Getting Lucky

Having the opportunity to celebrate St Patrick's Day in the Emerald Isle has brought new meaning to the "luck of the Irish." While St Patrick's Day is clearly about getting drunk and wearing green the combination of a flattering color (for those of us with lovely Irish coloring) and booze makes the bar scene an even more "profitable" one for those of us on the lookout for adorable men. The expectation of a whacky hat or T-shirt makes the weirdos a little more difficult to vet, as my friends and I were unfortunate enough to find out, but the increasing approachability made finding the pots of gold amidst the leprechans a litte more interesting. Yet, recent conversations with friends beg the question for everyday dating, "is it just about getting lucky?"

Now, I do not mean "getting lucky" in the same sense as the T-Shirts reading "The Luck of the Irish-- I can give it to you" or "I'm in Ireland and ready to get lucky" but in the sense that you are able to find a person in this crazy world that makes you happy. In the past year more of my friends have been dumped than found love and as some start to find love, that number is only increasing. While there is always the challenge of finding the right person, the harder challenge is knowing when hoping for luck slips into fantasy. I know many women who have believed that the best way to fix their broken relationships is to move in with their significant other or picking up and moving to the city where the love of their life is without any other direction because these women believe that not everything can be left to fate. That hoping and wishing on every charm in the world is not what you need-- it is action, purpose and drive. The problem is that while luck is not everything, neither is irrational commitment.

Of course there is push and pull in every relationship, but the push cannot be guided by a hope that it will be the last. The notion that this last move, phone call, email, friendship, will remind him what he is missing (or in some cases never saw) is a reaction to the randomness of some people's happiness. While I have friends who have successfully met incredible men by simply being in the right place at the right time, I have known more who have hoped that they could calculate the right place and time for reconciliation. The notion that a guy who has ignored you (even if he responds to your constant attempts at contact, that is still ignoring you-- guilt is a powerful drug ladies) will change his tune because you "take fate into your own hands" is in most cases as fanciful as psychic powers and voodoo.

While it is fine to hope that the next guy at the bar who kisses me because I'm Irish will be my one and only, counting on it and then moving in with him crosses a line. Being dumped, rejected or ignored by someone you truly love is difficult but putting yourself near them passed the point of outright rejection is only making it harder for you to give the other green haired beer drinkers a chance to impress. Remember that being lucky in love means that they love you back-- and if you want to find the right guy, stop forcing relationships with the ones who do not see what they are missing. So let yourself be a little into getting lucky, if only to keep you from getting hurt.

We're Just Not That Into You Lesson: Yes, you cannot sit in your bedroom and hope that Mr. Right finds you laying among your how to make men love you magazines and diet coke, but by the same token recognize when a relationship is not working. Be able to see that counting soley on luck is just as bad as obsessively taking matters into your own hands to the point you are moving in with someone, stalking someone or putting your own life's happiness in someone else's control. Leave a little room for luck and a lot of room for a reality check and you will be happy to see the green of envy in his eyes when you don't need him anymore.

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I am Woman, W-H-O-R-E

Meet Silda Wall Spitzer-- graduate of Harvard Law School and successful corporate attorney whose non-profit work has stretched from the NY Blue Ribbon Commission on Youth Leadership to the Children's Museum of Manhattan and most recently her founding of Children for Children, which is dedicated to the civic engagement and community involvement of youths. While her resume represents a successful individual, her reputation is now of a failed wife. Criticisms from the likes of Dr. Laura blame her lack of sexual attention for her husband's fall while others view her decision to stand by him through this embarrassing scandal as pathetic. Yet, the unspoken fear among successful women rests not in her actions, or lack of action-- but in her husband's infidelity. Is there a reason that men with successful spouses pursue sexual satisfaction with, well, less- qualified options?

We have all been called a whore and we have all played the whore. Women throw loaded terms like slut, whore, skank, etc. around for all types of reasons. Yet, when it comes to putting ourselves out there, women do accentuate our sexual traits rather than our intellectual accomplishments to attract men. We have all exuded sex, embraced our sexuality, and been proud of the results. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem lies in how successful we can be given that we are truly more complicated than that. After the attraction settles, our emotional and intellectual complexities taint our sexual front. It is troubling to see so many public men abandon their loyal, successful, complex wives for simple sex.

