"Heart"y Honesty?

I was reading a JDate profile this morning (I know, kill me now), and the guy wrote: "The heart never lies." Is this true? And if the heart is always telling the truth, then how do we explain moments wherein we follow our hearts, to our own peril, and sometimes to our own ruin? Is the reason we call those moments "lapses in judgment" an attempt to shift blame from heart to head, thereby preserving the sanctity of reputation for said cardiac organ? Re-reading the above, I have to concede that it is entirely possible that I think about things too much.

Cry It Out: A Playlist to Mourn a Lost Romance

From love shattered to romantic hopes dissolved, we always seem to seek out the music. We know that there's a substantial chance that the lyrics or notes so assembled will cause more tears, or evoke sadness that we were repressing. Maybe that's why we go to the music, to help us feel or to help us get past the feeling, to reinforce our shapeless sadness and bind it to emotional reality. Sometimes, it's all about the music. And here's a playlist for crying your way through it. Long December (Counting Crows) Don't Give Up (Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush) Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton) Two Steps Behind (Def Leppard) In Your Eyes (Peter Gabriel) Imagine (John Lennon) Torn (Natalie Imbruglia) The First Cut is the Deepest (Sheryl Crow) Behind These Hazel Eyes (Kelly Clarkson) Romeo & Juliet (Indigo Girls) This Woman's Work (Kate Bush) You Will Be Loved (Maroon 5) There's a Fine, Fine Line (Avenue Q) I'll Miss You in a Heartbeat (Def Leppard) Wise Up (Aimee Mann)

"The Man Behind 'Behind Everyman'"

Reaching your 30s, you realize that you are professionally unsatisfied and have dated with no visible results. You write two novels and a memoir, collecting three rejections over four years. In a bookstore, looking for a “funny, quick read for the train,” you notice that such books are geared toward women. That same day, you begin writing to fill that perceived void in the market. Seven weeks and 45,000 words later, your novel is finished. Critics call the book — written in second person with an unnamed narrator — original and inventive. After your book sells, you meet your soul mate. While planning your wedding, you decide to move out to Los Angeles and try to sell the book as a screenplay. In the process, you become not only an established writer but a singles success story. This is the story of composer-turned-novelist and bachelor-turned-newlywed David Israel, author of “Behind Everyman,” “a novel for guys and the women who rescue them” that critics called “high-concept lad lit debut afloat with wry humor, earnest romance and endearingly dopey self-doubt.”

For more of the article, my column in this week's Jewish Week, click here. And madd props to Hilary for introducing me to the book (and the author) to begin with.

Redating, Reusing, Recycling

Ever date someone, know they weren't for you, but thought they were too good to throw away? Did you ever fix them up with a friend, or integrate them into a group of friends, hoping that they'd mingle and mate with one of your nearest and dearest? If you have, JDaters Anonymous wants you to answer these questions for a future article: 1) Who was the person and how did you meet (blind date, online, at a party, through friends)? 2) How many times did you go out with that person before deciding he or she was not for you? 3) Was there mutuality on the lack of romantic chemistry? 4) Did you have someone specific in mind for that person, or did you just think, "anyone but me"? 5) How did you successfully transition from "date" to "friend"? 6) Have you ever "recycled" a former date more than once? Is that date resentful or appreciative? 7) Have any of your instances of recycling resulted in committed relationships? Your reflections on "recycling" welcome, either in the comments section or via email. Feel free to forward to friends for their feedback... Thanks!

Please, Tell Me...

Not that I'm not sympathetic to the plight of the single gal. Clearly I am. But, gentle reader, could you please tell me what the point of this article is? My summary: She's single. She's looking. She's frustrated by online dating. She's still hopeful and still waiting. I hope this story's on tape somewhere, because no one would ever believe it... [Yes, indeed, that's sarcasm.]

