Lost in Translation: Dating Websites and the Definition of "Casual Sex"

A young woman posts a profile on OKCupid (see article here,). She's striking - raven hair, scarlet lipstick, porcelain skin, and a multitude of tattoos. She receives hundreds of messages a week. Unfortunately, many, if not most of them "vulgar" (her word). Why are so many of them offensive?

She made the fatal mistake of ticking the box for "Casual Sex", as well as one for "Short-term" and "Long-term" dating.

I asked a couple guys what they would define as "casual sex" in a profile on a dating site. They universally assumed that meant literally they would contact the girl, the girl would come over (they didn't mention going to her place, interestingly), strip naked, have sex with them, and leave.

However, when I think of 'casual sex' in that context - on a dating site - what I, and most of my girlfriends, think of is dating without commitment, sex maybe on the first date - something more like a f*buddy than a one-night-stand.

And herein lies the reason this woman is being bombarded with vile propositions that would turn off even a professional call-girl (e.g., "I would swim the Amazon upstream with an airtank filled with Rosie O’Donnell’s queefs") Just...Eww.

When a dating website gives users an option to identify the type of relationship they're interested in, it should be mandatory that the site provide a definition of that classification!

While there are exceptions to every rule, in general women go to dating websites because they want, shockingly, to go on dates.

However, men are often confused by the term 'casual sex' appearing on what is referred to as a "dating" website.... women seem to generally consider 'casual sex' as part of a continuum, while men seem to see it as an invitation to a one-night-stand without having to go to the bar and find a girl who's drunk enough to let her guard down and go home with him.

And so, pity the woman who really does want casual sex and admits it, and thus crosses an invisible line in men's imagination, becoming a kind of live-action sex toy with a brain who shows up at midnight, has sex with you, dresses and leaves you sated and snoring the night away in your own bed.

Women: if you really do just want sex, no strings, one-night only, then have fun, be safe, and tick the box and watch the offers roll in by the thousands! But if you expect 'casual sex' to mean you want a guy to go on dates with and will have sex with no strings attached and no expectation of monogamy, you're probably safer sticking to "short term dating" as a definition of your interest.

Men: if you really do just want sex, no strings, one-night only, then you should not be trolling for it on a *dating* website, and you'd be better off on one of the many hook-up, sex-only websites that proliferate - or else, be prepared to be shocked when a girl who marked "casual sex" on her profile expects an actual date, or doesn't show up at your door in a trench coat naked underneath ready to do the dirty in the first five minutes you meet her.

Men have a biological drive - a need - to have sex in a way women generally (and we are dealing in generalizations here, I know) do not. Women generally want or need to have at least some chemistry with a guy to get turned on, and that doesn't happen in the distance between his doorstep and the bedroom.

So let's do each other a favor...

Women, be mindful of the way men think, and take responsibility for clarifying what YOU think your status means, BEFORE you agree to meet up - and you'll avoid a lot of confusion.

And men, stop confusing the experience you get with a girl who checks "casual sex" on her dating site profile with the experience you'd get from an escort service.

She is not going to behave like an escort, so save yourself the mental and physical frustration when you open the door in your boxers and the look on her face tells you when you told her you wanted to eat out, you didn't mean at the local sushi place...

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On a related note, women, if you think I'm kidding about the guys you're inviting to contact you if you say you're into 'casual sex', check out this blog post I found while doing research for this post... I'm not attributing it because the douchebag who wrote it is so vile, I'm not willing to credit him and inadvertently promote his site. 

Mr. Douchey says, in part...

"Let’s face it, OKCupid is a site for getting laid. If you want long term dating, you sign up to Match, pay your fees and actually go on dates with a purpose. OKCupid is for sex, and sex alone.

I was on it for 2-3 months, I would see the same girls saying “I’m seeing someone now” before a few weeks later saying “I’m available now”, and repeating the cycle.

The funny thing about it all is that the girls don’t want to appear slutty, and they’ll write their profiles about wanting a nice, loyal, down-to-Earth, pseudo characteristic, guy so as to make out they’re not sluts.

They’ll un-tick the “looking for casual sex” bit for extra authenticity and the worst thing is that guys lap it up."

