Don't Buy the Cow if You Ain't Tried the Milk

So I was having a chat with a another friend int he same boat as me: over thirty, single and giving up hope of meeting a single over-thirty guy who isn't single for a good reason.* She has found one, and of course he has his issues--wildly insecure etc, etc. They've been dating two months, and she tells me, woefully, that the sex is not...er...stellar. And you know what I thought? I though to myself, hooo boy, there's the best reason ever to not be coy and 'wait for the xth date'.

Seriosuly.
I get a lot of flak for my whole go-with-the-flow approach to sex and dating--if I had a dollar for every time someone has sternly told me 'MinCat, if you want to make this work, you have to NOT SLEEP WITH HIM. TILL THE 5TH DATE!' (Or whateverth date.) I'd have enough money to visit the Light of my Life every year. Apparently, if you sleep with a guy fast, he doesn't respect you. He is no longer interested in getting to know you. You won't have a chance to get him to emotionally bond with you before you give him what is, of course, his ultimate goal, and then he'll leave cos he has it. Or he won't value this precious gift you've given him.

Tosh.
No, really.
All this might hold true for when you're twenty-five, or sleeping with a twenty-five-year-old, but really, I've found they have very little bearing on things at the point I'm at.

For starters, I have, by this time, had enough sex to know I like it, it's important, and it's highly unlikely I'll be happy in a relationship that involves mediocre sex. This might have something to do with having been single so long and in the market, playing that field etc, etc, but whatever the cause, it is a fact. Yes I will dump someone if the sex is bad. So I'd much rather know right off, instead of waiting till *I* am emotionally bonded with the guy and won't be able to walk away.

Second, since sex is so much fun, if you go one one date with someone boring, you can still get away from the experience with some good sex under your belt, as it were. And, believe me, when you get to where I am, you go on a lot of first dates with boring guys. And since you don't have a nice steady partner squirelled away, it's nice to get laid once in a while.

Third, if this guy is a child enough to think that all you're good for is sex, how exactly is withholding it going to do anything more reinforce a really stupid power equation? Because yes, I do think that using sex to manipulate someone, or as a weapon, is a terrible thing. It's one thing to not be able to engage with a partner sexually because you have problems, but to actually say yes I'd like to but I won't until you do what I want is really fucked up. (har har, see what I did there?)

Fourth, sex is not some precious gift that I will only bestow on the knight who deserves it. That's rubbish. Are you telling me that women don't enjoy sex? That we only do it cos men like it and that's how we hold them in thrall? All I gotta say is, honey, if that's your life, go find some other man to sleep with--you've got a lemon. Women can, do and should enjoy sex. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being like that, and there is nothing wrong with having sex with a guy because you enjoy it and you want to, right now, even though it's only the second date.

Fifth, men are not sex-craving automatons! Plenty of men want relationships--okay, maybe not at thirty, but then those guys often want friendship with sex on the side, cuddling, dinner, etc. Men also want women in their lives they can have sex with but can also go have dinner with. It's complete bullshit to stick them in that hole where all they want is sex. Of course, there are guys who do disrespect a woman for putting out, or really do only want one thing, but look at it this way, at least you're not emotionally invested when he walks away! (See #1 above.) Would you want to be with that kind of guy in the first place? Take the sex and leave!

All this aside, I do really think that we seem obsessed with playing this dating game by some severely twisted rules. We spend hours pretending to feel what we don't, and then are upset when people don't get how we really feel. We put tons of effort into going after what we don't want, because it's not kosher to want what we want. There's so much shit going on and it simply complicates life so much that it can so easily ruin one of the best things life has to offer--sex! So, yeah, Don't tie yourself into knots about the number of hours you have spent in socially-dictated acceptable situation with someone. If you want to jump him, jump him. Just use condoms.

*Really, they all are. Some have been screwed over by some girl and can't get past it. Some have mommy issues. Some don't want commitment. Some are just strange. Some are super picky. None of these is good or bad, they just are. 

