Relief

Honestly, it is a huge relief to have fb guy out of my head. He never called me that often. He never expressed anything regarding how things were going until he called to tell me it was over. I'm now pretty sure he was never that into me. The Rules worked well to weed him out as a guy not that into me, even though I do believe he was a genuinely nice and good guy. It is wonderful not to have to think about him anymore.

But why did I put so much brainpower into him needlessly while it was going on? It was distracting and exhausting.

Pre-Rules me had few boundaries, emotional or physical. I fell fast and hard, immersing myself with abandon in my fantasies of him, drinking in as much communication and physical intimacy as I possibly could (short of sex until exclusivity was largely established). Rules me set up physical boundaries, stepping on the brakes as to literal contact. But, as I failed to realize until fb guy ended, my admirable adherence to my physical restrictions did not translate into emotional boundaries.

I have always been a strange mix of thought and emotion. Believe it or not (in fact, many of my close friends do not), my head rules my heart. It is my head, not my heart, that unbalances me every single time. This does not mean I am not emotionally sensitive - clearly, I am. But my most extreme emotional reactions occur as a result of my head's hostile invasion and ultimate conquest of my heart. On the rare occasions when I can figure out how to let go of my head and allow my heart to come to the surface, I can experience the kind of slow, healthy sadness that yields to calm acceptance.

As a child, I was a bit of an insomniac. Every little noise or thought kept me from falling asleep. Once I did, I'd often wake up in the middle of the night and feel completely out of control. One of my clearest mental images from my elementary school years is of me lying on my bed, moonlight glaring at me through the window, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling and listening to late-night soft pop on the radio in futile attempt to distract myself from the crickets and house creaks and thoughts of house fires or my parents getting a divorce or my cat wandering off or infectious diseases, which stood between me and slumber. Eventually I would not be able to stand it anymore and would stride quietly down the hall to wake my mother up. Out of tiredness and frustration at her inability to provide me any relief, she would sometimes get angry and threaten to take me to a psychiatrist. I would cry in desperation. We would argue until the flying sparks exhausted me and I returned to my room to collapse on my bed, radio still playing.

(Footnote: I have a wonderful, amazing mother whose only flaw is taking the angst of her children personally.)

Even that young, my sleeping trick was to focus on a love interest. Imagining a boy taking care of me somehow took the edge off in a way that nothing else did. By middle school, I drifted off every night to thoughts of me and him - "him" being anyone from the boy I slow danced with to someone interesting from the playground.

My insomnia was gone by high school, coinciding in part with the beginning of my long string of monogamous relationships. Dreaming about a boy who demonstrated affection for me in real life felt even safer than the abstract fantasies of pre- and early adolescence. These conscious dreams, and these boys, began as sleeping pills and gradually bled into what seemed like every minute of every day. When I sensed one man's chapter ending, I sought out another as if on auto-pilot.

Even now, it is a rare night that I do not go to sleep thinking about some man or another. It is all I know how to do. Recognition of the havoc this wreaks on my mental state has been percolating slowly for some time. It has been particularly lucid post-fb guy; I have had three consecutive man-free nights since he cut me loose. Miraculously, I increasingly possess the ability to breathe deeply and be with myself through the night.

Maybe next time my boundaries can be emotional, too.

Soundtrack: Jem, Save Me; Regina Spektor, Fidelity; Destiny's Child, Emotions; KT Tunstall, Silent Sea

My IM vice reemerges

I haven't discussed instant messaging in awhile. Back at the very beginning, before I even received my copy of the Rules for Online Dating, I noted that IMing wasn't very rules-y and hinted that I was going to sign off of it for the duration. I haven't really followed up on that, and it would appear that it is now time to do so.

As expected, the Rules generally frown on the practice of instant messaging. Rule #8 of the Online Dating rules is that you should block yourself from it altogether - though this is specifically in the context of dating websites. The Rules don't seem to account for general IM programs such as AIM and gchat. The modified Rules located in the appendix to the Online Dating volume have some guidance for IMing if you absolutely MUST, including counting to 60 before responding, and, of course, being light, breezy, and demure in your responses.

