It's Not Me, It's You

In recent posts, I have lamented the quality and types of responses I have gotten to my profile on an online dating site.  A friend noted that I seem to attract an unusual amount of hate mail.  I view my profile as honest and straightforward, detailing what I want and don't want to avoid wasting everyone's time.  Isn't the purpose of online shopping to facilitate meeting someone who fits your criteria without all that tedious dating and getting to know someone only to find out they double dip their chips or loathe giving head?

I've received a few messages of awed appreciation from men praising my profile as unique and refreshingly blunt.  But these men have all been quick to add that they are just admirers, not contenders.  Most messages are from guys who have not read my profile; they neither know nor care they don't fit its criteria.  Their usual practice is to send a generic message to every woman whose photo they like, without bothering to check profiles.  There is almost zero chance of getting a response, but it is also low risk/low effort.  What I am waiting for is a message from a man who has read my profile and fits my criteria.  That's the only one I want a response from.  But I also get voluminous hate mail, and a friend opined that my profile's bitter, virulent misandry is pissing people off.  There are also likely to be men who fit my criteria but who find my profile so off-putting they don't contact me.  I could potentially be missing out on these guys who think, "I fit the bill, but I don't want anything to do with this cold, sarcastic bitch."

If I ostensibly want a relationship, why is my profile so hostile?

It's a cliché that women form their expectations of male behaviour from their parents' relationship, and other relationships they observe in childhood.  If dad's a dick, they gravitate to dicks, confirming their expectations.  Nice guys finish last...because they're polite.

<rim shot>

Seriously, nice guys finish last because women throw up defence mechanisms to avoid being vulnerable and because we don't feel we deserve them.  Women also like a challenge—that broody, moody handsome guy you had a crush on in high school, who never gave you the time of day, got you wetter than that nice plain guy you barely noticed who was always waiting at the door on rainy days to hold an umbrella over you on the way to the bus stop (cue every 80s John Hughes movie).  It's human nature to want what we can't have.  This does not mean women want to date jerks—science has thoroughly debunked the myth that nice guys really finish last—just that women will try to save the difficult guy from himself, perhaps unconsciously trying to rewrite narratives they observed in childhood.  I have never been attracted to macho bad boys but one could find traces of the theme of "choosing a guy you need to remake into what you want rather than one who already is what you want" in my relationship choices:

I spent 7 years with someone who made it clear from the first date that he didn't want a long-term relationship or any responsibilities.  I told myself he'd change, he'd want these things with me.  He tried repeatedly to leave, assuring me that it wasn't my fault ("it's not you, it's me"), it was just time for him to move on, before I finally got fed up, gave up, and let him go.  If he had stayed, it would have been to my detriment since he was incapable of meeting my needs.  13 years later, he contacted me out of the blue to say that the only problem in our relationship had been that he wasn't ready to settle down and now he was ready so would I come join him.  I replied that it was presumptuous of him to assume that was the only problem, that a depressive sociopath was not the sort of partner I want, regardless if he was ready to settle down.  We've kept in touch lightly since then and it's clear he hasn't changed and never will; I was naive in my 20s to hope he would.  But my point is that I chose someone who didn't want to settle down and who couldn't meet my needs and tried to hold onto him for a long time after both those things became undeniable rather than trying to find a guy who did want to settle down and who could meet my needs.  My expectations of men were low; I didn't believe that I could leave him and find someone better because I didn't see him as problematic as an individual, a situation that could be remedied by finding a different individual.

Oh, no.  She'd be the one calling "Next!"

As much as I tried to choose someone very different in my next relationship, I again succumbed to the tyranny of low expectations.  I knew you can't change someone, yet I saw my younger, insecure partner as another type of work-in-progress.  I believed he was the opposite of my previous partner, who was all surface charm with nothing underneath.  This one was a diamond in the rough; he just needed polishing, literally and figuratively.  Because it is the M.O. of narcissists to make you feel like the centre of their universe at first, reinforced by everyone he knew who told him how lucky he was to have me, and because we were intellectually compatible, with many shared interests, taste, lifestyle preferences, humour, etc., I overlooked the fact that he also did not want to settle down nor was he capable of meeting my needs.  As a narcissist, he was a slave to his ego, and his life was devoted to feeding it.  At first, when I was feeding it, he was devoted to me, but that didn't last.  The monstrous ego of a narcissist is a gaping, bottomless well of need, and because you only exist to meet their needs, you will never get any emotional support in return.  But I stayed anyway, because I didn't expect any man to meet my needs.  When he left me for a woman young enough to be my daughter it seemed predictable and fitting: that's what men do.  I blamed myself: I had failed to feed his ego and meet his needs, whereas his self-centred, gaslighting, immature behaviour was just, to my jaded perception, being a typical male.  As in my previous relationship, I did not identify his faults as individual.

