happiest relationships

I don't post many articles (ok ok, I haven't been posting much at all) but I found this one about relationships particularly interesting. Some of the key happiness factors that I never would have guessed: being with a prettier woman and less attractive man, being a first born and a last born, and being gay... Or feminist. 

Luckily the relationship I'm in has at least 2 of those factors.. I'll let you guess which. 

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4613060?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

Oh yea and happy 2014! More to come - lots of interesting things happening but hard to find the time or words to document! 

earl grey

I've become a master at compartmentalizing. I got over the most recent guy I dated in two days and a bottle of wine. I got over my last boyfriend of six months in a week. I got over earl grey in...4 years and counting. 

It's not the first night I've lied awake thinking about him. Don't get me wrong, I don't think about him on a daily basis and I certainly don't let him hinder my dating life, but I've also more or less accepted that I'll always love him. There are sides of me I haven't experienced since I was with him, and I legitimately think I knew myself better when we were together. He's the only one in my adult life who's seen my inner child, and he's the person who has made me the happiest, saddest, and the most livid I have ever been. I've never lived life or loved anyone with such intensity. 

We are magnets held apart only by the hundreds of miles between SF and LA, and our worthless rational logic that tells us we'd never make it in the long run. 

Whenever I turn into this nostalgic mess I know it's just because the nights (and wine) make me more vulnerable. But if I wake up feeling the same way I do now, I think I need to tell him. I know admitting it to ourselves will be opening a Pandora's box we tried to close years ago - but what if it was never meant to be closed?

on being single

Touché, aziz ansari, touché. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyhennen/being-single-these-days-sucks-according-to-aziz-ansari?s=mobile

tow truck

whenever I pass by a tow truck, I feel a slight flutter in my stomach.

four years ago, my car battery died on the third floor down of my apartment garage. the first tow truck was too big to even enter the garage. the second tow truck came closer but still didn't cut it, so we ended up having to call a pickup over and hook my car up to it. in the hour or so that we were waiting for the pickup driver, the tow truck driver and I started chatting. he was about my age, and working to put himself through a junior college. we were from completely different backgrounds, but there was just something that made the conversation click, and i found his crooked smile to be endearing. after we got my car out, I rode with him to the dealership, and before we parted ways he thanked me and said he hadn't met someone who he could have such easy conversation with in quite some time. 

since that day I've forgotten his name, his face, and even the towing company he worked for, but i can't forget that spark (I think I might have even scanned missed connections on craigslist for a few days after). now whenever I see a tow truck, I can't help but peer through the window hoping I might recognize his face. 

but what then? would we exchange numbers? would we go on a date? 

I've been thinking about this a lot, and it's brought me to two somewhat conflicting conclusions: 

Conclusion 1: I'm ready to give chemistry a shot, even if nothing else seems to fit the criteria that I (and all of us) have in my head. clicking with someone is the hardest criteria to satisfy because of its intangible nature, and I can't underestimate the importance or the difficulty of that one trait. so, if I met tow truck man today, I would go on a date with him. 

Conclusion 2: There is no one person in the world that's right for me. just like when looking for an apartment, every potential match is a combination of dials - except instead of desired location, price, and proximity to public transport, the dials read intelligence, background, physical attractiveness, and chemistry. all relationships are different because of the values on each dial, and all can be great in different ways. 

based on conclusion 1, I'm holding chemistry as the most important dial. but, I have to take into consideration the balance of all the other dials to make it sustainable. maybe there isn't "the one", but some number of individuals have to fall within this ideal range. 

i'm putting both these conclusions to the test. I've been seeing someone who is definitely in the 90s on the chemistry and physical attractiveness scale, but low on the intelligence and background scale. it's been fun the last two weeks, but I already sense it falling apart (for one thing, the "goodnight, pretty lady" texts have stopped). chemistry only opens the door; intellectual stimulation and a common upbringing are what deepens the connections. yet, it's so easy to fall for someone based just off the way they look and how your body reacts when you're near them... 

the list.

