Tag Archives: NYC

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I Wanna Be Made

In my sorority, I was known as the girl who was going to New York, who interned at Cosmo and was forced to stand in the back of the rows at recruitment because I couldn’t (and can’t) clap on the off beat. At the college newspaper, I was the bubbly intern turned reporter turned lifestyles editor turned associate editor for content that was never taken as seriously as I wanted to be – mainly because I never projected myself seriously – a lesson I’ve come to cherish in my professional career. In my family, I was the oddball cousin who went against the norms of the rest, who went to college, achieved a degree and headed to chase a dream instead of racing down the aisle and into labor.

And in my circle of friends, from the start of college until right up until…um, now – I was the ambitious, fearless, friendly, and confident gal who could do anything. Anything that is except keep a man. Or as my best friend A’s said after a particularly rough breakup: “Why can’t you ever just make it work with someone? Where do you find these guys?”

I tried, I really did. With each of them – Mr. Fire, Mr. Rebound, Mr. Idea, Mr. Fling, Mr. Smother and the rest – to make it work. I logged overtime in baking, cleaning, sporting sexy lingerie and being readily available to pet or to sex-away worries and stress. And then I was too available. I’d attempt at playing the game I was so good at, the book that I could write now on how to attract a man (and perhaps I will write it) and how to get him to approach you. I’d lure one in, hold him captive in my mystery until the subtlety gave away to reality, and there I was exposed, naked in all forms reasonable (and unreasonable), waiting for him to accept or reject my affections. But I was always something – too good for them, not good enough. Too much to handle or far too needy. Swimingly sweet or a wannabe-New York-bitch with an agenda. I told them what they wanted to hear and then all of the things they didn’t. I was this and that, that and this, over and over again, up until I graduated from college, fled the mountaintops to rooftops, ended things with Mr. Idea, and decided New York would be different.

I could make it work in New York. I would make it work in New York. This was where I was supposed to be – the rest of those dudes, stuck in North Carolina, stuck in finance jobs they consider big money and big deals in Charlotte – they just weren’t for me. They may had walked all over me resentlessly and maybe I had let them on numerous occasions – but not anymore. I was in New York and if I could make it here, I could make it anywhere.

And so dating turned into a challenge. It became a sport I played throughout the week, developing new tricks and tactics along the way. I had a strategy, I figured out my best angle, my best feature. I found ways to cover up flaws and discovered sentences that all men like to hear, regardless if they’re Jewish, Italian, single, married, straight, flamboyant, consistently hard or hard-of-hearing. I mastered The Look, I signed up for free online dates for the weeks when I ran low on a free dinner evenings, and when it all became too much, I’d take a night off with Chinese and Merlot, watching Hulu in my panties.

But then I would start to like one of the many bachelors. I’d grow a little attached, I’d find some element of them attractive and irresistible, and then atlas, I’d have hope that I could make it work with one of them. I could be the woman they wanted me to be, I could be all of those perfect, dreamy qualities they always imagined a woman would be. If they’d let me, I’d take my sweet Southern grandmother’s advice to be a lady in the living room, a chef in the kitchen, and a well, you fill in the blank, in the bedroom. I’d find a way to keep them close to me, to make them fall in love with me and then I’d actually make it. I’d have one of those relationships that works and I wouldn’t be that girl anymore. I wouldn’t be the one of my friends who was scarily always single, yet never lacking a date.

That was all fine and dandy until the men would resist. Until they’d have excuses or let me know they only wanted to sleep with me and if I wasn’t looking for something casual, I should look elsewhere. And so I would, but I always found myself in the same situation again and again, until I had a moment of realization. I tend to have the best of these when I’m walking the streets sans iPod or when I’m in the shower, left to only the device of my rambling thoughts. And that’s where I was, curled up in an old Victorian tub that needed to be scrubbed, my arms wrapped around my legs, crying and wishing I could just make it work. Just once, I begged to some unnamed wise character of the universe. If I could just make it one time, I wouldn’t need a second chance. I’d get it right and that’d be that. I wouldn’t have to feel so disposable, so unwanted and undesirable if I could just make it work. Just once!

