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Meeting
Places
Current Reading: A Date That Will Live in Infamy; He was cheap, but he paid in the end. Big time
An excerpt from a piece by
by Gene Weingarten in The Washington Post:
His name is Darren. Hers is Joanne. Darren is the CEO of a small company. Joanne is a secretary. The two met on at a restaurant in New York City on June 4. Joanne had offered to pay half the check, but Darren gallantly declined. Later, however, when he could not reach Joanne and concluded she was not going to go out with him again, Darren decided she owed him for her half of the meal. He left a message on her answering machine. The audio was uploaded into the e-mail.
". . . You ate the food, you drank the wine. Do the right thing. The next time you go dating, be careful, don't lead guys on, which is what you did to me. Fifty dollars — please put it in the mail, and we're done and you never have to hear from me again. Otherwise I am just gonna keep on top of this, and I don't think you want me to keep on top of this."
...
Darren kept calling and leaving messages, exhibiting all the savoir-faire of Bruno the Disagreeable Loan Shark.
"You can only hide so much behind e-mails. I'm going to reach out to your employer and issue a summons and call you down to court. So, it's your call. My next call is going to be to your employer . . ."
Read the rest of the column in the Washington Post (prior registration needed)
Pew Internet Project Reports
Online Dating: Americans who are seeking romance use the internet to help them in their search, but there is still widespread public concern about the safety of online dating
There is now relatively broad public contact with the online dating world. Some 31% of American adults say they know someone who has used a dating website and 15% of American adults – about 30 million people – say they know someone who has been in a long-term relationship or married someone he or she met online.
Yet, dating websites are just one of many online avenues that can facilitate a romantic connection. Three out of four internet users who are single and looking for a romantic partner have done at least one dating-related activity online — ranging from using dating websites, to searching for information about prospective dates, to flirting via email and instant messaging, to browsing for information about the local singles scene.
Some 11% of all internet users and 37% of those who are single and looking say they have gone to dating websites. A majority of them say they have had positive experiences and believe their use of such sites helps them to find a better match. A notable number of these online daters have found firsthand that lasting romance can be forged online; 17% of them say they have entered long-term relationships or married someone they met through the services.
Read the report at the Pew site and view the questionnaire used for the survey.
Romance in America
Large numbers of single Americans are not actively looking for relationships and even significant numbers of those looking for partners are not that active on the dating scene.
At first glance, the survey results suggest ample targets for Cupid among American adults ... while the majority of American adults (56% or 113 million people) are not in the dating market (they are married or living as married), the number of potential romance-seekers is still huge. Fully 43% of adults (87 million people) say they are single. These data generally align with findings from a 50,000-household survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2004.
These findings emerge from a national survey conducted last fall by the Pew Internet & American Life Project looking at the place of online dating in the larger picture of relationships in America. The survey found that dating in America is, indeed, affected by online matchmaking activity.
In general, marriage patterns have ebbed and flowed over time. Census data show fairly consistent patterns throughout the first half of the 20th century with a swing towards marriage in the 1950s and 1960s. Marriage rates then receded as the ranks of both the widowed and the never-married increased.
While a sizable segment of the population is single, about a quarter of unmarried Americans (26% or about 23 million adults) say they are in committed romantic relationships. Single men are more likely than single women to report being so situated. Yet among the uncommitted, relatively few say they are in the market for relationships.
Among all singles, just 16% say they are currently looking for a romantic partner. That amounts to 7% of the adult population. Some 55% of singles report no active interest in seeking a romantic partner. This is especially true for women, for those who have been widowed or divorced, and for older singles.
A detailed look at online dating will be reported soon from the Pew Internet Project and will be available on its web site. You can also sign up to receive an email alert when the Project's report becomes available.
The Seduction Artists
"I came to the seductress, like most people, through the imagination.
Raised in a southern belle culture, with a mother who was the Miss
Valentine of Richmond, Virginia, I gravitated as a child to stories
of man charmers in fiction and fairy tales. Much later I taught
a college course on the topic “The Seductress in Literature” that
changed everything. First I discovered the dearth of research —
few unbiased or comprehensive studies — and second a ravenous appetite
among young people for knowledge. In my class, students of both
sexes avidly analyzed fabled sirens and tried to scope out their
secrets. Afterward, the women flooded my office. Over and over I
heard the same laments: elusive bad boys, soulless hookups, sapped
confidence, wrecked pride, and total mystification about how to
prevail in love.
