The Savvy Life

I’ve been toying with this theme for a bit and finally just decided to put it into words and see how it looked.  There is so much to be explored in the world of Buffy and I am certain in all the academic papers written about the show and the characters that relationships have been fully covered.  Yet, I still wanted to put my two cents into the discussion.

Buffy and Angel

Talk about star-crossed lovers, the Buffy-Angel relationship is one that has seen more than its fair share of turmoil and tragedy.

True love is never easy and requires you to make some very difficult decisions. Now it might not mean you have to decide between killing your lover and saving the world or decide between sex and being a soulless demon, but sacrifices will have to be made and even then a happy ending is not guaranteed.

Willow and Xander

These two have been friends their entire lives.  They care for each other, are able to administer dope slaps to each other, and honestly love each other.  Your best friend may seem like the perfect person to date, but in the long run, it is often more important to have a friend than a lover.

Willow and Oz

They were a perfect couple, geeky and sweet.  Oz clearly was a stand up guy able to be rational as well as communicate his feelings and emotions fairly well.

The person you fall in love with may have issues that you have to deal with, such as medical conditions like depression and lycanthropy or possibly just unique sexual desires. You can choose to accept your lover’s needs such as to be locked in a cage three nights a month (could be for lycanthropy or a unique sexual desire) or you might end up dating someone who doesn’t reveal these traits to you at all, and tries to cover them up. No one is perfect.

Xander and Anya

This is the relationship that never should have been: ex-vengeance demon with dopey guy.  Yet, for whatever reason, they seemed to work together as a couple fairly well.  Anya made Xander try to achieve more for himself.  Xander made Anya aware that she has some negative tendencies regarding social interactions.  For all his lack of charisma, Anya feel deeply in lover with Xander.

The more you love someone, the more likely you are to hurt them and the closer you are, the more intense the hurt will be. Sometimes this hurt can’t be avoided, but if you at least communicate with your lover, you can at least mitigate the pain.  Leaving someone at the altar, even if for the right reason, is the wrong thing to do.

Willow and Tara

As beautiful relationships go, the Willow-Tara relationship is one of the best.  They not only had the love part of their relationship down, they had the nuts and bolts aspect of their relationship down (notice my restraint in not making any jokes about nuts and bolts… although I guess saying this sort of ruins the classiness of my lack of a joke).  They had a great level of communication, were able to be parental to Dawn, and in general were facing life together, until Willow’s addiction to magic came along.

If you love someone and they are engaged in self-destructive behavior that is not only hurting them but others around them, the best thing you can do for them is to step away, no matter how hard it might be for you.  For Willow to reform her ways, she needed to know that she was losing Tara.

Buffy and Spike

A vampire slayer with a vampire who kills slayers seems like a really bad relationship.  Yet, it somehow worked, to a point.

There are many times you will fall in love with the wrong person for the right reasons and the right person for the wrong reasons. The best thing you can do is to be honest about what you are doing with yourself and your lover.  The other lesson here is never to confuse lust with love.

Every good relationship starts with good communication.  Or at least it sounds good to say that but it may not be the case.  A recent research study performed by researchers at Indiana University, examined almost 300 undergraduates of both sexes to determine their ability to detect sexual interest.  They were shown 280 photographs of women and were asked if the expression on the woman’s face was friendly, sexually interested, or rejecting.

Oddly enough, men often mistook friendly for sexually interested and sexually interested as friendly.

What does this mean to us men?  It means that when that woman we are friends with is acting like she is into us, she probably isn’t.  I have a lot of female friends who get frustrated that all their guy friends want to suddenly date and get upset over the fact that they received ‘mixed signals’.  Yeah, no mixed signals, they were just being friendly.

More to the point, it is critical for a man who wants to enter the world of dating and have some sense of accomplishment to understand the nuances of body language.  Calling some elements of body language ‘nuance’ is a complete understatement.  The following is a quick guide to body language:

1. She is looking at you.  This isn’t foolproof.  If you are wearing antlers and dancing on the bar in a drunken rendition of the Electric Slide, she may be looking at you, but probably not in a good way.  Unless she jumps up on the bar with you, it is safe to assume she is gaping at the car accident.  What is key is the look, look away, and look again move.  What is difficult is catching this without staring at her.  She may then be looking up to look at you to see if you are still staring.