Refraction

It's hard to come back from it, the edge of whatever your hope once was, to overcome the impetus that made you lose your footing and dangle from precipices to begin with. Harder still because you put yourself there, in some misguided, self-affirmative step toward individuation. Grimacing through the pain of it all, your mantra: all for the best, all for the best. Words ring empty--if at all--when vocalized, but still, must be repeated for continuity's sake, must be repeated ad infinitum, must be repeated until you start to believe it. You stay active in body and mind, so the totality of you will persevere, past bumps in the road and rough patches and stormy seas and a thousand other cliches. Slowly, you claw your way back, because you want to or because you have to. You seek redefinition of what you'd perceived, and recontextualize yourself within the new construct. Although you've swept them up before, shards of shattered hopes remain, insidious, piercing your bare feet just when you thought you'd found them all. But you're tough. Callused, in protection from renegade vestiges of something you thought was possible. In daily life, you cultivate steeliness, deny your warmth and flexibility. You're still you, craving the clamor of contact, the intensity of perceived or actual intimacy. But it's safer here. There's no room for interpretation in metals and no heartbreak in stone. It's only temporary. You know it is. As if there were an expiration date on sadness. You feel it in the air like pollen, an irritant that heralds the spring thaw. You rotate, earthlike, on your axis, yet not feeling like the world does or should revolve around you. But the motion is constant, and constitutes progress. There are others now, refracting prismatically, sometimes dazzlingly shiny. Shielding your eyes, you wonder if you'll ever see inside, and if the interior is as opulent as the exterior seems. But at least it's something new to look at.

The Week in Dating

What week in dating? I know it's only Monday. But start the week with last Monday if it makes more sense to you. If you've been thinking about calling E-Cyrano to help you with your profile, now's the time to help yourself and me at the same time. First, go here and decide which package is for you. Then, on the “buy” page, you’ll see that they've added an option to “How did you hear about E-Cyrano”, that says “E-Cyrano consultant”. If you do that, the page will refresh and you can type in my first name ("ESTHER"), so I can get “credit” for the referral and the client will be assigned to me. (Tell your friends! Thank you!) First, we'll visit with the regular gals and see what they're up to: Hilary had the blahs before the weekend, but her mood was much improved after a well-deserved few days away. Annabel Lee is up to date #3 with an E who (just to clarify) is not me and whose manners are devolving more and more with every date (unfortunately). That guy who usurped my initial better step up, or I am reporting him to the Committee on "E" Abuse. And Ari strikes again, by giving us just enough to keep us curious, but it seems fairly clear that she both kissed a new boy and saw a celebrity. I think if those things both happened to me on the same night, I'd probably die of shock right there. I haven't linked to the Smitten in a while, because she's become a Bridezilla. Just kidding. She just wants it the way she wants it. But since she met her fiance via the wonderful world of blogging, I thought she was worth including as a role model. Plus, chiquita (and her man, the chico) totally rocked Weight Watchers into oblivion. (If only that kind of success were contagious...) Barefoot Jewess, whose blog I don't visit nearly often enough, muses as to "how Jewish" she needs a life-partner to be. Here's a new blog, found via Superjux, wherein the author reflects on all of her first dates. Even for first dates, my blog on the same topic would be extremely short, and not very interesting. Just like most of my first dates. Over at Jewlicious, Laya posted about JQS Corp, which runs JMatch and is trying to give JDate a run for their money. They have a really cool blog, which features content from Jewlicious (including some posts by yours truly), and now have regular text-based instant chat as well as voice and video chat. Since we're plugging sites here, some of you internet-inclined Jewish daters may also wish to try the free-to-register JSoul, which is run by a friend of mine. Feel free to write them or me with your feedback... And of course, in case you haven't been paying attention (please present palms, as I smack them with a ruler), Dr. Janice relaunched her site. Check her out, sign up for her newsletter etc. After all, as she stated in an earlier comment, she's "here to help!" Have you ever wondered why people can be such jerks when it comes to dating, finally, we have the answer: it's all our celebrities fault. According to this article, our celebrities are pretty poor role models when it comes to relationships. I mean, how often has it happened to us that our boyfriends leave us for Angelina Jolie? And what's their excuse? "Brad Pitt did it..." In the world of this article, Sienna Miller=all that is good and Hillary Clinton and Victoria Beckham=women who accept their husbands' philanderings without standing up for themselves. Well, an interesting theory. You know what else is interesting? The concept of an Israeli version of the Bachelor, but starring an American guy from NYC. Esther at Jewlicious (I always enjoy her writing) shares her impressions of yet another Israeli reality show she'll never get to see, this one starring a guy who looks not entirely unlike David Boreanaz, which is never a bad thing (and shout-out to Jason for that call). And in a note only slightly related to dating, my friend Mark is one of the writers featured in Situation: Comedy, the new Project-Greenlight-style reality series on Bravo where the end product is a sitcom. (How's that related to dating? Last year, Mark, a friend of mine from camp who's been living in LA, married Mindy, another friend of mine who was living in New York. They didn't meet through me, but they could have, which proves a) that long-distance relationships can work if the people want them to, and b) that if everyone hangs out with me enough, you'll probably all end up married.) Watch the show (Tuesdays at 8, I believe), go to his site, leave him messages of support, link to him from your blogs, and tell him Esther sent you... That's all for now. Date well and wisely, and feel free to share the best and the worst with me. Like Dr. Janice, I'm here to help!