"As I looked around, I realized my students reflected a larger
crisis in society. Across the culture, women seemed to have lost
the plot erotically and entered the “plague years.” Despite equal
opportunity sex and babe feminism, guys still hold the whip hand:
They have numbers on their side (48 percent women to 43 percent
men nationwide); they age better and cling like crotch crabs to
their historic prerogatives of the initiative, double standard,
promiscuity, mate trade-ins, domination, and domestic copouts. The
population of single women, especially middle-aged professionals
and first wives, has swelled to one in four, with most wanting and
failing to “get married.”
"In surveys, women en masse report epic demoralization and
erotic despair. We say we’re “increasingly loved and left,” prey
to low self-esteem, and “really lonely and really afraid.” The orgasm
gap—the 15 to 30 percent female success rate during intercourse—continues
to widen, as women clamor for a Viagra equivalent and numb themselves
with antidepressants. “No one disputes the evidence,” writes a New
York Times reporter, “that many women are unhappy with their
sex lives” or that we’re engaged “in a frantic search for a role
model.”
"By the end of the semester I began investigating actual seductresses
in hopes of finding role models to pull us out of this funk. I cast
my nets wide. I read hundreds of biographies; I pumped friends and
colleagues; I followed up leads dropped at parties, here and abroad.
The list burgeoned; notebooks bulged until at last I narrowed the
field to the top players. I defined the seductress as a powerful
fascinator able to get and keep the men of her choice, men who are
good for her. Rarely discarded or two-timed, she successfully combines
erotic supremacy with personal and vocational achievement. That
automatically eliminated a number of pseudoseductresses: the eaten
and colonized Marilyn Monroe, the oft-dumped flunky Pamela Harriman,
and such gofers to male genius as Alma Mahler.
Read the entire excerpt from
Seductress; Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love
at B&N's website
Tech Solutions: nTags
I'm not suggesting that
this would work in all social situations but the very idea seems
to be a rational approach to those (forgive the overworked phrase!)
... senior moments.
"When people meet,
their nTAGs identify things they
have in common and provide that information right at the beginning
of the conversation, just the way a gracious host would. nTAGs make
it easy to meet new people, figure out who to spend time with, and
quickly build real connections."
Simple, no? The product
is an interactive name badge, a wearable computer in actuality.
Prospective users are reassured that
you don't have to be a rocket scientist to use the product.
One publicity release
describes it this way: The interactive badges are worn in the
same way as traditional nametags but have the ability to exchange
data with each other over a distance of three feet and then display
information customised to people who meet and interact. Each user
reads the message on the other person’s tag just as they would a
name badge except nTAG displays relevant information and mutual
interests between attendees.
We realize that the following
'games' were devised for business situations, but hey, they have
a slightly sexy bent:
Treasure Hunt
– To collect a treasure, each attendee has to accomplish networking
tasks such as meeting people from other countries, visiting expo
booths, or finding an accountant who loves broccoli.
Secret Partner
– Each attendee is assigned a “secret partner” to find. Greeting
people one by one, the task would be impossible. But nTAGs help
participants use the power of networking to find their secret partner
while meeting others along the way.
Sadly, the badges are
only available to rent at the moment but considering my difficulty
with remembering people's names at gatherings, I'm intrigued.
Mating
& Reality Shows
Recently John Dvorak,
writing in PC
Magazine, took a skeptical point-of-view regarding the legitimacy
of some of the reality TV shows. Nonetheless, their popularity is
scarcely dimmed by his doubts. A website, Orwell
Project, provides daily updates of the genre, in case you're
otherwise occupied watching the war or Daniel
Deronda.
The premise of relationship
experts selecting five potential mates for a contestant on a TV
show seems unique but the fact that the couple won't meet before
their engagement recalls older matchmaking techniques or arranged
marriages. Married
by America is a new reality show, following the ratings
successes of How to Marry a Millionaire, Bachelor, Bachelorette,
Joe Millionaire and other
shows. Of course, The Learning Channel has had their own long-running
A
Dating Game, though much less hyped than the newer network
concoctions have been. And if you appreciate a cold clime, consider
Bachelorettes in Alaska,
a series in which five single women travel to Alaska looking for
the love of their lives and perhaps a husband.
However, a Zachary Houle
article on TVParty.com
informs us that matchmaking isn't new to TV or radio, for that matter:
"The couple was
to be married on a program called Bride and Groom, where
everyday John and Jane Does from all over America were legally hitched
on TV. It originally ran on CBS between 1951 and 1953 in 15-minute
increments between soaps weekday mornings. The show moved briefly
to NBC in 1954 for one more season, and frittered into that network's
rerun lineup occasionally in fits and spurts until 1958, when it
was banished forever from the dial. (Originally, Bride and Groom
had been a radio show that'd been on the air possibly as far back
as 1946. You can actually hear a snippet of that show if
you go here.)"
