Public mushiness

Clever Elsie's very thoughtful comment on my last post got me thinking about public displays of affection. I mentioned that my S.O. is relatively affectionate and I like that. I don't think we ever act inappropriately but I can definitely imagine others thinking we are too mushy. Let me be clear - I absolutely believe there is a line for acceptable behavior and it makes me really uncomfortable to see people totally making out in public (if I had to be totally blunt, I think I'd say that if tongue is involved, that's over the line). But when I see people holding hands, or with their arms around each other, smiling at each other and maybe sneaking a periodic smooch, my personal reaction tends to be, "awwww" (again, sucking face with tongues down each other's throats is a whole different scenario). When I really started thinking about it, it occurred to me that my reaction is not that different from when I see people playing with their dogs. I think it's sweet, it makes me happy to see that tail wagging and the smile on the owner's face.

I know that when some people object to PDA, they are thinking of the "get a room" type of behavior that makes most sensible people uncomfortable. But there are some people who think any PDA is inappropriate and that's what I don't understand. That is, I get that some people are, themselves, not touchy-feely people but what I don't get is the objection to other people being touchy-feely. To me, it's just a difference in personality - some people are physically demonstrative and others are not. As long as someone isn't being physical with someone who is an unwilling participant, why is this behavior, in itself, a problem? If a particular couple is being affectionate (in an appropriate way), why is that any more objectionable than a puppy running around wagging its tail?

Maybe I'll feel differently in a few years (though I've never been particularly bothered by others' PDA). We recently went to dinner with some friends who were celebrating their seven-year anniversary (and they've been together more like thirteen) and as they were walking up to the restaurant (where my S.O. and I were already waiting at the bar), the wife said to her husband, "You can tell they haven't been together that long - they're still holding hands." For the rest of the night, we kind of joked about that but it did make me wonder. Right now, I love that my guy always holds my hand, partly because my previous boyfriends never did and it always bugged me. I've always been a physically demonstrative person and touch is important to me. But I'm sure we'll eventually reach a stage of our relationship where we'll be less affectionate than we are now, and maybe that's why some people think that PDA is a sign of insecurity (as suggested by one of the commenters on the Bella DePaulo post I mentioned last time) - the longer a couple has been together, the less likely they probably are to be affectionate in public. But the same could be said for any physical contact - lots of couples also tend to have sex less frequently the longer they've been together but does that mean that any couple that is still having a lot of sex is insecure?

I guess the main point I wanted to make is simply that for anyone who is bothered by public mushiness, I'm sorry you feel that way but please try to keep in mind that maybe what you're witnessing is simply two people in love. Instead of being offended, just think of it as puppy tails wagging and then ignore us...

Friday Fun

How is it possible that I haven't seen these magnets before? I think my favorite is "I had sex with my husband and all I got was this lousy kid" but they are all hysterical!

Can I be sappy without being seen as smug?

I just got back from an overnight trip to L.A. to visit a close friend who recently moved there with her husband. I drove up with my Significant Other, who my friend was very curious to meet, and we had a really fun evening, with good food, drink and conversation. This morning, the guys watched football while my friend and I took her dog for a walk. Of course, I wanted to get her opinion of my S.O. This is a friend who knows all about my previous, incredibly unhealthy relationships, and she's been hearing about this new guy for a while. What she said this morning was that the guy is great but more than anything else, she has never seen me this happy, that she thinks she heard me laugh more in the previous 24 hours than in the last several months, and that she is really, really happy for me.

