The Great Mate Debate

Posted by: Evan Marc Katz
Topic: Response to Aly Walansky

Stop being desperate, maybe.
Stop being needy, definitely.
Stop being bitter, absolutely.

But stop trying so hard?

I've got great respect for you, Aly, but it seems that your advice is specific to your friend. It's not that she's trying too hard. It's that she's a sad, jaded person whose air of negativity consumes her and repels men.

So you can blame it on the fact that she's "pressing". But the solution to your friend is not to stop trying. It's to lighten up. Find happiness elsewhere. Build her self esteem. Be ready for a relationship. And THEN try, try, try to meet a likeminded single man.

Truly, Aly, I didn't mean to call you out. The only reason I'm weighing in is because of the fairy tale perspectives that so many of us have.

"It happens when you least expect it", "It should happen naturally", "It's all about instant chemistry".

No, no, no! It CAN happen when you least expect it. It's NICE when it happens naturally. And instant chemistry CAN be thoroughly intoxicating. But that doesn't mean it's the ONLY way for it to happen. Ask anyone who's ever dated online (unnatural), thru a matchmaker (unnatural), gave someone a second date when the first one wasn't magic (not instant chemistry), or spent five years on the prowl until Mr. Right came along (very much on the hunt).

I said it in Why You're Still Single, and I'll say it again now: things don't just happen. We make them happen. Give your love life the attention you give your work life and watch things start to bloom.

Couple Fights: What’s the one bit of advice you’d like to share about making them productive, not destructive?
Posted by: Evan Marc Katz

As far as I know, Dale Carnegie said it first. I’m sure hundreds of other self-help gurus have reappropriated it as well. Maybe I’ll pretend I never heard it before and pass it off as my own idea. But, according to every expert I’ve ever read, the one surefire way to guarantee a conflict is by insisting that you’re right and that your partner is wrong.

Fact: NOBODY wants to be wrong. Wrong is invalidating, emasculating, and embarrassing. And anyone who tells you that you’re wrong has already lost you as an audience. Which means there’s no room for listening or peaceful negotiation. Wrong can ONLY mean a screaming match.

This is why experts often try to reframe relationship debates in terms of how someone feels. It’s not, “You were wrong for talking to that cute guy for an hour at the party,” but rather, “I felt kind of bad when I was looking to chat, and you waved me away because you were engaged in conversation with some other guy.” Same basic premise, very different delivery.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t some empirical right and wrong. Obviously if you skinned her cat, you’re wrong, and if she cheated on you, she’s wrong. But most arguments aren’t this black and white. So assuming you’re looking to get past the argument, rather than breaking up, consider these three steps:

• Listen to your partner’s side.
• Acknowledge your partner’s experience or opinion as valid, even if you disagree with it.
• Talk about how your partner’s opinion makes you feel bad in some way. If your partner truly loves you, he/she doesn’t want to make you feel bad.

Remember, a good arguer gains the sympathy of her partner. And as long as you’re insisting that your partner is flat-out wrong, it’ll be next to impossible to get him to take your side.

What advice would you give a friend who is looking to find love in 2008?
Posted by: Evan Marc Katz

Hmm…let’s see…

What advice would I give to a friend who is looking to lose weight in 2008?

• Sign up for a gym.
• Go at least three times a week for an hour at a time.
• Hire a personal trainer to keep you motivated and focused.
• Read a few diet books and figure out which one speaks to you most.
• Incorporate ALL of that book’s suggestions into your life, which probably means fewer carbs, sugars and fats, more vegetables, smaller portions, no late night eating, and vigilant awareness of what you’re putting into your body.
• Have a healthier approach to living and accept that you’re doing the best you can.

Now presuming you did ALL of these things, what would you expect the results to be?

Well, you couldn’t guarantee that you’d qualify for America’s Next Top Model, but it would stand to reason that you'd lose weight. And, depending upon how seriously you adhered to the diet/workout regimen, perhaps you'd lose a LOT of weight.