Dr. Janice's Site Relaunched

Friend of JDA Dr. Janice has relaunched her site. Now the celebrated Love Coach has a shiny new site, and a URL that's super-easy to remember: doctorlovecoach.com. Go visit her, sign up for her newsletter and register so you can participate in discussions on the message boards. You just might learn something! And do tell her that Esther, Queen of JDaters Anonymous, and She Who Kvetches Urbanely As Well As Jewliciously, sent you...

More Adventures in Billboard Dating...

He's 31 and still single? Whatever shall we do? We must rescue him from this horrible fate of loneliness...let's get ourselves a billboard! Stat! And we'll fill it with clever verbiage!

"I'm Lance, Let's go out!" reads the billboard on an interstate near Lindon, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Given, it's in Utah, so maybe NYC's big advertising firms are too busy to provide this guy with slogans, but still...

...So why the concern over Archibald's marital status? As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members typically marry in their early 20s, the 31-year-Archibald is approaching the male-equivalent of an "old maid."

There's a male equivalent of an old maid? I love it. Finally, some equity. But how does Archie feel about the attention? Is he excited by his friends' efforts? Mortified by the publicity? Or completely and utterly the Mormon equivalent of pareve on the matter?

"I'm not overly concerned about (marriage). I'm pretty happy right now," Archibald said. "I'd like to get married, but it's not a concern."

He seems pretty "laid-back and easy-going." I bet he also likes to work hard and play hard. Maybe he should try JDate? Nah, he's "not overly concerned." In the big city, we like to call that "not overly interested in commitment." Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just sayin', like the old adage goes, if'n you're not looking to meet someone, don't put up a billboard.

Plea for Help: Liver Transplant Needed

This is not a joke. This is not a hoax. This is a real person, a 31-year-old woman from Long Island, who is engaged to be married in October, and who led a 345-city tour to raise awareness of the importance of blood donation, whose liver suddenly failed this week, and who needs a complete liver transplant (Type A or O) to survive. There are very few of us who might be able to help in finding a liver. But if you know someone who can help, contact liverforalife@yahoo.com or go to http://helpshari.typepad.com. Link to the blog, send emails to your friends, send notes of support to her friends and family (via the blog)--do whatever you can. And if nothing else, pray.

"My Big Fake Jewish Wedding"

Weddings are supposed to be about joy and harmony, but the reality is, uniting two families is a complex negotiation, a diplomatic and tenuous situation, and rife with the opportunity for drama, comedy, and if you’re lucky, a good spot at the smorgasbord. For instance, take Leah Lowenstein’s wedding to Sam Levine. Leah’s a nice Bais Yaakov girl from a religious family; Sam’s in a rock band. Sam’s mother, Dr. Roz, has a popular radio advice show, but she has an awful relationship with Sam’s father, Morty. Dr. Roz has hired her “hippie rabbi,” Conrad Singer, to perform the wedding, unbeknownst to the Lowensteins, who have employed Rabbi Perl, a more traditionally Orthodox rabbi. The dysfunction flows like Baron Herzog into the glass of hyperactive, almost too-happy bridesmaid, Gitti Sara, who’s so desperate to get married that she solicits dates from the guests. Most of them just ignore the histrionics, turning their attentions to the kosher Moroccan-style buffet. Maybe you need a Jewish wedding refresher course. Or you’re sick of attending weddings. Or you’re considering a career as an Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn-style wedding crasher. “A Match Made in Manhattan” is a chance to attend nuptials where no one cares how you behave — as long as you participate in the simcha, and play Jewish geography until you find someone you know. (Like I did.)

