Well, hello—
Last week, I shared that I was piloting a new scheme in which I was no longer dating, but rather pursuing friendships in a roundabout way towards eventually being, er, more than just friends.
This week, I can share that this scheme failed immediately and has already been retired.
Ha ha!
I am laughing, preemptively, to save you the trouble, because this has been the general reaction to my unfortunate news, followed by responses not limited to but including:
“Yeah, no shit.”
“You think?!”
“I could have told you that.”
My friends keep me real, and I remain but a humble vessel for failed experiences that I share for the benefit of… those who may benefit from my failures. I did it so you don’t have to, etc.
Anyway, the post-mortem goes something like this:
Cause of death 1: A man who saved me the trouble of managing his expectations at our first coffee by immediately professing that he had a girlfriend he had no intention of leaving, and then seemed genuinely bummed that I only wanted to be friends anyway. While he was great, I’m not in the market to be a third. Poly or ethical non-monogamy or whatever is very in these days, and never say never (but do say, like, way-later-if-ever), but I would like to at least start off being 1-1 with someone.
Cause of death 2: A man who, despite my explicit clarification that I was only interested in meeting him non-romantically, swooped in for a kiss about an hour in, forcing me to swerve his face and simply pretend it was not happening. Awful, for both of us. Just… truly mortifying. Why are we putting people in the position of fending off unwelcome advances? Come on.
(On that note, here is a PSA for all would-be kissers: Asking if you can kiss someone is not only entirely appropriate, it is also very hot. Last year, I went out with a guy I didn’t particularly intend on kissing, until at the end of the date he very sweetly stammered, “Um, Meera… I’d really like to kiss you. Would that be ok?” And it was. More than OK, as it turned out.
In this latest instance, would I have kissed this guy if he had asked? Not this time, but maybe eventually? I don’t think so, but I might not have ruled it out. But I definitely wouldn’t kiss him now that I know he’s someone who’d so brazenly disregard my boundaries (and flagrantly flout the conventions of basic consent), though. Discovering which, in the defense of Operation: Friendship, was entirely the point of the scheme.)
Cause of death 3: The man I see almost every day on whom I have a debilitating crush and can’t very well just be friends with. He is the body double of Eric Bana in Troy, who was (ok, whose pecs were) my screensaver for longer than I care to admit; I may not know how to date, but I do know we are not trying to be just friends with our screensavers.
Anyway, he, it turns out, has a girlfriend (I know, because I asked him outright with the intention of following it up with a proposition, thus completely exposing myself to a man I see daily—it’s very exhilarating, I highly recommend it) so although I can’t date him, it did remind that sometimes I do meet people I just really like and want to be open about my intentions with. I guess it just hadn’t happened in a really long time.
So, anyway, we’re back to dating—or slow dating, or “dating like a normal person”, as my friend (and personal impulse moderator and life manager) Maru calls it. It might not surprise you to hear that doing anything like a normal person is something that does not come naturally to me and that I have to learn by way of hare-brained schemes and trial and error.
I’m now talking to several very nice men whom I’m enjoying getting to know, slowly. At least one of them is someone with whom I almost certainly have no future, but whom I really enjoy looking at and talking to and don’t intend to stop anytime soon. My curse, I’ve realised, is that I like novelty too much; I am just too curious, which is both my most favourite and most problematic trait. Like I said, trial and error. Anyway, it is fun and gentle and low stakes and nice.
And if nothing else, I, a storyteller, will have no shortage of stories. It won’t keep me warm at night, but also, it kind of does.
As a woman, I have spent roughly 1.5 million percent of my time over the past 40 years or so thinking—consciously or otherwise—about my identity as a potential child-bearing person. Bro, I am never not thinking about it—not even because I do or don’t want kids, but because it’s a hook on which so much of my identity as a woman hangs.
