Eliminating the Dream

There's a drastic difference in dating when we talk about men and women, and it's probably based on the patriarchal society more so than personalities.  Since most of my friends have been guys because of work over the last 30 years, I've noticed the differences and for the most part decided the main difference works against online dating... for women.  What is the difference?  Men eliminate. Women dream up. 

So first let me explain. When movies say most women have decided in person in the first few minutes whether a man even has a chance, most women will nod emphatically, even me.  But it's part of the patriarchy.  Women for hundreds, even thousands of years, would get a chance introduction, not be allowed to have any real or meaningful conversations and have to answer a marriage proposal.  Read any classic about women, particularly in the 1800's when women were finally able to write about it.  Men who had only a glimpse of a woman would come to see her at her parents, maybe stroll along a garden or just sit on a porch with her for less than an hour and then propose in the next day or so.  Women had to draw pictures in their minds based on these short encounters on whether or not to give their whole entity to this man.  Rebuking an offer often wasn't even an option for some women.  A great example is from one of my favorite books where the heroine is asked by a man only less than a couple days after meeting him to marry him.  She refuses and is warned she might not get another offer.  Later, her best friend accepts an offer from the man only a few days later with her friend explaining this offer is probably her last chance since she's not as strong, pretty, etc as the heroine.  Okay. Got it. We have had this ingrained into us from a young age and most of us don't even think about it.  It's natural after centuries of it being a cultural norm. Women make a more snap decision on men and tend to see the best qualities first. 

Men, on the other hand, typically didn't have to make any decisions at all. The more money they had, the better looking, women were drawing perfect pictures of them. They hardly had to try.  Just a hundred years ago men needed nothing but a large income and other men would pay them dowries to take daughters off their hands. Men could be more choosey.  They could hold out for prettier, smarter if that's what they wanted, more docile, less docile.... They could hold out for decades and never be rebuked for not marrying, never referred to as a "burden" on the family because of not marrying and not being able to work. As a result, men in general are eliminating.  

What do I mean by eliminating?  Men tend to look at women for our faults or even what they decide makes us "out of their league".  On one occasion a guy spoke to me for about 45 minutes, nice looking, good job, seemed alright.  When I told him I was an engineer, he asked what my degree was in. When I told him mechanical engineering? He looked disappointed and said "oh you're too smart for me" and excused himself politely although fairly abruptly. My education level compared to his own "eliminating" me from further effort in his mind. One of the guys I grew up with "eliminated" almost every woman.  She could be beautiful, smart, friendly, literally near perfect; he would find something wrong with her.  He reminded me of Eddie Murphy in "Boomerang". Eddie's character obsesses over "perfect feet" and ends up played as a result. Men can become fixated on their version of perfect and eliminate near perfection.  

How does this affect online dating?  Women talk, text for a bit, they've got a picture, probably more like a movie short, of what a man is.  Women dream up the man they've been communicating with.  Often by the time they meet, if there's any attraction on the woman's part, she's got this version of who he is in her head.  He could tell her anything, true or not. She really can't be sure because most things we learn about each other over time.  The picture is there nonetheless after centuries of grooming.  Men don't really have a picture in their minds of what she is, but rather a picture in their minds of what they see as perfect.  Men are comparing to that picture, whether it's realistic or not.  Online dating means they have a plethora of women to choose from.  No one is measuring up, so next.  Women now are forced to hedge their bets because men always have been able to hedge their bets. 

Women don't usually hedge their bets. In the past women who rebuked or refused a man who was considered viable by their father was often chastised as being full of herself, warned she might not get another offer, but worse? If they had multiple suitors at the same time, society frowned on that if she seemed to take her time picking one.  Men could just go house to house until someone said yes, if they were so inclined.  So internet dating gives them a never ending row of houses.  Let's not get into the 20 something females, some fake, some real, trolling for sugar daddies making this whole fiasco even more complicated.  Or the catfish just using other people's pictures because they are bored, manipulative, lonely, whatever.  Just the real people using online dating are going to have enough problems without the fakes out there pretending to be perfection. 

Does this all sound jaded?  Yes and no.  I'm kind of sick of it, yes.  But long term, not in my lifetime and certainly not with men my age, this will balance out.  Younger women are better educated, generally have their own jobs, self sufficient, don't need a man to have a home.  They can literally buy their own now, but in actuality, this is all very, very new in societal terms.  Just 50 years ago, a young woman, never married, not living at home with her parents? Buying her own home? This was very upsetting to people usually.  I'm not joking. We have come a long way, ladies.  These norms have shifted and over the next 50 years so will dating. We see it already. Millennials and the Zs are marrying later and tend to have more stable marriages than Boomers have. Their expectations not the same so online dating for them to tends to work a bit better.  

