Adventures in Dating

The good news is that my campaign to lift myself out of depression is working.  That bad news is that it is keeping me too busy to find time to write, though I have been percolating with ideas, and that wasn't happening when I was depressed. I've also been too busy to read so much. As a bonus, I've found that I want to be more active...and here I was beating myself up for not being active enough, with that inactivity affecting my health.  It proves once again my hypothesis if everything is working the way it should, we will do what is right for our bodies.  I was depressed, and didn't feel like getting out and moving.  In fact, it could hurt more, aches and pains, getting older. Not so depressed, there is lightness in my step, and I feel invigorated rather than fatigued.  So the lesson once again is, rather than place the blame on laziness, look for the reasons underlying the symptom.

Mondrian's Composition in Brown and Gray

Just the knowledge that I've been depressed helped me lift myself out, some.  Thanks to my Buddhist training, I have the skill to catch a thought at its inception (sometimes) and when I could catch that thought, I could also make a choice.  I would say to myself, "Oh, there's that depressed impulse again. I don't need to fall into it."  And I would look up, rather than hunker down in. Let me say that I don't think people who are ill can just decide not to be sick, and people with depression can just decide not to be depressed.  In my case, I am not naturally prone to depression, and I don't think I was severely depressed, though it must have been going on for a long time. With this awareness, I could steer myself toward my more natural positive state of mind.

The other main action has been my adventures in dating.  I can't count the ways I am grateful for my relationship with my sweetie, nor can words say how deeply I love him.  I believe our freedom makes this deep love possible.  We are a lot of things to each other, but we don't have to provide everything the other wants or likes, nor do we expect it from each other. I have no reason to be resentful or disappointed, and I'm not.  He loves me even though I'm a pack rat and leave messy habitats wherever I go!  When has a couple been evenly matched on how often they want to have sex? When have they been interested in the same exact things? What we do expect is honesty and consideration; these are the signs our relationship is healthy. On my adventures in dating, I have the freedom to seek what I need with the comfort of knowing my existing love will not be torn apart.

Just as an aside, I learned a few things about this particular scene.  One thing, online dating is the thing for us fat women.  All I have to do is wait, and those who are looking for someone exactly like me come and find me.  I don't have to approach only to be rejected.  They find me!  Another thing, there are a lot of way younger guys who are looking for older, large women.  What's up with that?  I was talking to another quite bosomy woman who is thirty-three. (I, if you haven't been keeping up, am forty-five.)  We were comparing our experiences with online dating. She said she seems to attract older, creepy guys. I said I too have had interest from some older guys, but have been surprised by how many younger men are interested in me, and not just geek boys (who are sexy) but fit, athletic guys.  Just that alone patches up a whole bunch of tears in self-esteem that might still exist from years of being considered too fat to be sexy.  When I said she should go to the site I'm using, she said, "Oh, I'm too young."  They might be twenty, but these particular guys are looking for me, not her.  Baffling, but hey! I'm not looking for that much younger, but I'll give them a chance.

Another thing learned, sexting is the thing they're into.  Instead of talking on the phone and getting excited, or chatting online, they're looking for sexy texting.  Oh, that is hard on my thumbs.  And then sometimes it turns out that's all they are looking for, and when it comes time to actually meet me in person, they turn into flakes. Hmmm.   Finally, I've learned it's a little suspicious if they don't post a photo as part of their profile...could be a sign of cheating.  This is the thing that's difficult to navigate.  I don't want to poach, so the ones who are honest are left to continue suffering, but the liars get to cheat all they want until their actions start to reveal their secrets.  I feel for the honest ones, I do...they aren't getting what they need, and they don't see a way to find it in their existing relationship. They still love, but don't know how to fix what's broken. I think the sexting without follow-through may be related to this, that these guys are seeking stimulation without it seeming to be cheating.

If you're reading, you who don't want to be cheating dogs, you need to be brave and talk to her. Tell her what you've always wanted and haven't been able to find with her, but that you love her. And that you want her to have a way to find what she's always wanted too.  We always change, all of us, and our needs change, while our love remains.  Yes, the monogamist way is often to break it off, to allow the love to wither, and to seek the next monogamous partner that newly meets our needs. Or to cheat. Sometimes, and this has to be very hard, steer the changes together so that the two still mesh.  Sometimes this is possible, many loves, to seek new loves, or simply to date, while consciously nurturing this love you've dedicated so much of your life to.  How could you tear it apart? You could be surprised. If you are careful, and considerate, and take it slowly, you could find what you're looking for and keep what you have.