It’s a cognitive overhead that encompasses so much more than “Will I or won’t I?”, which itself occupies a lot of mental and emotional real estate. It’s a patriarchal hangover I was born with that has shaped my identity so deeply that I perceive myself as losing value with each passing year. You can imagine how such a belief would affect the way women show up in every aspect of our lives—on any level, how does one not panic, or retain self-assurance and a sense of security, when we believe we are constantly diminishing in value?
This comes from the belief that our fundamental value is based on a single metric. I know I’ve always been aware of it, but my awareness was compartmentalized into two rooms that I drifted back and forth between: one in which my value was determined by motherhood, and one in which it wasn’t. The second room, as much as I have wanted to stay there (especially as I keep being reminded that my good reproductive years are dwindling/have dwindled), has always been nebulous. On the other hand, I have a very clear picture of what the first room looks like, and it’s easier to live in a room that’s already furnished.
I appreciate women like Chelsea Handler who regularly advertises her carefree, childless life with the tagline “Kids: They’re not that great” but I’ve always felt there’s a more nuanced take to be had on the ones that do vs. the ones that don’t. Then I listened to this wonderful podcast with the wondrous Tracee Ellis Ross in which they discussed fertility as a concept that encompasses so very much more than human beings bearing other human beings. And it got me thinking—who, that I know, isn’t abundantly fertile? Who doesn’t birth ideas, and love, and businesses, and art, and brilliance, that makes the world around us better? Who isn’t populating the world with the kind of things that make us want to live in it and populate it with more humans of our own? The podcast discussed the egregious disservice that history (ie. the patriarchy) has done humanity by limiting fertility to a single product, and the value this has robbed us of.
I recalled, as I do quite frequently, being told by a young woman that she intended to have children because that is our purpose as humans, and not to do so would be to fail at our primary function. I have wished ever since that I had told her to take care to whom she expressed that opinion because she had no idea what anyone’s fertility journey was—nor, indeed, what hers might be—and that she was harmfully excluding many already-marginalised people, not least trans men and women.
I’ve reflected on the mainstream narrative about women—what is expected of us, and the models that show us how to live—and I look at my life and say, “Hmm.” I acknowledge that I have followed my own map to get to where I am—a map that exists only behind me, and that appears in front of me only where I put my foot down next.
I want to say to people who feel lost and uncertain that there is no roadmap for people who don’t live like we were shown how to. We make it up as we go along—through trial and error. So when we don’t know where we are, of course we feel lost—and when we’re offroading it and the wolves of convention howl all around us to let us know we’re not supposed to be here, we feel what we’re supposed to: fear and shame.
But listen: We can’t feel like we failed to live up to what life is supposed to look like—because the whole thing was made up to keep us where we are; where we can be seen and kept in order. This is the truth I’m certain they didn’t want us to know: They can’t have a world full of lost women who create their own kingdoms in the wilderness. Who make our own rules, because the existing rules were not written for us to begin with.
It’s not just women: there are so many of us who have to follow more rules than other people, to varying degrees. We’re confined to margins which are made of a sticky, viscous substance that attaches to our limbs and keeps us as close to the boxes that were drawn for us as possible. Straying from these confines is constant, exhausting work—more for some than others. My constraints are among the lesser—the substance gets stickier and more arduous the more marginalised someone is. It is designed to keep us tired and grateful for what we get.
We’ve been sold Stockholm Syndrome dressed as a fairytale so that we don’t get too unruly. I’m realising that wilfully deviating from this feels like insanity; it’s supposed to. Living life on my own terms feels hard because it was designed that way. Every time I encounter an obstruction, I feel like I have failed. The shame is so debilitating I lie down and give up for about a week. But I have to remind myself that I am struggling because I’m meant to. I am not supposed to be a 40-year-old woman without a husband, children, or an employer. There are no rules for me. The same thing that makes it terrifying makes it liberating and empowering.