EDIT
On Dan Savage this morning:
Yes, Dan, thereare still plenty of straight guys out there who are put off by women who go "too fast," and oral sex on the first date is typically perceived as too fast. It's part of a misogynist mind-set, IMHO, that says women who are too sexually assertive are not "relationship material." Or maybe it's some ancient male fear of the insatiable nympho who will drain his male power by overwhelming him sexually. Or, more generously, maybe these men think going too fast just speaks to poor judgment (although straight men rarely apply that logic to themselves). Whatever the cause, I've experienced it myself, and I found the solution to be to date more sex-positive feminist men who take responsibility for their half of the pacing. I've found that feminist men actually appreciate women who are sexually assertive, while many non-feminist men are happy to accept the attentions of sexually assertive women while at the same time harboring contempt for us.

In the Immortal Words of Mick Jagger...

For someone who has only heard about three songs by the Rolling Stones, and has always thought Mr J is repulsive rather than attractive, it is rather ironic that he has become my guru. Well, maybe not my guru so much as his song has become my mantra.

Because, you see, you CAN'T always get what you want.

So the thing is, you know how people always walk around under the belief that, while bad things happen, they don't happen to me? It may not be a conscious belief--in fact it rarely is--but on some level, while we know bad things do happen, we think we will escape, even if they happen to the ones we love the most. 'There but for the grace of God...'

A corollary of this seems to be the equally strong belief that we get what we want, as long as we are patient or proactive, depending on the school of thought. 

But very little observation will quickly reveal that neither of these is true! People often get shafted by the universe, and very many kind and deserving people just never get what they want. Sometimes you get something else and realize it is, also in the immortal words of Mr J, it's what you need. Sometimes you realize you didn't really want it after all, whether you get it or not. But enough times, you want it and you don't get it, no matter what you do. 

And yet, somehow, we seem incapable of actually accepting this fact. 

Someone has to be in that group. Maybe one of those someones is me. And before there is a chorus of of course nots, let me say that this is not an emotional melodramatic statement. It's just a statement. And just as we will never know we won't get what we want, we never know we will either. The problem only comes in when our belief is pushing us in the direction of thinking yes it will happen, because then we are always in a state of pre-excitement, which just means we get disappointed too much. And then, when we think we won't get it, we are in a state of pre-disappointment, and that's really hard to deal with too. The important thing I guess is to just accept that sometimes people just don't get what they deserve. Accepting that I think has really helped me turn the corner on the horror of the past six months. I might actually be emerging from the hole for reals this time ladies and gents--two weeks meltdown free...touch wood =)

Yeh Sheher Meri Jaan

I was in college when the Euphoria sensation hit. I had moved to Delhi for the first time, and I was in love. It had more to do with college than anything else, because Delhi was horrible to women back then (believe me worse than it is now). They had this one song on the album Dhoom, that later was co-opted into the Commonwealth Games I think, and it went like this:

Yeh sheher meri jaan
Iska naam hai meri peehechaan
Dilli hai meri jaan

(this city is my life, it's name is my identity, delhi is my life)

I loved that song, not just because it was nice, but because I FELT IT. Never in my life had I felt like I fitted with people my age who weren't related to me. Never had I felt like I belonged, like I was happy.(The next time I was to feel like that was with New York, and then again, in 2009, with Hyderabad.) So the song became like an anthem for me.This is largely why, when I decided it was time to move, that I decided on Delhi.

Lots of shit went down in the three years I was in college, with the worst of it hitting bang in the middle of my final exams for the second year. One of my most vivid memories of third year, when I was living in a different place is of going back home for our housewarming in August, about a month after college started that year. I had landed back in Delhi the previous night; my uncle had had me picked up and I'd spent the night in their house. I was going to leave for college in the morning, and my parents called. And I stood in the pantry, on the phone, sobbing my heart out, because there was at that point nothing I wanted to do less than be back in Delhi.

This weekend I went home after eight months. I hadn't realized how long it had been until I thought about it, and it struck me. And I was deliriously happy to be home, to see my bewdas. I went on my first ever road trip, and had a truckload of fun. I lounged about in my ebony recliner in the verandah and read manuscripts. I demanded various foods for various meals and feasted on them. I could have burst with well-being, and I was so ready to come back and tackle all the shit that I have to tackle in Delhi.