I finally started putting my list on paper last night. yes, THE list. my primary motivation? I realized that I'm not sure what my number is, and that scares me a little. if I don't keep tabs now, soon I won't know if I'm in the teens or in the 50s. and of course the nerd in me sort of wants to run analytics, like how many different races I've slept with or what my average height partner was, and how many new guys I average in a year - you know, the usual.  

with my terrible memory, I knew it would be a challenge - but it turned out to be so much harder than I expected.

for example, in my list:

• I had to group the men in 2009-2010 because I couldn't remember where they fell on the timeline. The mid 20s were all a blur, and I didn't have the foresight to blog about them 
• I have line items that say: "Jonathan (blue eyes)"; "Cop"; and "Daniel (Asian)" because that's as much as I'll ever remember about them
• I scrolled through several years of text messages to recover names and reread many of my posts in this blog to piece together the slightly-more-significant suitors
• And of course, there is still one name missing between 2009-2011. I know this because when I started dating breve, I knew what my number was, and the math doesn't add up. 

yea, not an easy exercise. my advice: write it all down before you forget. because damn, that "+1" unknown on my list is gonna bother me forever. 

just. make. a. move.

seriously guys, a word of advice. at some point you just have to MAKE THE MOVE.

case in point: david from coffee meets bagel was matched with me a week ago, and this entire week he's just been trying to engage me with 2-3 mundane texts per day. I've gotten sick of his passiveness and for some reason want to give him a chance in person, so I've purposely inserted several openers into the conversation to make it REALLY easy for me him to ask me out.

first opener
david: Mission is pretty cool, they have a ton of great dessert spots, have you been?
chai: hm, I only really know of birite and tartine. what places are you thinking of?

ideal response: Oh man there's so many others! Humphrey slocombe, dynamo donuts, mission pie, anthony's cookies! any you would like to try?

actual response: Oh man there's so many others! Humphrey slocombe, dynamo donuts, mission pie, anthony's cookies! Good thing you don't have a sweet tooth, you don't have to worry about diabetes.

um what, really? you're bringing up diabetes in a dating conversation? 

second opener
chai: btw, do you actually have all those dogs in your pics?
david: Haha no, but the white one is my bro's, so I take care of him a lot. You want to meet him?
chai: lol I bet you get asked about them a lot. well played. haha, sure  [on meeting them]

ideal response: cool, why don't we grab some birite and I'll bring him to dolores park this weekend?

actual response: well a guy's gotta stand out somehow, might as well do it with cute dogs haha

ok, as I'm writing this I'm wondering to myself why exactly I still want to give this guy a chance

third opener 
david: so i'm guessing weekend brunches in the city aren't your thing eh?
chai: haha I didn't say that, I just don't like waiting for them. I love weekend brunch

at this point, I am full out expecting some sort of brunch invite. I just said that I LOVE WEEKEND BRUNCH

david: All the good brunches have ridiculous waits! I've only been to a few because I usually get too hangry haha

omg. seriously?!  OK. how obvious can I make it that you should just ask me to meet up in person?!

chai: Ha seriously. so...do you ever meet people from CMB or do you just text them forever?
no, I'm not even being nice anymore 

david: I've met a few - that's the whole point right? How about you, are you a veteran?

............alY$#jdmd;ja&6*%&%;q 
i give up. those few girls that you've met must have all asked you out, because you certainly aren't capable of pulling the trigger!! 

toothbrush

in my dating life, the moment I give someone a toothbrush carries a lot of significance. it means you've slept over at least 4 times and it doesn't make sense for you to just chew some trident before bed anymore. it means I have an expectation that you'll make good use of that brand new toothbrush, that there's some sense of permanency of having you in my life. it also means that I'll have a daily reminder of you sitting on my bathroom sink. having your own toothbrush is a prerequisite to having your own hanger, which opens the door to having your own drawer, key, etc. It's the commentary equivalent of Summer letting Tom into her room for the first time.  

today I threw wbf2's toothbrush out - and all of "us", whatever that was, along with it. I immediately felt a wave of relief and freedom - who knew a dental cleaning tool could carry such emotional symbolism? 

wbf2 and I had been loitering dangerously close to the border of relationship status, and it was only a matter of time before we accidentally inched a toe across that line. for us it was a weekend of fighting like a couple, realizing we cared, having way too many relationship-y lectures, being grilled by friends about our status, and sending a kissy face emoticon that set us over the edge into that relationship minefield. as the grey area crumbled, we turned and ran full speed the other way until "relationship" became a laughable foreign concept. 

