Reader Question #23: Libido, come home!
Posted: February 28, 2011 Filed under: Captain Awkward's Dating Guide for Geeks, Darth Vader Boyfriend, Dating, Reader Questions, Relationships, Sex | Tags: Advice, cats, intern paul, libido, mfk fisher, Relationship Advice, sex advice, singleness 16 Comments »
Everyone dies alone, cat wee or no cat wee.
Dear Captain Awkward,
My libido has largely picked up and walked off somewhere else. I’m waiting for it to come back from a trip to the corner store to buy cigarettes, but so far it hasn’t showed up.
It started in my late twenties after a series of flopping relationships and three years later I’ve hit my thirties and haven’t had sex in about three years.
The trouble is, I’m at a point where I’m looking ahead at the rest of my life and I don’t really feel like dying alone with seventeen cats. I only have one now, but we know how this story usually goes. Plus, while I don’t miss sex, I do miss affection and sleeping in the same bed with someone.
I also miss my younger, more libidinous self. She was a lot of fun and I have some great stories because of her, but I genuinely don’t know if she’s ever going to open the front door, Fantasia’s in hand, or not.
I’ve thought about exploring sluthood. I think it might have the ability to re-awaken my dormant sexuality. But unfortunately, where my body goes, my heart often follows and I don’t want to put my emotions through the kind of rollercoaster it might entail (which, now that I think about it, may actually be why I stepped off the sluthood boat years ago). On the other hand, there’s a whole world of human experience, monogamous or slutty, I am missing out on and I think that sucks.
Option #1 sluthood=libido=emotional rollercoaster/soul-sucking loneliness and despair/fantastic sex/valuable life experience. Option #2 long-term relationship=no libido=companionship/awkward sex due to lack of libido/inflicting my lack of libido on some poor guy resulting in relationship trouble, or Option #3 get another cat.
Are there other options I’m missing?
Thanks,
Conflicted
Dear Conflicted:
I’m going to try to answer your question without once using the words “get your groove back,” but you need to do me a favor, too.
I don’t know how cats became the ultimate metaphor for sad, lonely spinsterhood and dogs became the symbol for carefree happy couplehood, but cats are just cats and dogs are just dogs. If you like cats, have a cat.
In my entire checkered past of dating, I’ve met exactly two dudes who were uncool with cats. One had a severe allergy. Understandable. One made a joke about how he was hoping that I didn’t have a cat, since I seemed really cool and he had trouble meeting cool chicks without cats, possibly as a Pick-Up-Artist-style trick to lower my self-esteem to get me to talk to him. You know how you don’t get me to talk to you? Pass off a shitty, lazy stereotype about single women in the hopes that I’ll try to prove that I’m not like all “those” women. I was exactly like “those” women. My answer was something like “Oh man! You’re right, I AM really cool, but I also have a cat. Too bad! We’ll never know what might have been.”
So your first step towards getting your mack back is to stop defining yourself as the the sad media picture of lonely single women whose singleness is a disease that needs to be cured and your cat is just one of the symptoms, like a furry tumor. Even in a joking, self-deprecating way. Even if Liz Lemon does it.
Recommended!
Posted: February 26, 2011 Filed under: Dating, Feminism | Tags: Awesome stuff that is awesome, Awkward Embraces, How to be a woman in a boy's club, recommendations, This Recording 5 Comments »Neat people recommended awesome stuff, which I am now recommending to you.
1) Awkward Embraces, a web series about geek dating, which my friend T. describes as “for (and by) geeky, smart, awkward (but not backwards) girls. We know who we are (were).” Sexy Typewriter, did you know about this? Sorry about your plans for the rest of the day.
Edited to Add: It’s come to my attention that the Awkward Embraces team is just $3000 shy of their goal to make season 2. Donate here if you’ve had someone smell your hair during a hug…or while standing too close on a subway ride.
2) How To Be A Woman In Any Boy’s Club, from This Recording, recommended by my friend B. Here’s an excerpt:
“What If I Love Being The Only Girl In The Boys Club? Megan Fox Syndrome, aka Wendy from Peter Pan. It is the delusion that you can become an official part of the boys’ club if you are its strictest enforcer, its most useful prole. That if you follow the rules exactly you can become the Official Woman. If you refuse other women admission you are denying that other women are talented, which makes you just as bad as any boys’ club for thinking there would only be one talented girl at a time.