Of course relationships are more complicated than a simple Freudian reduction to our basest motivations, but both relationships, as dissimilar as they were, fit a narrative of having low expectations of men and low expectations for what I deserved.

I've had a few friends-with-benefits situations with married men that were textbook older man/younger woman mutual ego stroking.  Of course they were going to cheat, that's what men do (low expectations for men, although women cheat nearly as much).  According to this narrative, participating in a situation like that means that I don't think I deserve a man who belongs to me.  I'm reluctant to accept that because there are features that make these situations appealing without resorting to a self-deprecating explanation.  Frustrating as they could be at times, some of the constraints were useful because I got the best parts of a man—romance, affection, hot sex—without having to put up with all the crap in a full-time relationship.  It was a fantasy veneer of a relationship, untainted by the familiarity of day-to-day living that kills desire.  I never lost sight of that nor deluded myself that we could be a couple if they were single.  Yes, it's unlikely such a relationship would survive being together full-time with no impediments, but then most relationships don't.  It mightn't be as hot without the limited contact, the clandestine nature, but then no full-time relationship stays hot indefinitely.  For the married person, having the benefits of a full-time partner and also getting that excitement in your life is understandably appealing.  You get to have your cake and lick it, too.  A lover keeps you in a better mood and helps you put up with your partner for the long haul.  These situations save many marriages:  You can express facets of yourself that you can't in your marriage, which lessens frustration with your partner.  In France they take a civilised approach, where it is understood that both partners in a long-term relationship will have lovers.  They view it as helping, rather than harming, the primary relationship.  For a single woman, having the benefits of living alone but still having sex and romance in your life, is heaven.  I don't think one needs to justify its appeal with the belief that you don't deserve a man to yourself.

I can add one final relationship that fits the script:  My high school boyfriend was a total mensch: devoted, considerate, generous, cute, crazy about me.  He assumed I'd go to university locally, we'd move in together, eventually get married.  He was devastated when I left for a faraway college and broke up with him.  We remain platonic friends and there is nothing he wouldn't do for me.  He has carried a torch all these years.  30 years after I left, he'd take me back in a heartbeat if I'd have him and devote himself to me completely.  Yet, I have never had the slightest interest in getting back together.  This is "nice guys finish last" on steroids.  But that doesn't mean I want a partner who is an arsehole, and there are plenty of valid reasons why my high school boyfriend and I would not be compatible as partners now.

All this is to say that my bitter belief that men are dicks may be self-reinforced by writing a profile that labels them as such preemptively and pushes them away.

When I was a child, I loved The Chronicles of Narnia.  Of course I became disenchanted with the books as soon as I was old enough to recognise the religious allegory.  I wasn't the only one—the collective disillusionment of secular readers who had grown up hopefully feeling the back walls of their closets became such a thing that it spawned The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia.

One of the religious references Lewis made in The Last Battle stuck with me for entirely secular reasons:  When the dead characters are exploring the book's version of heaven—a warm, sunlit, endless, idyllic landscape of plenty—they see a group of dwarfs huddled together, convinced that they are in a dank, dark stable.  The sceptical dwarfs believe that the delicious food and wine are hay and water.  Aslan explains that they are prisoners of their own minds.  The message that Lewis was imparting was about religious faith, but the scene can be interpreted in an entirely different fashion.  In every area of life and human interaction, we view the world through our own lens of expectations.  If, like me, you don't trust anyone, you will see all around you confirmation that people are untrustworthy, but the reverse is also true.  How can two people find proof of opposing views?  We ignore information, not least in politics and relationships, that contradicts our biases and expectations.  Thus, it stands to reason that in holding a cynical attitude about men, I attract men who confirm that critical view.