Interestingly, the Rules do allow you to go meet people in "chat rooms" as long as you wait for them to message you, in a chapter that seems a little too AOL-era to be relevant. I may go try to find a chat room at some point just to play around with this Rule - although I really don't know where I would go for that. The last time I joined an actual chat room was I believe on the IRC, in 1998.

(Note that I can't do any Rules quoting right now because I did not pack my Rules on this business trip, but the basic idea is that it's too spontaneous, too available. Maybe I'll go back and edit this post when I get home so that I can be more precise.)

Now, on to applying this to myself. It is fair to say that I have been an avid IM-er since the practice existed. My family was on Prodigy when I was 11, and I dabbled in the bulletin boards (yes, there were sexual predators on the Internet before the Internet existed). A year or two later, a friend and I dialed into each other's computers and typed to each other on a DOS interface, and could not get over how amazing it was. The same friend and I used to play around on AOL chat rooms and screwed with people. I went on BBSs throughout high school, using Legend of the Red Dragon as an alternate social life. In college, I used ICQ, then AIM, basically constantly. After college I lived abroad and used Trillian, which facilitated communications through all major chat programs then existing.

I think it is also fair to say that instant messaging has played a significant role in many of my relationships and is in fact responsible for my ill-fated marriage, and possibly its early demise.

Back one summer in college, I found out the AIM screenname of my co-worker crush and added him to my list just to watch him, never messaging. I found out he liked me too when I asked to check my email on his computer at a gathering and saw my own screenname on his list.

Another college relationship, this one long-distance, relied on IM to keep it going. One night when he wasn't online I became suspicious, freaked out, and started calling his dorm phone over and over until he answered. The next day I drove to visit him and he told me he'd cheated on me.

A little later I was lonely living abroad, not having much of a social life there due to factors beyond my control. I leaned on my good friend who I later married - spending my entire workday (his entire night!) talking to him online. After months of this, he told me he couldn't talk to me anymore unless I agreed to date him when I returned to the country. I had not felt that way about him and told him no, then spent a month miserable because my main personal contact had been cut off from me. I resumed communication with him by agreeing to go on a date with him when I got back. That coerced date, for reasons I need not explain here, led to our marriage. I later realized things weren't working out when I started having feelings for a guy I met in law school, which I indulged through IM conversations.

At various intervals throughout this period of time, I'd generally initiate IM conversations with ex boyfriends whenever I felt like getting male attention.

I walk through my dubious IM-relationship-history not to pour out all my e-drama, but to set a foundation for conquering one of my biggest Rules weaknesses. IM is instant gratification, obtained easily and without much effort. And if IM is chocolate cake, I am a grotesquely obese person huffing and puffing to get up a flight of stairs.

Back to my six months of Rules. What modifications did I actually make to my instant messaging behavior? Well, I stopped using facebook chat altogether, and I have not relented once. Nor I have I looked back at all.

As for gchat, that's a little more of an addiction and not just when it comes to guys. My brain likes to multitask, and I work better when I feel like I'm not completely isolated from the world. There are two people I gchat every day, both girls, and this particular indulgence is not something I felt like I needed to let go of. Solution? First, I removed all potential guys from my "show" list (did not block them, just removed them so that I can't see when they're online). Second, I went invisible myself, so I can just message the two girls I like talking to.

This strategy has been mostly effective until recently. The only shortfall I had was my 2nd most recent ex, who knows I'm invisible because I pulled this sometimes pre-Rules, and chats me. OK, I guess I was bad at the beginning with him because I showed him the pictures of myself I posted to the AO, but that was the worst of it. But lately, I have started falling off the IM wagon. I have initiated IM conversations with this guy when invisible. I have initiated conversations with a previous ex (4th most recent, I think) that approach flirtation.