I have one toothbrush left, and you can bet I won't be giving it to another placeholder. 

placeholder.

I've been thinking for a while about how to recap my recent dating activity, and finally realized it can all be summed up with one theme: commoditized dating. probably the most notorious evidence of this can be seen in online dating - "giving" away unwanted matches to your friends on coffee meets bagel practically turns men into trading cards, and "liking" photo after photo on tinder makes it hard to keep track of which Matt or John you're messaging with today.

The title of this post is not for lack of a title, but rather that the men in my life have been commoditized to a point that they are mostly placeholders - guys I keep around for companionship and entertainment until someone better comes along. before I elaborate, I should also mention a second theme in my dating life: I can't stop dating co-workers. No, I'm not referring to work boyfriend, but a new, improved model who my friends and I have aptly dubbed "wbf2", or work boyfriend 2.

wbf2 is smarter, more ambitious, and funnier with more in common with me, but on the physical scale he's a bit of a hairy beast (though still over 6 feet with a fairly nice body). like the original, wbf2 is also foreign, but seems to have acclimated to the american way of dating, despite his claims of hating how casual it is.

in fact, our office tension broke about a month ago in the most casual way possible - through a drunken hookup after a night out. the events that followed reminded me only too much of another office romance where I asked for my caught-in-the-middle friend to conduct some recon. literally almost word for word to the Folgers situation, wbf2 described me as "smart, cool, and very pretty" but "didn't want a relationship", noting excuses about not wanting to date co-workers, not being sure how long he's going to stay in the states, (and after that all I heard was blah blah blah).

so I heeded his warnings and wishes to remain single and kept a distance from him at work and outside of work. that is, until last weekend when we took a work trip together to Seattle. sunshine, alcohol, views of the pacific northwest and a shared hotel made for quite the weekend, ahem.

ever since then, we seem to have been in some sort of relationship limbo - not quite friends with benefits because we both sense there is something deeper, but definitely no where near relationship status.*

we are simply placeholders. 

now this is not my first or even second attempt at reverse dating, so if placeholder does end up being synonymous with friends with benefits, I think I can be ok with that. for now.

*he even tried to sabotage himself just like Folgers by telling me about all the other women in his life, and how I didn't want to date him because his ex might be visiting (so clearly, this means they are going to hook up, well why not). the excuses were all too familiar - but they did prompt me to tell him about the accountant I had been seeing every so often. I felt bad at first for two-timing but when I heard about the women in his life, I felt like I should have been three- or four- timing to even the field.

ex-capades continue

friday. was. awful. at least from about 10:17 PM - 12 AM. and especially at 10:17 when I walked into chambers and immediately witnessed my ex kissing his new girlfriend in such a cute, gleeful way that for a split second I was happy for this adorable couple - until they disbanded and the realization dawned on me. even in the dim lighting there was an unmistakable second where all three of our faces fell. he gave me a flat "hello", she turned away to avoid eye contact, and I muttered "hey" under my breath as I beelined to the bar.

everything that usually works had the reverse effect that night. each drink sharpened my senses to what was going on in the corner with him and her friends. every familiar face that showed up drew more blanks in my mind for conversation. no matter what I did, every fiber of my being was laser-aware of them. I now wished I had taken people's advice to slut it up and bring a super hot fake boyfriend to that damn event. 

yes, I knew they were going to be there, so why did i put myself in this situation? well I wasn't going to let the fact that they were going to this bash stop me from going where all my friends were going to be. how did I know they were going to be there? because that was actually the second time I saw VF that day. at happy hour earlier we even had a one on one conversation that suffered from awkward politeness. 

clearly, I was not the only one who perceived the shift in our relationship and I couldn't help but fall to my old habits of facebook stalking to make sense of things. that's when I noticed that he had removed the old profile photo of us from when we were dating. I thought that was a little strange because I didn't think boys curated their facebooks so meticulously (especially with such an old photo), but then when I stalked further, I realized that every single photo or post that both of us were tagged in was purposefully removed from his timeline.

our relationship, eviscerated. if all you ever knew of us was our facebook presence, you would never know there was an us at all. 