Looking up at the running water turning cold, it occurred to me that I wasn’t working. I was functioning, sure. I had a small pool of friends, a job in the industry I adored, a pseudo-studio in the pseudo-Upper West Side.  On paper, my jagged pieces didn’t seem so rough around the edges. I seemed like any semi-adjusted girl who was somewhat new to the city, discovering what she liked and didn’t like, and making the rest up as she goes.

But did I want to make it up? Did I want to have to make something work with someone? Did I want to wear makeup to cover up the dark circles left from late night fights, not late night romps? Did I want to have to work so diligently, so intensely, so patiently to make a relationship last through the beginning stages? Is this what love is made of? If it is – why do I want it so badly?

Or could it be that what I wanted -what I still want – is to make myself? Not go looking for myself in the beds, the eyes and the empty promises of men who are saved and then deleted from my phone? Could I not make anything work with a man because I wasn’t working? Because I wasn’t a whole person, I wasn’t made up into the woman I wanted to be, into the me I knew I was meant to become? Had I allowed love to race to the forefront of my priorities and lost myself somewhere in the laps in between?

I had. And so, without knowing what else to do, I did the one thing that brought me comfort: I wrote. I wrote and wrote, I thought and thought, I chatted with my best friends and I picked the brains of the mentors I trusted the most. And I came up with this blog, a program of freeing myself from love addiction. A gradual way to detox myself…from myself. So that I could start anew, clean and unbothered by my tireless pursuit to make something out of nothing with men who should have never meant anything.

Nine months, nine steps, a new boyfriend (yes, I said it. Let’s move on, now), a well-read blog, a new apartment, a new sense of self, a new group of friends, a few freelancing gigs, one failed attempt at learning Italian, one deceased Beta fish (RIP in Giorgio), and a few lovely trips later – here I am. Not trying to make anything work. Not praying for things to work out perfectly and ideally. Not imagining my life or my love life as detrimental or possible to be classified into classified sections of “dateable” and “non-dateable.” Not hearing A’s words ringing continuously in my head when Mr. Possibility and I have a disagreement.

Nope. I’m just making myself into me. Into the me I want to be at any point, on any given day, without any notice or prerequistices. Because the thing I’d most like to be made into is the best version of me that I can be.

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The Girl Who Came Before

A few months ago at a wine bar in Chelsea, I nervously fiddled with my phone, texting some friends who thought I was crazy, and rightfully so. I mean, I was meeting the ex-girlfriend of a guy I had dated, a woman who I had heard time-and-time again “I was just like.” I had read her blog, followed her Twitter and knew her name – but I didn’t know her. I only knew second-hand information, the words of someone who had been hurt and disappointed, but yet was a someone I cared deeply for.

So why was I here, sipping wine with a lovely, tall brunette who was chatting away and reminding me more and more of myself by the minute? Well, maybe Mr. Something-or-Another was right. Could it be true that there was another me out there and we both happened to deliberately move to New York to be editors? To live in tiny apartments, happily (well, most of the time) meet and date Manhattan men, go sailing on the weekends, chase pigeons, and share a certain dislike for pickles? (Though I can eat them fried – but I’m Southern, so I’m allowed.)

The similarities were startling at first, but as time passed and a friendship developed, it stopped being so strange. Emails turned into Gchat, texting into being Facebook friends, drinks into events and figuring out the things we have in common that the Mr. never discovered.

Before meeting her –we’ll call her K – I had an idea in my head of what she would be like. I, too, had her up on a pedestal of this unattainable, heart-breaking dreamgirl. But what I have learned from her was the exact lesson she hoped I would when she reached out to me the first time: that she wasn’t that maneater at all. She was like me – another lady in New York who dated a guy and it didn’t work out. There are two sides of every dating story and then there’s the truth, but there’s also truth in the fact that if people really have a type, there’s a good chance you may like the girls a guy used to be with. Hell – you may even be similar to them, so why build them up to be something more than what they are?