Psyche looks upon the divine Eros

I've found those endorphins I needed. I found that boosts to the ego sure help lift depression as well.  I've had some awkward encounters, some nice encounters, some really hot encounters, and one very profound encounter. At the time I told him I felt we touched a bit of heaven.  Later I told him I felt the act we shared opened a gateway and returned a piece of me to me, and it was a sacred moment.  All these encounters helped with endorphins, but this one, I think, brought the healing I needed.  Then, of course, I struggled with attaching to that and falling a little bit in love...how could I not?  Classic Eros and Psyche. (That's another writing project.)

This Space of Love

In Redefining our Relationships, Wendy-O Matik says, "There is a tendency to want to put love in a tight frame, easily defined, and then put it on a shelf to over- or underanalyze. But love is far too clever to cooperate on this insignificant level." So, it could be said, is the self that touches buddha nature.

During the fervent fertile years of my Buddhist practice, when I spent much time digging and tilling in myself during Zen retreats, I experienced a fear at times, a trepidation over some next step, some next digging. I don't remember the specific question, but I remember the teacher's answer, "Perhaps you are bigger than you think you are." The small self of the ego tries to protect its walls through defensive posturing, through shrinking into corners, through over- or under-analyzing. Visually I always picture my friend Patrick, who (years ago) put his arm up over his face, bent elbow sticking out both as sword and shield, gleefully reducing the fearful ego to a tiny armor-bound body that clearly couldn't see beyond those sharp-edged walls.

I was finding that big self that needed no sharp elbows, that could see and be seen. Step by step, my zen teachers and my sangha, my beloved spiritual community, helped me expand my self beyond, always going on beyond that little defensive self.

I was learning to love myself. I didn't really know what love was, until it burst off that little shelf and knocked me sideways when I was thirty years old. "There is no place to rest," my buddha nature said. "Nope, you have to learn to love with your whole heart, your whole body, your whole mind." I thought I had come into my own. I thought I had become who I was meant to be. I had. I had learned to love myself. I had learned clarity. I thought I had come to an end, but it was only the beginning.

Wendy also said, "To give without expecting something in return is the ultimate gift of love, but it takes practice." If those first ten years of my Buddhist practice were all about finding the me I was meant to be, this second ten years have been all about forgetting about me, and learning to love without expectation. I don't mean a kind of love that still sets you apart. It's easy to love from inside a monastery on a hill. No, I'm talking about passionate involvement, along with all the psychic bumps and scrapes that come with negotiating the balance of attachment and nonattachment, with diving headfirst into feelings and connections and needs and revulsions. It takes practice.

Being poly, I got to get a lot of practice! Now, I'm not talking just about romantic love. The more I've experienced of that, the more I'm inclined to resist those boundaries. Love is love is love. There are different flavors of love. Each relationship I have, each love I have, has its own flavor, its own urgency, its own rhythm, its own boundaries. All these connections, all my relationships, flow from this love within me that is the same, a pure intention and movement in the direction of good wishes, kindness, compassion. Sometimes that pure intention and movement toward particular persons includes sexuality, sometimes it must exclude sex, but include loving affection. All those monumental rides and crashing highs and lows that came with romantic love helped me open up to a more passionate caring love for my platonic-flavored loves. Those bumps and scrapes prepared me for greater ease with a tender heart. They gave me a tender heart.


I was inspired to try to express this by my newfound blogger friend, Rachel, and her post about How She Found Out She's Poly. She fell in love. She still loved her husband. The feeling and the secret were tearing her apart. She confessed. Her husband had an interesting response:

Now I would call such a thing a "crush", because I believe you shouldn't call something "love" until your souls have mingled, and that takes intimacy and time. I think you can easily have crushes on other people without it affecting love for your partner.

