You Ain't Partying Here No More

If your New York relationship was good (and by good I mean was able to last longer than the customary three months), it can be exceedingly difficult to let go of. City breakups are rough, and if you partied together, splitting up can also lead to a lot of awkward encounters and hardcore game playing.

So here’s my question: If you have clout at a nightlife establishment i.e. you know the doorman, the owner, the investor who mattered or the security dude, is it socially or morally acceptable to have your ex-significant other banned from the place? Setting up an infrastructure with the powers of the locale so that when your ex walks up to the red rope they’re automatically turned away? A nightlife blacklisting of sorts?

I think the answer to this question is more complicated than it seems.

Full article here, including a humorous poll I've created on this topic.

Cast your vote!

Clubbing With the Ex

The downside of dating someone you go out and have fun with is that you’ll eventually have to see them drunk, at night clubs, post break-up. You’d think that because New York is ginormous, the chances of running into your ex would be slim. This could not be father from the truth. Most circles of friends frequent a rotating handful of places, the grown-up equivalent of the three neighborhood bars in college. Running into you’re ex isn’t a probability, it’s a certainty. And thanks to alcohol, all your emotions will be heightened and on edge. So ‘sadness’ becomes ‘SADNESS!’ and ‘I wasn’t that into him,’ becomes ‘We were building a LIFE together.’

So not only are you entering an inevitably awkward, emotionally uncomfortable situation, you’re doing it on dramatic steroids. How to handle such encounters? Let’s explore a few. Full article here.

Hate Mail to the Bachelor

Dear Brad,

As Bettina and her family pointed out, you lack any sort of formal college education, so this concept may be hard for you to get your head around:

People don’t watch reality TV to see reality.

See, we’re all already dating guys who say stuff to us like, “You posses every single quality I’m looking for in a woman, but I’m not interested.” The Bachelor works to ensure women that true love might actually exist. That dreams can come true. That hot, successful men out there are willing to settle down. If not any of those things, the show works as proof that there’s at least one man on the planet who’s not a total dipshit. That’s why ABC gets to charge advertisers $1.5 million for 30 second spots on the show.

Have you no respect for the system?

I decided not to judge you until watching last night’s cheesily titled “After The Final Rose” Special Edition of The Bachelor. Sadly, you were a worthless asshole last night too, and even got booed by the female audience.

Brad – I get that it’s difficult to be sure you want to spend the rest of your life with someone. That’s why past bachelors have sort of finagled the proposal and handed the ring over saying, “let’s get to know each other better and see if this works in real life.” Did you find both DiAnna and Jenni so repulsive that they weren’t even worthy of that non-committal statement? You’d really rather just walk away? Jeez. The past six weeks must have been torturous for you if you hate them that much. Considering you showered them with assurance, that also makes you a fabulous actor. Agents in LA probably already have you on their speed dial. Maybe that was part of this whole plan.

I guess I remain baffled that you couldn’t just make a non-committal proposal to one of these girls and take one for the team. Give American women something to smile about and dump whoever you picked five days later.

Is that so much to fucking ask?

Now, already emotionally schizophrenic women like me have learned that even if I open up to guy and spill out all my feelings, and even if he considers me ‘perfect’ for him, I’ll still get used like a Kleenex. Women will never want to be contestants on this show again. They sign up for a chance at happiness, not to participate in a rejection-fest. Women can get rejected in real life everyday without having to fly to LA, live in a house, and compete with twenty-four other women for your attention.

You’ve also made the ABC execs piss themselves to the extent where on last night’s special they brought out two happily married couples from previous seasons to affirm the show’s credibility. I’m impressed the head of reality programming at ABC hasn’t strangled you with his tie. I wish he would, because that would be affirming to watch.

That’s all for now.

Keep on sucking,

Model Behavior

PS Keep it up with the creatine because I think you’re getting fat

Grey. Grey. Grey.

