Sexual Disorientation: Momentary Insanity
Start your week with sex… or lack thereof. Delve into the jungle of the newly out and single every Monday morning in Sexual Disorientation.
Mindful of the Moment - Paris, April 2008
On Friday my therapist recommended I look into the concept of mindfulness, which he explained as the art of being mindful of one’s present experience.
“Do you know the expression of washing the dishes for the sake of washing the dishes?” he asked me. “It’s about concentrating on the feeling of the soap and water running over your hands, instead of just looking at it as a task that had to be completed.” I told him that I washed the dishes so that if I should take a nice boy to my house, I wouldn’t look like a slob, and would seem more like marriage material. He got a good laugh out of that.
But his point was well taken. I do, in fact, obsess about the deeper meaning of every tiny experience. My mind is never in the present – it’s connecting what’s going on to something from my past or to a future possibility. Lately, though, it’s been giving me trouble, especially as it’s applied to dating and relationships.
I’ve known since November that I’ll be leaving the District in May and moving two thousand miles west. Even for a pseudo-romantic like me, I’ve known that any interaction with men has been unlikely to turn into something long-term or serious. I’ve therefore been faced with a difficult question: do I hold off on dating until it can actually fit into my long-term wants and goals, until the men I involve myself with could be “the real deal”? Or do I just appreciate the moment and see where things go?
For the most part, to my own surprise, I’ve been leaning towards the latter option. I’ve given myself somewhat of a free pass over the past few months to explore the dating scene and try to figure out what I’d want in a relationship once I’m in a position to really pursue one. I’ve entered into some somewhat complicated situations that normally I may have avoided but that – under the circumstances – I figured I might as well just experience.
Despite the wonderful stereotypes that queerfolk are inherently promiscuous, I’ve sensed some push-back from potentially interested men when they learn I’m not going to be around much longer. I went on a quasi-date with a great guy with whom I really enjoyed spending time, but I got the impression that he didn’t want to get too involved with someone who was already one foot out the door. If we look at relationships as investments of our time, energy, and maybe even love, it makes sense that we might not want to put much into something that we knew wouldn’t last.
Things came to a head this weekend when I found myself with a guy I’ve known for a while but always just as friends. I was abroad, and then he was seeing someone, and when we were both finally available at the same time and place, I was counting down the days to my departure. After midnight in the rain, we kissed in the middle of an empty field for a few intense minutes. Before I knew it, though, he pulled away from me and stood up. “You’re leaving,” he said, “and we want very different things in life.” He said that since we had no chance for a future together, even if I was going to stick around, he couldn’t bring himself to stay with me that night.
I realized then that something doesn’t have to be for eternity or be totally goal-oriented to have any value. Something can be momentary without just being an excuse to hook up without strings attached. If we spend our whole lives worrying about whether people have the right ambitions, interests, jobs or goals, we may well wake up old and alone, with no future to look forward to and no present to enjoy – just a past of missed opportunities.
Nevertheless, my argument lost out, and I got left there in the rain, my clothing soaked and my head still buzzing from booze and disappointment.
I had told my therapist that the only place this mindfulness idea of his worked was in my shower. Only there did I tend to forget about my problems and agenda and just enjoy the feeling of warmth and cleansing, a few minutes of peace at the start of each day.
But the day after my aborted connection, even my shower was invaded by thoughts about the past and the future. Washing the store-brand shampoo out of my messy hair, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was slowly heading towards finding someone special, or if I was just absentmindedly watching each moment pass me by.
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It seems most men have your old mentality. I dated a guy for a few months before he moved to New York City. He showed great restaurants and hidden assets of our nation’s capitol as well as new things in the bedroom. A relationship does not have to last a long time to be beneficial to both parties. There are guys who like to date for dating-sake, Corey. They are just more difficult to come by.
I am sorry that you had the bad timing with your friend. I have been there. It is mind boggling for both parties.
Great post.
Dear Corey,
Things feel much the same for me, too: so much worrying, and finally you worry yourself right out of life!
I’ve been trying to see the whole dating morass in terms of two pressures: one is inner (psychological/existential), the other is outer (social/cultural). I don’t know if you’ve been thinking along the same lines here, but I see the problems we encounter along these two dimensions, and I think they lead to several factors that interfere with our best attempts at finding a partner with whom we harmonize.