Things that have helped this month
A dumb holiday
It’s weird how Valentine’s Day is something that we either are excited about or dread based on our relationship status. I can’t remember ever looking forward to this particular holiday as a single person, but this year I had my best Valentine’s Day yet. I got dressed up and looked cute, met my BFF Ric for lunch at our favourite cafe, had a couple day drinks, then went home and cooked a lovely dinner while listening to my love song playlist, which I curated to feel exactly as I want love to feel—meaning there’s not a single melancholy song about longing or heartbreak or unrequited love on there. It was the best end to a lovely day in which not only did I feel incredibly loved, but I was every bit the person I want to be with. That might be too cheesy, even for Valentine’s Day, but it’s the truth.
A new podcast
The podcast itself is not new, but I’ve only just started listening to it. I’ve been very familiar with Professor Scott Galloway as a Professional Smart Person for many years, but this week I started listening to Pivot, the podcast he co-hosts with Kara Swisher, and immediately became addicted. I never thought I’d find listening to tech news so soothing but their brand of dry banter and super-sharp insights is what I like to have on in the background all the time at the moment. Plus, they have fantastic guests—the last one was an online dating researcher who completely blew my mind when she said that most forms of social media and networking are eventually held accountable when data shows the effect they have on children, except for dating apps. We are literally being fed to the wolves out here, people.
A lovely book
I went to idly browse in a bookshop before a doctor’s appointment, and then was reminded that I cannot possibly browse idly in a bookshop because of all the books. Within five minutes, I’d left with this beautiful collection of musings on love in all its forms by some of my favourite thinkers including Roxane Gay, Heather Havrilesky, Esther Perel, and Alain de Botton. So much food for thought at a very timely juncture for me, personally, but there’s something in here for everyone. As usual, please try to buy this from an independent book seller so we keep them in business 🫶 I got mine from Uslar & Rai on Schönhauser Allee (you probably all know this but in case you don’t: if a bookshop doesn’t carry the book you want, they will always order it in for you!).
A yummy drink
I’m trying to cut out, or at least cut down, on caffeine so I’ve replaced the black tea in my daily chai for rooibos. It’s also a much simpler blend than my previously complex concoction—this is just rooibos and cardamom, and it’s delicious. To make it, all you have to do is:
Stop calling it “chai tea”. Immediately. You are saying “tea tea” and it is stupid. Also don’t call it “chai latte”, there’s no chai without milk. It’s just “chai.”
Bash 3-5 cardamom pods (I like a lot) in a pestle and mortar. Throw it in a saucepan with a tablespoon of rooibos and a cup of water. Bring to the boil.
Let it simmer for a few minutes (longer = stronger) and then add a cup of milk (I use oat milk, it’s most similar to regular milk in chai and least likely to break when boiled).
Bring to a simmer again. Strain, add sugar or your preferred sweetener.
Go, “Aahh.” Smile. Feel smug.
A holy grail serum
This serum. I recently went through a bad skin spell, and in general I’ve become quite anxious that my skin is showing signs of decline which I (very sadly) chalked it down to aging. Then I started using this serum (which is kind of like a very light oil) and almost overnight, my skin turned glowy and bouncy like a baby (no, not a baby’s skin or a baby’s bottom, an actual baby). I’m deeply obsessed and cannot stop putting it on morning, night, and mixed in with makeup.
A cute hydration app
I can be a bit forgetful about drinking enough water, so I’ve started using this app which is basically a plant Tamagotchi that you have to water. It reminds you to drink and the more you drink, the more your plant grows. I just realised maybe this is also why my skin is suddenly better. Anyway, do both! Do it all.
Cats that have helped this month
I continue to hope that my kids will become best friends and every now and again when I catch them vaguely in proximity to one another I dare to think, “It’s happening!” But, alas, it’s been six years and they seem to continue to only tolerate one another.
They do also chase each other around the house which legitimately sounds like a herd of wild ponies. As long as they amuse each other and I don’t get kicked out of my apartment for disturbing my neighbours, I’m happy.
It is Saturday afternoon so I must go—a grey and drizzly day awaits me, but the farmer’s market waits for no one. It is artichoke season and I intend to gorge myself on them til whichever one of us perishes first.
Have a lovely weekend folks,