The economics of pickiness

Alright, all of us singletons have been accused of being too picky at some point or another. Don't worry; this is not where I go into a rant about why someone who's such a great catch should start lowering standards. To lapse into economics for a moment, the essential question is whether the marginal benefit of being in someone's company outweighs the marginal cost. In equation form:

where i = all the things you like about the person and j = all the things you don't

and α, β, δ, and γ are weights

So you're out on a date. You're getting to know someone. Every new piece of information is either an i (positive) or a j (negative). You keep dating the person until the next j added tips the equation in that direction.

Where we open ourselves up to attack is what that j is. The proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back, the last j is unfortunately what we give as the reason we don’t want to keep seeing the person. So if my last j (under the category of Interests) is he likes the American version of The Office EVEN THOUGH he's seen the original, I get called out for being too picky. Which, if you look at the math, is totally unfair.

First, there's the issue of weights. One part of being accused of being too picky is when people don't like our weights. If my α is 0.85 and my β is 0.05, someone is going to come along and tell me I care too much about personality, and I should focus more on whether or not he's a good person. Actually, a friend of mine who got married by an arranged marriage keeps telling me I need to weight γ zero. That's going to make for a fun marriage when the kids are out of the house and that was the only thing you had in common.

Generally, I think it breaks down like this for me*:

α = 0.27

β = 0.27

δ = 0.19

γ = 0.27

So, liking the US Office added 0.27 to the right-hand side of the equation. That's really not very much at all. What it really comes down to is that the left-hand side of the equation didn't have enough i's to balance it out. If he were better looking, less religious, less inclined to spend the date talking about his exes, then that little 0.27 wouldn't have been enough to tip the balance.

So the next time someone gets on your case for being too picky, hand them a copy of this equation. Then plug in some numbers to show them quite clearly how rational it is to dump a woman for having man hands.

*Feel free to put your own numbers in the comments section—if you can't type greek, that's alpha, beta, delta, and gamma.

Shitting where you eat

Surprisingly, work has suddenly become a place to pick up guys. I say surprisingly because everyone here is old. Even the young people. The coworkers at an old job used the labels "old 30" and "young 30" to describe what I mean. While almost all 20 year-olds there were single, lived in or close to the city, and attended happy hours, only some of the 30 years-olds were similarly situated. Hence young 30 to describe the people who weren't way out in the suburbs with spouses or kids who no longer had a social life.

In the year and a half I've been working this job, I've only met one other young 30 person. I'm going off on a tangent because this is a good story. He was leading a training given to new employees. One of the other trainers was an older woman who kept trying to set us up. She would start extolling his good points to me every time we got near each other. Which would have been fine except this guy was currently playing Brad in a production of Rocky Horror Picture Show and was a really snazzy dresser. Awkward. I wonder if she ever figured out she was trying to set me up with a gay guy.

Anyway, I started a flirtation with a guy who sits near me and eventually he asked me out. This is was a big step for me, because he is old. Like in his 40s old. This has its advantages. He literally wined and dined me, but since he's so much older (and consequently farther along in his career), I didn't feel guilty about him picking up such a large check.

Some more lessons learned

I don't make it a habit to regret my decisions, and I'm happy to say I think my experience with the BT was beneficial. My post-breakup take home is that I need to date guys closer to my age. Yes, they have pot-bellies and receding hairlines. But at least they have their shit together. I'm saying goodbye to the younger guys who are still trying to figure it all out. However valid their search, they're a pain in my ass.

The second thing that came out of the experience was an unexpected trip into DXBF nostalgia. Post-breakup with my one serious boyfriend was quite a bit of recrimination for being with someone so completely messed up. But my trip down memory lane reminded me that giant emotional problems aside, we were really compatible. I haven't found anyone else I get along with that well. So years after the fact, I feel much better about the relationship and less bad about getting dumped.

Thank you, BT.  I'd tell you that in person, but that's going to make for one awkward conversation on the sidewalk when we finally run into each other.

