Attracting the wrong women

There's a kind of girl I like, but I don't seem to get anywhere with her because I don't speak the "cool people" language.

Published April 23, 2003 7:31PM (EDT)

Dear Cary,

It's been about three years since I started messing around with the online personals, after a tough breakup. During that time there was a nine-month relationship with a girl I met through friends who was "nice" but not exactly passionate, and we've deescalated into friends. Besides that, my dating life, though busy, has consisted of short episodes of e-mail/phone/dinner, rarely more than two dates, and that's it. It's almost always my choice not to continue, because it seems like I meet the same type of woman over and over again -- in real life or online. I'm a pretty steady healer-type and people who respond to me in a romantic way tend to be high-strung, fairly insecure and fearful to an extent greater than I want to have a future with.

There's another type of girl out there whom I see, make contact with and occasionally get responses from. This is the cute-as-hell, supercool, awesome, funny, smart sort of woman who really does it for me (and everyone else). We might go out on a date or two, but they don't seem very interested. I think there's some sort of language I don't speak -- the "cool people" language -- and I know that to relate to the kind of women I want in my life I must speak it, but I don't understand a word. This is getting to be a real bummer on me, and it's hard on women who think we're starting something and then get (gently) dropped.

I don't start much of anything anymore anyway -- seems sort of pointless with this broken record cycle. My amorous feelings are generally either dormant or anguished at having been woken up by someone who's not interested. Can you offer some perspective, perhaps some changes to make or other ideas? My occupation and hobbies don't put me near women on an activity-oriented basis, so the personals seemed like a good idea but it's just not working out, at least not the way I'm approaching it. I know these things take time, but it's been so long since I've been able to say the L-word and mean it in every sense.

Water, Water Everywhere

Dear Water,

I know what you're talking about. There's a kind of person who shines, who is quick and bright and hard to catch, around whom it seems that life is sweeter, lighter, faster. And you want to ride in their cars and go to the parties they go to. But when you get in the car suddenly you're like a bag of concrete in the leather seat, dusty and inert, and they look at you and you know they're thinking how heavy you are and how unpleasant it's going to be to have to carry you on their backs all the way up the steps of the glamorous house up in the Hollywood Hills where Ice-T lives.

All I can say is, you have some choices. You can be the slightly uncool guy who's always in the background, as if silence and shadow followed you around; there's a penumbra of uncoolness about your head so that it's almost hard to see you even in the bright sunlight. You can be that guy if you want, if you feed on this action and you can stand not to be in the spotlight, can stand being the driver, the fetcher of cocktails, the one who always goes for beer.

I have been cool and I have been uncool, and cool is pretty good, but uncool is better. Cool is too much work; you have to be an athlete of ennui, a virtuoso actor of sweet nonchalance, you have to look as though where you just came from was the most fabulous place in the world except for the place where you're headed to. You can do it if you study the movies. But you will always be pretending that you don't wake up lonely and afraid in the middle of the night.

For all I know, maybe you don't wake up lonely and afraid in the middle of the night. What do I know? My guess is that you're an introverted sensing type who's attracted to flashy extroverted intuitives. (As who wouldn't be?) So by the time you've formulated a sentence about the weather they've already summed up the history of condoms and what's wrong with Madonna. It's dizzying and fun to be around them, but you always feel a step behind. Well, you probably are a step behind, but your steps are bigger and more solid.

Here's a thought: If they have something you want, why not try to find out where they get it, and then see if you can get some yourself. Go to the places where they go. Listen to what they listen to. Take some of their drugs. See their movies. Because you have to start to feel the way they feel, and the cultural productions they consume contain the shape of their feelings and attitudes. You might be able to enhance your intuitive sense of where they're coming from if you immerse yourself in their cultural milieu.

And, if my wild guess is correct, and you're more oriented toward sensing, you can do stuff they can't do. What can you do? You can take all that money you're making doing some boring, solitary, analytical job and get a big house and have big parties where everything is just right. You might always be the Gatsby in the background, making sure the caterer gets tipped. But at least you'll be in that bright, dizzying world.

I know this may be a little more elliptical and all-encompassing than you were hoping for, but I think your small problem represents a lifelong orientation, so you might as well think big.

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Want more advice from Cary? Read yesterday's column.


By Cary Tennis

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