Now, K is a magazine mentor, but more importantly, a friend. I like to think of her as my dose of reality and a voice of reason when I worry about my career, about boys or really, about anything. She has a strong grasp on the city, often serving as my go-to for recommendations when I’m planning a night out. In a lot of ways – she’s where I see myself in a few years and chatting with her, as the Mr. always predicted I would, gives me some hope for the New York life I’ve yet to live.

Today, as we were talking, we stumbled across the topic of my blog and she said something that stuck with me: “It’s funny, reading your blog. I think you’ll be interested, reading it again in a few years. You’re going to have all the same realizations over and over again in different situations.”

A little over two years older than me, K has experienced everything and more that I’ve written about on these pages. And some topics I haven’t posted, but we’ve discussed (I may get to chatting about more risqué topics eventually). And while going through a 12-step program to cure a love addiction I diagnosed myself with seemed like a great idea nine months ago, K and some other friends and characters have taught me that maybe, I misdiagnosed myself.

Could it be that I’m just normal? That K, too at my age in the situations I faced, perhaps acted the same way? Felt with the same intensity? Or any of my other friends who happen to be 20-something women who want to find love as much as they run away from it? Anyone who has ever been disappointed by a man or has fallen in love with the wrong one, as K said, “over and over again”?

It isn’t love addiction – it’s being a woman who experiences normal feelings, thinks thoughts similar to the gal next to her and has characteristics like the girl who came before her.

We may not all have a twin – physically anyway – but if you look, or if you happen to meet a reader who figured out your blog’s riddle – you may realize a comforting notion that if you’re going through it right now…you’re not the first. You probably won’t be the last, either. Addicted to love or just growing up learning lessons you’ll learn again – rest assured there’s someone close by who’s right there with you. And someone who has done it before and someone who will do it again.

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Penthouse With a View & 6’3″

New York doesn’t care for Spring much. One day you’re in raincoat, wondering why it’s 50 degrees in May and then you’re smoldering inside a small, non air-conditioned room, wishing for a gust of chilly wind. Even if my new accessory is sweat, I couldn’t be happier to greet the sun this weekend with big blue eyes, one teeny-tiny bikini and two girlfriends.

At a park in Williamsburg filled with hipsters and puppies, we laid on tattered beach towels, sipping on $4 beers in styrofoam cups, we chatted about the types of men in Manhattan. One of the gals is a new friend, B, and she asked M and I about where to go to meet fun eligible bachelors and though we were far away from sailors (they tend to stay in Times Square), we gave her some simple truths about this tiny island and it’s male inhabitants.

In Chelsea, don’t expect to find a straight man and if you do, he is probably there with his girlfriend or he’s joining the gay bars tempting his curiosity and probably not interested in how killer your legs look in sky-tall heels. Or if he is, it’s most likely out of jealousy than thinking you look sexy. In the Upper West Side, you’ll find men so endearing, so kind and good-natured, so funny and exuberantly happy, you’ll find yourself magnetized to them, wondering where they’ve fond such a profound joy. And as you’re searching, walking closer to try and steal their attention, you’ll meet your competition: their wife and children. Children dressed in Ralph Lauren with lovely eyes that match their mother’s.

And then, if you venture to the Lower East Side or Union Square, you won’t find a guy older than 21, though his ID may indicate otherwise. The Upper East Side offers wildly attractive men from old money who wear stunning clothes and more than likely are unavailable…or the type of guys you’d rather take as a lover than a partner. Murray Hill isn’t a place you want to go unless you never filled your frat guy appetite in college or if you would like to date someone from Ohio or the South. If you way downtown during the day or right after work for a happy hour, you’ll find banker upon banker upon banker, but go past 9 p.m. and you’ll feel lost in desolate, empty streets. Williamsburg features men who don’t shower, Park Slope has dudes with strollers and Jersey City…well, just say no. The West Village offers a bit of everything above and you’ll need to be a dedicated resident (like my friend K) to have the stunning ability to tell the difference between gay and straight, married and single, available and unavailable.