I'm sharing this because I think that readers of this blog know that when I talk about how happy I am in my current relationship, I do not intend in any way to belittle or diminish those who are NOT in relationships, or to refute anything I have ever said about how important it is to be comfortable with being single. Mostly, when I talk about how happy I am in my current relationship, I do so because this happiness is new, certainly a departure from relationships I have known in the past, and honestly, I'm still kind of incredulous about it. I think that people who care about me will be happy to know that I have found this happiness, as my friend said this morning. But Bella DePaulo has a couple of posts that have me feeling sort of defensive. Her first post was about people who post annoying Facebook status updates about their relationships; her follow-up post talks about how people with these sorts of updates must be insecure (that is, these folks must be insecure or else they wouldn't feel the need to "act" so affectionately in public). What bugs me about that is that lately, I have been one of those people and I know that my motivation is about as far from what she's saying as you can get. When I post something on Facebook about the amazing weekend I had my guy, I'm not bragging about my relationship; I'm letting my friends know that things are great and I'm happy (I should say that I am only friends on Facebook with people that I am actually friends with in real life). Without exception, my friends have responded with comments like "You deserve it!" or "I'm so happy for you!" My S.O. also happens to be a really affectionate person, which I love since I did not get ANY public affection in my last relationship (heck, I didn't get much private affection either). I am sure that to other people, we are probably annoyingly affectionate but a) we are still sort of new at this so maybe it will lessen over time and b) if it doesn't, well, I hold his hand and sneak a quick smooch because it makes me silly happy to do so, not because I want others to think anything in particular (and just to be clear, I'm not talking about making out in a restaurant here).

I get that there are plenty of people who buy into matrimania and who want everyone to know they are in a relationship because they think that they will be seen as a 'loser' if they aren't, and I get why DePaulo feels they should be mocked. I guess I just wish that DePaulo, and many who commented on her posts, wouldn't sound so much as if everyone with sappy Facebook updates must fall into that group. DePaulo talks a lot about 'singlism' which she defines as "the stereotyping and stigmatizing of people who are single"; maybe it's just me being defensive now that I am part of a couple, but sadly, I feel like the singles community is just as likely to engage in 'couplism'.

Will you still love me in the ER?

Jezebel had a great post about a story on another site (that honestly, I don't feel like linking to because it's so stupid I don't really want to be a source of any traffic to it) that dealt with a woman who had basically been abandoned by two so-called friends. In a nutshell, the woman thinks she was drugged at a club, ended up in an emergency room, and the friends she had been with at the club almost couldn't be bothered to pick her up from the hospital. The response in the post-I-don't-want-to-link-to was that she shouldn't have expected them to! That sure, you can expect that of a significant other, but not friends (see the Jezebel post for the relevant quotes). WTF?

When I read this, the first thing I thought of was an incident three years ago when one of my best friends got food poisoning and needed to go to the ER because he'd been throwing up for several hours. Ironically (in the context of 'this is only a job for significant others'), his wife was out of town and SHE was the one who called me at 1 in the morning to ask me to take him to the hospital. I have no doubt that if our situations were reversed, either one of them would not hesitate to do the same for me. Would I call my boyfriend first? Probably. But anyone who thinks that being in a relationship is a guarantee that someone will always be there at 1 in the morning so you don't need other friends, is sadly deluded.

The second thing I thought when I read the Jezebel piece was that no one in their right mind would call these people friends but worse, they don't even sound like very decent human beings. Forget boyfriends, best friends, family, or whatever other relationships you might call on first - when push comes to shove, I think a truly decent human being will help another human being in need. OK, maybe I wouldn't call some random stranger to pick me up at the hospital at 1 in the morning, but I can imagine a scenario where every person I would normally call was, for some reason, unavailable and I might call someone much further down on my acquaintance list. Maybe I'm being too pollyanna but I honestly think that most of the people that I associate with in any dimension would be willing to come. They might be bewildered why I was calling them and they might not be excited about it but I can't imagine someone flat out saying "No, I just won't." Is that naive? Would you help someone out who asked, even if they were not someone you considered a close friend?

Compromising is rational

I'm growing my hair out. I've gone back and forth on my hair length a million times and usually what happens is that I start trying to grow it out and then I get so annoyed with it that I decide to just cut it all off (for any readers who don't really understand what I'm talking about: long hair is great if it's long enough to pull up, out of my face and off my neck, but there's always an in-between stage where your hair is long enough to get in the way but too short to put up - that's the point where I usually get impatient and just cut it off). But this time, I'm trying to stick it out and put up with the in-between stage. Why? Because my boyfriend likes long hair (by the way, what is up with guys and long hair?). But the other night, when I made some comment about growing out my hair, my boyfriend said, "Are you doing that because I said I think you'd look good with longer hair?" and my instant, knee-jerk reaction was to say, "No, of course not!" I mean, god forbid I do something for him that I wouldn't choose to do on my own, right? Of course, growing out my hair is a pretty minor thing but it's slippery slope - today, it's my hair; tomorrow, who knows?