I was worried how I'd deal with leaving, but then I ran into a dear friend at the airport and we flew together, which was lovely. I cried a bit when we took off, because on some visceral level I felt like I was leaving safety behind (yes, I have realized I don't feel safe in Delhi, I don't feel like anyone would notice much or care unless something dramatic happened to me, that there's no one to take the wheel once in a while and steer this exceedingly convoluted course*). But I was expecting this and it passed and I proceeded to yak and giggle and generally have a good flight. But then, once the pilot announced we were beginning our descent, this WEIGHT began to descend. I swear to God, I have been breaking out in hives. And I found myself nearly gibbering with the need to TURN THE PLANE AROUND AND GO BACK HOME.

And then I got home to find more shit to deal with and I wanted nothing more than to just curl up in bed and cry for my mommy, an impulse I admirably resisted. But it made me flash back to nearly exactly ten years ago. And it made me think about how, perhaps, the way there is just this constant insidious resistance to my settling down in Delhi, maybe it means I should just leave. Maybe it means that in a year I should talk to my boss and ask if I can be moved back to south India somewhere, where I can run home on weekends and find the strength to hold myself together.


*This is not true of course, I do have friends here, Glare and Lithium, and they do most certainly care, and would most certainly help me with the little things if I asked for it. But is it justified to make someone disrupt their life and commute large distances just because you're sick of trying to get your gas and stove up and running, and every morning you find one more small yet vital thing that needs to be fixed or dealt with, and you're totally capable of dealing with it, but you're just so fucking tired and it's been like this for three months?

Soledad

Soledad in Spanish is a lovely word, because it encompasses solitude and loneliness. I've always felt that the relationship between the two is most interesting.

Last afternoon, I drove 25km to MW's house, because I haven't seen him in ages and I was hoping to man up and have a chat with him. He was writing, and I was curled up on a sofa, reading this book, for about three hours. At that point, another friend dropped in and we had a quiet chat, which eventually got MW out of his writing frenzy and he joined in. After friend left, MW went back to work, but also began to talk and then we spent the next couple of hours sporadically talking and sitting about quietly. Then he looked up from his laptop and said: 'I hope you didn't get bored.'
I laughed and said, no of course not. 'Why are you treating me like a guest?'
No, he replied, I just don't understand how you could come all the way here and sit and read a book. I'd never do that--I'd stay home and read it!

Which is when I had to explain to him that sitting in companiable silence with another person, each of us doing our own thing, is exactly what is missing in my life. Amma always found it bizarre that Dragon and I would travel vast distances to sit in the same room and read different books. But to me that is the epitome of not being alone. It means that your life is settled enough that you don't need to be in the frenzied active active  space of social interaction. It reminds me hours spent in a friends house in Hyderabad on weekends, reading a book while everyone watched TV or slept. It reminds me of family vacations where everyone takes communal naps. It symbolises the happiest safest least critical or judgemental place there is.

Which brings me to how funny it is how different people are in their interpretations of solitude and loneliness.

Just Keep Swimming

So new and improved post-trip mid-fog MinCat is trying to make some changes.

Don't be such a doormat.
Well, today I tried. There was an incident with MW recently that upset me a lot. In true DoormaCat style I didn't say anything much about it, not even along the lines of my own much vaunted must-articulate-for-acknowledgement theory of making peace with life and people. It wasn't a really big deal, and a lot of my own hurt was a result of the fog, but I needed much prodding from The Bride and Glare to say anything at all--mainly because ever since the Dragon I've been terrified people will always walk away. I did eventually talk about it, but not really in a serious stand up for myself way, or what you did really hurt me way, but I did manage to actually say it upset me when the upsetness was not the point of the conversation.

Do something about the weight
SERIOUSLY!!! Not doing too well with that so far...but tomorrow (hopefully) it all begins.

Write
This one I've been doing okay with. I am (of course) trying to write a book, and to revive the blog, which is why this rather pointless I-brushed-my-teeth-this-morning kind of post. Here's hoping some discipline will come in.

Bring back the mojo
Which has already been accomplished, whether because of rain, hormones, alcohol or my dear friend I have not seen in ages, around whom surreal things happen I don't know.

Find an interest outside of work
I'm hoping to work on an unusual project, which will also get me some moolah so yay to that. If it doesn't come through I'll go back to dancing or something. One of my friends, whom we shall refer to as Mentor, told me that my problem was that all I do is work, talk about work, think about work, and then hang out with people. He does have a point. But the question is, what? Photography has officially died. Dancing requires a partner and spending money I don't have. I could try and volunteer teach or something. Hmmm...