The word whore, while it might be used to describe your ex's new girlfriend or someone wearing a tube top in the snow, actually is a person who sells their body for sex. Simple sex. There are no emotional ties or complications in a relationship with a whore as part of the business agreement attached to the action. Now, those of us who are not employed by prostitution rings can also pursue simple sex, but at a point it has to end. Without a business agreement to prevent it, conversation and emotion make the relationship more substantive. We have been raised to believe that this is the ideal-- in fact the ideal is to have a significant connection emotionally and intellectually before the sexual relationship. Yet, when we look at the statistics of married couples who cheat (between 1 in 5 and 1 in 10 depending on who admits it) and those that stay together (as high as 7 in 10 of those when the man cheats) the reality of simple sex haunts those of us who pursue highly sophisticated intellectual relationships.

Of course there are many successful marriages and relationships where both parties are loyal, and it is in no way my intention to taint those relationships. I do, however, see a future for myself where I have to tolerate my husband's simple sex with someone else because it is a role that I can never play. While in theory I would love to profess I could never tolerate such behavior, but in reality I look at admirable, intelligent women who accept their role as wife as separate from providing sexual satisfaction.

Meet the Emperor's Club, a group of women who meet the needs of powerful men married to women like me. While I will never intimately understand the appeal of the whore, I know Hillary Rodham Clinton, Silda Wall Spitzer and others like them have learned that sometimes, we have to choose to either ignore or become them.

Just Not That Into You Lesson: I am not advocating becoming a prostitute, but rather that the role we adopt in the workplace of power and intellect often stifles the role we play in relationships. Making your partner feel satisfied both emotionally and physically by someone who produces some insecurity is a difficult balance. There are ways of finding men who yearn for this relationship-- the deep understanding and love to enhance the physical-- and we should focus on them, even if it means a turtleneck or a little more conversation and a little less action for a while.

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Getting Into It?

Greg, you might be right. I hate saying this. I hate the message of "He's Just Not That Into You" enough that this entire blog is devoted to countering it. Until, well, I was (euphemistically) broken up with and I started to re-evaluate Greg's wisdom.

I have come to the conclusion that Greg is absolutely right that it is far, far better to be alone than to be with someone whom you're just not that into. Which, if you're honest, you're probably not if he exhibits any of the douchebag behavior Greg laments in the book. Ladies, if the first part of your day is a 30 to 60 minute bitch fest about the guy you're dating, trust me, you are not into him and he is probably not into you. If you've gotten to the point in any relationship where you're making up excuses not to sleep together, that's where you call it quits and perhaps invest in a rabbit.

Which leads me to my critique, I'll accept that it's better to be alone than together and miserable, but I still have trouble with Greg placing all the agency at the foot of men. Greg and Liz both present women as these desperate, lonely creatures starving for attention of any kind. I just don't believe that the same powerful, articulate women I see in the boardroom, on the dance floor, and in the front row of my classes are incapable of calling the shots in a relationship too. Do we all really just collapse in a puddle of tears beside the phone when he doesn't call? I think not.

Maybe I'm being unfair. The book is targeted to the demographic of women who self-select to buy and read a book entitled basically "Your boyfriend hates you." (and I would add the subtitle: "If you're honest, you probably hate him too.") And I think Greg is right on to tell anyone who's wondering whether it's okay if her boyfriend cheating on her since she gained 20 pounds that she needs lose 175 pounds of a douchebag boyfriend. I just don't think that the majority of women need this message. Not to be sanctimonious, but I certainly didn't. Although, perhaps you can't reminded enough not to ever ever take yourself for granted or be in an unhealthy relationship. I think that's a lesson worth waking up to every morning.

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Sexism at the WaPo

Yesterday's vitriolic Washington Post piece upset me. Like the silly woman I am, I insist on getting caught up in my emotions when another woman wants to express her First Amendment views that all women are basically stupid, senseless, empty headed crybabies good only for keeping a nice house and taking care of men.

Thanks, Charlotte Allen, for keeping sexism alive. After all, it hardly counts as misogyny if another woman writes it, right? This self-hating mockery ran the gamut from the "harmless": noting that women frequently faint before Obama's thrilling oratory, to the, um, slightly more insidious assertion that scientific evidence proves men are smarter (and better drivers). On its merits as an op-ed piece alone, Allen's is woefully lacking. She starts out with unqualified assertions about fainting spells (ooh! Emotions=stupidity), moves on to the "no man I know would do xyz stupid female behavior," and ends with the assertion that women should just do what they do best, take care of others. I venture to guess she wouldn't include writing op-ed pieces as part of what women were made to do. Shame on you, Charlotte for touting forth your abilities while the rest of us silly headed gals paint our toenalis and braid each other's hair.

