Dating Isn't The Only Way To Find Love

Both of them go into high anxiety about what they wear, whether they used the right body products, where they got their hair cut, what the other one thinks of everything about them. The whole night is spent judging a stranger who tries to put some slick packaging onto a life that probably isn't anywhere near as artificial as either of them is trying to create as an impression.

It sounds like mutual fraud in a lot of ways.

But the custom drives billions of dollars in consumer spending on everything from restaurants to body products, clothes and whatnot. The idea is for her to come off as physically sexy and attracted to him, while for him it's to come off as wealthy and interested in her. It's a weird custom. It's also one of the toughest ways to get to know a human being that there is.

With both parties desperately imitating television commercials, the odds of actually getting to know the person across the table at the restaurant aren't high on that first date. Or even on quite a few of them, what can be established is mostly what restaurants both of them like. Even then that's filtered through traditional expectations that he hopes to get laid that night and she hopes for a wedding ring before he gets to that point.

Without actually knowing each other that well.

I've had a colorful and interesting love life. I've had numerous partners in romances that varied from one long miserable one to numerous shorter but happier relationships. I've had lovers who were exquisitely beautiful women, the kind of women that turned heads no matter where we went. I have a personal interest in very bright, creative partners so I'm also just as proud of my ex-lovers' accomplishments in life. I mostly dated writers, including a couple of romance writers.

No one appreciates the tango of romance the way a romance writer does. Contrary to popular opinion about women who read a lot and write books, many romance writers are beautiful women who could pose for their own book covers if they bleached their hair. Both of the romance writers I've had romances with were dark ladies. Either of them could easily have starred in a movie based on her work.

I wasn't either rich or conventional. I'm disabled. I'm short, I don't live on the clock, most of my life I haven't had much to spare beyond basic survival in terms of money. So showing off my economic potential was not exactly a competitive process. I didn't even think of trying to show off to women that I was willing to spend money I didn't have on them -- or date women I didn't know.

What happened instead in my life was that I got very good at making friends with people who share my interests. My anthropologist son in law calls this "affinity groups." That can be your pals for going out on plein air trips in scenic areas near home. Or it could be a completely immersive subculture like the Society for Creative Anachronism. Fandom for a particular sport, television show, hobby or activity becomes an affinity group.

Unless the activity is so gendered that you're unlikely to meet anyone of the desired gender doing it, you'll make friends with people of the opposite sex. Actually this goes for gay and lesbian dating too -- if you hang out in gay groups doing other things, you will eventually find out who the attractive singles are and find out all about your real friends' personal lives.

You'll know who the established couples are. You'll know who the unhappy couples are. Don't circle like a shark waiting for a vulnerable moment to grab someone coming off a bad relationship. Just give support and care about your friend. It is much safer both for casual happy buddy sex or serious relationships to get to know your friends well first and then start getting romantic at happy moments in their lives.

It took me a while to understand the entire process by which a friend became a lover. One important step stood out -- as friends we got around to talking about love and sex. Not just one of those topics, both of them. In general.

That became the point of starting to find out what each others' boundaries and ideas were. Is she going to assume that if we have one romantic night, we will go get married the morning after? Is she going to want me to change my religion? Is she going to want me to change my personal habits?

Around this point in the friendship, that's also when we'd look over each others' lives -- at the point of trust when I'd let her come over when it's messy. My daughter tells me that was actually attractive to women, that a single guy whose home isn't perfectly organized will make a girl feel needed. I'll take her word for that.

My own advice is to be real, have your friend over and visit her where she lives. Don't make a big deal about it while still just looking around. Have fun. Do things together that you have in common.

Spending the afternoon in shop talk about how to write fight scenes is something two writers get into with the glorious relief of "Somebody UNDERSTANDS!" When that goes to being the guy who's willing to slo-mo the fight scene in detail with her either playing the villain or the hero, you've reached Trusted Friend.

What this does for the quality of the relationship afterwards, as opposed to just chatting up someone pretty you met at a convention and know nothing about, is amazing. It means that in those moments when you're not feeling romantic, you're still hanging out with your best friend. It means that if you're having trouble with a rewrite and she asks "What's wrong?" you can tell her.

"I'm really angry because I'm having trouble writing my main character in this scene, he wants to do something incredibly stupid and I know it's not going to work."

"Oh, that's all. I thought you were mad at me for something."

"Oh no, you're wonderful. It's my MC that I want to strangle."

Fight averted.

You don't get that kind of communication in a relationship without friendship first, friendship during and friendship after. I have found romantic interludes by just meeting someone hot at a big event like a science fiction convention. We danced, we partied, we wound up together horny at three in the morning, we moved in together because that was good.

That's actually how all my bad relationships started. The attractive other who was ready to commit on the basis of looking good and being interested is someone who may be completely incompatible in terms of habits, goals, ideals, world view. That's how I wound up a hippie connected with an economic conservative for the long-haul miserable one.

All of the relationships that started on shared interests and friendship became good ones and parted gently. At the point I broke up with my first romance writer, she laughed because she was looking for how to let me down gently -- and when she said "I want to still be your friend" she did mean it. We both did. The friendship survived.

Be honest and real in those discussions of love and sex and life plans. If you don't want kids, say so. If you want a lot of kids and love being around little kids, say so. If you dream of being a dad, don't hook up with a lady who doesn't want kids. Real basic things like that need to get established before it's romance in order to avoid romantic tragedy later on.