You will never actually be part of the boys’ club, because you are a woman. You are Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. You are not Italian, therefore you are never going to get made. And you don’t want to be a part of the boys’ club, because it is dedicated to preserving its own privilege at your expense. Why wouldn’t you want to know and endorse the work of other women who share your interests? How insecure are you?
Drive It Like You Stole It: Be the best. That is, assuming that you are the best. Be the best you can possibly be, whatever that means to you. Absolutely do not step down in order to not threaten people. Don’t apologize. If you genuinely fucked up fine, you are allowed to apologize once but then stop apologizing. Think about how much you hear women apologizing for themselves for no reason, or being self-deprecating or self-abnegating out of habit. What the fuck are you apologizing for? For being too good?”
Read the whole thing – it’s for men, it’s for women, and from now on I will probably sneak it into the syllabus for my courses.
And now, Katharine Hepburn wishes you a good weekend, as do I.
Reader Question 22: I’m living out the European remake of 500 Days of Summer.
Posted: February 25, 2011 Filed under: Captain Awkward's Dating Guide for Geeks, Dating, Intern Paul, Reader Questions, Relationships, Sex | Tags: 500 Days of Summer, dating abroad, expat relationships, the Lutheran Corporate Tax Accountant 8 Comments »
People hear what they want to hear.
Dear Captain Awkward,
Reader Question #21: Why don’t my friends-with-benefits like being told that they are friends-with-benefits?
Posted: February 24, 2011 Filed under: Captain Awkward's Dating Guide for Geeks, Dating, Reader Questions, Relationships, Sex | Tags: casual sex, ethical slut, friends-with-benefits, how to tell a partner you only want sex, Sex, To His Coy Mistress 2 Comments »
Let's keep this logical between us.
Dear Captain Awkward,
I have just discovered your blog and I love it for many reasons. One of them is: I have somewhere to ask this question!
I am a young, single, straight, cis woman. In my capacity as such, I met a man a while ago — and by a while ago, I mean, like, July. Super cute, nerdy, funny, flirty in a way that is respectful of my boundaries, etc. But due to career-related shenanigans, we weren’t in the same city at the same time for a few months. However, once that resolved itself, we went on a date that resulted in what was either the best sex I’ve ever had, or the second-best. Hooray!
Despite the crazy-awesome-fantastic sex, however, I’m not into him in a dating way. I like spending time with him, but even thinking the word “dating” sets of my blinkers of Bad Idea. Partially it’s that there’s no conversational chemistry — it’s just “talking with you is nice before we get to the making out.” Partially it’s that he is a total flake, who can’t make plans to spend time with me in a useful fashion. (Like, text messages saying “Hey, what are you doing tonight?” sent at 7:30 on a Friday.) It’s been a while since we last hooked up, and I’m worried I missed the window of establishing fuckbuddyhood.
My question is this: when I’ve been interested in guys for casual, respectful, sex-based arrangements, I’ve found that telling guys that that’s what I want rarely goes well. I usually say something like, “I think you’re really awesome, and I like hanging out with you and having sex with you, but I don’t want an actual relationship with you,” and while that sounds fine to my ears, there’s clearly something I’m saying or doing that makes them uncomfortable, and thus less likely to make out with me. Is there a better way to go about this?
Thanks for reading.
– The Polite Nerd
Hello Polite Nerd!
I read what you are telling these lucky sometimes-lovers and it sounds so honest and straightforward and like you are being a good Ethical Slut and covering your bases and also exactly like stuff I have said to people in the past, however, I also thought “Oof, people do not like being told that no matter how true it might be, even if they feel exactly the same way.”
I think good sex comes less from skill and more from connection. When I was doing a lot of internet dating, one of the automatic dealbreakers was reading “I am very good at pleasing a woman“* in a man’s profile. Because:
- I’ll be the judge of that.
- I am never going to let you touch me there, because by writing that you are telling me that you have some weird “system” or “method” that you assume that you can transfer from woman to woman.
- Leading with that as one of your selling points tells me you are some mix of really insecure and really overconfident. Can’t we just talk about books or something and let that be a pleasant surprise?
So what you want in a sex partner, even in a friend-with-benefits situation, is someone who is easy to get along with, pays attention to how you work, can communicate about he works, and makes you feel safe and comfortable to be around,communicates honestly about safe sex, birth control, etc. Controlling for the occasional Zipless Fuck, it sounds suspiciously like you want someone who is actually your friend.