Post mortem

I did end up getting an email from the BT the next day. Poor kid. It was sweet, apologizing for making me mad. I emailed back to say I wasn’t mad, I had forced his hand for a reason, and there’s no reason to think this was anything other than mutual. In retrospect, I think the line, “But I can't help but think tomorrow I'm some girl you used to know,” was misinterpreted. I meant that from my point of view. I was trying to say, deal with this now, because if you don’t, I’m gone tomorrow. Not, deal with this now, because if you don’t, it shows how little you care about me.

Anyway, I was glad I got the chance to clear up the texts. Having said that, I think text message is a great way to end the relationship. Everyone is so horrified by this, but aren’t breakups better when you are forced to type out your thoughts rather than blurting out something stupid? Talking it over with a friend, she made the point that at least texts are a conversation. When one person breaks up by email (or the infamous Sex and the City post-it note), it doesn’t give the other person a chance to respond. After I got over feeling guilty about that statement (I’ve blocked sender so the other person can’t respond), I realized that is the crucial aspect. As long as there’s a back and forth, I don’t see any reason why breakups have to be done in person. I’m not sure the benefit of looking someone in the eye outweighs the cost of being looked in the eye.

Once more on to the breach

You can probably guess what the point of this post is. Since this blog is about dating in the technological age, I'll go ahead and just post the series of texts that was the end of my latest relationship. But first, some background. The BT and I were hanging out after I got out of work. He was texting a friend to see if he could come out and finally called him and agreed to come over. I'm standing there like, what the fuck?, and the BT tells me the friend would be annoyed if I came with him. So he decided to go hang out with the friend and send me home with promises to see me later. After I got home, I started reading and fell asleep. In that time I got:

     BT: Hey sorry, you at home? Want me to bring you some food? 8:13 PM

     BT: Are you mad at me? 8:44 PM

I wake up to the two texts noting the first one was sent a good 45 minutes after we parted ways. So it's not like he immediately felt bad about what happened. This is what happened next:

     Me: I think so. I fell asleep 8:59 PM

     Me: Where are you? 9:07 PM 

After I didn't hear from him I called, but he was still at his friend's. I said something like, do you only want to be with me when you have nothing better to do? But he was not in a place where he could talk so I hung up. He followed up with me by text:
 

     BT: I'll talk to you tomorrow ok? 9:21 PM

     Me: No. Don't talk to me if you're not willing to sort this out. 9:23 PM

     BT: That's what i meant. When we're both sober 9:24 PM

     Me: I'm sober, and hurt as hell. I'm not going to feel better that you're hanging out with friends so you can take care of me tomorrow. 9:27 PM 
     BT: Well i'm not sober, but i am sorry, and i'll talk to you tomorrow 9:31 PM

     Me: I get that. But I can't help but think tomorrow I'm some girl you used to know. 9:37 PM

     Me: No snark. No way you stay out drinking and fix it tomorrow. 9:51 PM

     BT: I'm not sure if i want to fix it, 9:56 PM

     BT: And it really is hard for me to say that, and i wish it wasn't over the phone 10:00 PM 
     BT: Fair enough. I guess if I want a post mortem I'll ask. Have a nice life. 10:04 PM

     BT: No, [datista], please don't be like that. I want to talk to you tomorrow. You mean more that to me 10:07 PM

     Me: ? You don't want to fix it but you do? 10:16 PM

     BT: I just want to talk to you ok? 10:18 PM

     Me: Why? 10:20 PM

     BT: Because you aren't just some girl 10:27 PM

     Me: I appreciate that. But i don't want to go through a breakup twice. 10:33 PM

     BT: Ok, but this texting shit just doesn't feel right 10:43 PM

     Me: As long as breaking up does, the medium is irrelevant

It's a few hours after the last text and I've had a chance to process a little by email and over the phone with friends. Basically, I've been feeling like the relationship has been stale for the past couple of weeks. I hate to put a timeline on these things, but after four months I felt like we should love each other if we were going to. I wasn't feeling it, and since it was clear he wasn't feeling it either, best to just get out. 

