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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