Am I going to revise my profile to overcome confirmation bias?  No.  I am who I am.  They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.  But I'm not trying to catch flies, and flies aren't that picky:  They'll swarm around shit as readily as honey.  I'm looking for someone who prefers the tart sharpness of the vinegar.

More Tales From The Trenches

(You can read my first post about online dating, in which I explain the dick pic phenomenon, here.)

"Is racism a deal-breaker?"

The genesis of this post lies in the moment I observed that I was asking myself that question in all seriousness.

It happened after speaking with an online suitor who ticked so many of the boxes (even ginger!) that I found myself unusually hopeful and optimistic.  But over the course of a two hour conversation, during which he asked me zero questions, it became clear that he held some racist views.  We left it that I would call him if I were still interested and I found myself considering it.  I mean, if he ticked other boxes, was believing that other races were intellectually inferior to whites something I could overlook?

It was one of those step-back-and-look-at-yourself moments that makes you question your entire life path since conception.

I have already explained in another post that I embarked on this online dating lark for two reasons only: 1) I want financial security but I have no chance of achieving it on my own; and 2) I want biological children before ye olde eggs spoil and I cannot afford to be a SPBC—new acronym I just learned: Single Parent By Choice.

Dating in such a time-sensitive, calculating way has proven distasteful.  One of the best pieces of advice my mother ever gave me was never to be emotionally or financially dependent upon a man.  As a feminist, the idea of needing a man for his money is anathema. On the emotional side, "I've had enough so-so for the rest of my life" but the dictates of biology and finances don't give me the luxury of waiting.

Add to this some recent discussions about men amongst friends and online:  Increasing numbers of women are describing themselves as "happily" widowed or divorced, declaring themselves "post-men" or otherwise not seeking out relationships.  The general consensus seems to be that men are not worth the hassle—if you don't need one to co-parent or help pay the bills, then you are better off single.

If I am questioning whether I would seek out a new relationship if I were independently wealthy, and if many women are choosing not to date, that is a pretty depressing indictment of half the population.  There have to be some advantages to being in a relationship, right?  Most couples are together for financial reasons, but surely not all of them?  I could think of a few possibilities:  I occasionally have to move heavy objects.  It would be nice to get a lift when I have to take my car to the garage for repairs.  It would be useful to have someone to watch the house, take care of the cat, and water the plants when I go out of town.  I need daily massages.  I like to have someone to cook and bake for who appreciates it.  But none of those things requires a romantic partner, or even a male.  (And I've never met one willing to reciprocate a massage.)  Sex?  Horniness is a constant problem but I've only fucked four men in my entire life, so clearly I am not the casual sex type.  I've never had a one-night stand but one obviously does not need to be in a LTR to have sex.  Intimacy?  I've yet to date a man capable of it so that's not guaranteed in a relationship.

I posed the question about the value of relationships in a private, candid online forum populated by thousands of thoughtful women over 40.  I expected a poignant stream of responses describing the joys of coupledom that were eluding me, anecdotes, and odes to concerned, supportive partners that would restore my faith in relationships.  Or, at the very least, give me some less cynical views on dating.

I think you can guess what happened.

At this point, I don't expect to meet anyone online.  I am overwhelmed with messages (I respond to about one out of 100) but it's easy to dismiss anyone who does not tick every box on my list.  A 51-year-old man from CT messaged me yesterday and his profile reflected a well-earned cynicism about online dating: "What's so frustrating is that [after 7 years on this dating site] I have to qualify myself to mostly antisocial, contemptuous, vainglorious, standoffish, superficial, narcissistic, aloof, fickle women...Which I refuse to do. Ladies, you should be lucky to meet/date me." I can understand his frustration; I'm yet another woman who is going to see that he is only 5'8" and balding, and never write back to him.  Yet, if I met that guy in another context, perhaps he would have some qualities that might inspire compromise or there might be chemistry that overrides every other consideration.  Well, not him, he's clearly an asshole, but I mean any guy to whom I don't deign to reply based on a 5 second glance at his photo and profile. 

OTOH, I could have great chemistry with someone I met in person who turns out to be unsuitable – maybe he doesn't want kids or he doesn't have enough money.  That would suck, but at least I have a better chance in person of meeting someone whom I like rather than who ticks boxes, who inspires me to view a potential relationship other than as a necessary evil.