Since I wrote them, I don't know how my texts come off. I hope they don't sound bitter because I didn't mean them that way, and I don't want him to come away thinking that I was detached to cover up my true emotions. Not out of pride, but because I made this whole big thing out of the grace of 30, and I want him to know breakups can be like this. No big drama, no tears, no angry words, no pretense of being friends, just goodbye. 

So I'm not upset. I'm sad that I'm losing a reliable source of sex. But frankly, that was going stale too. I'm just disappointed. My heart isn't broken but I sort of wish it were. Here's him telling me that I mean more to him than some cheap breakup by text and I'm saying cheap breakup by text is ok by me. I"m starting to think that in all my practicality I'm just not capable of being in love. After all, when it comes down to it, I'm just someone who'd can't be bothered to break up in person.

Don't hate the player

At the risk of gender baiting, I have to say I can’t believe some guys still know so little about women. Oh hell, I’m not gender baiting. I can’t believe some guys still know this little about people. The guys I’m talking about are the inventors and adherents of the seduction industry. Popularized by The Game, this industry sells men a proven method to pick up women (and get laid).

I have been totally sucked into reading up on this after the BT first told me about it. Yeah, I know, I’m waaaaay behind the times. (He’s not an adherent, but a friend is. I’m trying to figure out how I can go out with the friend and see it in action.) It’s hilarious. These guys really believe their stupid techniques work. They’ll even back it up with pop psychology or evolutionary biology. Apparently, women have evolved an attraction for guys who subtly insult us.

But I ask you, what is the number one contributing factor to attractiveness? Yeah. Confidence. All other things being equal, the confident bird catches the worm. So if you designed a program that told guys what to say/do when around the opposite sex, if you gave them training, and even took them out to practice, what do you think would happen? Duh, you idiots. It would work. But not because faking disinterest makes a woman compete for your attention. Because being talkative and friendly and not desperate is attractive. To people, not just women.

I can’t honestly say it’s a bad thing that guys are being given this confidence. Nor am I upset it’s promoting a misogynist point of view. It only is if the guys are so stupid they think these women are actually into them. Really, the only thing that upsets me is that they’re stupid enough to believe they’re own hype. That’s just sad.

The grace of 30

It’s hard to keep a blog about online dating going when you’re not doing any of it. Stupid relationships. But I managed to create a tempest in a teacup this weekend. Better yet, the tempest was entirely in my own head. The short story (the longer it goes, the stupider I sound) is that I told the BT I was no longer fucking around in the relationship, I was falling in love, and I was afraid he was going to break my heart. Yeah, the last part was added by the drunk part of my mind. The next morning he was acting strange and then he decided to go home and spend the rest of the day on his own. I now know he was tired and out of sorts and just needed to get some rest. My mind went somewhere else entirely, and I got all paranoid that I had freaked him out. So much for the grace of 30.

In the midst of all this nonsense, plus a friend’s breakup, I’ve had time to reflect on the difference between dating in your 20s and dating in your 30s. When asking someone out, a 20-something worries about humiliation and a 30-something worries how many times she’s going to have to do it before she gets a yes. When declaring feelings, a 20-something worries about ruining the relationship by saying something too soon (Quiet, you. I was reflexively worried because he’s a 20-something.), and a 30-something worries he’s going to find out the relationship has run its course. When a 20-something doesn’t return the feelings, she feels that she’s leading the guy on and has to break up with him. When a 30-something doesn’t return the feelings, she waits to see if she’ll get there at some point. A dumping can go a couple of ways for a 20-something. The depression route has a 20-something feeling unlovable and inadequate. The anger route has a 20-something feeling outraged that anyone could dare think he is unlovable or inadequate. A 30-something is sad it didn’t work out, and worried about how long he’s going to have to wait to get laid again.

Essentially, the grace of 30 is realizing that shit doesn’t work out, and it’s not a referendum on you. I hope I give anyone younger relief that things do get better or maybe even the inspiration to get there faster.