Date Cleanser

I recently had a well-meaning neighbor hook me up with a guy. Unlike the past 5 hook ups people attempted, this dude actually made contact. Kudos dude, kudos. But our brief conversation quickly revealed an ulterior motive by the well-meaning neighbor.

I try to live as decently as I can, but like the poorly conceived medieval sin eaters, goodliness is not transferable nor is it highly contagious. So I found myself feeling very ill used as a purge-by-proximity for a guy who wanted no such thing. And he was well aware of my standards so it just got awkward because we both knew we had been paired for no other reason than to “save his soul”. Word of advice, don’t use blind dates to try and save wayward people. It is demeaning for both parties.

Me in a Nutty Shell

Metalanguage

To be an introvert means to have a high-reactive amygdala. The amygdala acts as a filter for incoming information from the senses. It processes about four billion bits of data a second sending it all to the subconscious mind and only 2,000 bits of data to the conscious mind. Since the brain is evolutionarily obsessed with energy conservation it only fires about ten percent of neurons at a time as to not overwhelm the conscious mind. But if you’re an introvert you get a bit more than 2,000 bits of data sent to your consciousness. This is why introverts are easily overwhelmed. They are bombarded by more sensory information and easily get mental and emotional fatigue. But this also makes introverts better observers than participants in social situations. They are highly acute to detecting metalanguage.

Metalanguage, as I am applying the term here, are the silent bodily cues people communicate subtlety and often unconsciously. Like masked sarcasm, slight eye rolls, twitching mouth corners, clenched fists. These silent cues are easily missed by the average person, but for an introvert these cues can seem like they’re being silently shouted.

With this established I can sum up a past relationship as thus:

A Confident Beetle

I watched Kubo and the Two Strings a little bit ago with some siblings and aside from the mind boggling stop motion animation the biggest thing that impressed me was the comedic relief Beetle. A samurai warrior who was cursed by spiteful deities and suffers from amnesia and trauma that provokes him to hilarious behavior. What impressed me about this unfortunate character was his self-confidence. No matter how abrasive his traveling companion Monkey was he was totally un-phased by it.

I’m afraid the charming Mathew McConaughey had me smitten with this ridiculous character.

Not that I’d ever treat anyone as rudely as Monkey did but MAN! What I would give for a guy with that level of self-confidence. No need to flaunt his ego, nothing to prove, un-threatened, comfortable with himself. That was so darn attractive I almost cried because this characteristic probably doesn’t exist in reality.

The most demeaned demographic now a days seems to be white males. They’re portrayed in the media as bumbling, sex addicted, vulgar, under educated, sexist, and morons.  Sadly, our society has been helping to fulfill that image rather than giving them a nobler standard. Their gender role in society and in the family unit is being dissolved and less defined seeming to leave them a bit adrift and unfocused. At least this seems to be the development among my dating options from my little corner of observation. I’m sure plenty would beg to differ.

So if my observation is remotely true, it’s no wonder guys are so insecure, and an insecurity leads to some very unattractive behavior and over-compensation. (My biggest pet peeve: loud, smoke belching, ego-trucks.)

What I want to know is how on earth can that self-confidence and humility be cultivated in my future sons?

Gotta Dim to Date?

One time I vented my frustration on how fragile all my dates seemed to be. They scared off like a skittish deer, more so if I ended up elaborating on my skills and accomplishments. The list isn’t huge but it seems enough to make their masculinity feel threatened.

My listener suggested that I withhold details of my aspirations until further in the relationship.

 This has felt double edged to me because if I talk too little of myself they also seem to lose interest. A significant number of my skills I’ve acquired are for the sake of attracting and benefiting a future spouse, not to compete against them. So in that light why would I want a companion so insecure that I have to wad myself up just so they can feel better about themselves?

A Tailor’s Good Advice

A suit tailor came to our house to put some finishing touches to dad’s new speaking uniform and once his work was complete there was some idle chat. He mentioned his younger brothers and at once my ears perked up. I asked him about them but they were all married. DANG! At once all of us got into the subject of the male shortage in Utah. He told me of the frustrations of his friends in finding girls and I picked his brain about their struggles and he gave me some fantastic advice.