More Dubious Than Desperate

I was savouring Laura Kipnis’s snarky book review until I read this:

"Over dinner recently, an acquaintance (single and approaching a certain age) returned repeatedly to the theme of not wanting to be coupled. She wondered why people kept insisting she get coupled, and proleptically bemoaned how much narrower her life would be were she coupled. What I heard was someone desperate to couple.”

Oh shit, are my musings about whether I really want to be in a relationship a sign that I am secretly yearning for one?  Doth this lady protest too much?

After confronting that possibility and considering it from various angles, I think not.  Questioning the merit of another LTR is genuine, based on my particular life experiences.  And I mean my experiences since birth, not just my own LTRs:  Our expectations for relationships are formed by observing our parents.  Looking at my parents and grandparents, I don’t have good models.  Amongst my contemporaries, few of my friends are happily coupled.  From my personal experience, the two LTRs in my adult life were object lessons in disappointment, exercises in lowering expectations, adjusting to the miserable reality that was forged by our individual shortcomings.  In entering the dating scene again, looking for a potential third LTR, I would have to be singularly unintrospective not to question whether I wanted another LTR and, if so, why and what for.

I have been earnest in considering whether I value certain features of relationships, like love and intimacy, that are taken for granted as desirable.  My motivation has been the distasteful undertaking of goal-oriented online dating.  Because I must stay focused on finding someone with money, who wants kids right away, I know I will have to compromise in other areas.  That naturally leads to consideration of what my deal-breakers are and what I'd be looking for if money and the biological clock weren’t overriding concerns.  Would I be looking for anyone at all or are practical needs my only motivation for dating?  It would have been myopic not to wonder and I think one is allowed a certain amount of navel-gazing after the demise of two LTRs that together comprise most of my adult life.

Most alarming to me is that it was my partner in both cases who ended the relationship despite the fact that I was miserable in both LTRs once it became undeniable that my partners were too fucked up to engage in any type of adult relationship at all.  I was prepared to grit my teeth and stick it out each time.  That’s disturbing.  In both cases, I should have left years earlier.  In fact, I should have heeded warning signs from the beginning and never let them become such serious long-term entanglements.  What the hell does that say about me?  Nothing good, that’s for sure.  I need to be careful not to do that again.  Yet how to avoid it if my main motivation is financial stability?  So you see, I have to give this relationship business some honest thought.  Neither partner was capable of intimacy and I was evidently prepared to live without that.  So, can I honestly claim that intimacy is something that I need from my next relationship?  Can I even state unequivocally that it is something I am capable of myself?

Likewise love: I never loved City Boy, which made me sad at the time (it’s not something you can force - believe me, I tried) but it was also a safeguard, a protection from future pain.  (I have taken to heart the scene in one of my favourite movies when the protagonist announces her engagement and her mother asks if she loves him.  When she replies in the negative, her mother says “good”.  When City Boy left, my mother scoffed that she'd never been in love nor depended on any man and it served me right for being stupid enough to depend, emotionally or financially, on a male.  She was right.)  Yet, not loving him didn’t stop me from going through hell when he left.  (In the same film, when the fiancé-she-doesn’t-love breaks their engagement, he says, “In time you will see that this is the best thing,” which is true, but her reply is priceless: "In time you'll drop dead and I'll come to your funeral in a red dress.”)

In contrast, I was smitten with Country Boy yet I later realised that I was in love with the person I wanted him to be, not who he was.  So, was that really love?  That question has perturbed me ever since.  Add to this a third variable:  I later loved someone who was unsuitable for a relationship for several insurmountable reasons.  Feelings don't make things work out in the real world, despite what the songs say.  (“The storybooks are bullshit!”  Ok, ok, I’ll stop now but that is the greatest speech.)

Solving for that equation, what do we learn about the importance of love in a LTR?  I didn’t love my partner in my longest relationship and was prepared to stay in it forever anyway.  And it didn’t save me from pain at the demise of the relationship.  I didn’t love the person my prior partner turned out to be, although I figured I'd made my choice and would just live with it anyway.  And love alone doesn’t make someone a suitable partner; practical considerations must always trump feelings in real life.  Add up emotions, subtract misconceptions, divide by reality, and solving for X tells me that love is not a necessary ingredient in a LTR.

