FAMILY
& RELATIONSHIPS
"IF
ONLY SOMEON COULD MAKE
SENSE OUT OF THE DATING GAME"
by Maria Elena Fernandez, LOS
ANGELES TIMES
The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Co. newspaper.
November
06, 2001
TO understand
Jeff Wise's wacky (and facetious) idea for a memorial to
singles on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., you must
know where he has been. It's the same place so many 30-something
professionals, including me, increasingly find themselves:
singlesville. A place that can be equally fulfilling and
lonesome, invigorating and demoralizing, exciting and frustrating.
It is where hope lives and dies, sometimes in the span of
a week, a month or years.
"Dating
is an inherently silly occupation," says Wise, 35,
founder of the American Dating Association, a support group
for singles he intended as a parody. But it has been taken
so seriously by his Internet audience that he has written
a self-help book called "Universal Dating: Regulations
and Bylaws" (Simon & Schuster, $9.95).
Wise
and I are trying to sort out why dating in America at the
end of 2001 feels more and more like a thankless job, an
empty endeavor that men and women embrace and reject simultaneously
and almost never get quite right.
Dating
is "actually serious," says Wise, who lives in
Los Angeles.
"You're
laying the groundwork for what will happen the rest of your
life," he says. "There's a lot of pain in it,
and there's a lot of joy. All of the drama of life is contained
in this absurd activity."
There
are plenty of love coaches, matchmakers and seminars to
go around, all promising to help us become more loving and
lovable, but more often than not, to no avail. Hundreds
of books and videotapes also seem to guarantee we will find
and bond with Mr. or Ms. Right.
A sampling
of men and women in the dating trenches shows there is plenty
of angst but no easy answers. Why is relating to the opposite
sex nearly impossible sometimes?
"People
need to have it in black and white," Wise says. "When
you're in a relationship, you're so caught up in the hope
that you lose sight of reality. So if you have this thing,
which says in black and white, in Section 9, Paragraph 4,
that you must end this relationship, a lot of your rationalization
and justification would go out the window."
Everywhere,
we see women searching for their soul mates: on the street,
on television (Fox's Ally McBeal, HBO's Carrie Bradshaw),
on the big screen and bookshelves (Bridget Jones in both).
What
many single women fail to notice is that there is a batch
of men just like us, who want to commit and dream of the
house, picket fence, double income and parenthood. But many
of them have no idea where to begin.
"Everyone
wants to connect, but then there's the fear of connecting,
the avoidance and the anxiety over what's going to happen,"
says Alexander Avila, author of "Love Types: Discover
Your Romantic Style and Find Your Soul Mate" (Avon,
$13.50). He's a psychologist who coaches men in the art
of relating to women.
"As
people become more educated, not only do they marry later
and focus less on family, but they also feel they have more
options," Avila said. "There really aren't as
many as people think. As people get more secure career-wise,
they raise their romantic expectations to unrealistic levels."
In other
words, men and women are too picky, too dismissive, too
quick to turn away a potential soul mate. There are more
fish in the sea, we are quick to rationalize. "Never
settle" seems to be the motto.
THERE
ARE an estimated 43 million single women in the United States
today - and 35 percent of them are 25 to 55 years old, according
to a Young and Rubicam study released last year. Single
by choice is the name of this silent but spreading movement.
But
is there a price, wonders Sterling Schubert, a high school
teacher in Montebello, Calif., who says he doesn't want
to settle. "I'd rather be alone. But now that I'm turning
35, I think about that a lot. Do I really mean that? Do
I really want to be alone? Once you know who you are, it's
not that you're being picky or dismissive, but there has
to be something fundamental about the person that fits with
you. If you don't fit together at the core, you definitely
won't fit together in the finer points."
That's
where it gets complicated, says Renee
Piane, owner of LOVE
WORKS, a Los Angeles dating and personal coaching
company.
"Most
people walk around with the fantasy of what they want, but
it's not in line with their heart and soul," says Piane,
who interviewed hundreds of singles over six years for a
cable television show. "You have to look at the spirit
of the other person, which makes you look at your own spirit.
A lot of people don't want to do that. They don't want to
go that deep."
Add
to the strain the changing roles of men and women, and you
might wonder how anybody makes it to the altar in the 21st
century, says Piane, who has never been married.
"It's
harder today because women are so much more independent,
and the men don't know what their role is and they feel
confused," she says. "The women of the world need
to realize that we have shifted. We've become a more powerful
and commanding presence, very much like men. I think both
men and women need to send out vibrations of openness. People
get so weary."
One
recent Thursday night in Santa Monica, Piane is sitting
among an audience of mostly women who are listening to a
panel of men, ages 24 to 84, tell it like it is. "You
ladies have to flirt with men!" she rises out of her
chair and yells. The men panelists are here to enlighten
women on "What Men Really Want."
"Men
are stimulated by your beauty," Piane says. "But
this is L.A., home to the most beautiful and unapproachable
women in the world. Men get rejected and rejected and rejected.
Be loving! Be friendly to everyone! Men will feel safe."
"I
agree," says panelist Eric Board, 54, who has never
been married. "But make it obvious when you're flirting!
We are stupid!" The audience erupts in laughter, but
Board is serious.
THE
WOMEN in the room, ranging in age from 30 to 50, are discouraged
by men. "When women come to understand the true and
sincere nature of men, they only have three choices: to
deny it, to weep about it or to humanize it," says
Michael Levine, the moderator, who owns a public relations
firm in Los Angeles. "I know so many beautiful, charming,
sensitive women who are frustrated by men. But maybe it's
as simple as men and women having different primal needs.
Maybe we're supposed to annoy each other so we can each
grow."
The
men have unanimously delivered this message: Be definite.
Have an opinion. Do not overthink everything. Men are not
that evolved. Know what you want and communicate it.
Jodi
Martin, a divorced mother of two at the conference, likes
the way this sounds, but it's not realistic, she says. In
her experience many men intellectually want a strong and
equal partner but are not emotionally equipped to handle
one. "If you're smart or independent and the man has
nothing to rescue or take care of, he backs off. It doesn't
matter how accomplished the guy is or how much money he
has, they do get scared of you when you have your act together,"
she says.
Avila,
who has spent a lot of time researching romance and coaching
singles on how to attract each other, doesn't blame intellect,
education or even lack of communication for the great schism
between the sexes. He thinks we live in an isolated society,
and the main problem is that people do not know what they
really want or what best suits them. His book, designed
to determine what "love types" individuals are
compatible with, offers a criterion that he says is more
practical:
"The
key is to ... extend your loving energy without trying to
make anything work out. Wait for that natural harmony."
WEB
RESOURCES - FOR
MORE INFORMATION:
LOVE
WORKS CENTRAL & RENEE PIANE
http://www.LoveWorksCentral.com
American
Dating Association
http://www.AmericanDating.org
Alexander
Avila
http://www.LoveType.com
Copyright
© 2001, Newsday, Inc.
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