There's a bigger problem with online dating and it's the "addiction" of something better out there.  A female acquaintance said to me once of a guy she met online, "if I could land this guy, maybe I could find even a better fit (guy)".  What she meant was this guy wasn't her dream, so maybe she could start over with a new guy and a new dream of his imaginary perfection.  I had a guy I used to work with just bragged how many women slept with him.  He had no intention of giving that up.  He eliminated women as soon as he got into their pants.  In the past, at least based on the norms, we knew better than to give up on near perfection because there might not be another opportunity.  In online dating, there's always another opportunity.  

Now I know online dating is about the only way to actually meet anyone anymore. Most men don't talk to women in public anymore. There's no ego attachment to being ignored or rejected online. Move on to the next profile.  In person, there was always that crash and burn in front of the other guys you know possibility.  Women playing the eye contact game, again up until maybe 50 years ago.  Can't do that with online dating.  It's really taken the personal out of one of the most personal things we do in our lives.  

Probably why I've never gone out on more than a couple dates with anyone I've met online. Literally, it's been a total waste of my time. I have never dated anyone seriously that I met online. This blog started with laughs over some of the most ridiculous dates I had from online dating.  I've never made any real friends from online dating either.  Unlike a lot of people, I can honestly say, I've never even been intimate with anyone I've met online and I figured out why.  I can't dream up the perfect fit for some guy I've never met in person.  I know other women can but I can't do it.  Online dating let's me be more like all the guys I've worked with and am friends with over the years. I'm eliminating. 

In fact, based on a recent dating experience, I'm even eliminating in person now.  Not that I wasn't able to dream him up better than the guy is. But I was quick to see where he didn't live up to that.  It was work trying to decide how to handle that while getting frustrated by what a total shitbag he actually is. It's one thing to watch the dream picture we see initially fade and have a guy be a good guy overall.  It's a reckoning when you have realized he's actually a shitbag on top of it. Would it matter if I wasn't eliminating?  I mean really. I know other women that hold onto their illusions still.  I mean dream and keep dreaming.  So much for my fairy tale ending. 

But you're darker than I am...

Why, why oh why, would Trump women even exist?  I mean the open misogyny was disgusting. He has more open ties than any other man in the country to Jeffrey Epstein.  No one woman with any knowledge of this could possibly back a man to the point that they would vote for a man like that.  But 56% did in 2016... and 63% did in 2020.  I know, for the average minority women and the almost 40% other white women (yes that 63% represents only white women), we all stood by expecting them to vote against the female hate.  I guess this is how the suffragettes felt.  What women would actively protest against women getting the Right to vote?  The same ones that would actively back the policies of the far right that Trump has become a God over.  So, we need to decide what and why. 

First why do we need to understand them? Who cares?  Well, unfortunately, the reality is Trump's control over white men dropped from election to election, and it took a drastic drop after the insurgence at the Capitol.  But white women?  Not as much, let alone the increase from election to election.  There's something wrong that any women would vote against themselves, but it goes deep and we have to acknowledge it.  

Women, a large majority, have all of self value tied to our looks, and whether we like to admit it or not, to our "color".  I know this because I'm not different than anyone else.  I am the spitting image of my mother when she was younger and even her last living brother will tell you he sees her when he looks at me.  My mother was Polish and German. The family roots with direct DNA and historical links to Berlin, Warsaw and Lviv (used to be Poland, now Ukraine). My mother's skin was a slight shade lighter than mine but not once I stayed out of the sun.  My ex sister in law and I were often mistaken as sisters.  She very Italian looking but half Scottish and half Italian.  Both of us always thought of ourselves as "white" but because she spoke fluent Spanish (and her looks) people often assumed she was Hispanic.  Neither of us ever liked that.  I have to be honest. It's simply because of the way people say it when they incorrectly assume. They're being assholes.  It's never genuine curiosity.  It's always peppered before and after with insults.  Before because they're racist f**ks and after because they are positive in their own pea brains you're lying. They couldn't possibly be wrong. God friggin forbid. So we get taught early and over and over our looks, but even our skin color means something to someone. 

Except I grew up in a large Slavic area. Polish, Hungarians, lots and lots of various Slavic decent, and lots of full blooded Germans, mostly Berlin decent.  My grandfather was 6'5-6'6" and dark blonde hair, somewhat olive and his entire family (and our DNA proves) is almost entirely back to Berlin.  (We won't get into how tight knit German Americans were for almost a century leading up to WWII.  Three of my grandfather's cousins answered the call to the Fatherland in the 1930s.). I'm so German my grandfather would speak German to me when I was little. 

Now I've met German decent folks in the South.  Yeah, they have no idea what I'm talking about. Lutheran churches are almost non existent compared to the Great Lakes.  They complied with not speaking German or being looked at like aliens and going up North where it didn't become a travesty until after WWI. 

Okay why all the history?  So I haven't been insulted about the color of my skin till Trump, by a wrong assumption of my race, until this idiot not since the last election, so let's call her Karen (it might be ironic if that was her real name, wouldn't it?).  She and I had similar experiences with men belittling our value at work. Poor, poor Karen. We had common ground. But her introduction of common ground was only preface to find out my race. She was quite convinced I was Native and quite flabbergasted that I told her I wasn't.  I know my background, even have had a DNA test done. She absolutely had to know what it said. No Native. She just "couldn't believe it".  Oh for fucks' sake Karen. Every one of you dumbasses.  My immediate thought was my sons are "whiter than you".  