It seems heretical to say that intimacy and love aren't required, just money and willing sperm.  Temperamentally, I'm the last woman on earth who is a suitable candidate to be a trophy wife, and I'm reaching the outer limits of fuckability agewise, so the whole enterprise just seems absurd and humiliating.  I'm a realist—I'm never going to earn enough money to buy my own horse farm or have a child on my own—but I am also a feminist who has never had a penny of support from a man.  My OCD would be a challenge for someone to live with and I'm also introverted to the point of needing to spend most of my time alone.  My motto is "I'd rather be right than liked", which has never gone over well in the in-law dept.  I'm hornier than my partners can keep up with, which, snickering aside, is a more significant issue than you might imagine.  Not to mention that I deeply resented, in both LTRs, doing all of the housework, shopping, cooking, etc., despite paying over half the expenses. 

Given all that, it would be odd, as I vet candidates, if I didn't query the value of relationships.  I don’t see how I could reenter the dating market without asking these kinds of questions.  I suppose one could bumble along brightly with a “third time’s the charm” optimism but I seem to be more Wednesday Addams than Pollyanna.

Familiarity is not Intimacy

Familiarity is not intimacy.

Lying awake one night recently, that line popped into my head.  It explains much.  I've had two long-term partners in my adult life, one for 7 years, one for 13.  I thought each was permanent and considered myself as good as married.  But each relationship was lacking fundamental elements that I always took for granted were part of long-term relationships.  As I attempt to vet and select a third life partner, something I never expected to have to do, I've been considering what was missing in previous relationships and evaluating if it's important in my next one. The answers have been somewhat surprising.

With the perspective of hindsight, I have concluded that there was no true intimacy in either relationship, but I did not realise that at the time because I mistook familiarity for intimacy.  When you live with someone for years—especially in a tiny studio apartment—when you hear all their stories about the big and small humiliations of their childhood and learn, in post-coital conversations, how each scar, physical and emotional, occurred.  When you've seen everything from their baby photos to their primary school report cards and the refrigerator art their mother saved.  When you've met the exes they are still friends with and their childhood best friend.  When you've seen their full emotional spectrum, not to mention seen them with food poisoning.  When you know their habits and preferences so well that you can order for them and shop for them and be spot-on every time.  When you can finish their sentences, and know exactly how they will react to situations and events.  When you have seen them naked, and seen them cum, and explored every inch of their body.  When you have watched them become disillusioned as they self-sabotage themself out of their dreams and ambitions.  When you know their demons, and how and why they are slaves to feeding them.  When you have travelled with them, endured rental car breakdowns in foreign countries, lost luggage, inopportune illnesses, the odd concussion or a few stitches, not to mention a miscarriage, or the death of a family member.

When you have lived in – proximity – to someone through years of life events, good and bad, and they have asked you to pop that zit in the middle of their back, it's easy to assume you are intimate with that person.  But that's not necessarily the case.  Intimacy is more than familiarity, it is a connection that must be forged through love.  It takes empathy, patience, understanding, some form of trust and caring, to build intimacy.  Intimacy is a much deeper bond than familiarity.  You can have familiarity without intimacy.  Is the reverse possible?  Can you be truly intimate with someone with whom you are not extremely familiar?  It doesn't sound probable, but I can't say for sure.

Why were my relationships lacking intimacy?  The easy answer is that it was not something that my partners understood, valued, or sought in a relationship.  Intimacy requires self-esteem, a deep-seated belief that you are worthy.  It was not something either was capable of.  Am I?  I don't know.  Is it important then, when online dating, for me to find a man who seeks intimacy and is capable of creating it?  In my twenties, I would have replied yes, of course, that such a connection is the essence of true love and the secret to long-term contentment with a partner.  But then, in my twenties I was blindly hopeful about so many things in life.

Now, I don't think that I would pursue any relationship if I had financial stability and the means to have a child on my own.  Taking care of a child is so demanding that I don't see how any woman can take care of a man as well.  I don't want to waste my time cleaning up after some asshole, I have things to do, life to live.  It seems like a drag, to have to deal with someone's issues and messes—I have enough of my own to deal with.  Not to speak of the expense.  I've always paid more than half the household expenses and done 100% of the housework, and relationship work.  It's draining and costly and what's in it for me?