If this idiot actually thinks every woman is a slut-in-waiting, who's manipulating everything she does just to avoid looking slutty, it's pretty much a sure-fire bet this guy is a hugely insecure little prick (pun intended) who I would definitely NOT look to for advice on getting laid. As if OKCupid somehow has magically filtered out all women who actually want to go on dates with real men who also actually want to go on dates, and only allows "closet sluts" to register. (This isn't just douchey, it's delusional.)

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Let me be clear: this is NOT about OKCupid. This is about the inherent problems we encounter when we speak different languages. It's about bridging the gap between wishful thinking and reality. It's about being a grown-up and being honest with yourself and your partner about what you want.

Yes, there is an internal conflict within many women about sex - our brains typically need to be stimulated for our bodies to follow... we may have hang-ups passed down from our mothers about what good girls do and don't do... we can change our mind at the drop of a hat. And we have constant dialogs in our heads - with ourselves - about how we feel about something or someone, and what we'll do or not.

Yes, we are complicated.

So guys, if you really think when we tick a little box, two simple words "Casual Sex", that our complicated minds literally mean we will walk in your door, pull down your pants, and go for it, please re-read this post until it sinks in. (And if you're that desperate to get laid, just get over the idea that sex only counts if you don't pay for it, call the escort service, and take care of your business.)

And ladies, if you really think that when you tick the little box, two simple words, "Casual Sex", that guys - who are very literal - will expect anything other than free sex, no strings, one-night-stand, then this post is for you. Which means you need to change your profile...Like, right now...

Love is.

 

He slipped out of bed, shuffled on slippers, and disappeared downstairs. I figured he had an early appointment. I only had thirty minutes myself to get up and out the door for a meeting, having wrung every last drop of sleep from the night. But when I hit the bottom of the steps I saw him walk in the door, shivering off the cold.

He'd gotten up early just to start my car, so it would be warm and ready for me to jump in and go...

This is what love is.

I'd been so sick for so long... I needed to take a nap before the movie. He kissed me and said he was running to the store. While I slept, he stood at the counter and opened the bag of popcorn. He took the small paring knife in hand, and cut out the kernels from every piece, because I couldn't eat them and he didn't want me to have to go to the movies and think about the fact that I couldn't have popcorn.

This is what love is. 

The first gift he ever gave me was a silicon soup ladle. I was puzzled momentarily until he explained,

"I was in the grocery store, and I saw this and thought of you - you have these nice pots but you only have a metal ladle, and I didn't want you to scratch up your nice cookwear."

We'd been dating maybe two months. Imagining him in the grocery store, thinking of me, made my heart happy. 

This is what love is. (And we still use the ladle!)

They say you don't know what love is till you know. The idea that something so fundamental and important to our happiness can remain undefined, unexplained, and unable to be conjured or controlled is maddening - but makes it so much sweeter when you do find it.

He held my hand for hours in the emergency room, while I squirmed on the gurney, delirious with pain. He wakes early to cook a hot breakfast for me on days I have an important meeting. When my new patent leather heels were being ruined by the brick sidewalk that was gobbling them up as we walked back from dinner on a freezing February night, he gave me his shoes, willing to walk the icy pavement in his socks.

This is a love that has made me a better person - a kinder, more patient person.  This is what you hope love is.

I remember when I was single how bad Valentine's Day made me feel about being single. It puts immense pressure on men to live up to an ideal created by mass media, card companies, restaurants, jewelers - even my grocery store has giant red heart balloon arches and a sea of red-packaged food products that smack you when you walk in the door!

So I swore that if I didn't celebrate it as a singleton, I would not celebrate if and when I was coupled. And that's why this is most definitively NOT a post for Valentine's Day.

What it is is a reminder that love is something that cannot be expressed in flowers, cards, chocolates, jewelry, restaurants, no matter the color, value, shape, or size.

Love is a big thing made up of a million small - sometimes microscopic - things.

It's opening a jar that's too tight. It's refilling a drink without being asked. It's singing a beautiful song off-key because the words remind you of them. It's when they pull the blanket over you when you're sleeping. It's turning your alarm down so it doesn't wake them. It's loading the dishwasher, and doing a load of laundry - and thanking them for taking the initiative - period. It's knowing sometimes they need to *not* talk about it just yet - and knowing that just because you're talking about it he doesn't have to do anything but listen. It's letting him rest his hand on your soft, fleshy hip when you are lying next to each other instead of swatting at his hand or turning away...