This is what I advocate for people who are looking for a new lease on love. Not weight loss. Effort. Don’t just talk about it. LIVE IT. Carve out time and energy. Invest money in it. If you say that a relationship is your top priority, start acting like it. Most of us want it to happen, but we don’t really do anything to MAKE it happen. We somehow think that love should happen organically, like a cute, scripted Hollywood romantic comedy. And hey, it’s not that it can’t happen that way; it’s that it rarely happens that way, simply because of how our lives are constructed. We work 10 hours a day, our friends are married, we’re over the bar scene, we find blind dates creepy, we rail against online dating… and then we complain that we’re not meeting anyone good. No wonder we’re still single!

My entire job as a dating coach is to be a personal trainer for people who want to fall in love. My clients get on a healthy dating regimen and actively incorporate dating into their busy lives. That might mean getting professional photos, rewriting your online profile, working on flirting and dating, or simply discussing the confusing nuances of dating and relationships.

So what does this mean for you? Certainly not that you should hire me as your dating coach. But, for your own sake, do SOMETHING. Go to the gym and get in shape. Join a MeetUp group that puts you in contact with other single people. Sign up for Chemistry.com. Contact a matchmaker.

But no matter what, make sure your actions are aligned with your goals. Because if you say you want to get married and aren’t doing a single thing to try to get married, you’re no different than every overweight person who refuses to diet and work out. 

This is hard to hear because it means taking responsibility, even when you feel the only reason you’re still single is that you “just haven’t met the right person”.

I’m in no position to argue, but I would ask you this: what are you doing TO meet the right person?

What’s the best holiday gift you ever got from a romantic partner – and why?
Posted by: Evan Marc Katz

Oh, this one’s easy. And not just because this is the first holiday I’m celebrating with a girlfriend. (No, I’m not kidding, and no, I’m not 17.)

So, conveniently, I just received my favorite holiday gift of all time merely 24 hours ago.

It’s a 30GB Apple iPod that was regifted to me by my girlfriend despite the fact that it has someone else’s name engraved on the back.

I LOVE IT!

I love that she paid attention to my desire to get myself a new iPod .

I love that she finagled it for me with gift certificates, barter exchanges, and perhaps some creative cold-calling.

I love that it didn’t cost her a dime, because that’s money she’d be better off spending on herself.

But most of all, I love it because it came from her.

Because honestly, don’t symbolic gifts trump dollar value gifts every single time?

Posted by: Evan Marc Katz

A recent study says that we can correctly figure out what a stranger is thinking 20% of the time…and what a romantic partner is thinking 35% of the time. In your opinion, what does that indicate about how well we know our mates?

Well, if the average person uses 10% of his brain, and 48% of those people believe in ESP, and 13% of those people have their powers work on strangers, then…wait, where was I?

Oh, I got it. Something about knowing my girlfriend better than the checkout guy at the Gap. Yeah, that’s true.

I’m not really sure what to make of such statistics, except that they probably say a lot about the subtle nuances that come with familiarity. I just don’t think this is any surprise. You can probably navigate your way around your home blindfolded safely 60% of the time, and hit a hotel room coffee table in the dark 80% of the time, but what does this prove? We know things we already know?

However, I do have this to say about familiarity – it doesn’t necessarily breed contempt.

In fact, I smile every time I speak and my girlfriend laughs and replies, “Get out of my head!” It’s wonderful to be on the same wavelength with a romantic partner, much the way we are with siblings who know us as we know ourselves. You know your relationship is on a higher plane when you can pick up something wrong in her voice, exchange knowing glances across a crowded party, and, of course, finish each others’ sentences

So yeah, there’s beauty in familiarity, all right.

But I think the real word for it is this:

Intimacy.

Posted by: Evan Marc Katz
Topic: What’s the best thing about being single during the holidays…and the best thing about being coupled up over the holidays?

Great timing!

This might be the first holiday season that I’m arriving at parties with someone on my arm, instead of looking for someone to squire home. Yes, I’m serious, and no, I’m not embarrassed about it.

Okay, maybe a little.

And while I’m a fierce advocate of the single life, I gotta tell you, this couple stuff is SO much better. I guess one can make an argument that the excitement of naughty eggnog sex with a stranger is superior to exchanging mundane stocking stuffers with the one you love. It’s just that, right now, I’m not the one to make that argument.