For more of this week's column, "My Big Fake Jewish Wedding," click here.

Putting the "Desperate" Back in "Desperately Seeking..."

[Originally posted at Jewlicious] Who doesn't love Jewish singles events? (I know, stretching the sarcasm until it transforms into a rhetorical question.) The Transom (which is apparently a section of the NY Observer) went to a Jewish singles night at the Upper West Side's Makor (Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y). They interviewed Dave/Steve/Mike/Mark Jacob Manczyk (the names will change from event to event, but believe me, the issues remain the same), who spent the evening apparently either joking/flirting with the reporter or stumbling over his own words. (As you can see, sometimes it's hard to tell which...) Here's Manczyk on matchmaking:

“It’s an act of desperation, it’s unnatural. I wouldn’t want to tell my kids I met their mom through a matchmaker.” But the single-meet up scene hasn’t done the trick either, right? “Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m the one with the problem, the relationship issue. Maybe I’m the fool.” He looked up, eyes bright. “How old are you? Could you take off your glasses?” Michelle Lee, a 33-year old lawyer, is a JDate member and regular single event attendee. How has the matchmaking been going, the Transom asks. “I’m still single,” she sang. And the JDate, the singles events? “I’m still single,” she repeated.

She sang? I've attended many an event, and have never "sung" anything resembling "I'm single"--there's a karaoke event that might have seen a rendition of "I'm Too Sexy," but even that cannot be corroborated. I guess she's the one who puts the "sing" back in single.

The man she’s with, Dave Sanders, 39, is an engineer from Queens. He answers for what she’s looking for in a man. “You know, someone blond, blue eyes, likes to ski and travel,” he said. The Transom cringed as he described himself, but Ms. Lee giggled.

I'm still kind of cringing. But look, she found it entertaining enough that they're talking of margaritas for next week. So good luck to these crazy kids. Here's hoping they make it through and never have to attend any other Jewish singles events ever, me'az v'ad olam...IYH soon too by you, amen selah. Jewish Singles Events: Putting the "Desperate" Back in "Desperately Seeking..." Since Before the Common Era...

For Everyone Who Describes Themselves as "Ripped"

This just in... Adonises and Adonisettes of the world, be sure to warm up, stretching all of the major muscle groups, jog over to the computer that's mounted over your treadmill, set the incline at 8.5 and the speed at 15 mph, and log on Fitness Singles, the site for people as obsessed with fitness as you are. That's right, now you can find someone who is as in love with his or her own body as you are with yours! Finally, the person to whom you can say, "honey, do these washboard abs make me look fat?" Follow online dating registration with a rigorous circuit training workout, ending in three reps of 8-Minute Abs, and followed by a cool-down.

Singles Columnist to Hire Husband

Hey, you thought that was about me, didn't you? Well, I never. Literally. I would never seek to "hire" a husband, because I can't afford a good one, and what's the point in engaging the services of a sub-par husband? I mean, really... Palm Beach (Florida) singles columnist Angela Manfredi (who's apparently looking for her own Man Freddy, or Mikey, or Davey, or whoever) has given up on looking for love and decided to take on some help of the husband variety: someone who can take out the trash, fix things around the house, presumably open jars...you know, husband things. And she's chronicling the journey for her column in the Palm Beach Post. The term of engagement for such an indispensable "husband"? Two weeks. Payment? "To be discussed privately, but not less than $1000." (See more details and legal stuff at the "apply" section of her site.) In her own words:

Help Wanted: Unique position available for success-minded single man to help never-wed singles columnist experience the practical side of marriage for two weeks over the summer.

Responsibilities include: Rescuing me from the perils of intrusive dinner party conversation, car concerns, household handiwork and hurricane preparations. Applicants should be proficient at displaying enthusiasm and rapt attention while listening to a vivid, detailed account of my entire day.

The ideal candidate: He possesses the ability to express (in a gentle, flattering, non-verbal way) that the outfit I'm eyeing is better suited for one of Lil' Kim's back-up dancers.