2. The laugh.  Did you just say something mildly funny?  Maybe you retold a witticism you heard from Jon Stewart, or retold that one story about that one time when you were in that one place and she laughed, not a soft “I’m supposed to insert laughter here” laugh but a genuine laugh?  Then she is digging you.

3. The questions.  Does she seem to ask a lot of different questions about you?  Unless she is trying to fill the silence with idle chatter and is asking you questions about whether you think it will rain or not, there is a good chance that she is into you.  Women who are interested want to know about you and will ask questions and actually listen to the answers.  How do you know this is happening?  The follow-up question.

4. The touch.  This is huge.  Does she find a reason to touch you?  Touch your hand, fix your collar, or just lean against you if possible?  This is the riskiest move she can make from her perspective – initiating contact, but is the most commonly confused by men.  The subtle pretense she used to initiate the touch is often thought of as valid by the man.  Adjusting a shirt collar?  It needed to be adjusted.  Being leaned against?  That other person needed to walk by and she was just making room.  The touch on the arm in the midst of a conversation?  She is trying to get your attention so she can say something or she is excited and doesn’t realize what she is doing.

There are countless number of books and websites devoted to interpreting body language.  After reading all of them, I’d still be an idiot about how to do it?  The fundamental factor involved here goes to the heart of a lot of dating issues:  fear of rejection.  The fear that the woman crawling over the table giving me that sexy look isn’t interested in me and if I make a move she’ll reject me will always be present.  Even if I am married to her.

As the study seemed to indicate, we have two options as men: assume every friendly woman wants us, or assume they don’t.  The option that seems safer to us indicates a lot about our personalities.

I haven’t written much about dating, relationships, and sex and there is a reason for that. I can’t say that I have a lot of great advice to offer in these areas and planned to collect the advice of others and present it here as a clearinghouse.

Dan Savage’s Savage Love Podcast has been the best source of information on all things sex – not necessarily all things dating and relationships, but definitely the best source of realistic information regarding sex.

In Dan Savage’s latest podcast Episode 64, dated 1/8/2008, he is helping a woman deal with her boyfriend’s porn collection when he makes the following pronouncement that made me pause. Sometimes it is hard to see the forest for the trees when you are in the thick of it.

The world is stacked against guys. Male sexuality, heterosexual male sexuality in particular – they get the raw end of the stick because male sexuality is pathologized. It’s not healthy, it’s not good to want to fuck a million people. It’s not healthy, it’s not good to want to look at pornography. Or want to not be monogamous. Guys are derided for having standard issue heterosexual male fantasies like a threeway with two girls. Guys can’t seem to catch a break. Guys are told that love is not wanting to sleep with someone else, when actually love is refraining from sleeping with someone else.

I can’t speak for women, I can’t speak for homosexual or bisexual men, but I can speak as a heterosexual male that I understand this statement so well. If a man wants to have sex more often than his partner, then there is something wrong with him. If a man doesn’t want to have sex as often as his partner, then there is something wrong with him. If a man wants to do something kinky, he is a pervert. If a man doesn’t want to indulge his partners fantasies, he is a prude.

Yes, I am certain that women also feel these constraints, yet women exploring their sexuality is generally encouraged by men. Men again are just considered perverts.

There isn’t much here other than a general recommendation of Dan Savage’s podcast for quality raw information about sex.

How to Have Less Awkward Conversations, located Postivity Blog and found via Lifehacker attempts to give a bit of advice in making daily interactions a bit less stressful and a bit more rewarding.

Assuming rapport. This is definitely one of the best social skill tips I have ever learned about. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten a bit about it lately. Maybe you have too. Or missed it altogether. So I thought I’d bring it up again.

Now, what is assuming rapport?

Basically, instead of going into a conversation or meeting nervously and thinking “how will this go?” you take different approach. You assume that you and the person(s) will establish a good connection (rapport).