OK, the ex thing sucks and I clearly need to stop it in the spirit of the Rules, but is not terribly dangerous to my Rules experiment IRL because both exes are far away. But that's not all.

I have made myself "visible" a couple of times to chat with a new guy friend that I am only 80% sure is just a friend. He and I had IMed a couple of times before the experiment so there was some precedent for the conversations. I don't feel chemistry with him, but I have grown to like him a great deal, and am definitely establishing some kind of a bond with him. The first few times I made myself visible in order to bait him into chatting me, which he usually did. Then I stopped caring whether he IMed me first, and just signed on and IMed him when I want to. I actually asked him to go to a movie with me spontaneously one weeknight (as in, "I want to see the 7 PM show of X, let's go") and he did it. And then we went to dinner at a sit-down place afterwards.

And since I've been on the business trip, I've been just horrible about IMing. I miss the life I was building in Atlanta. I've started to feel insecure about having just established myself on the Jewish dating scene and then ripping myself away from it for two weeks and two weekends. I worry that I'll have to start all over when I get back, that the guys who had planted seeds of interest will forget about me, that I'll lose the great progress I'd made toward having a social circle in the Jewish community.

A CUAO is supposed to brush these thoughts aside. There will always be other men. If these men forget about me they never liked me enough to begin with. When I fly into town, jetsetter that I am, I will breeze into any room and light it up. And if nobody notices me, their loss.

But I am not quite in true CUAO form yet. And the result of that is back to old habits, meaning a total lapse on IM, as to ex boyfriends but most relevantly as to my new male friend.

I suppose this would not be a problem if we were truly just friends, but it is more complicated than that. I wonder if there might be interest on his end, though he's never made any overt moves in that direction. A couple of people have suggested that we date, or that something's already going on between us. Clearly I have thought about that possibility more than once. I admit that I have wished that there were more chemistry because I enjoy his company so much. I have even thought that I might be moving towards liking him that way a couple of times. I unabashedly ask him to hang out, on IM and not. I text him and respond to his texts.

After a particularly flirtatious IM conversation, I let my friend read it over. She informed me in no uncertain terms that I was leading him on. This is not something a Rules Girl would do.

So first of all, I think it's time to get my virtual self into shape. Lay off the IM. If I cannot lay off the IM, sign on infrequently and allow guys to IM me, but do not IM them. Apply the Rules of IMing in terms of my response time and length.

Lastly, use the rest of this trip to make some kind of a decision on my guy friend. If he is just a friend, I must treat him as such and quit flirting. If he might be more, I need to start Rulesing him.

I am not doing this to find a boyfriend

I have to remind self of this constantly when I am not returning calls and texts from someone I believe is a good guy, who I like, and who I think likes me.

I did not start this blog to find a boyfriend. I am doing these Rules to find myself.

That means meeting my insecurities, which cause me to try to control people and situations, head on.

Returning a phone call is hardly trying to control someone. I get this.

But down the road, I might freak out that he doesn't have a picture of me as his wallpaper, or hasn't asked to be in a relationship on facebook (despite my disdain for this practice). Down the road, I may throw a tantrum because his friends keep inviting him to weddings without his serious girlfriend and he doesn't seem to care. Down the road, I could well threaten to break up with him if he doesn't want to move in together.

I will scrutinize his actions and inactions, worried that they are all referenda on our relationship. I will listen to every nice thing my friends' significant others do for them and wonder why mine isn't doing the same for me. I will drive myself crazy, and once I have done so, I will drive him crazy.

Until I can trust myself not to be this worst version of me, I have to let go a little. Even of a guy I like. Even before any of these things are on the horizon.

"You will not lose something that you were meant to keep."

As if reprise

A commenter on my previous entry noted that "as if" is a rather dishonest defense mechanism. She recommended that I avoid my former boyfriend at all costs because it is too painful right now, and causes unnecessary negative emotional reactions. She has a good point, and my friends definitely had that instinct when I talked about the issue with them.