Then I glanced down at our hands.  I'm whiter than she is.  I pointed it out. She was so flustered she started to argue her hand, her skin was actually lighter.  It was something with the lighting, which was aimed and shining brightly on both of our hands.  I held back laughing in her face.  I explained that pretty much all Slavic have olive tones.  Oh no, no, she insisted. I couldn't possibly be German. Her husband is German and Germans are blonde hair and blue eyed.  She went on about how her husband's family knew all their roots.  Nevermind that he was barely 5'6 to 5'8", dark brown hair, dark brown eyes--short and stocky.  Hardly blonde, blue eyed or tall. Nothing Arian about him.  I held back.  

Now she went into the open conspiracy theory nonsense, the media, every thing is a lie except Trump. Okay. I held in my laughter.  Come on honey. I did point out that since she was darker than me and she never had a DNA it was likely she had some Slavic or Eastern or Southern European like Italian or Greek. She was adamant she was Irish. Maybe I said but Irish don't have olive skin at all, and being the smart ass I am, again I pointed how how she was a shade or two darker than me.  Yeah, she might have been close to coming unhinged. I really didn't care.  Our common ground that we might have capitalized on in a sisterhood was way, way less important than her desperate need to be better than another woman. 

Welcome to who these women really are.  They really need to be better than other women so badly and find their value from men valuing them more than other women. They can't find the common ground with us because their value is nothing, still, without a man's approval and praise. Well, isn't that all of us?  

Well, yes at some level.  My grandfather and my father fed my ego well.  I don't need any man's praise on how I look. I look how I feel and like to look.  But I'm sure that's more because I still know what impressed the two of them. I know who I am and am secure in who I look like because of them. I don't need a random man's approval, and for better or worse, I don't need a man I date or marry to approve either. (They probably should if they're going to like being with me but that's really not about me so much as their security.). But it was clear, she needed her short, stocky husband's approval, at bare minimum. She also had tied herself to this belief system. She had to be better than me based on skin color and I'm guessing my nose. Which is sadly very Polish.  Several of my Polish Americans cousins (more Pole than me) have it too. In fact, if you look up Melania Trump at 14, that's me at 14.  So Melania and I would probably be pretty close in looks if she hadn't had bone shaved off the front of her skull. I don't know why women do this.  But I had a grandfather tell me all the time I reminded him of his favorite cousin and how beautiful I was. Pure German American cousin. So yeah, my security even with this poor little shallow thing who couldn't recognize her husband hardly represented the blond hair blue eyed stereotype she had of German.... While mind boggling, very telling.  

These women have no value other than the level of disrespect they temperate and tolerate.  Their value is tied to women like Farrah Fawcett and Marilyn Monroe.  Dye in a bottle.  Drug addicts.  Whores.  That is what we told them was sexy and deep in the darkest corners of their minds they still believe it even with all the evidence to the contrary.  What is more praising to misogyny, than convincing and confining women to being proud to be fake, fake hair color, fake bone structure, fake skin colors, and real whores and drug addicts?  Singing a sleezy version of happy birthday to one of two brothers you've screwed in front of the one's wife and the entire nation?? Falling over drunk and coked up in interviews with everyone from Barbara Walters to Johnny Carson to David Letterman?  This is who these women believe they should be. Should we be surprised that my counterpart and all that plastic surgery is appealing and defendable to them? 

Eh, but what do I know?  I don't have a man. Sure, but maybe that bar was set super high from the jump.  My grandfather told me how I could do anything a boy could do. How beautiful I was and how amazing I could be.  He told me take no crap. My father treated women with the utmost respect.  He deserved my mother's and step mother's respect because he treated them like they were the only women in the world that mattered to him, respectively. With examples and the confidence they instilled in me at a very young age? Are we surprised?  Really? I'm pretty sure my friend with her PhD would say my confidence is textbook level for a boy who's given all the love, support and confidence to be successful.  How sad is it that all of that is often used to attack me as a woman?  

So excuse me if Karen was laughable and a bit on my nerves when I gave it a thought. Her insecurities were why she insulted me, why she blew by our common ground and why it was so easy to aggravate her in response.... But it's also indictive of why 60% of white women voted for Trump.  He promised them they could be better than other women again, if only for the most shallow worthless reasons. When and how do we get them to look in the mirror and live and love themselves enough that shit doesn't matter and the only thing that matters is we all have been lessened by some man just because we are women and thousands of years we have been nothing but property?  Black men have suffered horrible injustices, but even now, black, white, purple, green, women get raped and it's us who get demonized.  And this Karen and all her other Karen friends voted twice for someone who wanted to keep us there. Literally more worried about being more "whiter" than uniting over our common ground.  And yeah Karen, I'm still "whiter than you".