What's in it for him? For better or worse, until the end of our employment contract do us part, you could consider this espousal exercise groom-ing for the real thing, a refresher course, or just a great summer job opportunity!

Angela's never been married and claims "22 years" in the dating trenches. And yet she looks like a daytime TV talk show host. Maybe she's living in the wrong city? I dunno. Anyone who wants to try on husband shoes for a few weeks? And any suggestions for stunts I should pitch to the Jewish Week for my column?

JDate's Literal Poster Girl

The glamorous showbiz lifestyle has finally got its dirty mitts on the previously innocent Annabel Lee, luring her with corporate promises of beauty, billboard prominence and tank tops. Back in June (the post is from my birthday, which I attribute to that day's intrinsic glamour and luck), the divine Miss L received an email from evil corporate bastion of internet dating JDate that her picture had caught their collective eye. They extended seductive promises:

you'll not only enjoy a fun day with fellow JDate Members and the chance to be featured in our campaigns, but you'll also receive a $200 cash bonus and digital copies of your best looking headshots. You'll have great photos for your profile and to send to family and friends! Unfortunately, we cannot provide compensation for travel arrangements or other expenses, but in addition to offering you this exciting opportunity, we'll treat you to a delicious breakfast and lunch, and of course, some glamorous socializing.

Turns out, they had her at hello. Our girl enlisted for her day of "glamourous socializing" with other unsuspecting, L.A.-area JDaters who had also been caught in their taloned claws, much like King Kong did Fay Wray/Jessica Lange/Naomi Watts. You can read about her day here.

Saying "I Love You"--Hah, Hah...

There's nothing like that moment when you and your sweetie say "I love you" for the first time. (Or so I've heard.) It can be nerve-wracking, emotional, and...funny? Renatt Brodsky, a freelance writer, is working on an upcoming Glamour story about women aged 20-35 who have comical stories about saying "I love you" for the first time. And she's asked JDaters Anonymous for our help:

We need the women to still be with the guys and have happy endings. The women can be telling about their own "I love you" misfires, or about that of the guy they are currently with. Like women who said I love you during a loud moment in a concert or movie or fireworks show then had to scream it to him, only for the noise to stop and everyone to turn around, or a guy who called his girlfriend and blurted out I love you as soon as she answered, but it ended up being the wrong number. Here's an example of one that works: "I had been dating my now-husband for a few months when I decided to tell him how I felt about him. The only problem? I was half-asleep at the time. So I roused myself semi-awake, rolled over, and said: 'I love you... Milk.' His name is Mike." - Nina Johnson, 30, Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Personally, I think that story would be funnier if his name was Milk, and she accidentally called him "Mike." If you or any female you know has a funny story to share with Glamour please email Renatt the following information by Tuesday, 10 a.m.:

1. first and last name 2. age 3. city, state 4. email and number 5. Your comical story in two paragraphs- When did you say I love you, and Why did it end up being so hysterical?

And remember to tell her you're a reader of JDaters Anonymous...

And if you meet any nice Jewish guys named "Milk," please send them my way; I'd be happy to date them just for the comedy value.

Has a Movie Inspired You To Change Your Life?

If you're from somewhere other than NJ or NY, Glamour Magazine wants to know, has a movie inspired you to change your life? Writer Renatt Brodsky's looking for a few good movie-related epiphanies:

For an upcoming Glamour story, I'm looking for women ages 20-40 (who are not from NEW JERSEY or NEW YORK), who have have had a life-epiphany based on seeing a movie. In a nutshell, I want to know how seeing a particular movie inspired you to alter your life. We already have a few options for career-changing movies. We are now looking for movie epiphanies related to * love * family relationships * something personal (ex/ weight/health; drinking; self-confidence; etc.) If this sounds like you or a woman you know please have her email me the following by tomorrow, Thursday, 7/7 by 3:30 p.m.: 1. first and last name 2. age 3. city, state 4. email and number 5. Your story- What movie inspired you to alter your life? How so?

Personally, it was Pretty Woman that inspired me to move to NYC (because LA was too far and too hot) and try my hand (and my everything else) at prostitution, but I'm from NY, so Renatt doesn't want my story. If you contact her, tell her Esther sent you!