I know I'm particularly sensitive about this because in past relationships, I have often suppressed my own needs, trying to be whatever I thought would make the guy like me more. And in a lot of cases, I would convince myself that whatever it was I was doing, I was doing just as much for me as for him (case in point: I actually DID enjoy hiking several miles every weekend but the fact that I haven't done it a single time since Mr. Outdoors Guy moved away tells me something about my real motivation). But over the last several years, being single has allowed me to do exactly what I want to do without worrying about anyone else's opinion or feelings and this allowed me to discover what I truly want/like/need, in a way that I know I couldn't really figure out while in a relationship.

But my knee-jerk reaction to my boyfriend's comment about my hair got me thinking about compromises. One of the core principles of economics is that rational people make decisions by comparing costs and benefits - if the benefits outweigh the costs, then you do it; if the benefits are less than the costs, then you don't. That may sound incredibly obvious but I have often found it a powerful aide in making sense of other people's behavior. If someone does something that I don't understand, I ask myself what benefit could they be getting from that action, or is it that they do not perceive the costs in the same way I do? Usually, this helps me get to a place where, even if I don't agree with the choice, I can at least understand it.

Unsurprisingly, I also tend to apply cost-benefit analysis in my own life, sometimes in ways that I'm sure seem strange to other people. And while it may not sound very romantic, I've found that thinking about my relationship in terms of costs and benefits can be helpful. Like the costs and benefits of cutting my hair - in the past, I've always gotten to a point where the costs of dealing with it outweighed the benefits and so I cut it off. But now, although the costs are basically the same, there is an added benefit, i.e., my boyfriend thinking I look good. And that's enough to tip the scale toward continuing to grow it out. The totally geeky, economist way to put it is that we have interdependent utility functions - his happiness contributes to my happiness and vice versa. I think the trick to not going overboard, to not compromising so much that I feel like I'm only doing something because of him, is having a rock-solid understanding of what MY costs and benefits really are before I start factoring him in. So yeah, I guess you could say that I am growing out my hair "because of him" but that doesn't mean I've suddenly become a spineless, irrational ninny.

Reining in defensiveness

Clever Elsie has a really thoughtful Singletude post about how to respond when someone asks 'why are you single', pointing out that giving the benefit of the doubt is likely to be a better approach than getting defensive:

As offensive as it can be, though, if you're so inclined, it can be a great opportunity to educate the nosy party about singles. Something I've noticed over the past year and am still coming to terms with is that many people who ask questions like this aren't aware that they're offensive or--hello?--awkward. Sometimes they imagine you must be upset about your singleness (usually because they would be if they were single) and want to encourage you or help in some way. Other times, they may be genuinely curious. They may even just be making small talk and don't know what else to say.

Does that mean it's okay for them to ask why you're single? If it's not okay with you, of course not. But if they're not asking with intent to hurt or irritate, then they're asking out of ignorance, and the best way to combat ignorance is with knowledge--in this case, your firsthand knowledge of being single... As much as you might relish firing back with a real zinger, a candid explanation...could help a singlist person (i.e., someone who has a bias against singles or being single) open his or her mind and understand how "single" can be a good choice, not an unfortunate mistake. It might also help them realize how a question like "Why are you single?" can deeply affect someone. On the other hand, a sarcastic comeback could put them on the defensive or make you seem defensive, reinforcing their unfavorable attitudes about singles.

Her point about people asking out of ignorance made me think about the questions I sometimes get as an Asian-American (for example, 'what are you' or 'where are you from' when the real question they mean to ask is 'what is your racial/ethnic background' ). The person asking usually has no idea how offensive their question is, or that the question itself is rooted in racist assumptions, and every time it happens, I have to consciously remind myself that they probably don't mean to be rude and I should think of it as an opportunity to educate them. At the same time, I have to admit that a big part of me is annoyed that I even have to go through that thought process. That is, why is it my job to educate them, to choose my words carefully so I don't directly suggest that they are racist? Of course I know that the alternative (i.e., saying what is really going through my mind) would be totally unproductive, but it would also be so much easier (well, for me at least). Along similar lines, when I encounter singlist attitudes, I generally try to find a diplomatic way to reply but sometimes I think having to make that effort is, in itself, annoying. Fortunately, it doesn't happen to me all that often. It would be nice to think that we will eventually reach a point where this educating process won't be necessary...