How do you do that? You simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

I am a bundle of social anxiety often, worrying about how others are judging me, what kind of impression I am making, and whether my breath stinks. This concept of assuming rapport, convincing yourself that you are meeting a friend, and essentially many of the other ‘tricks’ that revolve around telling yourself a lie are doomed to failure. I’ve been in situations where someone begins treating me like we’ve known each other for ages. It is creepy and too much like glad-handing. I know that isn’t what this article is asking people to do and does further clarify later by asking people to just be themselves and be positive which is to act naturally and approach the encounter in a positive frame of mind.

I believe at the core of this is self confidence, on of the most elusive personality traits that goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks: gnothi seauton – know thyself. While I am not supporting the view of having less awkward conversations by making assumptions about the non-existent relationship, I do support the view that no assumptions should be made and a positive outlook should be used.

This comic and the following information found its way into my inbox this morning thanks to TechRepublic. I wouldn’t expect TechRepublic to be a source of information regarding dating and relationships, but sometimes it is good to have our core expectations shaken once in awhile.

To intensify the geek aspect of the math behind this comic, they also linked to this graph, which I too am linking to because this morning, I am feeling a bit like a follower. Oh, and I have a theory that nobody reads the internet on Friday.

I never would have thought of this if I hadn’t read How to Be Boring over at I Will Change Your Life.  I spend a lot of my time trying not to be bored, but I never thought that maybe I am boring.  Now I won’t say there is anything wrong with being boring, but complaints of being bored while being boring are no longer valid.

Boring people are inactive people.  Peter’s post highlights this by telling us that if you want to be boring, be a fence sitter and be lazy.  Indecisiveness and inaction are boring, possibly because both maintain the status quo and the status quo, if held for too long, becomes boring.  Change is exciting.

We also need to pay attention to the fact that boring people aren’t fun to be around, thus when we find ourselves with nothing to do, we have to consider the possibility that we’ve become boring.

Aretha Franklin had it right, it seems, when she sang her hit song, It’s in His Kiss.

Does he love me?
I wanna know!
How can I tell if he loves me so?

(Is it in his eyes?)
Oh no! You need to see!
(Is it in his size?)
Oh no! You make believe!
If you wanna know
If he loves you so
Its in his kiss!
(That’s where it is!)

So it may not be about love, but it is about making or breaking of a relationship. And it isn’t about all the kisses, it is about the very important first kiss. A recent survey by George Gallup at the State University of New York revealed some predictable attitudes regarding kissing, such as women place a higher value on the act of kissing as a goal in and of itself and men see it as a step along the path towards sex.

More surprisingly, the results of the survey pointed to both sexes placing a lot of value on the first kiss. “59% of men and 66% of women reported on occasion finding themselves attracted to someone, only to lose interest after kissing them for the first time. ” The survey received a brief write up at New Scientist.

The lesson I walk away from this as a single man is not to fumble that first kiss. Make it intense and memorable if I really have an interest in developing the relationship.

Finding a date just got harder, at least according to one person’s survey of the field. The following post was found on the New York Craigslist:

So I am guy who tested out these posts to see if they are real. I have replied to 100 posts in Casual Encounters. I wanted to see how many were fake or not. Now, there might be some who are not fake but decided not to reply and not sure what percentage that would be.

Here are the results.
- 100 post replied
- 81 responses
- 4 seems to be legitimate (or person at least): 1 successful online conversation / 3 email conversation (2 dudes)
- 58 immediate (with in 2 hours) automatic fake responses (porn sites)
- 19 delayed responses: the fake sites are getting smarter, they are sending out reply after a day
- 19 non-reply (i even got rejected from porn sites!!)

Your mileage may vary. No matter which way I look at it, the fact of the matter is, the only way to get a quality date is through some effort, not spamming 100 craigslist posts in hopes for a quick hook up.

One of the most difficult aspects of dating is trying to determine if the woman you’ve exchanged a few niceties with actually wants to date you, or is just bored and using you for a few minutes of entertainment. I tend to be an overly cautious person not wanting to be ‘that guy’ who is constantly hitting on every available woman in my vincinity, so I tend to miss the signs that a woman is interested. If she does the casual touch thing, I assume it is because I had lint on me and she is a obsessive compulsive freak. If she seems to be dropping hints about movies she wants to see, I assume she just likes movies and likes talking about movies.

