Sigh, it is 4 am on a Saturday morning, and I realized that I can't get back to sleep until I get some thoughts out of my head.
Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to develop very meaningful relationships with women from all around the country; women I have known for most of my life, and women I have just met. Deep conversations, questions about life and death, very heavy things - talking for hours on the phone, well past the time either of us should be logically asleep. But at the risk of offending these wonderful women, I am beginning to feel like I am being used. There is a pattern I have recognized. We all know the cliche phrase where a woman complains, "he just wants me for my body". I feel like I am being used for my intellect. But I am thinking that maybe it isn't just me, but our entire society that is going through this.
For a very short time, I got on Match.com. My great friend told me about how he met some really nice women and I should try it, too. I was newly divorced, and he convinced me to try it. It didn't take long for me to realize that it was a very shallow and unhealthy thing for me - I was being treated like a pair of shoes from Zappo's. Try it on and send it back, and try on another pair. I went on two dates and I was really disappointed that the women I had gone out with were liars. They lied about their age (significantly), they lied about their weight (significantly). I closed my account because I felt dirty - almost like a commodity.
But my point is that on the match.com page in little Monterey, there are hundreds of single women - and I am sure that there are hundreds of single men as well. I see the profiles, I know they are here...but when I look around me, it is like a desert.
I look around me everyday, and see women who are obviously single - filling their single woman shopping carts, reading their single woman books, drinking their single woman coffees, doing their single woman workouts on the elliptical machines; just doing their single woman daily routines. But invariably I recognize that they have their faces glued to a phone or a computer, or earplugs in, interacting with someone not present.
It is frustrating to me, because I prefer real women to electrons. The conversations I have had with several of my female friends - had they taken place curled up on the couch or cuddled up in bed - would be cement in a real relationship. Hell, if they had occurred in a restaurant or bar, they would have ended up cuddled in bed. I know I am not alone in that realization. But instead of growing close to a living person, it ends with a goodnight and the phone is hung up. Then I don't hear from them again for days or weeks. I am pretty sure that is not how it is intended for humans to interact.
It seems that our society is becoming plugged in to the point of dysfunction. I can have these wonderful conversations with women in different time zones, but I can't even get a hello from the woman sitting next to me at Starbucks. It's not like we are just shy, or that we don't have anything in common; it's not that either of us are unattractive. It is that her face is glued to a screen to the point that she isn't even aware that there is someone sitting right next to her.
If we can have these wonderful relationships with people in different time zones, isn't it possible that we should start looking for the same people in our hometowns, our neighborhoods, our communities? Shouldn't we open up ourselves to the possibility that a real person is preferable to an electron?
OK, that is it for me. No person in his right mind should be up at 5:15 writing a blog post. Let me close my computer and cuddle up with my nice warm imagination...
No comments:
Post a Comment