Finally, her tired examples of why exactly men are so much smarter than women fail to hold up to rational analysis. Even if she's correct and men are more biologically exceptional at analytic skills while women are exceptional at memory and verbal skills, this only points out a difference; her own bias creates the normative value. She relies upon the unstated assertion that the skills women do excel at are inferior to men's. It's less worthy to be an exceptional verbal communicator, writer, or memorizer of fact than a spatial reasoner? Back that up, Charlotte, and don't just tell me you're a girl and so you can't.

Falling into the vitriol myself, I think this article is bullshit and could only be published because it's written by a woman about women. No one would publish this if it made the same assertions about a racial minority group or about a disabled population or about gays and lesbians. Nor should they because it is wrong to make unqualified, untrue, hateful assertions about an entire group of people, even if you belong to said group. Well, I guess women will have to should onward closing the achievement gap with men and proving old bags like Charlotte wrong one career promotion at a time.

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First comes love then comes dating

Dinner and a movie. A drink. Perhaps even something more adventerous like rock climbing or an early morning run. All of these things would constitute as dates, and I am sad to say I have never been on one. I met my ex-boyfriends at school or through social networks and we became friends, flirted, hooked up and then we were "together." In this popular method of finding a significant other, dating comes after the relationship. Women in their early twenties find themselves out of the vast social networks that come with college and into a working world with limited options in making a good friend into a boyfriend. Instead, we have to rely on the date. Finding someone we barely know and using one-on-one time to establish the comfort level that has been the foundation of past relationships.

On Sex and the City and other popular TV shows people meet random people in coffee shops, on the street, etc. and then they go on dates. Of my friends, I know about two girls this has ever happened to (both while living abroad). Now, after college, this is changing. Of my many friends who find themselves newly sigle, all are perplexed about where and how to find men. The notion of going out and simply asking one out, is not only foriegn but scary. Of course, in theory, many women are confortable with the idea of asking a guy out-- but a random one? On the street? This falls so far outside our comfort zone that we dismiss the idea and revert instead to online dating (at least we can email first) or fix-ups (vetted by a friend).

Yet, for those of us in our early twenties it is important to be able to look outside our group of male friends and into the pool of random men we come across everyday. Perhaps the idea of finding someone on the street, at the gym or in a bar needs to be given more thought. When one is no longer in school, clubs and surrounded my hoards of people your own age it doenst mean that all of the doors to dating are closed, but that instead of pursuing the men we know we should be pursuing the ones we do not.

We are not dating ourselves by dating. While modern hook-up culture seemingly does not lend itself to bonding over a cup of coffee, our past social networking methods are no longer always available. In a recent survey, men were much more attracted to women when they were told that the women were attracted to them. Our reluctance to get to know someone because we are attracted to them means seeing limited options when they are actually limitless. So next time you are walking down the street or working out at the gym stop the cute guy walking by and ask if he's free for a coffee or a drink-- at least if he says no you never have to see him again!

We're Just Not That Into You Lesson: Of course many women date, but it is a hard transition because younger generations no longer do. In high school and college no one goes on dates with people they are not already dating. It is important that if you want to put yourself out there, you are not afraid of getting to know people with an obvious romantic intention. Women are often made to feel desperate when pursuing men, but the truth is that not everyone we see is going to be into us immediately-- try to get to know as many people as you can and eventually the right one just might show up.

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Hold the Olives, Please

Starving yourself to live? How about starving yourself to get a better high? Behaviors once relegated to the horrors of college excess are seeping into the mainstream and now there's a word for it: Drunkorexics. Women (usually) who either starve all day to offset the calories they drink or who use drinking as a means to relax them enough to be able to eat. I had read stories of mixing slim fast with tequila before going out at night, but I've never seen it in action. Quite frankly, my friends and I are much more likely to down our drinks with chicken wings and pizza, not diet drinks.

But I can relate to the anxiety of wanting to fit in socially while also worrying about the caloric cost. I've been known to assiduously eat whole grains and veggies for weeks and then down the liquid equivalent of two big macs over the course of an evening. (Hopefully the dancing that inevitably ensues burns off some of the Coors Lite.) But I don't mean to make light of yet another pernicious societal side effect of the beauty myth. Binge drinking for women has grown more socially acceptable in the past ten years. Coupling this trend with the alarming statistics on eating disorders and unhealthy body images has led to an entirely new class of disorder. Add to the mix rampant media images of our fave party girls doing coke and checking into rehab at the same rate the rest of us visit Ikea, and you've got a recipe for super skinny and drunk disaster.

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