What do you want your wife to be like? What kind of life would actually mesh well with yours? Are you looking for an equal partner with a career and interests of her own and willing to trade off on issues like relocation and social support of each others' careers? Or are you looking for a traditional lady who'd like to be supported and take care of the house and run your social life?

These are things to actually discuss over hobbies like making antique scrolls with authentic materials or sharing an interest in bicycling across country. You could spend a lot of quality time getting to know her on sharing a bicycle marathon like that.

While courting, that's when to start paying romantic attention in more obvious and subtle ways. Little romantic surprises in the middle of other shared activities make a big impact. So do small kindnesses.

Everyone, every human being likes being taken care of. So bring an extra water bottle for when she's tired. Massage cramps out of her legs or her back. Let her go ahead in line for things. A habit of small considerate things will have a deep emotional impact.

It will, in a healthy relationship, begin to attract the same kind of interested support. Noticing and being appreciative when she does little things for you is a big part of the shift from friend to more than friend. It's also one of the best ways to make a relationship stable and happy to continue doing small considerate things and appreciate everything she does for you.

My daughter, a font of wisdom about gender and romance, tells me that women will make sacrifices for the ones they love by doing things for them. Men will make sacrifices for the ones they love by not controlling what they do. This is part of today's social expectations, these gender roles are sweeping and do affect even gay and lesbian relationships.

She asked me to think about that observation in terms of what comes easy to either men or women.

It was quite an eye-opener and made a lot of things make sense to me. I do fall into that pattern and so did most of the women I've ever dated. So be appreciative of her efforts. She is going to make a lot of them long before it even gets to the romantic point just because she likes you.

The last, most important thing, maybe the whole gist of this article is: be with her specifically and not with the whole map of What Women Want. She is an individual. She has personal habits, priorities and tastes that are unique. You can find out what moves her most very easily by asking her in a casual discussion.

Most people are actually upfront about it with their close friends. They'll be happy to say "I love it if someone makes coffee at two in the morning and doesn't expect me to stop writing till my chapter is done." OK, for writers in love, this may be true of both partners. Or one of them is an early bird who will always want to get up an hour before you do so that she can get in a chapter on her book before starting her day.

She's the one most likely to wake you up romantically because she's already awake, had coffee, accomplished something and may be in a very happy erotic mood if she just finished a love scene. The night writer is just going to rip your head off if you roll over first thing on waking and try to get her interested. She'd rather sleep in.

That is the type of explicit sex talk that close friends exchange. The mechanics are pretty clear to most adults. The personal habits like "I love it if my lover wakes me up with slow gentle foreplay and the first thing that happens in the morning is making wild passionate love" are the things anyone needs to know in order to keep a spouse or significant other happy and thrilled instead of bored and frustrated.

Where someone is ticklish and what touches are exciting, that's more personal. The more you know the person, the more satisfying sex becomes.

Even in the unhappy relationship, the sex was better than casual encounters. By the end, good sex was pretty much what kept us together because we knew each other too well and knew every detail of every personal turn-on. A stranger doesn't. A stranger is full of fantasies -- that she hasn't shared and you wouldn't guess in a million years.

When you're serious with someone, all the roommate issues come up. They're hard to discuss in that artificial dating situation. That is not where you will find out that in her family for eight generations, the women controlled the savings accounts and checkbooks and she learned to be a master accountant making the most of any income anyone brings in... and expects you to turn over your check in blind trust and never spend a dime without consulting her.

If that sounds scary, that's because you're talking about a serious relationship issue. It's one that could be wonderful as easily as it could be rotten, people who have that life pattern, the wife routinely budgets some spending money for her husband to get the things he wants that she's got no interest in. If you actually have trouble remembering to pay the bills or saving up for things you want, that may actually be the gal for you -- once she earns that trust.

It's easier with a long friendship to tell that lady from the control freak who'd take advantage of it to blow your entire check on trendy kitchen appliances and fancy body products without allowing you enough lunch money let alone power tools and hobby stuff without a fight.

If that's her outlook in life, look at her track record as treasurer for a fan club or something that isn't your paycheck. Did she manage to raise funds for all the group's activities well? Did she spend them wisely? Does she have the skills to do that? How well does she allocate funds for activities she's not personally interested in that other members like?

Someone who wants that kind of trust in a skill ought to demonstrate real skill at it. But women with that "women run the checkbook" family pattern often have great skill they learned from a very young age. Same with the housekeeping stuff. Many women know how to keep house and shop a lot better than guys do. They get taught those things and help out early on.

Others rejected those roles and are free spirits who don't want to be the one who does all the chores -- and gets blamed or credited for the results. If you meet a lady who does all those things, expect her to be house-proud. She will want the place cleaned up before any stranger comes over, no matter how casual. She will expect it to look nice, and you can win a lot of points by making that easier for her.

Ways of making it easier -- actually putting the dishes in the sink and laundry into the bin. Appreciating the occasional grand performance like the spring cleaning stem to stern or the special dinner she got the idea of making. Thanking her for doing it. Washing your hands before going to dinner.

That was my grandfather's way of it and he kept my grandmother very happy for 46 years. They dated conventionally, they stuck because both were kind and considerate to each other -- and respectful of separate territories while considerate in shared space. He had his workshop, she never moved a screw or a tool or cleaned in there. She had the kitchen, he washed his hands before going in and never moved anything.

So there are many different patterns of living. Any long term relationship is going to be built out of combining and testing those patterns to build one unique to the country of two. But getting to know the particular beauty that you want to share cornflakes with for years is more likely when you're already her friend than if you just pick her out on looks from among strangers.