He said the thing that was turned his friends off were girls who were competitive and excessively independent.  I personally wasn’t sure how competition looked in a marriage so I looked it up. 

Dr. Gail Saltz in his article on Today.com, 6 Signs Your Relationship is Competitive, describes a competitive relationship as as hoping your spouse fails, angry when they succeed, feeling insecure about your own talents when compared to theirs, attempts to outdo your spouse on various tasks, viewing them as an adversary, and feeling “happily superior at their failures”.

I could definitely tell I was at risk for this with my “more macho than my man” problem. So I described my problem that the longer I went single the more I had to become more independent by necessity. Personally, after having just replaced my spark plugs, cam and crankshaft sensors, and ignition switch, I would love to relinquish auto mechanics to my future husband.

He sympathized with me on the excess of guys who, rather than take up their mantle of manhood and adult roles, resort to gaming to get a feeling of accomplishment since real life can often be long coming or seldom rewarding. He prescribed being sweet, kind, pretty, and most importantly a cheerleader in a future relationship.

Grant Feller in his article How to deal with Competitive Marriage Syndrome, on Telegraph.com says the fight for women’s equality has reversed the balance of power and competitive marriage is one of the results. He says women are less accepting of subordination. (Bad wording dude) Scriptures implore women to be submissive not subordinate. There’s a difference between subordination and submissiveness.

I even looked it up in order to be precise:  to subordinate is to place in a lower class, rank, or position while submissive is meekly obedient or passive (The-difference-between.com). Thousands of years of subordination is exactly what provoked the women’s rights movement. But, I agree that feminism has become excessive. Rather than becoming equal with the husband women are now dominating and subjugating; committing the very crime that previous generations of men were accused of. This imbalance is hurting the family government and creating a generation of gender-role-confused, undervalued, video game escapist, and self defeatist males.

The Lord imparted the secret of a woman’s power to Eve when he told her to be submissive.  Meekness isn’t weakness, meekness means: power under control.  Men by nature are protectors and if you butt heads with them they will stand their ground and butt back. They’re designed that way. But they are very responsive to submissiveness. They love to please, to be chivalrous, to be praised, and made to feel manly. History has proven they will go to ridiculous lengths to please the woman when she works her influence. (I'm not talking about sexual influence here, that's its own can of worms.)

If a righteous man and woman coordinate in a partnership, the man leads as the first among equals but woman has a very powerful influence, when used right, empowers her spouse and influences their posterity for generations.

I’m so used to being one of the bro’s amongst three brothers I fear I am out of touch with my sweet side but I am hopeful that I have done well practicing cheerleading on my family members. So taking the tailor’s advice, I’m going to be aware, try to cultivate some sugar in my attitude, try not to be domineering, and let the man play his God anointed role of being my teammate.

The Death of Dating

In our grandparents and parents days in high school, continuous dating was not considered to be a gesture of commitment or intimacy. It was getting to know each other and having a good time.
But somehow, the term 'dating' and 'going steady' have become synonymous to millennials.

Now going on more than one date is considered committing to each other or having a relationship. So to avoid this, millennials prefer to hang out, because that's more noncommittal than dating. The result is the first date has become this do-or-die, Russian roulette of first impressions. Its as bad as a job interview, if its not a flawless performance there is no second date.

No wonder people are terrified to ask each other out, it feels like one inch from a proposal.

I think there are two culprits. Parents and Hollywood.
The reason why I think parents have contributed to this is because of their dialogue with us before or after a date.

I find family tends to think about marriage the second you even mention you're going out. Their dialogue makes it feel like an arranged marriage and effectively kills a fun night out because you've been conditioned to think of one thing.

Hollywood, on the other hand is notorious for depicting adult like romantic relationships between kids! It makes it seem like if you so much as come into proximity with the opposite gender sparks are gonna start flying. That and I think they contributed to making the terminology all mesh into one. Dating, going steady, and so on, now have no distinction especially where Hollywood thinks a first date also includes sex which in my personal belief should come after marriage. No wonder its hard to be alone with each other. We don't want intimacy and committed relationships right off the bat!
I don't know whether the traditional date can ever be restored to its original purpose and interpretation, but as of now, its become an ineffective form for many of us to meet new people.