"Unlike reality
TV shows of today, the couple getting married actually knew each
other for some time before tying the knot."
The Warner Bros. network
promotes a show called Change
of Heart wherein the contestants explore "the possibilities
available when two people come to a crossroads in their relationship.
The show features couples who are not living together and have been
dating for less than a year, and interviews them about what they're
looking for in an ideal mate. Each of them is then set up on a date
with someone else who meets their criteria. Following their separate
dates, the original couple returns to discuss whether they have
a future together or if one or both of them have a 'change of heart.'
"
Warners, not content
with just one example of this genre air a show called elimiDate,
pitting "four suitors against one another for the hand of one
lucky single on a group date. These candidates, three of whom will
be eliminated over the course of the game, need to outflirt, outsmart
and outlast their competition using their wit, charm and sex appeal.
Their strategy should ultimately ensure that they're the one left
standing when the dating dust has settled." For some obscure
reason, the photos for this series seem to be populated by young
women in wet T-shirts or Bikini tops. Odd, that.
Even the Food Network
is getting into the act. The premise of DatePlate
is to "take 2 eligible bachelors (or bachelorettes), give each
a $ 50 shopping budget, and ask them to plan and cook a romantic
meal in hopes of winning over a blind date."
Our coalition partners
across the pond were not immune to the lure of the reality relationship
formula. The BBC2 network hosted a show called Would
Like to Meet following 10 men and women and their dating
trails and tribulations.
"In Mr.
Personality, a young, beautiful and single woman will court
several eligible men who must rely strictly on their individual
personalities to captivate her. Each man will be disguised throughout
the dating process, keeping his looks hidden. While our beautiful
heroine will not see the appearance of the men she is dating, viewers
will. As the series progresses, the single woman ultimately narrows
her choice to one man." Mr.
Personality, hosted by Monica Lewinsky, is conducting an open
casting call. Sadly, the age of women they want as a contestant
ends at 35.
What happened to the
lure of the older woman? Should we concoct a show called Younger
Man, Older Woman?
However, there are shows
that are still accepting applications for contestants. One entry
that has been postponed until events in Iraq allow is Around
the World in 80 Dates. "If chosen you could be enjoying
a candlelit dinner at Buckingham Palace, riding through the moonlit
canals of Venice or taking in the opera at the famed Sydney Opera
House. Sound enticing? How about a private jet to whisk you and
your dream date from one romantic destination to the next? On this
new NBC reality show, one lucky guy is going around the world and
he's coming back with the woman of his dreams." Another
program in casting stages is Race
to the Altar, "when eight couples race around the country
competing against each other in a series of mental and physical
challenges on the new reality series from NBC."
But perhaps the show
most suited to our older, more mature, more experienced, more-just-more
crowd is the tantalizingly named Who
Wants to Marry My Dad? Application
forms await.
Mating and Relating
"Wouldn’t the mating
game be much easier if you could recognize where you blossom and
where you may tend to wilt? Are you making an impression on the
people you meet at work, at parties, and at the grocery store? And
if so, exactly what kind of impression are you leaving behind?"
Examples of the quiz
at the Penguin Putnam site promoting the book, Rate
Yourself on Romance Self-Evaluation to Assess Your Love Life:
How Romantic Are
You?
1) Your 6-month anniversary
with your significant other is coming up in one week.
As a gift, you will:
a) Do nothing. You're not into the whole gift thing.
b) Run out that day to get a card – you always leave things like
that to the last minute.
c) Shop around for the next few days to find a gift you know your
partner will love.
d) Relax. You've already bought a gift and planned a special celebration
for the occasion.
2) Your pet name for
your significant other is:
a) Any cute name
that you can imagine b) Honey
c) His/her given name
d) Baby
3) It's Friday night,
and you've got a date with your partner. What are your ideal plans?
a) Watching a romantic
video while cuddling by the light of scented candles. b) Getting
together with your partner and a bunch of good friends.
c) Getting dressed up for a night that will include good wine, a
fine meal, dancing and a moonlit stroll.
d) Staying in with a warm bath drawn for two, followed by sensual
full body massage and champagne and strawberries.
Online
Dating Article
"In 1999, after
a long dry spell, datewise, I explored a new dating frontier - online
personal ads. I posted my own ads, answered others, and met and
dated men I met online. I learned that, while some of the same commonsense
guidelines that have always applied to dating still work, there
are a lot of new guidelines that come with the territory."
Online
Dating Tips
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