The problem is that I don't think I *can* avoid him totally. I have come to believe the fear of him is a) worse than the reality of him, and b) allowing him too much control over my decisions. I end up feeling worse seeing his name on an RSVP to an event I'd like to go to than I think I would if he were just there and I didn't know about it beforehand. I realized this a couple of weeks ago and decided not to look at facebook RSVPs anymore, a strategy that has been largely effective in ridding myself of him-related unpleasantness. Unfortunately, there are always events I will strongly suspect he will attend because I know him; and for the Purim party in question, when I clicked to RSVP, he was one of the 8 or so people listed at the bottom of the page. I can accept these things, because I know I cannot control them.

Now that I have broken the ice on some level, I think I can ignore him at future events and leave it to him if he wants to talk to me. Which he will not, because in truth, he is a pansy, something I say not as a bitter woman, but someone who tried very hard to put up with his pansy-ness for a very long time.

The "as if" attitude is a defense mechanism, as became clear to me when I spilled my guts to my friend that afternoon. However, this particular defense mechanism or versions of it are recommended by such authoritative sources as Hasidic masters, Charlie Chaplin, and my mother (who thinks that wearing makeup and making your bed is the best way to feel better).

For the first month after the breakup, I was not at all ready to act "as if." I dumped on my sister and my friends all the damn time. I am ready now, and I think "as if" is probably the best approach for me. I shut him out of my mind and have stopped talking about him entirely; part of why Friend1 was surprised at my entry the other day after I did not mention it during our last outing.

I am suppressing and I know it. But I try to allow myself to indulge the feelings in safe spaces and on kickass playlists, when I need to. I just don't really need to anymore. I am ready to MOVE ON, although I wasn't for a while. Next!

Rulebreaker/Homewrecker

Today I found out that I broke up a relationship.



OK, perhaps I'm giving myself too much credit. I am hardly a threat to any relationship, as for some reason my guy-sensors instantly go dead as soon as I know someone is taken (possible exception: ex boyfriends, but that has only happened once). Also, I'm really very nice and cool to the wives and girlfriends of male coworkers, friends, etc. Rulebreaker is not at all the homewrecker type.

No, my blog indirectly led to one of my female readers determining that her boyfriend wasn't putting enough effort in, and she Nexted him.

This reminds me very much of Jennifer Aniston's character in the movie "He's Just Not That Into You." That guy manned up in the end, I think. Only time will tell on this one.

The Rules and rejection

In the single/dating world, rejection is inevitable. This truth, along with the truth that guys can say a lot of effusive shit they don't mean, is something I never had occasion to learn in the past because of how most of my previous relationships developed. Now I'm getting to experience that bitter pill right and left, and man, it kind of sucks.

But really, not as bad as it could suck, by a long shot. Even when you account for the enhanced embarrassment that occurs when you've blogged about a prospect and then he doesn't call you.

I have mentioned indirectly the self-preservation role that The Rules play. For example, following the Rules has the following benefits that are helpful when dealing with rejection:

• Decreases anxiety by taking decisions out of your hands.
  
• Encourages acceptance of things you cannot control.
  
• Prevents you from doing something you could really regret, like sex on the first date or random hookups.

I said from the beginning that my main goal from this experiment was not to find a husband but to train myself not to be so boy-crazy. It is working really well for that. OK, so I'm still pretty neurotic, but the Rules obviates my instinct to force the issue (which I usually do by making my interest plainly obvious and/or finding excuses to initiate contact). My hands are tied; I don't really use up real energy figuring out how to make things happen because I'm not allowed to. This leaves me free and in fact incentivized to clean out my car, buy vacuum cleaners, play my old classical piano pieces, read everything Orson Scott Card has ever written, and become obsessed with the bands Muse and Spoon. Also, when my single friends tell me about their non-Rules-y interactions with guys, I cringe at how desperate they sound and feel overwhelming relief that that could not happen to me.