This Week's Clips

I've been published a few times this week, on everything from my nephew to vacation, with a smattering of Jewtopia thrown in for good measure. Read, enjoy, and comment away!

The Boy Who Changed Everything

From the second I laid eyes on him, that phrase about having known and loved him before I met him suddenly made perfect sense. He’s a relative heavyweight; but I’m still way taller. He’s a new player on the stage of my life, but fits perfectly into the family I’ve always known. We’ve all literally and figuratively embraced him, even though all he does is look around at this new, exciting world, demand sustenance, and poop on us.

For more of this week's First Person Singular column, click here.

Sole Searching

Even after many of us have graduated from an academic calendar, we think of July and August as the time to escape: to leave the countless papers on our desks for innumerable, sprawling seaside sands. It is a time of sun-filled getaways, SPF 45, and bathing suit anxiety. We look forward to letting our hair down and taking our clothes off, to whatever extent we wish. We court relaxation like a soulmate, and hedonism as if it's our last night of freedom...

...Would we be able to free our City selves from the code of acceptable behavior as mandated by our tight-knit, seemingly omniscient Jewish community, and embrace the possibility of relative debauchery? It wasn't like Turks and Caicos was Vegas; there was no advertised assurance that what happened here would stay here. What if we "went wild"? Would the video proof of our adventures end up on the Internet? At shul board meetings? Would reputations be damaged? Jobs lost? And would any of us care?

The above is excerpted from "Vacation: A Spiritual Retrospective" (my "Sole Searching" spirituality column at GenerationJ.com). To read the column in its entirety, click here.

Jewtopia's becoming a book...

“Jewtopia’s” co-creators Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson, who also co-star in the play, were just finishing up the script for “Jewtopia: The Movie,” when a book agent saw their show and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. “We weren’t even thinking about it,” said Wolfson. But the agent was persistent. “He hounded us … ‘I can get you a deal,’ he said. He got every publisher out and started a bidding war; it was supposed to be a small kitschy paperback, but it got so much heat that it’s going to be a hardcover [WarnerBooks won the bidding war, and the book is slated for September 2006 release].”

“Jewtopia: The Book,” Wolfson explains, will include “silly stuff from the play, but in more detail; like Jon Stewart’s ‘America: The Book,’ with graphs, charts etc., but for Jews.”

For more, see this Jewish Week article by a fairly prolific writer. Of course, most of you have already read about the book deal here. And still others of you will remember this column. No, Sam and Bryan are not paying me to promote them. (But maybe they should...)

Your scrolling bonus: three stories I posted to Jewlicious and one from My Urban Kvetch...

This Space for Rent: A woman rents out her forehead to be tattooed with the name of an online casino

Man Rents Billboard to Find a Wife: This post at My Urban Kvetch has started some interesting discussion on whether renting a billboard is or isn't an effective way to find a spouse. Come on over and participate in the conversation...

Hummus is Potentially Trayf: An argument over whether tehina used in making hummus is kosher if ground by a non-Jew.

Could Lead to Dancing: The Wednesday night Israeli dancing scene at the 92nd Street Y. (Postscript to this: a friend of mine went and said the scene was pathetic, so it's possible much of this article was spin.)

That's the egomaniacal Week in Me.

More undoubtedly to come...for which I apologize in advance.

Jewish Bloggers in the World Jewish Digest

Ever wonder how blogging changed my life? Wonder no more.

Want to hear the founders of Jewlicious and other popular Jewish blogs talk about their reasons for blogging, rendered sensitively and beautifully by Chayyei Sarah? Sate your hunger for blogformation.

Click on, my blogbrothers and blogsisters.