It’s a rainy Thursday and as I sit here with a steaming hot chocolate, complete with mini marshmallows (yes I’m still five), it seems the perfect opportunity to reflect on the other immature aspects of my life. Yep, you all guessed right. I’m ranting about grey relationships yet again. Cut me some slack. Today the sky’s grey, the rain’s grey, my sheets are grey (they used to be white, I need to wash them, I realize that’s gross). Grey is inevitably on my mind. So using my Milanese ex-fantasy man Grin as an example, I’m going to go over some of the common symptoms that stem from dysfunctional big city relationships, all of which I suffered through with him, some of which still plague me now:

1. The Silent Treatment: Remember that game you used to play at age eight when after losing a fight with your brother or sister (usually over some glossy toy or gross piece of play dough) you’d give them the ‘silent treatment’ until your bruised ego felt like it had ‘punished’ them for an adequate amount of time? While we’re no longer playing with Barbie’s (hopefully), we still treat our grey relationship partners in the same irrationally emotional way we did our siblings. By not calling them, not texting them, not emailing them you’re both protecting yourself from being hurt when they potentially don’t respond and winning in the infantile ‘silent treatment game’ sense of victory. This transitions beautifully into our next symptom.

2. Playing to Win: Often when I post about grey / faux relationships, I’m surprised to receive reader comments encouraging me to confess my true feelings for my partner, talk it out with him, take it to the next level – all reasonable suggestions if one’s goal was to live happily ever after or fall in love. I feel in all my writing about this topic, I’ve evidently failed to properly illustrate on what a high level of immaturity the grey dynamic operates. Stability, normalcy and happiness aren’t the goals here. People in grey relationships are too afraid to fall in love. They’re terrified of living happily ever after. Happily ever after, despite its charming connotations, is frighteningly final, and grey relationship participants tend to be commitment phobic. The implicit goal may be to get closer to another human being, but the explicit goal is to win. The dysfunctional relationship rule book clearly states that whichever entity appears to care less about the relationship is considered the winner. Let’s look at an example:

After five days of giving one another the silent treatment, Grin texts me for an aperitivo. Grin initiated contact (+10 points for me) with a detailed plan for getting together as opposed to a vague ‘how are you’ (an additional +15 points for me). He’s putting himself on the line.

I happen to be busy that night (+12 points for me – I’m seemingly not prioritizing him), but phone to thank him for the invite (phoning means reaching out / caring so minus 15 points for me, + 12 points for him.)

The ultimate goal is to keep both our scores equal. If one person seems to care more than the other, things get unbalanced and someone tends to freak out and disappear. The grey relationship is destroyed. Ideally, both your scores rise at a matching rate (I mean if your scores didn’t rise you’d never see one another at all.)

So while this game may seem cruel, it’s actually a process of you both nurturing for your faux relationship so it can continue to exist at a level of intimacy you’re both comfortable with. And while the whole score keeping thing may seem confusing, it’s actually not at all. Most 21st century Manhatteners are capable of making virtually all of these calculations subconsciously. Often I don’t even think we know we’re doing it, but in a grey relationship, someone’s always keeping score. There is self-imposed control. I mean, if you just let things just play out naturally you might find yourself actually being intimate with someone (God forbid!), which in the dating game of most major metropolises is a no-no.

3. Pacing Intimacy: Pacing intimacy has a lot to do with knowing how to properly keep score. It also requires obeying certain boundaries, some of which I explored in Please Don’t Be Nice. Even though you may be crazy about this person, you have to keep in mind that you’re not each other’s significant other. The grey relationship is about fun, excitement, adrenaline, and intensely high doses of middle school cattiness. It’s not about companionship. Your partner cannot become to ‘real’ to you. I mean if you start shoe shopping together you’re just a hop, skip and a jump away from him farting in your face and you no longer shaving your legs. Or as a friend of mine put it:

“If you spend more than fourteen consecutive hours together, you’re fucked.”

Fucked in what sense? You may thoroughly enjoy each other's company, but going out to dinner or brunch several days a week is just crossing a line. You might actually start to feel like boyfriend and girlfriend (again, God forbid).

4. Hide and Seek: And because there are so many questions you’d like to ask your grey relationship partner, but know you can’t (doing so would obliterate the cloudy grayness in which you both feel comfortable), you try to attain knowledge about them indirectly from other sources. Like:

My friend (casually): Hey, you know I ran in Grin the other night at Pacha.

Me (suddenly sweating bullets): Wait. When? Where? At what time exactly? Who was he with? A girl? Several girls? What was he wearing? Dressed down or dressed up? Did he ask about me? Was he wearing jeans or dress pants? What was your exact conversation word by word? Tell me Godammit!!!!

Since I’d often be paranoid Grin was out partying when he claimed to be at home, I’d go out when I’d normally stay in and go to as many Milanese clubs and bars as physically possible with our common friends, scouring each location to make sure he wasn’t there. He never would be and I’d come home, exhausted but victorious. Mature, right?