Judginess and defensiveness

I used to be incredibly judgmental. Anyone who has met me in the last few years might be surprised to hear that (at least I hope they would be!) but there was definitely a time when I had very strong opinions about the way people "should be", and I wasn't very subtle about letting people know those opinions. I was also incredibly defensive - if I detected the slightest hint that someone thought I might be wrong, I'd get all bent out of shape. It wasn't until I had been in therapy for a while that I began to realize how my judginess and defensiveness were related to each other, and to my low self-esteem. The way I'd describe it is that since I was judging everyone else, I assumed everyone else was judging me, and since I had somewhat shaky self-esteem, I took others' judgment personally (hence the defensiveness), and that often led me to be even more judgy - you know, thinking along the lines of "You think I'm being too sensitive? Well, that's just because YOU'RE insensitive, and stupid". A fun little immature vicious circle.

As I became more comfortable with myself, I found that I was less defensive, and less judgmental - my thinking evolved more into "You think I'm being too sensitive? Why do you think that? Hmmm, no, I don't really agree with that. Well, OK, whatever". There's a bit of a chicken-egg thing here, in that I don't know if my increased self-confidence made me less defensive and therefore less judgmental of others, or if I mellowed out and stopped being so judgmental so I stopped perceiving that others were judging me. But the end result is that today, I'm WAY less judgmental. That doesn't mean I don't still have strong opinions about some things, but I have a much stronger 'live and let live' attitude (and I like to think I've also learned how to express myself more kindly). I've also become, for lack of a better way to put it, much more of an economist, and what I mean by that is that economists study choices but we try to do it in an objective way, identifying the costs and benefits of all the options. As I tell my students, if someone makes a different choice than the choice you would make, it just means that they value the costs and benefits of that choice differently than you do. Rather than thinking about their choice as 'wrong', it's far more productive to try to understand how and why they value those costs and benefits differently.

Which brings me to the real point of this post. I think because of my own history, I am acutely aware of it when I hear other people being judgmental. And whether I agree with their opinion or not (though admittedly, more so when I don't), I don't like it and it sort of makes me want to avoid those people. And to be perfectly honest, that is one of the reasons I haven't posted anything on this blog in the last couple of months. Because although I still consider myself very much a quirkyalone, I am now also in a capital-R Relationship. And I am happy - incredibly, sappily, didn't-know-relationships-could-be-like-this happy. And in the context of this blog, where I have talked a lot about being happily single, and that I know is read by at least a few in the 'happily single' community, I feel a little guilty about being so happy in my Relationship.

The problem is that over the last few months, I feel like I keep encountering a bizarrely judgmental attitude from those in the single community where anything that suggests coupledom might have some benefits, or singledom might have some costs, is taken as heresy and the writer is suspected of buying into matrimania. It's a very black and white attitude. The clearest example is a recent guest post that Simone Grant wrote for Single Women Rule about how she sometimes thinks that life would be easier with a significant other around. She wasn't saying life would instantly be perfect if she were coupled, or that she wanted just anyone in her life, but Keysha of SWR felt the need to add her own response to Simone's post, basically suggesting Simone is buying into some relationship myths. Anyone who has read Simone's own blog (which rocks, btw) should know how stupid that is.

This bizarre judginess has made me really hesitant to write anything here about my relationship. And I don't think I'm the only one feeling this way - in June, Sasha Cagan, the original Quirkyalone, wrote a really thoughtful post about how she actually wants a relationship, a post that she felt hesitant to even write; over at The Unmarried Estate, Therese writes about her decision to get married and says, "I can’t help feeling guilty – like I am betraying the Unmarried Rights community or the feminist community or something."

Because I feel this guilt too, I've avoided this blog. But the more I've thought about it, the more annoyed I've gotten that I feel this way. So I'm back. I know I'll be returning to this topic - and I know that I will be choosing my words super-carefully whenever I talk about my relationship - but the bottom line is that even though I'm now a quirkytogether, I don't think what I have to say has really changed, since I've always thought about this blog as being about people having the right to be happy being whatever they want to be. I'm not going to promise to post super-often or all that regularly (because I always get myself in trouble with promises like that), but I'm not going to avoid posting either. Go ahead and judge me, if it makes you happy...