How Casual Are You Really?

I'm a secret Modern Love addict. I read the NYTimes columns on a regular basis, but especially during times of love-life insecurities, I seek out these first-person narratives on dating, love, and sex. Reading other people's strange takes on love in modernity makes me feel less strange. Key word searching for my dilemma of the moment brings me internet solidarity; key word searching for worst case scenarios brings me a sense of relief. Finding modern love is difficult, joining forces with an army of similarly minded young singles helps me to (ahem) celebrate singleness and ruminate on togetherness, and otherwise just accept whatever the hell this is that's called "dating."

I especially liked the winner of the College Essay contest, Marguerite Fields. (Quick pause so you can click here and read her well-written, poignant, thoughtful essay.)

Marguerite's story sounded a lot like many of my own. She's talking about "dating" (if you want to call it that) in a culture deeply ambivalent about commitment. She doesn't want to place "expectations" upon anyone else, but she's a little lost about how to navigate an expectation-less social tapestry. Because the way we conceptualize courtship and dating is based primarily on unspoken expectations, once these thought constructs are gone, knowing where to go next is pretty tricky. Whether these thought constructs can ever really disappear is up for debate.

I don't mean to defend the traditional, patriarchal mode of dating. I don't advocate playing by the rules, nor do I think a woman should let a man pay, hold the door, igrovel to be next to her etc... My point is that while we're debating whether or not a man should pay, just getting men to deem it necessary to do more than simply send a text message is almost impossible. I think too often, people romantically involved treat each other worse than they would treat their friends, and that's the main problem. For some reason, once entered into the realm of "relationship" no matter how casual, the odds of things becoming socially strange (in the situations Marguerite and I have dated in) go up fast.

I don't have a take away or lesson, except for this. I think it's really important to know whether you can handle a deeply ambivalent relationship. If carefree and casual is for you, that's great, but don't saddle your friends with unremitting complaints about a non-committal partner, if he's never led you to think he was anything but that. Greg's original message "He's just not that into you." is wrong in placing all the relationship agency in the hands of men, but he's not wrong in helping women identify men unlikely to submit to even the simplest demands of friendship. IF he's not a good friend, he's not a good lover. Leave him (or take the best parts of him and try to practice zen-like non-attachment. I'm not sure which is better.)