One of the factors is what one Antrhopologist (Thomas de Zengotita) recently called “opionality”: there doesn’t seem to be a whole hell of a lot in our society, and even within our own psyche, that keeps us rooted or bound to each other — or even to reality. Think about it like this: Facebook, dating & cruise websites, — so many options! Quick travel around the globe, my country — all the world’s my stage! High turn-over rate at most businesses/corporations — if I don’t like where I am, flee! If they don’t like me, I’m out. Flee, flee, flee! All these things make our basic connection to people and places — to reality — slippery. It also gives us a sense of control, of course: whenever I’m unhappy with something, there’s always another thing — another option — I have that may potentially satisfy me. Thus, “opionality”. And all of our techno-toys are there to supply us with a welter of options. (Not to mention “The Market”).
Now, the above torrent leaves us in the grips of what I like to call the “smorgasbord” syndrome: so many options finally drugs us up, and we end up groping around for as many options as we possibly can fill ourselves with. We become gluttons, stuffing ourselves with so much that eventually we become like a slave (“slave to the passions” goes the ancient phrase). Dating and cruise websites seem to be the worst here: even when we go on the dates, we’re thinking of the options, whether or not the person in front of us is “what we’re looking for”. Our iPhones buzz with more gentleman/woman-callers; we’re inundated with texts about the next date; our curious friends call/text; … and so on. Even if we turn the phones *off*, they still exert a mental pull on us. Talk about un-mindfulness!
And, speaking of the “what we’re looking for” mentality: well, here’s the problem, I think. I ask myself, what do I and others mean by this expression “… looking for …”. I guess there’s some feature — a spec — that we desire (whether or not we can articulate exactly what). We’ve got some implicit or explicit list of preferences by which we judge our potential mates. And so, our interactions with people are initially very utilitarian: people are “worth our time” only if they are useful to us, only if, that is, their specs are right for us. This is the “buyer/seller” mentality, and it seems to become the frame of all dating — it even is the frame for how we meet other people in general. I think it’s particularly bad in DC (being such a “networking” crowd to begin with), but I’m afraid this is just the basic structure of interaction for most highly educated, “upwardly mobile” people (i.e., most of the LGBT scene). Again, mindfulness is out the window here!
One thing I’ve sensed, though, is that it’s possible to exit this morass. But you can’t *plan* for this exit (that would be just more of the problem we want out of). In other words, you really can’t *plan* for Mr./Mrs. Right. I find that in all aspects of creativity (writing, teaching, thinking), when you actually let go of the tendency to frame things in a certain way, when you manage to stop consciously enacting a skill set or some kind of a program — then a moment, or a space, of spontaneity opens up. In that moment, I find, there’s much to be explored. You start to see that your hopes/dreams/desires are often out of whack with what’s right in front of your face. You start to see things for what they are: a bunch of contradictions, a paradox!
You can’t rationalize a paradox away, finally; yet most of our inner and outer lives are built around an attempt to do the impossible, to clean up reality, to give us a program to follow, to flatten out the inner kaleidoscope, the war that keep us bouncing from utter sadness and isolation to unbounded joy and openness. Reality is ugly. Reality is beautiful. It’s both, yet we want only one.
I don’t really think there’s any “solution” to the dating morass. I don’t think there’s any “way out”. The only way around is through!
You see, when you start thinking through the issues, at some point you have to start questioning the basic assumptions around which our lives are built. If you do that, then all bets are off. No options anymore. Maybe no more dating, either. There’s just no prediction here, no “control”, no mentality of “what I’m looking for is …”. All that is vanquished, evaporated into nothing — like puff of smoke in the winds of a storm (that eventually brings the sun).
In any case, this isn’t going to be much help or comfort — but maybe it can point us in the right direction (which is really no direction, in the end).
There was some movie or TV show that I saw years ago in which someone said “no one ever said the perfect relationship has to last forever.” I’ve remembered that ever since, trying to squash that little voice inside me that says I should only be investing time in relationships that could be life-long.
People see dating as a chance to meet new people and learn about them. However, I think the biggest benefit to dating is learning about yourself. Every interaction with another person is a unique combination of “you” and “the other.” Seeing what happens when these combinations occur can be really instructive.