This past weekend, my girlfriend and I drove two hours to her hometown for a holiday cocktail party. Parking took us forever, and we wandered aimlessly in our attempts to find the apartment in the cold rain. I spent time talking to her mother and stepfather, and probably spent three hours counseling various women on their respective love lives. (Tell people you’re a dating coach and these things happen naturally). And, apart from refilling my girlfriend’s martini glass twice, we barely spoke two words while at the party. We went home at 3am and crashed in her friend’s guest room without even a kiss.

Yet, I don’t even think I have to explain why I feel so lucky to be in love this holiday season.

All the reasons that we appreciate our relationships – constancy, warmth, companionship, affection, family – are amplified during the holidays. We sang out loud in the car, held hands while getting lost in the apartment complex, exchanged knowing glances from across the room, and held each other warmly under the thin blankets at night. This is love, and damn, it feels good.

In my mind, there is never a tougher time to be single than the holidays, and never more of a motivation to find true love.

Or at least some naughty eggnog sex.

Posted by: Evan Marc Katz
Topic: Speaking from personal experience, what are the three best things about being single?

I can talk for hours about dating (ask any of my friends), tout my vast experience as a dating coach (ask any of my clients), and write endless articles about relationships on my blog (ask any of my readers), but at the end of the day, my perspective is entirely limited.

After all, I’ve ALWAYS been single. And asking a perpetually single person the best thing about being single is like asking your buddy, “What’s the best thing about being a man?”

Um, “You can pee standing up?”

So if you want real wisdom, ask my married blogger friends, Amy and Margo, both of whom have been both single AND married. Ask me and you’re gonna get a one-sided point of view.

But I sure do know that view well.

Listen, there are a lot of ways to learn about people. You’ll have a different experience dating one woman than you will dating fifty women, and a different experience sleeping with one woman repeatedly than with fifty women once. One experience provides depth, the other provides breadth.

My experience is all breadth. By remaining single for 35 years, I’ve inadvertently gotten a knowledge of women that I never would have if I’d tied the knot when I was 25.

So chalk that up in the plus column: Experience

Riding shotgun with experience is everybody’s favorite spice of life: Variety. And after eight years of online dating and hundreds of dates, I can say definitively that if I never go on another first date again (and my girlfriend would kill me if I did), I won’t go the grave wondering what else is out there. I’ve seen it up close and taken notes every step of the way. All of which has honed my decision making and allowed my choice in girlfriends to get better and better.

Fall madly for one person and you become an expert in one person. Sample a lot of people and you become an expert in human nature. Thank God for variety.

Finally, while it’s well documented what you get out of being married –  safety and security being close to the top of many couples’ lists – what you lose is something I hold dear to my heart: Freedom and Independence. Being single is a selfish life, and I’ll tell you – it’s pretty darned nice. I’ve always woken up when I wanted, traveled where I wanted, and scheduled my life according to my whims and desires. There’s no compromise in being single – you just have to remain true to yourself and look out for Number One. Life is easy when you’re accountable only to yourself.

For me, being single has been a long and joyous experiment. So while I’m ambivalent about giving up my variety and freedom, at least I know that no one can ever take away my experience.

Posted by: Evan Marc Katz
Topic: Do you think you can really and truly “feel” chemistry via email? 

If you realize that writing an email is pretty much the same thing as talking – you’d be hard pressed to conclude that there is no such thing as email chemistry. Before the Internet, legions of people fell in love through letters. And while email doesn’t hold a candle to ink and parchment, it can still be a very personal form of communication.

Presuming you embrace email, you’ve probably been met with the heightened expectations that accompany lengthy email exchanges. I’ve fallen for women that I’d never spoken to on the phone, just because our frequent correspondence made me giddy. After all, witty banter is witty banter, regardless of whether it’s spoken or written. And verbal people will be always be turned on by a turn of phrase, a pithy insight, or a dirty come-on. If words couldn’t communicate feeling, why would we ever bother to read for pleasure?

So yes, I will say with no hesitation that there can be a strong feeling of chemistry via email.