By all accounts I should have been a confident and independent enough woman not to need such contrived tools to become engrossed in my own pursuits. The fact is that I have always lived a full, well-rounded life, but I have never really focused on it on the merits due to feelings of emptiness whenever I don't have a man.

Yes, I wish that I had always been secure enough not to need The Rules. But such is not the state of the world. So I'm happy for the protection they afford me as I navigate the perilous single life for the first time, facing multiple rounds of rejection at every turn.

("At every turn" is currently kind of an exaggeration, I'm just 0 for 3 on getting a real legit date.)

PS, if you're out there, please comment - I'm planning to post some of my rejection stories but it's even harder to put that out there when no one's reading it :)

I may not get a date during this experiment and you will just have to deal with it

Some of you have commented that this blog is not interesting because I am not writing about dates. I would be writing about dates if I were going on them, but that part is largely outside my control. The Rules prohibit me from doing anything to get a date other than looking my best at all times and hoping somebody likes me.

Needless to say, this is not my usual M.O. I am in my comfort zone when I hone in on some guy and have him get to know my quirky, down-to-earth, irreverent, geeky, non-makeup-wearing and not particularly girly self, make my crush obvious to him, and then engineer situations where something might happen. Using this method, I have about a 75% success rate in making that guy my boyfriend in the end. For the guys who have pursued me unsolicited, they have for the most part pursued quirky, down-to-earth, irreverent, geeky, non-makeup-wearing me.

This experiment turns my dating philosophy on its head, and filters my personality substantially (though I admit I am having a lot of trouble actually implementing the latter part). While I am perfectly confident in my ability to get someone to want to be with me, it's usually closer to the whole ME that they actively want to be with, not just how I appear from across a room. In other words, I do not have confidence that I will attract men passively by smiling at the world and acting breezy in settings that I hate.

A word about my looks, since that is the obvious question that arises from the previous paragraph. I'm a "she's pretty if you like that type" girl. I consider myself above-average looking but do not immediately strike most people as gorgeous. I'm probably never going to be the prettiest girl in the room at these singles events. I do not generally hang out at bars or clubs, and when I do I am infrequently approached. I'm small chested so I can't use my cleavage to get guys to come up to me, and people can look at my long legs and great ass all night without saying a word to me. No - what makes me desirable to men is the combination of my attractiveness and other positive things about me. Sort of like a "hey, a decently good-looking girl who is also smart, funny, and interesting." The Rules do not give me an outlet to showcase the whole package, and therefore I honestly do not anticipate success in getting dates this way.

And I am okay with this. It's a little early to call the dating experiment a wash, but like I said from the get-go, I'm not going to consider this a failure even if not a single guy asks me out in the next six months.

Soooo, while I will mourn the potential loss of my beloved actuarial readership, I simply can't do anything else short of a boob job - which I am not getting any more than I am getting a nose job - to make guys ask me out. I'll try to post more anecdotal stuff to entertain, though, and feel free to keep telling me what's boring. It's helpful to me as a writer, if nothing else.

Why not just not date for 6 months?

This has been suggested to me more than once both by close friends and random people on the internet, based on the unfortunate fact that I've never had real single time. My relationship life was really confusing in college and the year after, so I'm not sure it's 100% true to say 3 months is the longest I've been single (though during that period I was always engaging with or crushing on certain men). But I actually did consider the option of a hiatus, and talked it over with a few people, but when I thought of this idea I just went with it. I didn't have a whole lot of time to think it over because the concept revolved around turning 30, but I also think that this is a good way to go for these reasons:

• I actually think that if I follow the Rules, no dating may be the result because my personality doesn't fit with them AT ALL and I'm not sure they work in modern society anyway. I've said this already, but it bears mentioning again.
• I'm not sure a hiatus would really work to change my mindset, or if it did, it would be pretty miserable in the process. I'm kind of obsessive about men and find it hard to concentrate on my own life when I'm not in a relationship. Because my work life is so grueling, I can't just suddenly let go of my compulsion to think about men when I don't have one. The Rules, in addition to being a "method to dating" (which channels my natural impulse to obsess about men), works to change this attitude, which is something I think could be helpful to me. This way I still get to think about it - something I don't think I'm quite strong enough to control since it's been with me my whole life - but I'm doing it in a different, hopefully healthier, way. This is probably the main reason, honestly.
  