Of all the advice I’ve read, the article currently at MSN.com called Does She Want to Date You? has a stellar piece of advice that any single man caught on the fence about whether a woman is interested in him or not should pay attention to.

And how does a guy know if a woman isn’t interested? “If she is looking around the room while he’s talking to her and crossing her arms across her chest,” says Jess, “she’s probably not that interested. Also, if she tells the guy that he would be perfect for her sister or she suddenly brings up the fact that she’s been talking to her ex-boyfriend, there’s probably not a spark there.” The guy should just move on to a woman who is worth his time or possibly take the uninterested woman up on her sister offer.

I know it is a ‘negative’ indicator instead of a positive indicator, but since one of my personal goals is to limit rejection, I like to pick up on the negative indicators.  If she is doing things that clearly indicate a lack of interest in me in that way, then I know not to expend any romantic energy towards her.

There are other subtle ways to know if she is interested though.  Unfortunately, the following requires me to make some general statements about women.  I hope to do this in a non-demeaning sort of way, though I think the following are sort of truisms.  Women think about relationships more than men.  While they want men to make the first move, they will make easy for the man.  The first sign she is interested is she is there.  She is available to be asked out.  If a man finds himself seeking out the woman, she could possibly be avoiding him.  If she is available, then she might be interested.  Let me stress the might part of that sentence.  MIGHT be interested.

Another verbal clue she is interested is if she talks about possible future plans that she and the man could do together.  “Oh, you like sushi? We should go to that sushi bar in Wicker Park sometime.”  At this point, she really is setting the ball for it to be spiked.  For a lot of women, this is as close as they will get to asking a man out.  She has taken the big risk by indicating she would indeed like to spend time with this man in the future.

The real lesson on ‘reading women’ is to pay attention.  If it seems difficult to even talk with her, she is probably deftly avoiding the awkwardness.  On the other hand, if she makes herself available, and in general easily engages in conversation with the man, she is most likely willing to go on a date with him.

Whether she will sleep with him is an entirely different subject.

On NPR this morning, there was a story about weight loss and behavior modifcation.  One of the methods discussed was carrying around a list of benefits of losing weight.  The list was the essence of why the person wanted to lose weight.

I immediately saw a wider benefit to this method in application to other things.  One of the important aspects of developing a list of 8 reasons is I will be able to determine if this is truly something I want to do or if it is something I think I should do.  The difference is important.  Right now, I think I should do a lot of things, but I have little motivation to do them.  Part of being motivated to do something is understanding why I am doing it.

One of my most troublesome issues I have is exercise.  I know I should do it for general health reasons and to help lose weight, yet I lack motivation.  When the opportunity presents itself to go running, I don’t.  Part of building the motivation to exercise would be consolidating my reasons.  Create a list of eight reaons why I want to exercise.  Once I have developed that list, when the time comes to go for a run, I can use those eight reasons to push myself up off the couch and out into the world for a jog.

Whether it is saving money, networking, dating, or changing other elements of my life, of your life, sit down and write out eight reasons why you want to do something that you currently aren’t doing.

Why do you want to network more?  What benefits will you derive from exercising?  Why should you be more extroverted and ask more people out for dates?

As a practical example, here are my eight reasons why I want to exercise:

1. Stamina.  I want to be able to have more than twenty minutes of physical activity before becoming completely winded.

2. Improved self image.  While I’d like to lose weight, I’m more interested in toning my muscles.  I have no reason to look like a Spartan from 300, but I’d like to at least lean more in that direction in regards to my physique.

3. Improved mental ability. Exercise and mental acuity go hand in hand.

4. Enjoyment of food. By exercising regularly, lapses in what I eat aren’t as detrimental.  I encourage hedonism as a lifestyle, not as a form of slow suicide.

5. Better clothing options. When you have a gut, certain clothing choices aren’t very flattering.

6. Dating potential.  Being lean and more athletic increases dating opportunities.

7. Vigor. Exercise will improve my overall health, increasing torso strength, forestalling ailments associated with aging.

8. Disciplined escapism.  Exercise routines will add an element of discipline in my week where I disconnect from all the electronic media, and focus inwardly.