Has this guy ever indicated that he wants to have a traditional dating relationship and be your boyfriend? Or are you guys just “hanging out” and “listening to music” when you get a last-minute text on a day that your schedules happen to line up? Because that sounds like you already have the fuckbuddy-only relationship you seek. If you’re going to have an argument with him about how making last minute plans doesn’t work for you and he should be more respectful when arranging dates, but also that the word dating gives you a wiggins, that’s getting pretty close to an argument you’d have with someone you are evaluating as a boyfriend. If you’re fine just hooking up now and again, and he’s texted at an inconvenient time, you just say “Not tonight, sorry. Tuesday?” and go on with your day and then you fuck when you fuck. If he wanted to get more serious, you’d know, because he’d tell you, and then you’d have the opportunity to state your piece. But even then, I’d recommend asking him where he sees it going vs. telling him that it’s going nowhere. From what you describe, chances are you already on the same page.
Reader Question #20: Captain Awkward’s Emporium of Cutting Remarks
Posted: February 23, 2011 Filed under: Families, Inspiring, Manners, Quotes, Social Interactions | Tags: Captain Awkward's Emporium of Cutting Remarks, Cordelia Chase, Dorothy Parker, Downton Abbey, Julia Sugarbaker, Maggie Smith, Mame, Mean Girls, The Academy for Wayward Girls Who Want To Stay That Way 17 Comments »
"Tact is just not saying true stuff." - Cordelia Chase
Dear Captain Awkward,
Are there times when the FU should not be silent when telling people the STFU? If so, do you have a combat guide for mild-mannered ladies who wear pearls and read a lot of Jane Austen?
Wanting to Get out the Sticks and Stones
Oh, my ladylike friend, one day you will be on the subway and a creepy strange man will be leering at you and trying to talk to you, and where before you may have just tried to focus extra-hard on your book or retreated back into your happy place of recalling last night’s ball at Netherfield or mentally cataloging your spice rack, something will snap inside you and you will say “Listen, you creepy, disgusting motherfucker, why don’t you take five steps back from me because I just cannot handle your goddamn bullshit today” and it will feel fantastic.
Not everyone curses like a sailor in an extremely unprofessional manner, when, say, teaching a class on lighting for film and finding that every single light in the kit I’m using to demo is broken in a slightly different way. Invective might not roll off the tongue for you, which is okay, because people who are just learning to cuss end up sounding kind of cute when they try. It’s especially noticeable from novice actors and directors who attempt Mamet or Mamet-like (Mamet-ish? Mamet-y?) dialogue. They overemphasize the swears because the little kid inside them gets excited about saying them or they want to be dramatic, so the rejoinder to Creepy Subway Guy (above) comes out as “Listen, you creepy, disgusting MOTHER (pause) FUCKER, why don’t you take five steps back from me because I just cannot handle your GODDAMN (pause) BULLSHIT today.” Amateur hour.
Thankfully we have Miss Julia Sugarbaker to turn to in times of crisis. Look, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched an episode of Designing Women and I have no idea what she’s so mad about in this clip but I’m pretty sure I agree with every word she’s saying.
You might have to age into that some to get the right mix of patrician elocution and crazy eyes, but that just means it’s something to look forward to! Does anyone know if Dixie Carter attended some kind of Auntie Mame-training academy and, if so, can I go, too? Maybe there I can learn to cultivate pointed silence in the face of vapid absurdity.
If you want to ride down the middle of the road and can master a sufficiently cutting tone, here are some all-purpose phrases that might get you through a trying conversation if you’ve exhausted “Really,” “Wow,” and “What.”
- “Well, I’ll be doing the opposite of that, but thanks for your opinion.”
- “It’s amazing that you think that’s your business.”
- “Let’s just pretend this never happened. It will be less embarrassing for you.”
When I am rich and dead, teenage girls will get copies of The Portable Dorothy Parker and The Handmaid’s Tale* from my dead rich lady foundation, so that they learn exactly how depressing and terrifying life can be and develop the necessary sarcasm and drinking skills to cope. Dorothy Parker could bring the pain.
“So, you’re the man who can’t spell ‘fuck.‘”
-Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, ‘fug,’ in his 1948 book, “The Naked and the Dead.”
Buuuuuuuuuurn.
Have you been watching Downton Abbey? Because Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess Lady Grantham is delightful. When I use the word “cunty” to describe her character’s amazing ability to deliver a backhanded compliment, please believe that I mean to convey only respect and awe.
Lady Grantham: “You are quite wonderful the way you see room for improvement wherever you look. I never knew such reforming zeal.”
Mrs. Crawley: “I take that as a compliment.”