I don't like using that word, crush. Or infatuation. Or even NRE for new relationship energy. I still prefer to say "falling in love". The first smashes the feeling down as insignificant. Indeed that was the intent of the man I quoted. If a feeling is made insignificant, crushed down and made small, well then it will be small. This is what most of us do to ourselves. We have an opportunity for expansion, and we do our damnedest to shrink it down to something we can control and kick around. The second belittles the love, makes it something that doesn't even qualify as love. Love is relegated to some lofty exclusive realm that only certain people are allowed to receive, while others are only worthy of receiving a delusion. The third, so clinical. At least not a delusion, but still not worthy yet of inclusion in this space of love.

Later he says,

I think about human nature, and the way that love can make us irrational and jealous and giddy and happy and sad... Love between two is complicated enough!

Indeed love can be overwhelming with the giddiness and the sadness, but with more experience, more practice, it becomes easier to steer, easier to transform and redirect those strong feelings. You may not be able to control it on that little shelf, but it can be possible to steer it in a general direction. I have learned too that love between two can be simple enough. When we don't have to share all the same interests, the same hobbies, or even the same sexual tastes, it becomes easier to love and accept each other just as we are. The points of conflict become less when we don't expect to have so many points aligned. Not so complicated, we can simply share this space of love.

There's more that Rachel inspired me to say, but I'll take that up in the next installment. Go here for part 2.

Maiden Voyage

It is a new year and I have a new computer. My beloved Steve shared his wealth with me by taking me shopping for a laptop for Christmas. (Yes, I am Buddhist and he is an uncommitted atheist, but we still celebrate the universal practice of giving.) A while back he'd asked me if I'd like a laptop. I said something like, "A laptop? Yeah, sure I could use one, I suppose." He took that to mean I wasn't particularly excited about the idea. But how do you respond to the prospect of an expensive gift when you don't concern yourself too much with having things? I started to think of the ways I could use the flexibility and mobility. Sometimes I spend a lot of time at my computer and I don't get out of the house all day. With a laptop, I could go to a neighborhood cafe and be among people, and stretch my legs with the walk to get there. As I am doing now, sitting in my favorite coffee shop (Stumptown), taking this my maiden voyage of blogging while sitting in public. A month or so after Steve asked me what I wanted for Christmas. "I thought you were getting me a laptop?" He said, "You didn't seem very excited about getting one." We dispelled that notion and now here I am.

I like my HP Pavilion dv6130, Intel inside of course, duo core processor. That stuff means more to Steve than to me, but what I like is the wide screen and the touch pad mouse. For those of you who care: Duo Processor T5200 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB); 1024MB system memory; 120GB hard drive; LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD R/RW drive with Double Layer support; Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with up to 128 MB shared video memory. (I only know that because it's right here below the keyboard.) I worried about the laptop mouse, thinking they looked so fragile and would wear out quickly, but this one has a metal pad. It's so easy to use the scroll bar on the side, and I've learned the easier way to use click-and-drag.

But enough boring electronics talk. A big thank you to my best friend and lover, my sweetest of sweeties. If we had to cut coupons and buy cheap beans to get by, he still would be the best, but it sure is nice not to have those worries, and to receive perks like this.

Let's see, what's been on my list to talk about? This is not my maiden voyage in a cafe, but first for blogging while out and about. My first wireless experience was Friday at Sckavone's. That's my day I get off work early. I hadn't felt hungry around lunchtime, but was ready for a veggie burger or something and they also have happy hour. I hardly ever drink, but sometimes the lark of the happy hour experience appeals to me more than the drinking itself. I noticed as I went to the fish store next door that Sckavone's now had wireless, so it all added up. Later it occurred to me that it's now perfectly acceptable for a person to be alone in such a place, it's not automatically seen as "Oh, how lonely." Now, all one needs is a laptop, and it's perfectly legitimate, really almost required, that you be alone. Not that I worried about such things anyway, but I thought here's yet another way in which computers connect us and bring us in a more public space, rather than than isolate us from each other.

Sometimes mysterious things happen with my new computer. My palm brushes the mousepad as I type, and suddenly the cursor is in a different spot. Or I think I'm nowhere near the pad, but the web page has suddenly scrolled to the bottom. On that day, when I connected to the wireless, my yahoo messenger logged in with me as visible. I never do that, have the settings on 'invisible' and rarely sign in. Once upon a time I did that stuff, and met some people online. They've apparently faithfully kept their eye on me, and I was promptly pounced upon by a young man from Chicago who's sent me dozens of offline messages over the past year or so "You online?" "You there?" I was flattered and while I meant to write some other email, decided to chat with him. A few minutes later somebody else found me too. Here I was trying to eat, telling the one he could talk to me but to be prepared for long silences, that I had stuff to do. Told the other I had stuff to do and made myself invisible again. T. in Chicago talked me into running my webcam. He only could because I wanted to try it out anyway...it's right there at the top of the widescreen monitor. My food came, the webcam sucked my battery dry, and that ended the conversation, 1 hour online. Today I am testing the battery (but brought my cord) to see how long it lasts without webcam. 2 hours and still going.