On Kissing and Not Kissing and Other Stuff

I've got readers who kiss and readers who don't. Whatever the reasons, religious or lack of opportunity or desire. But when Miss Fish writes about kissing, you just want to go out and do it. (Or maybe that's just me. In any case, it probably has nothing to do with the little imp-girl she met while she was out the other night.) On the flip side, there's P-Life, going all passionate in his head. Turns out he met a girl who's also passionate in her head. And they're being all expressive and stuff: Today we did a meditation exercise and it turned out that – when I was supposed to see my soul on its own light I couldn’t at all – your soul was so attached to mine that I couldn’t see my soul on her own. Saw us together as one. Sounds scary to verbalize it... And in a completely different vein, Anna Broadway, "enjoying" (or at least answering) lots of reader letters after her appearance in the Rolling Stone article about the new virginity movement, gets down and chaste (and as always intellectual) about being Queen of the Castle and why other should be Master of their Own Domains. (And I don't mean domain names. Those can be purchased from GoDaddy.) And a roundup wouldn't be a roundup without visits to H, who's over at Slay Your Demons taking on weak online dating profiles; Annabel Lee, who's ducking the usual JDate inappropriates; and Ari, who almost took a homeless guy back to her apartment for some lovin' and warns mothers everywhere to hide their sons.

"A Kiddush for All the Single Women in the World"

I love a good shidduch (match). In this case, the shidduch was between a post on Jewlicious and Daphna, a single woman in Jerusalem. The post informed the Jewlicious public about Reb Chaim's Worldwide Kiddush, a Shabbat kiddush happening in the Old City of Jerusalem in honor of all the single women in the world; through out the eating and drinking those in attendance would be "collecting" mazal-tovs (congratulatory wishes) and hopefully, those mazal-tovs would speed the arrival of soulmates for those who were single and searching. If you're skeptical, and this kind of event sounds like it was rife with potential to be overly heavy-handed and preachy, don't worry. Daphna was hesitant too. In fact, on Jewlicious, she anticipated that it might be "[k]inda like the space aliens call when they beam down eerily seductive signals from their giant space ships so that they can suck you up and perform bizarre medical experiments on you before they send you back to your real life in which everyone will now think you are nuts apart from a couple groupies in Roswell." (My response: who couldn't use a spiritual anal probe these days?) What happened? Read the full account on her blog. But suffice it to say that everyone won here: Daphna showed everyone how fearless and funny she is; Jewlicious gets the mitzvah points for making the shidduch; and Reb Chaim was able to facilitate a true spiritual encounter for a single woman. In Daphna's own words:

If it is true that I really do not know whether I believe that what I did today will have any effect on my finding a beschert, it is also true that I walked away with the feeling that, if anyone might have a shot of pulling such a miracle out of the pocket of heaven, Reb Chaim would.

Faith can be so elusive. It's nice to know that there are people reaching out and trying to make a difference in the lives of often-communally-neglected observant singles population.

Truth and Consequences (Salon)

Anna Jane Grossman, of BreakupNews.com, on truth and online dating in Salon:

Meeting people on the Internet was nothing new to [LA resident Jessica] Walters, who had spent her high-school years talking to people all over the world in chat rooms. "I remember feeling like people were pretty straightforward about themselves when we'd chat," she said. "They didn't seem to be pretending they were something they weren't."

So when the first guy who contacted her through JDate revealed on his profile that he was only 5-foot-3, Walters assumed he was telling the truth.

I think we all know where the story goes from here. And it involves the words "Oompa Loompa." (Not my joke; Walters's.)

Read the rest of the story here. (And who's that quoted on page 2?)

Friday Night Lights (new column)

When I was in college, Chabad made a huge push for Jewish women to light Shabbat candles every Friday night. If, for one solitary Sabbath, every Jewish woman in the world lit a pair of candles, the campus rabbi maintained, the unity and peace of that one worldwide act would bring the Messiah. Unfortunately, as long as I live in my flammable little studio, I’m going to have to live with the fact that the continued imperfection of our pre-Messianic world may be my fault.

In case you haven't seen it on My Urban Kvetch or in your own personal copy of The Jewish Week, here's the link to my new column, Friday Night Lights.

Blogdentity Crisis

Crisis may be too strong a word. But still, this blog has definitely changed. When we first began in April 2004, this was our purpose:

There are thousands of us out here, in the online netherworld, shopping for love and companionship over the Internet...We have experienced the joy of an email from someone we thought we found interesting, only to be disappointed in real life. We have encountered people who lied about their height and interests. We have chatted with people online who seem witty with the 10-20 second IM delay, and moved the relationship to the phone, only to find that their conversational skills are clearly lacking. We have wondered how to handle the delicate situations we encounter, and have sought advice from friends. Now, there's one more friend to consult... The goal of this blog is to record our experiences, good and bad, of men and women, serial JDaters and novices, from NYC to L.A. and everywhere in between. When the muse inspires, there will be features, rants and raves on related subjects. But this is your blog, your forum. Speak.