Lady Grantham: “I must’ve said it wrong.”
It seems what is required is to just remove one’s filter. Strip it right off. Why wait for dementia to set in when you could be enjoying an unfiltered life right now?
I hope you found this educational and improving. Shall we take a turn about the room?
*What else (besides Auntie Mame, can’t believe I left that off) should we add to the curriculum for the Academy for Wayward Girls Who Want To Stay That Way?
Blog Crush: Dear Sugar
Posted: February 22, 2011 Filed under: Advice Columns | Tags: dear sugar, things that are awesome 8 Comments »If you like advice columns (and I think you do) and seriously badass honest writing (and I think you do), you might want to read Dear Sugar.
My favorite recent thing she’s done is this letter to her younger self:
You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart.
…There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness
….One evening you will be rolling around on the wooden floor of your apartment with a man who will tell you he doesn’t have a condom. You will smile in this spunky way that you think is hot and tell him to fuck you anyway. This will be a mistake for which you alone will pay.
…Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.
…You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.
…The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.
Damn. Her writing reminds me of one of my favorite poems, that was a manifesto for a long time:
Rape: Awkward.
Posted: February 21, 2011 Filed under: Abuse, Dating, Enthusiastic Consent, Feminism, How Not To Be, Sex | Tags: Enthusiastic Consent, rape, victim-blaming 29 Comments »
Racist AND Sexist. Gross.
You guys, sorry to go all serious and unfunny on you, but I am incredibly creeped out at the news reports of what happened to the CBS News reporter* and her crew in Egypt, especially the ones that need to mention that she was an “attractive blonde” so that you can really, really picture it. Gross. Unfortunately, as you an see from our handy visual aid, the “Swarthy Foreigners Are Defiling Our Women” meme is nothing new.
If you’ve got a strong stomach and a nice padded place for when you give up on humanity and start banging your head against the walls, Manboobz has the scoop here and here.
This incident, plus the semesterly reading of Freshman creative writing where I have to explain that “Hey, the part of your story where your female character said she didn’t want to have sex and then the male character got her really, really drunk and had sex with her anyway? Yeah, I think that your character just raped that lady,” told me that it was a time for a little bit of schooling around this extremely awkward topic.
Here’s what happens when you get raped:
1. A person or people carry out a serious invasion of your personal space.
2. You risk a whole bunch of shitty complications afterwards, including but not limited to: STDs, pregnancy (which you might be forced to carry to term thanks to religious zealots), physical pain and emotional trauma, bad dreams, flashbacks, plus every asshat in the world second-guessing everything you’ve ever done in your life in an effort to explain what you did that led to you getting attacked, possibly for the rest of your life.
Here’s how you got raped:
1. You went about your life and used your liberty to pursue happiness.
2. You encountered a rapist who decided to rape you.
Period.
Reader Question #19: How do I get my flatmates to do their fair share of the chores?
Posted: February 21, 2011 Filed under: Manners, Roommates | Tags: cleaning, dishes, roommates 15 Comments »
Dear Captain Awkward,
Here’s the short version of my question: How can I get my flatmates to help with the household chores?
Here’s the long version: I live with several other adults. They clean the common areas either not at all or on extremely rare occasion. I have lost every game of “kitchen chicken” (where you wait and wait and wait and see who gives in and does the washing up first) ever.
Part of this is because I was raised by a Joan Crawford-esque mother and grandmother who punished messy children quite severely. Part of this is because my flatmates just do not seem to care about the mess. At all.
Now, despite my upbringing I think I have quite reasonable expectations about cleanliness. For example, the bathroom should be thoroughly cleaned every couple of weeks and/or before/after a party. Dishes should be done within a day or two, especially since we have had a couple small pest incidents (though nothing major). Everyone’s personal bedroom is his or her own business. Yet even with these fairly relaxed standards I am still the one doing 90% of the work.
I have tried having an open and non-hostile conversation with the flatmates about chores (“Hey, we are all adults and everyone needs to do their bit”). I have tried humorous little quips and hints. I do not want to be a nag. I do not want to be a bitch. Basically, I do not want to be my mother. But I do not want to continue being the only one to scrub the loo or empty the dishwasher.
Can you help me, Captain Awkward?
Sincerely,
Tired of the Mess
Dear Tired:
I have a fairly simple and straightforward answer to this question. In fact, we might set a CaptainAwkward.com record for brevity.
Hire a cleaning person.
Reader Question #18: I want to shake the dust of this godforsaken place from my feet, but I also want to keep my job. How do I tell my boss?