The Rational-Emotional Disconnect

You know how sometimes someone does something that hurts you (like a friend who you haven't seen in a month comes to your birthday party and then wants to leave soon after, and isn't particularly nice to you, and then calls you about making a plan to do something nice for someone else's birthday) but then you know, rationally, that it's not a big deal (being nice is not their thing, it's not actually your birthday, and said person has warned you several time that they are thoughtless, and you know they are in a tantrum mood and therefore what to expect from them). At this point, you are upset. But you also know that saying something will get you branded as irrational.

Then there's this scenario, where someone does something that irritates or annoys you intensely (your parents are stressing out about someone you're seeing), and while you know they mean it for the best (you have had a series of bad relationships, said person is insolvent or from a vastly different background). Again, you are upset, and again you know that people will keep throwing logic at you.

I was thinking about this once, well okay I was thinking about how often I am upset but I can't get past it because I can't do or say anything because I am a rational person, an 'adult' and I like to think I can and do behave in a rational manner. This often leaves me feeling very frustrated. So, when Dragon picked BBot, I had this whole thing where I was choking in misery, and when I was talking to Disco Dancer about it he really upset me because he insisted on saying, well, she is an adult, she made a choice, you can't dictate how long it takes someone to attach to someone, or blame them for who they choose. Which were all very valid points, point, moreover, that I kept making to myself. Then why did it make me cry?

It occurred to me that everyone operates on two parallel levels--the rational level and the emotional level. As we get older we tend to start privielging the rational level over the emotional one (to wit, you can't stamp your foot and demand that you be important to someone--you are or you're not. But it still hurts like the BLAZES.). So then we discard, nay ignore, the emotional response, because the rational one is the one that will give us the right behaviour in the end.

The problem is, there has to be a balance, and unless the rational and emotional level are both acknowledged and dealt with, you can't really get past the hurt completely--you become harder, cynical, whatever. And, while it is true that most of the time the rational level is right, this does not mean that the emotional response doesn't exist. (We tend to flagellate ourselves for even having an emotional response usually.) So when you're dating, and a person behaves a certain way, you beat yourself up saying, see? You KNEW they'be a jerk. Then why did you have to be stupid and get attached? Now deal with this shit and move on.

I call this the Rational Emotional Disconnect, and it is the single most debilitating problem I have with all the things I do in my life. Until I can align the two levels and their responses I find that I simply can't get past things that happen to me.

For the longest time I thought the RED was only one way--you have an emotional response and you suppress it. But then it struck me, that often, once you're in a relationship with someone, you start to privilege the emotional over the rational. If you love me you should know better. You know, some days it's not that your partner doesn't love you, it's that they're having a shitty day, or they're tired, or stressed, or you didn't communicate your upsetness. So the rational response has to be heard too before anything can be done.

I've started to try and do this thing now where, when I'm upset, I sit down and think it all through, all the emotional stuff and the rational stuff. I say it to myself, or to a friend (read, The Bride), and then, once I've exorcised the reaction as it were, I can stand back and figure out which was what response and which one is the better one to use in this situation. And let's not assume the rational one is always best--sometimes an emotional response is what the other person needs from you--but then we all train ourselves to deny emotional responses so much that we can't bring them out, which then makes the other person feel bad and suppress theirs and the endless cycle of people are so cold begins.

Like Lau Love

So, while discussing Mr Darcy*, MinCat's latest I-think-I'm-in-love-with-him, with The Bride, I came up with this theory of love. It all began when I went to an event involving a friend I have had one very unexpected and positively delightful drunken encounter with--an encounter never referred to again, which is a bit sad.

Now, despite the strong feelings I have for Mr Darcy, I am never quite sure what they are. Sometimes I look at him and it reduces me to that post. Sometimes I want to smack him. Sometimes I think that he is so different from me, it could never work, and yet this is exactly what I love about him--we are complementary. Sometimes I think it is not that I want him, but I want to be the kind of girl that a guy like him wants. The only thing I know about him is that he makes absolutely no sense to me: I can never tell if he's serious or not, if he means what he's saying or is messing with me, and this drives me nuts--making me sometimes want him and sometimes hate him. Is it the mystery that I want to solve, not the guy I want to be with? Etc.