And at the end of the day, I think one of the reasons dysfunctional relationships are so common is that they allow us to recapture the joys of childhood immaturity. These adrenaline-based affairs may be absurd, but they help us feel like kids again. The relationship games we play are rarely stressful, they’re somehow as relaxing and familiar as a game of tag, a battle of hide-and-seek.

So far, that’s the only explanation I’ve come up with about why we keep coming back for more.

My Dating Ego

Let’s all take a moment, close our eyes, and imagine a solar system in which our dating life and our ego were not intrinsically intertwined. What a simpler universe that would be. I’m guessing that in such a world, people actually say what’s on their mind and store bought CDs are actually easy to open. While I’ve strived to create such a world of emotional sanity for myself, it ain’t happening. Why? Because the older and theoretically wiser I get, the more I realize my ego is the evil brute force behind ninety nine percent of the bad decisions in my life – especially romantic ones.

Let’s use as an example the utterly pathetic love story that inspired me to write ‘The Grey Relationship." In me and my partner’s agonizingly subtle grey relationship break-up, he put the sexual breaks on the relationship before I did. Had I considered doing the same thing weeks, if not months earlier? Yes. Did I know this relationship was unhealthy and going nowhere? Yes. Was I hoping it would end soon anyway? Absolutely. Yet naturally I was filled with pure outrage when he decided we should maneuver toward the land of ‘just friends’ before me. Instead of being happy I put yet another worthless relationship behind me without a difficult and uncomfortable confrontation, I just feel rejected. My pesky ego then begins thumping through every fiber of my body screaming: ‘work to get this guy back.’ Suddenly, Mr. Wrong is Mr. Hard to Get. And every girl loves a challenge. An inner dialogue ensues that goes something like this:

Me: Why would I want this dysfunctional grey relationship to continue? The sex wasn’t even good enough to make it worthwhile.
My Ego: I bet the sex is good with the new Norwegian super model he dumped you for.
Me: He knew we mutually wanted to end things. It was a tacit understanding. He just took the initiative.
My Ego: ‘Tacit understanding.’ The drugs you’re deluding yourself with must be really powerful. Wake up! He doesn’t want you anymore.
Me: That’s fine. I knew this wouldn’t work out from the get-go. And I’m sure my hips have nothing to do with it.
My Ego: But how you smell might.
Me: He’s fine with the way I smell. At least…he was…
My Ego: Explain all the wasted hours envisioning what beautiful children you’d have together?
Me: We WOULD have beautiful children, so what?
My Ego: Honey, you’re future husband just DUMPED you like your months of faux intimacy didn’t even matter.
Me: (finally in nervous breakdown mode) GAAAAA! Do you think if I wear my red cocktail dress and slut heels tonight he’ll take me back?
My Ego: It’s worth a shot.

Hence my pride prevents me from acting rationally and letting a relationship come to its natural end. I think our female ego is one of the biggest obstacles to a clean break-up, right next to loneliness. And sure sexual rejection hurts, but when it’s in both of your best interests, you’d think a mature, intelligent human being would get over that and move on. Instead, I end up performing the emotional equivalent of running into a wall repeatedly until I slither, beat-up, into the fetal position in the corner, feeling rejected now not once, but ten times. I think this horrific image transitions into my next frightening, existential question: How much of why we date someone in the first place has to do with them, and how much has to do with our overly ambitious pride?

I’ll be first in line to admit that often, subconsciously, I’m attracted to someone for all the wrong reasons – chiefly being that they make ME look good instead of that they are good FOR me. Men that I feel make me look good are usually handsome types that can pull off wearing white linen pants or headbands. Neither of those qualifications mean they’re
a) literate
b) tolerable or
c) a good match for me
Therefore my initial attraction to the opposite sex is fundamentally distorted from the beginning thanks to my exhibitionist side forcing me to care so much about what the outside world thinks. When it comes to micromanaging and especially ending dysfunctional relationships, my evil ego whispers in my ear that I shouldn’t be letting that ‘catch’ get away. In reality, my ‘catch’ is an essentially unemployed partying playboy with no personality, no sensitivity, and no future that doesn’t involve jumping up and down on club banquette couches.

How to tame the ego? That’s another topic for another day. I’ll get back to you when I have some answers.