Posted: February 20, 2011 Filed under: Reader Questions, Work | Tags: conversations with the boss, Deadwood, leaving town, moving 3 Comments »
Hello Captain,
For the past seven years I have worked in a fantastic office for a great company. I love my job, my coworkers are like family, and I have an excellent relationship with my boss and all of the management above me. The only bad thing, however, is that this company is located in a big city in a flat part of the country and I am done with city living. DONE. My partner and I share a vision of rural living, in the mountains, in the woods, far from urban or suburban sprawl.
It’s no secret around my office that I long for a country life, but these plans are starting to get a bit more tangible, like things might happen as early as this summer. So, how and when do I talk to my boss? Here are the things to consider: 1) this job is my only professional experience in my field, and really my only “grown-up” job, so I will need to list my supervisors as references for any new employment possibilities. 2) There is a possibility of continuing to work for my current employer after relocating on a seasonal part-time. I don’t know details, though, because it’s always been thrown around as a “oh yeah that could happen talk to me when it comes up” sort of thing. 3) While relocating could happen as early as this summer, there’s an equal chance that plans might not move that quickly. I need to either find a job (see problem one) or have a solid sense of how much I could earn from seasonal work (see problem two). I don’t want to disrupt my current professional life for a whole lotta maybes, but I can’t really get plans rolling without resolving numbers one and two.
Thanks Captain Awkward,
Fleeing the City
Dear Fleeing,
Thanks for your question. I think the actual conversation with your boss and working things out will be the easy part of this, given the relationship you describe and given that (s)he has said “Okay, that could work, talk to me when it comes up” about the possibility of seasonal work.
What you have here is a research project, followed by a plan, followed by a decision, followed by a conversation. Because when you sit your boss down for a conversation (this advice is for everyone), you need to have a response to the question “So, okay, what do you want?”
Dear Prudence + Bygones + Fun with Stats
Posted: February 15, 2011 Filed under: Advice Columns, Friendship | Tags: Advice, Dear Prudence, forgiveness, search terms, stats, The African Violet of Broken Friendship 7 Comments »
I don’t mean to pick on Dear Prudence so much. She’s generally a pretty great writer, good at being terse (I’m working on it) but colorful, and has an awesome eye for choosing questions to answer. It’s honestly a combination of “I am out of questions right now, send me your questions!” and “honest disagreement.” (Seriously, I am out of questions. Send me questions!)
This week, about halfway down the page, she counsels a woman whose best friend hooked up with her husband. The letter writer lost both the friend and the husband, and while she doesn’t miss the husband, she’s missing her friend and doing a little Facebook stalking and thinking about old times. Prudence rightly points out that husband-stealing and then blaming the letter writer for it (“This wouldn’t have happened if you’d been taking better care of him”) is crappy, but she counsels the woman to cut her old friend out of her life completely.
I say: “Bygones.”
If you miss your friend and share all that history, write her a note or call her up. Maybe with all this time and distance you’ll see her in a different light – maybe she was never your friend and was competing with you all the time and the husband-theft was the final act in a long sad play, and you are right to let her go. Or maybe she really was your friend and is your friend, and husbands can’t be stolen if they don’t really want to be stolen, and people make mistakes. If you are really missing her, what do you lose by calling her up and talking it through? Life is too short to have people who aren’t really your friends in your life, but it is also too short to never forgive or move on or change.
In other news, here are search terms that people use to find CaptainAwkward.com:
- Captain Awkward, Captain Awkward Blog (duh)
- Broken Friendship
- Awkward Valentine’s Gifts
- “I got a pee on her Scott Pilgrim”
- Awkward every time you see a person
- Happy Darth Vader
- Very-Expensive-Therapy
- Midwest Manners
- Mr. Darcy is shy
- Dating mad lib
- My friend is dating someone I don’t like
- How do I say I am annoyed in a good manner
- Feminist advice columns
- How do I tell my parents I’ve been dating someone for 3 years (Write to me, searcher! Write to me!)
- I want all boyfriend’s attention and do not like sharing
- Why do some people stand so close
- How to ask boss for time off
- Family judgmental
- Oxygen tanks at concerts
- My boner
I hope everyone found what they were looking for.
In other stats news, 396 of you read The Golden Retriever/Kwisatz Haderach of Love post. Within that article 304 of you clicked on the post about being slutty, but only 5 of you clicked on Derek Walcott’s poem Love After Love.
I hope everyone found what they were looking for.
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