In all the conversations I have with The Bride on the subject of Mr Darcy, I refer to my feelings for him as the lau feelings, right from when I first realised I was in denial of said feelings. (They are the bane of my life at the moment.) Anyway, cut to said event, where I found myself finding excuses to fondly and adoringly pat that friend, and stand close to him, and sniff him. All the body language of flirting was present and accounted for. And I found that I was feeling decidedly more warm and dewy eyed than I ever do around Mr Darcy. Which made me think that I can't possibly be in love with Mr Darcy then, because when I'm in love, I don't get warm melty pit of the stomach feelings for other guys.

I proudly announced this to The Bride this morning, saying that it can't be love, it must be lau, and she promptly asked me if there was a difference between lau and love anyway? And that's when I realised that I have a beautifully graded and (then) badly articulated theory of liking and love. It goes like this: (take me by the tongue and I'll know you...er...sorry.)

It all begins with like. (This works for any relationship by the way; it's my overall theory of love.) You meet someone, and you find a spark. Something about them. Sometimes it's mental chemistry, sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's a joke, or a shared interest, sometimes it's boredom--there is something. You explore it and you are surprised and happy because there is a spark. You meet again/spend more time together, and you realise it's more than a spark; it's a connection. Yay! The more time you spend together, the more connected you feel. Super! You find out things about them you like, and things you don't. As time goes by, you like them more and more, and the things you don't like fade away--they're totally worth tolerating because they come with the good stuff.

That's when you reach the extrapolation point. This is the point at which you realise that things are so awesome. You start to think, wow this is like fifty percent of this person and it's such a great connection! What would it be like if it were seventy percent? Or eighty? Or even a hundred? Then you begin to extrapolate what this person is like, what you and this person together would be like, how your relationship might be. You are now officially at the lau stage. This is where you introduce the friend as soul sibling, cosmically connected, most amazing person you know, brother from another mother, etc. This is where you think, I'm falling for this person. This could actually be it. This could be the person it all works with!

Time passes. You get to know them more. You find out more and more and like what you find out less and less. The joy of the connection starts the wear off and the annoying things come back to niggle. And then you reach the tipping point. One of several things happens:
1. You realise that the person, or the relationship, doesn't match the extrapolation, and you don't like it. So it doesn't turn into love, and fades back to like.
2. You realise the person matches the extrapolation, but your projection of what you wanted was not right, and you don't want this, so it fades back to like.
3. You realise the annoying things annoy you way more than the liking, and it changes to dislike or indifference.
4. You realise that the extrapolation doesn't match, but you like what you're getting anyway and it turns into love.
5. You realise that the extrapolation does match, and it turns into love.

 So the difference is essentially that lau is more like infatuation, and can turn into love, but not always. And once it has turned into love, it can turn back into like or even move to dislike. However, I think three things are important here:
1. The longer you are in love, the harder it is for it to switch without a catastrophic changing event (kinda like the law of conservation of momentum). Eventually you reach a place where it doesn't matter what turns up, you love the person. The kind of love can change. With BBot, for example, it went from sexual-romantic love to platonic love, but I still love him deeply.
2. The speed of conversion is often proportional to the time knowing each other, but, especially in the like to lau to love part, the time doesn't necessarily have any bearing of how fast the conversion occurs.
3. (This one is especially for me) Until you accept you love someone, it remains lau. So, until I consciously accept I love someone, it can't be love as love should be, and will not be able to give me all I want from love. Even if I really love Mr Darcy, at this point it won't have the positive effects that love would normally have on me, because I am unwilling or unable to accept it and embrace it consciously.

Phew, that turned into a bhashan!

 *This is how that nickname came about:
Me: to be honest i think the most annoying and attractive thing about is that he makes absolutely no sense to me
The Bride: does he stand next to bookcases looking aloof?
Me: hhahahahaha YES!!!! thats it he has a new nickname mr darcy
TB: hehe sounds dangerous you know how my mr. darcy story ended
Me: hahahahahaha well i dont think i would object to mr darcy calling me love of his life and proposing marriage
im just saying
but thats it exactly
he infuriates me with his aloofness and his distance and his non neediness goddammit
TB: haha
me: and his goddamn intelligence and his ability to use it
and his bloody fucking interest in things he doesnt know
and his curiosity
and worst of all his appreciation of these things in me
the intelligence and curiosity
lol
iiiiii got it baaaaaad