Filed under: News, Treats, media — posted by Breakup Girl @ 9:53 am
Ooh! “Singles for Foursquare builds a dating and messaging service on top of the location-sharing application. The result is a mashup that could match up hip iPhone-using, Foursquare-playing, same-bar-going early adopters.”
ProgrammableWeb also has this keen idea for version 2.0: “The concept could actually be expanded to connect users in a time-shifted manner. Rather than needing to be at the same place at the same time, Singles could recognize two of its users that frequent a particular restaurant and suggest they go at the same time. With dating sites based on even more tangential commonalities, it seems like a reasonable service to give to Foursquare users who tend to love their local businesses.” Plus, no LDRs.
Lauren Graham in More Magazine: “I’ve only connected with people I met by accident,” she says. “My first boyfriend in high school was the guy who sat in front of me, because, you know, alphabetically we were soul mates. I looked at the back of his head long enough that I was like, ‘I think I’m in love with you.’ ” Any pressure she might feel about settling down is external, not internal. “What is so funny to me is I’m in a profession where two percent of people are working, yet there’s still this implication that you’re not completely successful if you’re single and in your forties,” she says. “Well, why not? I wanted a horse when I was growing up too. Does that mean I’m not successful, because I don’t have a horse?”
Author (and FOBG) Lori Gottlieb appeared on the Today Show this morning to discuss her — to me, bizarrely — inflammatory book, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, which basically urges women to be picky about the important stuff (kindness) and not picky about the not-important stuff (height), and which Lemondrop summarizes rather equitably here. What it’s left in its wake is a lot of women feeling very rankled and defensive about being told they should “settle,” which is not really what Lori is saying. That said, I understand the defensiveness. Women, rightly, do not like to hear, which they often do, over and over, that they are “too picky.” (Yes, picky. About the person you are going to spend your life with. Urr?) Not that there aren’t women (and men) who are indeed “too picky.” But to be told that, or to get that message from our culture, which single women do, over and over, can be insulting, dismissive, unsympathetic. For one thing among many, it puts the dating onus squarely and only on the woman, whereas it’s not like every still-single woman is surrounded by terrific uncomplicated men on bended knee, just waiting for her to get over her thing about bowties or “no lawyers” or whatever. Women who have gone on a million dates with and given a million chances to a million perfectly nice guys who for whatever legitimate reason leave them lukewarm do not want to hear that they are “just being picky.” They are tired. They are trying. Go away. That’s part of my theory, anyway, for why Lori’s message, fairly or not, has left so many women so totally steamed.
I also wonder this: to the degree that men are paying attention to this tempest in a coffee-date, how does this message make you feel? If I may render it in the shorthand of stereotype, it’s basically “give the short bald poor guy a chance.” Do you feel that Lori’s advice, for those who follow it, could spell triumph for the common man? Let us know in comments!
Marriage, as it turns out, is an extremely good predictor of happiness. Married people make more money per capita, eat better, live longer, have more sex and enjoy it more. In terms of comparisons of happiness, you’d need to be making $100,000 more as an unmarried person to be as happy as a married person. (On average, and your mileage may vary, of course. And please, keep in mind, this is Gilbert talking, not me.) Is this a causal relationship? Maybe happier people are simply more likely to get married? That’s true, but studies over time reveal a very common pattern — people are less happy before marriage, experience a happiness peak shortly after marriage, and become slightly less happy a few years into marriage, though remain significantly happier than before marriage.
Well, that’s better news than something about marriage, after all that, making you less happy. But please keep this from the folks who are happiest of all when they’re bugging singles to shack up.
I met this guy in my home town through a radio dating service. The quintessential blind date, but wait, here’s a bonus: he’s adorable, has his own business, has no children, no ex-wives, no psychological problems to speak of but … he has zero sense of humor. He is about as dry as a piece of wheat toast. I think I intimidate him because I got about an inch over him in the height department. And I have a strong personality. Okay, here comes the problem: I blew him off a couple of months ago because it was too difficult being witty all by myself. But get this: I get a call asking how I’ve been and all that — and that now he knows it’s me he wants to be with. And that he has had this soul-searching revelation, and he doesn’t want to grow old alone, blah, blah, blah. But he still hasn’t acquired any personality traits that I can see. What should I do? I mean he is terribly sweet, and a kind person, but just as dull as a board. Am I a shallow person? I mean the usual dregs that I fall for have me grabbing my side with hysterical laughter — and later clutching my heart trying to keep it from falling to pieces because they have dogged me out. Help me please — all my girlfriends think I’m crazy, and that I should lock him up and keep him to myself. What do you think? Am I crazy?
I am currently single after three and a half long years (and proud of it dammit:). Well, I have a long time friend of ten years who just got married and has a newborn child. After flirting for all this time, we finally did the deed and slept together. It was so good that we just can’t seem to stop. My question is, should I be the mature one and say “hello! You’re married?” or should I just go eith the flow, I mean, I’m not the one cheating! Or am I?
– Friendly Luva
Dear Friendly,
“I’m not the one cheating!” Nice try, Luva. The “sound” of “one person cheating” is a concept far too Zen for Breakup Girl. If you’re so “friendly,” do no more deeds. Instead, help the new mom find someone to talk to about post-partum blues.
Filed under: Comedy, News, TV, Treats — posted by Breakup Girl @ 9:52 am
One thing singles tell me a lot is that they enjoy singlehood, they really do — and that they would enjoy it even more if they knew, for super-sure guarantee, that it also had an end date. Well, one new movie — starring BG imaginary BFF Emma Caulfield as a gal named Oona – uses machine-as-metaphor to make that fantasy real. It’s TiMER, in which women and men may choose to be implanted with a device that counts down the days, minutes, and seconds until they meet The One. But Oona’s timer is blank. So what will she do? Like the rest of us in the real world, will she have to just “just know”?
From the trailer, TiMER looks like a sweet sci-fi wrapped in a chick-flick tied with a careful-what-you-wish-for bow. And since what we’ve been wishing for is the return of Emma Caulfield, we’re not gonna be careful at all. (Now if we could just know for sure when — or if — it’ll go into wide release.)
– I swear I did not know that DePaulo was gonna name-check that same baby-shower “SATC” ep as I linked to in my most recent post. All the same, I will take this opportunity to remind you what great minds do.
– In other tried-but-true cliches (including the use of “tried and true,” shame on me), Geller eloquently discusses how those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. (Translation: She recommends all those entering marriage to read up on its history.)
– If a Mormon can decide to take the Sarandon-Robbins alternate route to happiness, then change is inevitable.
Filed under: News, Psychology — posted by Rose @ 12:32 pm
Last we left our whatevs-to-marriage heroines — authors Bella DePaulo and Jaclyn Geller; the former is running a three-part Q&A with the latter on the Psychology Today blogs — the discussion dwelled on the inequities of wedding registries, “single” v.”married” vocab and the notion that spouses trump friends any day of the week (and, I’m guessing, twice on your anniversary).
e-mail to a friend in need
, which basically urges women to be picky about the important stuff (kindness) and not picky about the not-important stuff (height), and which Lemondrop summarizes rather equitably 