So, to be brutally honest about it, if I wouldn't be seeking a relationship if I had money, is intimacy something I really value at this stage of my life?  It is always difficult to conjure a counterfactual in the real world but, it's possible that I am wrong in my belief that I would not be looking for a partner if I were rich.  I tell myself I only want a man for the financial stability and the baby daddy aspects of a relationship.  Why would I take on the headache and the hassle otherwise?  I'm too set in my ways to live with someone and I find myself less and less willing to compromise on anything.  It's my way or the highway.  People make adjustments, sacrifices, concessions to fit a partner into their homes and lives.  I can't imagine any reason to do that if I were independently wealthy; I can't see any positives to a relationship.  That's not normal; most people want a partner because they are lonely or bored.  I don't think I've ever been lonely or bored in my entire life.  I live for solitude and down-time.  That signals that I must lack a craving for intimacy.

But, the truth is, I simply can't think past the practical things because they loom so immutably.  I can't hear anything else for the increasingly deafening tick of the biological clock, or think of anything but juggling which utilities I pay each month so I don't accidentally not pay the same one two months in a row.  So, it may be that I would still put up an online dating profile if I were rich, I'd just have the freedom to look for other things in a partner than his solvency and desire to procreate.  I think one of the reasons I haven’t found anyone permanent yet is because I hate this focused, targeted dating, the weeding out of anyone who seems intellectually compatible but is poor or is certain he doesn't want kids.  It feels calculating but that doesn't bother me as I am calculating by nature.  Could it be that, deep down, I do want intimacy in a relationship and balk at settling for another relationship without it?  If so, I need to get past that.  This is a time in my life to be practical, not ask for the moon.

What forges a connection?

“For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” 
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Before Facebook, there were email lists (via Yahoo! Groups and other hosts) to connect with other horse-crazy lunatics people who shared your interests or profession.  I subscribed to groups for opera singers and early music lovers, knitters, Alaskan Malamute owners, political scientists, with subgroups for environmental policy and constitutional law, and, of course, a group dedicated to Friesians.

The Friesian list was global but it was started by a Friesian breeder in Australia so the list had a high proportion of Aussies.  I joined in 1997, which was 16 years before I had a Friesian of my own.  I lived vicariously through the experiences of other listees, as did other members who were Friesian-less.

List members would come and go, and ugly spats occasionally ensued, but a core of frequent contributors grew to share off-topic personal info – marriages, divorces, babies, moves, job changes, accidents, cancers, etc. – in addition to all the Friesian talk.  One U.S. listee even took her honeymoon in Oz so she could meet list members there.  Questions from newbies about caring for those long, thick manes and tails (it's a full-time job) and keeping black coats from getting sunbleached (not possible unless you only let your horse outside at night), came up so often some list members compiled FAQs.  The best posts were about someone finally living their Friesian dream, or going on their first Friesian ride, with the obligatory photos sporting the "Friesian grin".  Worst were the panicked colic posts, when we waited with our hearts in our mouths for news, which was always bad – Friesians rarely survive colic.

People would also post about the illnesses and deaths of their non-equine family members – dogs, parents, etc.  The problem with a large global list was that there was always someone celebrating a joyous event – the purchase of their first Friesian, the birth of their first foal, a first premie award at keuring – at the same time someone else was experiencing the death of a beloved Friesian or other personal tragedy.  It was an emotional roller coaster.  Some days, I could not face the list, knowing that my emotions would be buffeted by events out of my control, happening to people and horses I had never met.

Oh, I did meet some people.  I've met most list members in New England, and their Friesians.  I experienced my first Friesian ride (yes, I posted the inevitable Friesian grin photo) thanks to a list member, and the memorial portraits of my dogs are by list members, one in NH and one in Oz.  The artist in NH used to have a booth at Equine Affaire, in which she hired me to work each year.  I've made friends, both equine and human, thanks to the list.

Once we all started connecting on Facebook, the list petered out.  It still exists, but posts are rare.  Most conversation has moved to Fb, either on personal pages or in the various Friesian groups.  It's easier to connect on Fb but more diffuse as there are dozens of Friesian groups and none replicates the environment of the list, which felt closed and close-knit, even though there could have been any number of lurkers, just like on Fb.