• I enjoy writing and have been meaning to start a blog for a long time. It seemed like a cohesive enough concept to go with, so I took the opportunity. I decided I would try to post regularly to test the waters until the 28th, and then go for it if I still felt like it would be a positive thing.
  
• I am 29.5, and I want to have kids someday. My single male friends have made comments about avoiding girls as old as I am, because they want multiple kids. Reality.
• I mentioned my work life above, and that's a factor. Last year I worked 60-80 hours a week and pulled at least 5 all-nighters. If I turn dating off as a priority for 6 months, I could wind up in my current job 10 years from now with nothing else going on, and possibly insane. Ok, that's admittedly unlikely because of how much I care about things like music (I'm in a musical performing group) and volunteering and other activities. But work was driving me crazy before my breakup, and I don't want it to suck my personal life away now that I no longer have a relationship. The one other girl at my workplace that's not married is a scary workaholic.
• Putting myself "out there" allows me to make new friends too, and I've started making lots of new friends already thinking about this approach. This is particularly helpful for someone who lost a bunch of friends recently because they were all his - I moved to this city for a job, met this guy, and started hanging out with him and his friends for 2 years before I really made mine, so a big chunk of my social circle just got chopped off. Luckily, I do have plenty of really great friends here that are my own, but it's nice to make more.
  
• Finally, and this is a big one too, it adds significance to turning 30 that allows me to embrace that milestone rather than fear it.

I enabled anonymous commenting, so feel free to reject these reasons, tell me how insecure I am, ask me for pictures, or say anything else you'd like to. And why can't I be hot if I go to services? :) (fuck, rules says no emoticons. oops, rules says no cursing.)

The Rules: Basic Philosophy

It has been awhile since I've read the Rules, though I just ordered a brand new copy of three different volumes for the purpose of this voyage. The first read was on a friend's recommendation after the breakup before this last one - with the same guy, but that's a different story. The Rules state that the natural order of things is for men to pursue women, and when women pursue men, this balance gets thrown off, and the woman is not adored enough, and basically the relationship is doomed. I'm exaggerating, of course, but the language in the book is pretty strong that legitimately successful non-Rules marriages are the exception and not the rule (no pun intended). Which is pretty startling if you take them seriously about how few true Rules marriages there are.

I am not instinctively a Rules girl. My whole life I have crushed on guys, starting back in first grade when I chased a boy named Stephen around the playground and fluttered whenever he would insult me, which was often. I talk about guys to girlfriends. I let guys know I'm interested in ways that are obvious. I count phone calls but I probably do just as much of the calling. I accept last minute dates and suggest things myself that could be perceived as such. I make friends with guys and try to turn it into something else.

I am also quirky, funny, smart, and unmysterious, and believe I come off this way.

Before I read the Rules, I thought they were crap. I thought the Rules were just an excuse to play games, and I consider myself a straight-shooter, not a game-player.

After I read them, I still thought some of them were crap (or at least too extreme), but I started to think of them as a way of treating yourself well rather than a way of gaming men. That said, I tend to obsess over my "targets" (whether because I want to start something with them or because they are not fulfilling my needs in a relationship). The Rules, if you really believe them, takes this all out of your hands. Conceptually, I have internalized the Rules and recommend them to my friends, although I have utterly failed to implement them myself so far. Especially recently.

After getting facebook friended by a guy who was supposed to call me last week, I also think the Rules are frustratingly out of date. What is the rule when the guy who says he's going to call you two weeks ago facebook friends you instead with no message, and you typically facebook friend everyone you've met?

So here goes my experiment. It should be interesting, even if it winds up with me not dating for six months. That might even be the best result.