So T. in Chicago is polyamorous and for some reason really wants me to be his long distance girlfriend. I'm bemused and baffled, why me? I don't know him, he doesn't know me, apparently doesn't read this (though maybe he does and pretends not to). Maybe it's a case of liking the chase. I've pretty much been uninterested in long distance friendships, much less ldrs. He used that term, ldr, and I had to ask what that meant, what with shuffling food, computer, vodka-spiked raspberry italian soda. I've replied several times to his offline messages, said that if he really wants to get in touch with me, he needs to email me. Hasn't yet. I don't understand why some people will never use email, only IM, unless there's something to hide. He was at work. Maybe that has something to do with it.

He tells me he wants to meet me, asks would I ever be in Chicago. In my slightly vodka-spiked state I tell him he is in luck, I have family in Wisconsin, and I wish to visit my Grandma more often as she nears the end of her life. Another present Steve gave me is an upgrade to my Art Museum membership. I now can go to several museums around the US without having to pay admission. When Steve gave it to me, he said, "Now when you travel, if you travel, you can go to these museums. Some of them cost a lot." And I said, "Well, maybe that will be a reason to travel." I've already been thinking of visiting Wisconsin again, my Grandma keeps asking. I could go to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, visit a friend of Steve's, and visit this insistent younger (16 years younger) man, and drive to Wisconsin for family.

I'm not so closed to the idea of a long distance relationship anymore. I still talk to my friend in New York. That's not quite what you could call a relationship, but I'm still waiting and seeing. I used to think an ldr would be expensive, that I didn't have time for such a distraction, that whether friend or lover, somebody that I could see close by was more worth my time. I've lost a lot of my judgements about love and the possibilities of love. Similar to my thoughts on monogamous thinking, I was judging ldrs with the same stamp of monogamous thinking. Maybe some relationships don't take so much effort, maybe some have short sharp bursts of flow, and long slow hidden waves of ebb. Ebb and flow can be very different for different interconnections. As I said to Steve, I've thought perhaps the reason why I persist with Mr. NY is that I don't have to be too serious. Rather than too expensive, an ldr can be an excuse to travel. I am thinking about visiting NY again despite the long plane trip...so many sights there I haven't seen, and maybe I could meet Mr. Paine, or even better, Mr. Paine and his lovely wife.

(time to plug in, 7% battery remaining. 2.75 hours on battery. Hmmm, suddenly the screen is brighter.)

I went to Darklady's Pirates and Ninja NYE party. Not all fun and games (though I did have fun, yes sir)...I got the cloakroom off to a good and orderly start, and met more of the volunteers. Have I mentioned before how gratified I am to witness the willingness of volunteers for these parties? Much harder to get such commitments with peace and Buddhist stuff. ....nothing like sex to unite us all. Make love not war! (I just noticed a guy reading the paper but actually trying to look up my skirt without me noticing.) I couldn't think of a costume, so I wore a sweet new top with see through and velour pattern and skirt, nothing under. I told people that when I can't think of a costume, half-naked works. They liked that. A young woman reminded me later, "Hey, it's the half-naked lady." There were a lot of beautiful big buxom women in kimonos, and dashing, randy pirates. It didn't occur to me I could just do something Japanese for the "Ninja" part. Not that I had something like that anyway. I got into a conversation with a couple of other Darklings about how we couldn't imagine going to a regular party or club on NYE anymore. "What, we can't get half-naked? What kind of boring party is this? Where's the play space?" What if we went and did that anyway? It's not illegal in Oregon, we discussed, just as long as we don't create a traffic hazard. Inside I knew though Darklady's party would still be it, may it live long, because as a large woman, I feel quite welcome and sexy at her parties, and I have made some good friends I could count on in hard times. Oh, and for hard times....