I’ve met guys all over the city, on buses, online dating, at the bar, in the park, through a friend, through a networking contact, over pasta, at the gym, and the list goes on and on. I’m amazed when folks say it is difficult to meet men in New York – I’ve always found that part easy. It’s finding one that you actually want to hang around with and one that enjoys your company is the tough thing to do. With so many fellas to date and so few we’d like to see past the second kiss, how’s a girl supposed to make it work?

M, B and I discussed that one way to navigate the single gal’s world is to first, figure out what you want. Seemingly simple enough, we each went through our types: B goes for metro dudes who take longer to get ready than she does; M doesn’t have a specific qualification, but can sometimes get lost in finding something enchanting about the person and confuse it with liking them; as for me, I tend to go for the tall (6’0″ and above), the life-of-the-party, dimple-stained and blue-eyed man. (Enter Mr. Possibility)

I’ll agree that deciding what fits your fancy before getting into a relationship is important…but I don’t really recommend knowing precisely what you desire before you agree to a date. The thing is, you’ll never figure out what you want and more importantly, what you don’t want – until you go out with it. Or sleep with it. Or have your heart crushed, smashed and crumbled by it.

Through the many neighborhoods of Manhattan, the apartments and male dorms in college, the summer romances during summer vacations, and all of the bus rides in between – I’ve grown to figure out what I really don’t want and what I won’t settle for. I’ll make some modifications here-and-there, compromise on certain things and give up on some specifics I was once gung-ho about – but the nitty-gritty charms that make up a person, well those, I can’t let go. I would have never know what turns me off if I never gave it the chance the turn me on. I would never know what I love if I didn’t lose my faith in something that wouldn’t commit to me. Through it all -I’ve discovered that what I don’t want is maybe more important than what I do. Regardless of where the man’s from, where he lives or if he’s my type – if he just isn’t what I want…then he simply won’t do.

And even a penthouse with a view owned by a chiseled-6’3″ smart, foreign and funny dude won’t change my mind.

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Freedom From Myself

I’ve spent months upon months blogging about love. I’ve spent an unforgivable amount of time thinking about relationships in general. My own obsession with all things romantic, rose-colored and happily-ever-after approved is the reason I started this blog. I wanted to stop basing so much of my own happiness on if I was loved by a man or not. I wanted to stop fretting over getting married, on if there was something wrong with me that made men leave me or be continuously unavailable. I wanted to be able to have sex without having to think if that decision made me less of a lady.

Basically, I wanted to free myself…from myself.

I saw this whole world outside of my own mentality and boundaries. A city that begged me to play, to explore, to dream, and to do. To take my life in my hands without worrying if I had another hand to hold. Did I really need the balance of someone else to keep my sturdy, or could it be possible that I can be just fine, with just me?

What I’ve found through daily memoirs and a growing base of loving followers is that I’m not alone. I’m not the only young woman who has waited anxiously by the phone or had more guys break up with her than she ended things with. I’ve discovered I’m not as ridiculous as I once imagined and that sometimes, people get so caught up in your life, without knowing you, that they draw inaccurate conclusions. You can’t blame them though – writing and blogging is meant to drive opinions. I’ve learned that if you publish your intimate, personal details, those you were intimate and personal with will be affected, and they probably will contact you because of it. And the one your with, well it is possible he is subjected to just as much ridicule as you are.

But the beauty of this blog is that while I’m on Step 8, in a lot of ways I think I’ve made it further than I thought I would. Maybe I can give credit to New York or to having a big girl job that demands my attention. It could be that time really is the magical cure that solves all issues of the heart and mind or perhaps it’s just that like all things full of life, change is natural and healthy. Over the last nine months (yes, can you believe it?!), I’ve freed myself from some very limiting thoughts. Much to my surprise and maybe to the delight of others, I’ve now developed new perspectives and opinions I didn’t have less than a year go.