I was utterly confused, and really hurt. I get that you don't want the past following you around, but at the same time, even if things don't work out in the end I still cherish the great times that were had. did it really all mean nothing? 

after thorough over-analysis, I came up with the two most plausible explanations for being wiped out of VF history: 

theory 1: he did it to get over me.

theory 2: he has an evil girlfriend disguised in a cute-girl body who poisons him about what an awful person I am and how much better off he is with her, thus forcing him to remove all reminders of me.  

there's actually quite a bit of evidence to support theory 2. her friends who used to suck up to me looked at me with disdain and gave me attitude on Friday. when I left, I saw his crew shivering in line waiting to get in and realized that she must have some spell over him to convince him to go to the event with just her and her friends while leaving his friends behind. 

regardless of the true reason, I'm now dreading a trip to Seattle that I'd originally planned and looked forward to as a reunion with my past co-workers, including VF. If I can't bear two hours with him, I'm not sure how I can bear two days. 

digital dating...?

hm. this is going to sound a little weird but just take it as an indication that we really do live in a digital age... I can't figure out - am I "dating" charlie chaplin?

no, I haven't seen him since halloween, and we still refer to our friends at that party by their costumes when we talk to each other ("I'm going to mexico with matt, the stop sign") but he texts me regularly and calls me 'darling' on gchat. he sends me random emails and asked me to escort him to a restaurant opening last week. and even though we're friends on facebook, I know next to nothing about him - not to mention that I still have my doubts about his sexuality. what is going on?  I'm responding to him because he is a constant source of entertainment, but it feels a little strange. at the end of the day we are really just strangers, and I'm not gen Y enough to be in a virtual relationship.

I'm sure one of these days I will see him again face to face. at that point I think one of two things will happen:

1. we will be drunk and I will go home with him  
2. we will be sober and I will realize he's not straight.  haha. 

in fact, next weekend seems like the perfect opportunity to sort this all out.  I'm hosting a get together at a swanky SOMA bar, and it should be a low pressure event where I won't have to give him my full attention.  but it will also mean that a lot of worlds will be colliding -- aka past flames and hot joes in one room...oh i forgot, story of my life.

the original was a man of few words...mine is a man of few appearances

coffee prophecy

halloween weekend came and went with plenty of alcohol and crazy homemade costumes, but not much to report on the boy front - except that I met a very tall, dapper, secret-weapon concealing charlie chaplin with a questionable sexuality.  he has been texting me bad jokes all week like "the skeleton wanted to go to the party but had no BODY to go with" and "what do you call a cow in an earthquake?"  I'm starting to think that my suspicions are confirmed.

in other news, the coffee prophecy came true. Folgers and I finally broke the tension in an off-work rendezvous. it was actually one of those situations where imagined that I wanted something to happen before it did, but when the moment came I realized I didn't REALLY want anything to happen, so it was all quite awkward and rude.  I also found out he is the third adopted guy that I have hung out with this year...I swear there must be something about adopted guys having weird insecurities...

anyways, now the witty banter has completely died between me and Folgers.  isn't it funny how once you attain the unattainable, it loses all of its allure?

but don't worry, I have a new crush, and as always, I think he is nicer than the last. we've gone out for a few drinks but I'm not ready to let my guard down.  after all, I'd rather keep the allure going for as long as possible. oh, and did I mention he lives in Seattle? it's like a built-in firewall for bad decisions.

sizzle? more like fizzle.