I mention this because last month a list member in Oregon had her barn roof collapse under the weight of unaccustomed snow, killing 5 of her 6 horses.  I don't know how she and her daughter are coping with such a devastating loss.  I followed the disaster on Fb, cringing at the photos in helpless horror.  I found my heart going out to someone I barely know, have never met in real life, and probably never will.

Members are diverse; the only thing we have in common is a love of Friesians.  There are a lot of right-wingers.  This wasn't as apparent on the list, when things like politics and religion were almost never discussed.  But everyone's views are on display on Facebook.  Horse owners are often rural people in red states, with pick-up trucks and without a college education.  It's to be expected they'd be guns'n'god types but the recent election tested some online friendships.  Listees who are gay saw "marriage is between one man and one woman" posts from other members, views that would never have been apparent on the list.  Can liking the same horse breed overcome these sorts of differences in an increasingly polarised climate?  The list member whose barn roof collapsed had recently un-friended me.  I have no idea what I said to offend her, but I can only assume it's linked to the election—my anti-Trump posts have been frequent and scathing.

Of course, the bigger picture window into other's lives afforded by Fb also shows how good some people are.  One listee has turned out to be one of the nicest, most kind-hearted and deserving-of-all-good things people I have ever known.  She is in Oz, so it's unlikely I will ever meet her, unless the plane ride gets a lot shorter and the wildlife gets a lot less homicidal.

They have bad brush fires in Australia, just like in southern California.  Every year as the fires rage in both places, listees in those locales are expected to check in and let everyone know they're ok.  Yesterday the super kind listee told us the nearest fires to her were moving slowly in another direction and local authorities had assured everyone that there was no need to prepare to evacuate.

Next post she is explaining that wind picked up, shifted direction, and the fire is at her property line.  She got her kids, her dogs, and as many of her chickens as she could and evacuated with only the clothes on her back.  She had a hauler coming to evac her two Friesians and she wondered why it wasn't arriving.  As she was forced to flee, she passed a road block – on the only road to her place – through which the police would not let the trailer pass.

Needless to say, she spent a sleepless night in the evacuation centre with her family, practically puking from the fear and horror of imagining the great loves of her life being barbequed alive.

“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” 
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

She posted this Thursday night and my dreams were haunted by fears for her horses and chickens left behind.  I couldn't grab my phone fast enough when I woke up Friday morning.  The news reported that 15 houses had burned to the ground and the smoke was too thick to speculate about animals.  Finally, a neighbour got through and was able to inform her that her house was still standing, albeit with burn marks on the brick and the downspouts melted.  Every fence and outbuilding and piece of vegetation on the property was burned to the ground.  The chicken coop and yard were just ashes, along with her favourite rooster, Charlie, three younger cockerels, some beloved hens, and 12 baby chicks.  Her hay shed was toast, along with all her hay, feed, and tack and equipment for her horses.

The only thing standing was the fence to the horse pasture, because it was made of steel.  And moving slowly on burned feet and with pained lungs, looking like ghostly apparitions through the haze, came the two pieces of her heart she'd been forced to leave behind.  Every patch of ground, every tree and bush in their field was charred and smoking.  I can't imagine how terrified they must have been.  No-one knows how they survived.  I can only assume they stood in the pond in the middle of their pasture.

When she posted that photo, sent to her by her neighbour, I was at the gym, on a bike, waiting for class to start.  But I cried—tears of relief for the horses, and of sadness for the chickens.  I have not met this woman and I probably never will.  But I cared deeply that these horses survived; I've heard so much about them for the last 20 years, I feel like I know them.  I felt her wrenching fear for their fate all night.  I don't particularly want to; I can't take on the weight of everyone else's troubles in the world, especially when there is nothing I can do but worry helplessly.

"To perceive is to suffer" - Aristotle

I can't say why the Friesian list has become so much tighter than other online groups.  I can't say why I care about animals, and to some extent people, I've never met.  (There have certainly been scammers on the list, people who were not who they portrayed themselves to be.  I never fell for them—my innate distrustfulness and shrewdness come in handy sometimes.)  But it seems to be human nature to put yourself in others' shoes and imagine how you'd feel if it were your babies in that fire.  This isn't a political post but it makes the callousness of the right more galling, the lack of empathy.  And it sure as hell makes me wish my little fuzzy guy wasn't so far away so I could hug him now.