And at the end of the day, it doesn’t mean a thing.

Because what everybody ELSE calls chemistry is that magical, ephemeral, intangible, hormonal rush that you can only get in the physical presence of another human being. And no matter how much email chemistry you’ve got going on, if the physical part isn’t there, it doesn’t amount to jack squat.

Take it from a guy who has written over five hundred online dating profiles: there’s the advertisement and there’s the product.

If the two don’t match up – if the words don’t go with the pictures – nothing else makes a difference.

Still, I sure do love a woman who can make me tingle with a text message.

Posted by: Evan Marc Katz

Topic: Recently some schools banned hugging and “extreme displays of public affection” – what impact do you think this will have on kids and teens, as they become adults?

There are two different things that are going on here:

Hugging.

Extreme displays of public affection.

Until I get a definition of “extreme displays of public affection”, I have to assume it means anything more than kissing in the hallways. And while I’ll admit, I haven’t been to high school in – gulp - 17 years, I wouldn’t think that heavy petting and oral sex were so prevalent as to need a “banning”.

I mean, I know kids move faster these days – but do they really do it in public?

I’ll admit remember being jealous of some of the more popular guys who experienced a greater amount of PDA in high school. But I don’t remember seeing anything that was remotely “rated R”. So either I’m severely underestimating the extent of this problem, or I’m thinking that schools need to loosen their ties a bit.

I was inclined to say, “let kids be kids”, but I think it’s more about letting people be people. This isn’t the same as two adults getting it on in the copy room (which, frankly, is okay by me, too); this is prohibiting two hormone-infused teenagers from making out in the parking lot. And while being publicly cheesy may not be conducive to a studious environment, I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that Our Children Are Being Left Behind because of a little hallway PDA.

And while I don’t think there is any radical impact of stifling your romantic impulses during school hours (it would, after all, prepare kids for the workplace), I think this is an attempt to legislate something that that should not be legislated. Affection. Warmth. Hugging.

Next thing you know, you’ll tell me they’ve banned breast cancer awareness T-Shirts.

Paging George Orwell...

Posted by: Evan Marc Katz
Topic: Do you believe in love at first sight? Have you experienced it – and was it “the real thing” or lust? 

I think it’s always “lust at first sight”.

It’s just that once in a blue moon, lust turns into everlasting love. And because those stories exist, millions upon millions of people hope to similarly capture lightning in a bottle.

Witness this hugely popular story out of New York City last week, which fed into our collective desire to believe in “love at first sight”. Young Patrick Moberg saw a girl on the subway, and, unable to summon the nerve to ask her out, built a website, “New York Girl of My Dreams” to try and track her down. Being an artist and graphic designer, he did. And, as reported by Diane Sawyer, they had one great first date, most befitting of two adorable urban hipsters.

But how long do you think they’re going to last, really? Three dates? Five dates? Five months?

I hate to be a cynic, but I think we can agree that 99% of first dates DON’T turn into marriage.

You can talk about love all you want, but no matter how you look at it – the ONLY thing a guy can tell about a girl at first sight is whether he wants to rip her clothes off.

He has no idea what she does professionally, how she gets along with her dad, if she likes golden retrievers or board games or pornography or chocolate ice cream. He certainly doesn’t know how she’s going to treat him, nor whether she’s in a healthy place for a relationship.

Believe it or not, I’m a romantic. I love following my heart and pursuing dreams. WAY before “missed connections” became a staple of places like Craigslist, I took out an ad in my college newspaper to find a woman with whom I had magical eye contact. We didn't meet until six years later in Los Angeles. And what I learned when we became friends is that a) she had no recollection of the strong connection I felt back in college, and b) apart from how hot she was, she’d be the last person I’d ever date.

So yes, our radar can be off as much as it can be on. And thank God for that. Because I experience lust at first sight pretty much every time I go out.

But in no way do I mistake that exciting, new hormone rush for the deeper way I love my girlfriend. Too much misplaced lust over the years has taught me well.

The fact is, only a handful of people have their lust turn into love, and their love turn into stability.

Good for them. The rest of us just need to get over it.