This is a community announcement. Over the last few weeks I got many emails asking where SuperTova disappeared to. Well, it was down for way longer than they expected but I have just been made aware that it is back up.
Enjoy!
Please note: this post was triggered by the following comment – but is in no way addressed specifically to this person. Critique of an entire gender is so commonplace now it’s become an accepted norm, a subject of discussion. There are times when we all (married, single and anywhere in-between) need to examine ourselves, need to re-assess how we talk about others and how we relate.
Just a guy:
I am not just hurt. I am not just broken. I am ANGRY. I cannot have a meaningful relationship with a woman now. I have tried. Lord I have tried! I was SUCKED DRY. Every inch of my soul is simply burning with pain from the HORRORS I underwent BECAUSE OF YOUR GENDER!
So many people, men and women, single, married, divorced have been through bad experiences. Some say it’s only the men, some say it’s only the women, and some say they deserve each other.
But get real – question is, do you, does anyone want to stay with such feelings? To carry on treading the same rut?
And do you, just a guy, want to be considered as just a guy? a man? (or amongst the macho, a real man?) or a person? I address the same question to the women who malign men day in day out – do you want to be considered as a woman first – or as a person?
When Deena and I gave the original tag line to this site, we called it “Date like a Mensch” – not like a man, or like a woman. “Menschlichkeit”, behaving like a mensch, comes before and way above sexuality in relationships. Without it marriages can’t work, relationships can’t work, and let’s face it, even a single date can’t work.
To malign an entire gender is not menschlich – whether it comes from a man or a woman. And beyond that, for anyone wanting to get married – it’s not useful, not helpful, and serves to distort the soul.
Move on, look for the individual, look for the good in that individual, and be aware of your power in relationships, because even the one who feels so much like a victim has power if he/she would only wake up to it.
But repeating complaints without purpose – unless, just-a-guy and others, you’re trying to convince yourself to enter a monastery or a single-sexrelationship – is just that, without purpose.
Date like a mensch. That is the only way to go.
My new role models
OK, here’s the thing. Yenta decided she wants to open a singles bar in Florida. For over-90′s. Well I can’t let her do this all on her own… she’ll guilt trip me into oblivion…
OK, for real now – I find I’m not able to continue co-authoring this blog (as you may have noticed in the last couple of months!) due to time constraints, and am officially retiring to the peanut gallery. My role models are the two old men in the heilige Muppet Show, and I hope to follow their example faithfully and well, developing my talents for offending the innocent (and amusing the guilty) to unprecedented levels.
Many thanks and kudos to Deena for keeping this blog going and for telling it like it is! From the many responses and comments we’ve had over the last year, it seems that we have been touching a nerve, somewhere, and I hope habitza.com continues to make a lot of people deservedly nervous for many years (you know who you are, you think such behaviour will be tolerated? no, it will be blogged about!).
Photo by Ricardipus on flickr
Words words words – what do they really mean?
Did he really mean xyz when he said that?
Did she really mean xzy when she answered?
I know you said… but what did you mean… and did you mean….?
Anyone who knows the old joke about Moshe Rabbenu saying to G-d: “do you mean that we should….” hands up. Anyone who doesn’t – maybe I’ll post it. Or maybe not.
Recently I’ve heard of several situations where people said things that other people thought meant something different. If your date says: “Good Luck” at the end of the date – does it mean “Good Bye”? (or possibly “Good Riddance”?) I knew someone who said to a friend, when the friend said she doesn’t like cleaning, “I wouldn’t expect my wife to clean” – and the friend went into agonies of “what did he mean? Does he want something more than friendship?”
And to be honest, how much do we play with words, how much are we almost deliberately ambiguous, to leave a door open, or to mess with someone’s head? And yes, it can be fun…
I think if we all start measuring our words very carefully to say exactly what we mean all the time…life will probably get very boring. On the other hand, trying to figure out when to take something at face value or to read more into it is challenging in the extreme.
However, if given the choice between boring and challenging, I’d probably go with the latter. So go know…
This post relates to Deena’s recent post on being nice. But perhaps this post isn’t nice…
I’m going to explain my central point here, as Deena says I’m too obscure – just stay with me willya! So many stories build about dating situations, and each story impacts us, whether it’s based on truth or misunderstanding. He wasn’t nice. She wasn’t nice. It was meant to be but didn’t happen. These stories are for the most part negative, so their impact is negative, and as they build and make themselves at home in our psyche, they drip their daily drops of poison…often for years and years…
Every relationship that comes after suffers from these stories – and I stress that the stories may be completely true, the guy/girl may have behaved like ***@#@#, etc. But have you never been in a relationship where the other person totally over-reacted to something and it turns out there was a previous relationship where someone did something similar etc. etc….
Ladies and Gentlemen – WHY WAIT? don’t let that story build, and take control of your life. Life’s too short.
You had a good time, you’d like to see the guy again, he didn’t call, you don’t know why, why wait? Call him!
You had a great time, she’s nice, your therapist says you shouldn’t be in relationships right now, you’re still thinking of your old girlfriend, you’re not earning enough money to get married – don’t overthink! Call her!