Just to name a few:

I’m Too Young for “I Do”

Since I started this blog, my best friend L took a trip to the courthouse and is now officially a Mrs. I’ve watched my Facebook friends post engagement and wedding photos, publish statuses about their “hubbies” and their babys-to-be. It used to be that such albums and sentiments would drive me crazy. I used to have this gut-wrenching fear that if I didn’t get married by 25, then all hope was lost. That’s how old my mother was and by Southern standards, that’s actually pretty old. But it isn’t like that in New York. In fact, if someone is married under 27, it’s quite odd. And children before 30? Forget it. Divorce statistics are higher down South and multiple marriages more frequent. I’d rather follow the lead of the North and wait until I really know myself, until I am established and happy in my career and by myself, before I promise my life to anyone. I mean, if I spend the rest of my day-to-days with the same person until I die…what’s the rush?

I’m Not Afraid of the Birds and the Bees

I haven’t slept around ever. I used to think that to have mind-blowing, earth-shattering, give-The-Rabbit-a-run-for-his-money orgasms, I needed to be madly in love. Though I haven’t experienced a one-night stand or sex with a complete stranger – I’m no longer against it. I have several friends in the city who are liberated with their sexuality and as they chronicle their escapades, I find a seed of jealously start to grow. I used to think it was really important to keep my number low so that one day, when I met whoever it was that I was going to marry, he wouldn’t think bad of me for exploring other options. But the thing is, my sexual history (as long as I’m healthy) is not the business of my husband. And the only standards I need to live up to are my own. This doesn’t mean I want to start galavanting about Manhattan, shagging with a different man every night, it just means I don’t think women should be judged by who they decide to sleep with. Or how many they decide to sleep with. Having high standards doesn’t always mean saying “No” – it can mean knowing when to say “Yes” to the right person…and not making excuses if you mix up right and wrong from time to time. After all, do men ever need to make excuses when they’re bachelors?

I love me.

Well, most of the time anyway. The point of this journey was never to meet a Mr. Possibility or to find the answer to all of my problems. It wasn’t supposed to change the person I am or my little quirks. I just wanted to learn to love myself -and who knew it would take over 200 posts (and counting) to start to get there? And who knew to love yourself, you’d need to free yourself, too?

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The Big Idea

A big part of a journalist’s job is to come up with big ideas. I’m still developing this skill – but I have found a knack for making a story out of anything – hence why I can be spontaneously combustible with a blog post after one thing sparks my creativity. But when your career is dependent on looking at one topic in a bazillion different ways until one sticks, you often find yourself making stories out of…nothing.

Especially when those stories happen to be love stories.

Maybe it’s being a woman, but I don’t really think so. I refuse to blame my quirks and obsessions on my genitalia, nor should anyone use their sex as an excuse for anything. Regardless, I have a lot of ideas about how a relationship should be. How it should feel. How it should develop. How I should grow because of it. How the man will be. How he will treat me. How our life together will be day-to-day.

And all of those ideas…well, they are ideas. They are not facts based off of experience – though I’ve had many, I’ve yet to meet a man who is everything I expected without a few surprises. They are not things I use to qualify men – if that was the case, I would have never discarded my single status at any point, period. They are not things I know I would like or things I know I wouldn’t – they are based on other ideas I’ve learned from outside factors and things I think I should know, feel, do, or stand by.

But these ideas, for whatever reason, are important. And they continuously shape with each angle, each direction, and each added source my inquisitive, daring nature insists upon. If I look at any idea – any man – in the right way, with one eye squinted and one thought focused on the headline of the love story, I can make a romance out of basically nothing. I may even be able to convince myself that all those things I wanted, all those things I thought would make me happy, all those things I didn’t think I could live without – are not things I wanted, not things that make me smile, and not things I can’t live without. I can dig so deep, brainstorm so wildly, that in the process of developing ideas, I end up losing the big idea.

You know, the idea that above all other things, all other notions, that the most important idea to buy into…is yourself. Even more importantly, to stop making yourself an idea and into a person. A person that doesn’t give up on the idea that love, in its truest and best form, doesn’t need a whole bunch of dreaming of what could change about a man she’s seeing, and just takes the man as he is. After all, falling in love with an idea never got anyone anywhere…especially if that idea never turned into anything more.