It's knowing there are twice as many good things as bad, and that every day he or she is in your life is better than if they weren't.

That's what love is.

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Amanda Bynes & The Mental Illness Conundrum

She's crazy.
She's a trainwreck.
She's a stoner.

She pierced her cheeks, crashed her car - twice - while driving drunk, wears awful blond wigs, Tweets bizarre statements, and retires-un-retires-retires from acting on a regular basis. Her neighbors complain about the pot smoke and smell constantly eminating from her apartment, and finally called the police when they found her rambling and stumbling in the hallway, stoned off her butt.

Why don't her parents do something? Why doesn't someone do something?

There is no law against being mentally ill - but there is a law that prevents someone to lock up or restrain or forceably commit another person to a mental health facility unless they are a danger to themselves or others. When she was arrested most recently, she was given a psych evaluation before being booked at the police station - so they thought she may be having a mental health crisis, but once it was determined she was not going to harm herself, they had to release her.

There are very good reasons for this - there was a not-too-distant past time when it was all too easy to commit a mentally ill person to a mental health facility - an "asylum" in antiquated terms - when they were not deemed to be fit to live in civil society. Those so-called asylums were anything but - they were often no more than warehouses for the mentally ill and those with profound physical or emotional disabilities, or mental retardation.

Many people with mental illness do not know they are mentally ill. It slowly creeps up on them, and builds up in such a way that it's not evident to them they are ill. There are no red splotches on their foreheads that let a family member or friend say "Uh oh, Amanda, you seem to be coming down with a case of szchizophrenia or bi-polar...". I can only imagine it's worse with celebrities, who are already often eccentric by nature, or made that way by the bubble they live in.

When they feel out of control, they may  try to self-medicate.
How would you self-medicate? Alcohol and drugs....
Pot quiets the disturbing thoughts and the voices in their heads.

As someone close to several people dealing with a variety of mental illnesses, it saddens me that she will eventually be diagnosed and get help, and will have to look back at the social media trail of destruction in her wake, look around and ask herself the same thing the general public is asking every time she posts a strange selfie, or is caught rambling non-sensically on a streetcorner...

"Why didn't someone do something?"

The answer is complicated. It has to do with free will, government non-interference in our private lives, and the challenge of convincing someone with a problem that they in fact have a problem they don't think they have. It has nothing to do with how much her parents love her, or how badly she needs help.

We don't want the government dictating how we live our lives or keeping track of our medical history, but we see someone in crisis like she is, or like Britney Spears was, and our hearts want someone to do something. I feel that way too. 

The question is: Who gets to decide where the line gets drawn?

California disability rights activists in the 1960's, from what I can find, appear to be the source of the modern legislation attempting to ensure humane treatment of the mentally ill. The Conservatorship law that governs Britney Spears life was conceived and passed by California state assemblymen, and is described here: http://www.calhospital.org/overview/lanterman-petris-short-lps-act.

It seems this is also where the rumor circulating since I was a child that Reagan 'kicked people out of the mental hospitals in the 80's' comes from... He was Governor of California and passed the legislation reforming the mental health system in the 60's - not as president in the 80's. And that was bi-partisan legislation, by the way. Another example of a good idea executed poorly, to disasterous results.

It was a perfect storm. The ACLU provided the lawyers for the original cases that were the genesis of many changes and legislation - advocated that the definition of someone being able to take care of themselves should mean able to bathe, dress, and feed ones self, versus the more traditional definition of being able to obtain food and shelter and financial livlihood. But the half-way homes and community support services that were supposed to simutaneously arise to support the people who were not ill enough to be institutionalized, but were not well enough to live indepdendently, never materialized. Most of those people ended up as homeless on the streets as a result.

So Amanda Bynes bizarre behavior is very likely due to the onset of mental illness in her early 20's - the most common time for the emergence of several common mental illnesses, by the way. And the good intentions of both the Left and the Right in the 1960's to change the way mentally ill citizens interact with the healthcare system have created an impossibility to help those closest to her to help her.

In the end, it's a draw....
Should we provide support to those in crisis? Yes.
Should we protect the rights of individuals? Yes.

Meanwhile, people like Bynes are trapped in the midst of this philosophical tug of war.
I don't have an answer, but we have to keep asking the question.