Valentine's Day is the kick in the arse some relationships need

It's hip to hate on V-Day.  All the cool couples scorn it.  It's passé, a cheesy Hallmark holiday to sell overpriced roses and waxy chocolate, an obligatory sex day even if it falls on a work night and your back hurts from shovelling all that snow.  Besides, if you need a greeting card company to remind you to express affection to your partner, your relationship has problems ain't no annual blow job gonna fix.

Take note, guys: Most women would rather have a dozen orgasms than a dozen roses.

All men hate Valentine's Day.  At least, I have yet to meet one who doesn't.  My ex refused to even acknowledge its existence.  Despite having had two long-term relationships in my adult life, the only Valentine's Day gift I've ever received was from a high school boyfriend who gave me chocolate-covered strawberries.  Strawberries are not exactly in season in Chicago in February, so they probably tasted like Styrofoam but, at 16, I thought it was pretty sweet a boy had gone to Godiva to get me something.  (30 years later, he now hates V-Day, too.)

"Sex tonight?  Aw, sorry, honey, I can't.
I have to clip my toenails & do my taxes."

Guys give the same reason for rejecting the holiday:  Forced displays of affection are meaningless.  I agree.  For the couple getting each other generic gifts, like the cliché of the executive who has his secretary order a dozen roses for his wife every year, it is meaningless.  But, even if you choose not to celebrate it, there is a lesson couples can take from V-Day, if you apply a little perspective to the holiday.  I first wrote a defence of Valentine's Day 14 years ago, the gist of which was:  No, you cannot feel emotions on command, nor should you.  Yes, you and your partner should have sexy romantic fun time and give each other random gifts throughout the year.  But life gets in the way.  Couples with the best of intentions to make time for each other, to keep the romance alive, to have other than perfunctory weekly sex, don't.  Responsibilities, from work to kids to housework, family, friends, hobbies, binge-watching Netflix, sleeping, take priority.  You may even feel guilty taking time for yourselves as a couple—spending money on dinner out or a babysitter, or staying up late to fuck.  Valentine's Day isn’t going to repair a broken relationship.  It's not going to reawaken sexual desire or feelings of warmth and affection, but if they're there, just pushed onto a backburner, it is an excuse to make your relationship a priority, guilt-free.  You can go out for dinner and agree not to talk about the kids or the mildew problem in the basement, hold hands and flirt like when you were dating, schedule a hot tub and massage and then go home and fuck without worrying about being tired in the morning.

This unisex card has the perfect message.

In that way, it's not so much forcing you to feel emotions based on the calendar as providing an excuse to express ones that are already there.  If the day itself doesn't work for you — maybe a kid is sick or one of you has a major work deadline or it's just too cheesy — use it as a reminder to schedule that time at the first opportunity.  If you find you don't want to, that's a red flag.  You don't have to celebrate or acknowledge V-Day at all but if the thought of having any kind of a date night leaves you cold, the relationship may be dead and you just didn't notice.  It may be possible to resuscitate it or it may be time to move on.  Either way, don't hit snooze and ignore the wake-up call.

Any holiday can be made political if you try hard enough.

Shy about expressing your desires?
Make some of these.

I used to write a sex advice column in the persona of a dominatrix.  For a completely unserious lark, the column received a lot of serious questions.  By far the most common one was "I'd like to try <insert sexual activity> but I'm afraid to ask my partner."  V-Day, or its personalised substitute, if you prefer to use your birthday, anniversary, Arbor Day, etc., provides an excuse to kick a routine sex life up a notch.  If you don't feel comfortable straight-up asking for what you want, you can pen it as a fantasy, draw a picture, make coupons, or, if all else fails, there's always alcohol and handcuffs.

(That last was a joke – not suggesting anything non-consensual.)

If you agree as a couple to ignore Valentine's Day, that's your prerogative.  But in my experience it's usually the guy who wants to disregard it and the woman goes along because she has no counterargument and she wants to seem cool and not sappy or needy.  Ladies, here's your response.  Gentlemen, bear in mind that this is the one holiday that is guaranteed to get you laid.  How can you not dig that?

If you're not sore for the next few days, you need to 'celebrate the holiday' again.