So, kudos to you for learning early-on that time invested in short-term relationships (even the length of one date) is never wasted.
I haven’t dated anyone in years, using the excuse that I was graduating, I didn’t know where I would end up, and now that I’m in the District, my job isn’t secure and I might be leaving in a month and a half. But oddly enough, I can’t stop thinking about how much I want to date. Something in the past month has broke through my barrier and now I just want to date. Unfortunately, just like you, I can’t find anyone willing to just have a “spring romance.”
May I also suggest a reframing? When I think of “hanging out with a friend”, I think of something enjoyable: dining out, seeing a film, going to the museums, etc. When I think of dating, I think of barely disguised interviews for the job of being a life partner. Dating becomes a chore, a sereis of tasks to be gotten through in order to bag a man. The onerousness of it turns me off. But I love to hang out with friends. And it is much easier to be mindful and in the moment when I do.
Kyle,
Regarding your point about friends or life partner venues, I think there does not need to be such black and white parameters. Dating can involve hanging out with someone or having the opportunity to make out with someone. If dating was a series of interviews for a life partner, I would have never done it. I do not feel that when I pursued boyfriends that it seemed like an interview process. Through dating, we happened to discover our likes, dislikes, quarks, and sensitive topics. I am not saying that your interview process in dating does not exist, but I have avoided those types of daters.
maybe it’s because my problem is the exact opposite of yours re: living in the moment. i seem utterly incapable of really thinking about the future. that said, when i met my boyfriend i really don’t think either of us expected any sort of life-long commitment to anything. we were both on vacation in europe, we were both leaving prague for berlin the next day, we made each other laugh. but i eventually had to go back to vancouver, and he had to return to dc and we both knew that. that didn’t stop us from staying in touch, and it didn’t stop us from visiting each other in our respective cities. it all happened pretty naturally. if we’d been firmly of the opinion that “i’m not moving to america” or “i’m not moving to canada”, so this isn’t worth my time, well we wouldn’t have just celebrated our fourth anniversary together. my point is…i don’t actually know. can you see a point in here? helpful eh?
I am the king of bad timing with guys. Seriously, I could write you an anthology. The guy I want will be in a relationship when I’m single, or one of us will be on our way out of town, or we’ll have spent so much time as friends that there’s no realistic way to make the jump into a relationship without putting everything we already have into jeopardy – despite the fact that we both have feelings for each other (the current relationship-clusterfuck I find myself in). What it’s taught me though, Corey, is that you never know what’s around the corner and how quickly things can change for the better. Push forward and trust that one of these days when life has settled down a bit it’ll work out.
Great post.
Corey, I hear you loud and clear on this. I was recently in the exact same situation — about a year ago, I won a grant to do research in Argentina, but I couldn’t leave until just this past February. I finished school in Baltimore last May and stayed in the city until the fall, when I returned home to Northern VA to save money by living with my parents. Whereas in Baltimore I’d had a social network built up over four years of college, back in Loudoun County, VA my high school friends had all left town. I broke up with my boyfriend of several years at about the same time, and it was then that I realized that most of my gay friends were actually his friends . . . thus leaving me kind of alone.
As I went about re-building my own social life in and around the district, I had a recurring internal conflict: do I look for a boyfriend, do I just leave the gay scene behind until I come back from Argentina, do I look for hookups, do I use this as learn-to-be-alone time…? I was really conflicted about the whole thing, about whether I was putting my life on hold by not really jumping into things. I ended up meeting a guy at a party who I clicked really well with. We went on a couple “quasi-dates” (as one of the other commenters put it) in January, but ultimately we both knew it was only for the moment. I was leaving for a year at the end of February. I never really knew if I should bring up whether there was sort of an “us”, and ultimately I’m glad I didn’t. I realized at some point that it was good to date just for the enjoyment of it, for the good conversation and — really importantly — for helping me get a feel for what I do and don’t like. Many, many, many relationships (especially those started in youth) end eventually. That doesn’t mean they don’t mean anything, or aren’t worth something (however brief or intangible they might’ve been). We’re best off, I think, enjoying the moment when the moment is good. And if moving across or out of the country is on the agenda in the near future, then every new person you meet — almost automatically — knows that they’re making a new friend, not a new boyfriend. And in a way, that can be liberating, especially in a world where we sometimes struggle to find one without the other.
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