Until you resolve, you can’t move on. Not in the relationship in question, or not to a new and better one. And until someone calls, everyone is so mired in the story of the thing that didn’t work out, the person that didn’t behave nicely, that no-one moves on. And no-one gets married.
This isn’t a case of nice or not nice, in my not nice opinion. This is a case of sense or senseless. This is a case of passing up on a good thing – or moving on to a better. This is a case of giving your life over to your stories, or living it for yourself.
Say “what the heck”, try a glass of wine, try moral support, but just call. The longer you wait the more the story and its baggage builds.
Deena asked me what I used to do when I got depressed about being single, what helped me then. (really, such personal questions! ok, Deena, just kidding…)
It was an interesting question, made me think. I can get depressed these days too – nothing has changed there. Life is still full of challenges, insecurities, decisions, uncertainties. Germaine Greer, I think, once wrote that people think marriage brings security, when it’s really the difference between one person alone on a raft in a raging sea – or two people on a raft in a raging sea…
For me personally the only thing that really helps is the same thing that helped when I was single – taking action. Any action – preferably something that involves some form of movement, but also setting up a site, starting a movement, starting a religion (haven’t done that yet, working on it), writing a magnum opus, going out and doing something.
Any other suggestions?
ROAR!
I’m considering getting “ROAR” tattooed onto my forehead so that maybe no one will every say anything to me about singles, dating or anything in between.
ROAR!!!!!!!!!!!! Come here if you want me to eat your head for lunch.
Oh, I do have it tattooed on my head. :)
Someone married (not Vera) was just saying to me that she has often been misunderstood by singles. She has commented on singles blogs or communicated with singles in different ways, giving her opinions on different things, and singles have taken her words to mean more negative things that she intended.
Um, do you think that maybe, just maybe, some of us are a little – only a little – defensive when it comes to our singlehood?
Like, I’m not saying for sure and I’m not saying EVERYone, just SOME people so please don’t bite my head off. :)
Ouch! That hurt!
Photo by MacJewell on flickr.
should you blow your own trumpet?
As an ex-Brit I tend towards understatement. After moving to Israel I learned you have to be careful with that – when someone asks you “Are you good at ….?” and you respond, offhandedly, “well, I’m not bad at it…” – they take you at face value and go to someone else.
So how much should we hype ourselves? In today’s sales-oriented world we’re taught to call ourselves President and CEO of the International Tubular Intervention Company (plumbers), Chief Planner and Project Manager for Informal Education with Youth at Risk (mothers), you get the idea…
The result is – loss of trust. A sense that whoever we go for, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. The ramshackle office that has a huge glossy full page ad in the yellow pages, the large experienced company that turns out to be a one man show run by someone who qualified last Tuesday at 3 p.m., the gorgeous picture or profile on the dating site that turns out to be airbrushed and polished into something which has about as much connection with reality as a cucumber resembles a hairbrush (well, after several weeks mouldering in the fridge anything can happen…).
The dilemma is harsh. I think the only thing that can help is a worldwide movement to restore the values of underestimation, to ferret out those who constantly blow their own trumpets and confiscate the instrument, I’ll just go get the t-shirts printed at the Worldwide Fashion Internet Emporium (kiosk down the road), and polish my sign telling people the truth. I’m G-d’s right hand woman, honest.
Photo by Sara Bjork on flickr
This is a very delicate subject. I will try to approach it with the delicacy it deserves. I don’t think I’m going to succeed.
30 year old women don’t usually want to date 60 year old men. It’s not just something about the math, twice as old, half as young. However many men seem to want to date women much younger than them (I know – many of you don’t feel that way, but the ones who do are noisier).
More mature women (I said I’m trying to be delicate – I’m one of them so I’m entitled to write about this) feel disparaged by the men who make drooly remarks about younger women, or comments about wanting to have a family and that’s why…etc…
Older men feel disparaged by the younger single women who receive their interest with barely veiled disgust. Well, some do, others are clearly very thick skinned, gluttons for punishment or deeply masochistic.
Younger single women feel disparaged by all eligible single men, when the only people who show interest are older men who’ve been around the block several times.
Thing is – everyone has the right to ask. Everyone has the right to say no (with civility, if possible). There are some very different and unexpected marriages out there. But some facts need to be brought to light:
If you close yourself off around an idea that’s more of a prejudice than a principle – be it age or fecundity – you may be closing yourself off to life, simply by trying to control all the parameters.
I set out to write a very profound and meaningful blog post on this subject, but I’m not sure I succeeded. I hope at least I was delicate.
What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?
If there’s something wrong with you – maybe that means there’s nothing wrong with me?
We live in such a critical society, so often people look for something to criticise just to make small talk. Clothes, walk, behaviour, attitude, friends, family – it’s all up for grabs. And it’s such an unproductive waste of time and energy. Criticism gives us nothing – certainly when we’re on the end that’s dishing it out, and most of the time when we’re the ones on the receiving side…
At the risk of sounding Polyanna-ish (and what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know), isn’t it time we either looked for the positive in others, or just accepted them as they are and moved on? I hear people after they go on dates giving a litany either of what was wrong with the date, or what’s wrong with the dater.
I think it’s a better idea to talk about the weather.