I vowed to myself that I wouldn't write about the people in my life, because it wasn't fair to present a story that was half theirs, but strip them of their voices. Besides, just because the chemistry wasn't right with me didn't mean that person wouldn't make a great boyfriend/husband/companion for someone else. The one time I wrote about a specific person in a blog post happened on My Urban Kvetch, and it was after a decade. And I had learned that he had just been married. And, just to be sure he was unrecognizable, I changed his name. I was extremely careful about such things. As weeks and months wore on, with my commitment to being a neutral zone open to all and that wasn't about me, content was less of the "speak and be heard" variety and more of a way for singles-columnist me to track trends and patterns in online and offline dating, with the occasional foray into "I can't believe he (or she) did this (or that)." But over the last several weeks, the content has changed*, and not in a manner that's totally comfortable for me. And these are posts that I may yet live to regret, because they, in some small way, violate that promise I made to myself when I started blogging. I'm still not naming names or specifics. I'm writing about the emotional fallout from such encounters or expectations thwarted, often in so abstract a manner that it can confuse people who don't know me. I write as myself, under my own name, of my own experiences. I'm trying to reinforce my emotional fortitude by being more open about how I feel, writing my way through perceived and actual betrayals of whatever magnitude, and letting that come through in my writing. And at the same time, I'm trying to maintain the reputations of the people who, often through no real fault of their own, made me feel this way. Because the inquisition is all internal, it's easy for me to write about what I'm feeling, and extremely difficult to push that "Publish" button. I've learned that with a few exceptions, people protect their own interests, and that's a lesson I could stand to internalize, in moderation, at least. I find myself wondering if this kind of writing does me a disservice, even if I don't name names. Perhaps it would be better to slay my demons privately instead of expelling my disappointments into the blogosphere to land in the ears of the similarly disappointed. Perhaps I should refocus the blog on observing the trends and contributing snarky commentary that keeps everyone laughing, and feeling like they've found a community. But then again, the emotional posts seem to have found their own audience, and a network of support has reached back from an Internet void to embrace me and provide me with desperately-needed comfort. I'll have to give this some serious thought. Your feedback, as always, is welcome. *The posts that inspired this one: The Single Gal's Survival Guide...Up Late...Emotional Jetlag

Emotional Jetlag

From 0 to 60 to 30,000 feet, I’m back at 0. Back to the standard yellow alert that keeps me on edge, but not frantic. Back to normal. But somehow, normal seems nowhere near as normal as I remembered. I don’t know what I was expecting, but hometown doldrums are unaltered by departures and arrivals, by endless terminals that in name alone sound deadly, by points of origin and destinations that seem extremely different at journey’s start than they do after all the mileage has been accrued. It’s a short trip from optimism to pessimism, from elation to deflation. And during the trip entire, I’m still just me. As far as I've traveled, I've returned to a circumstance unaltered by my experiences. Still, it's a journey. I pass through insecurity, a checkpoint I am all too used to. Unshoeing myself, I feel my socks, the protectors of my tender toes, slip on shiny, happy linoleum. My footing unstable, I wonder if metal detectors can detect the slow, metallic hardening of a human heart. I dismiss the melodrama and put my shoes back on. Dragging a suitcase, now with only one wheel functioning, I wondered: did my bag travel on hope, with optimism contained just within a zipped compartment? Or was it despair that kept my carry-on rolling on, in the knowledge that to stop would result in paralysis? Then, the answer: hope and despair are too closely connected to separate. They are conjoined twins; one will die without the other. And that's why distance can make you sad and proximity can make you sadder: because the closer you are, the more your heart feels the once and future distance. In a wireless lounge, hope rebooted leads to some endless area of the undeveloped internet, where I am lost in the land of 404-filenotfounds of missed connections and opportunities. I can’t explain it away, argue it out of existence in front of a jury of my fears. I’m judge and defendant and prosecutor. Interpretation and reinterpretation are the soul purview of self, and the burden of justice weighs heavily. It's not just about him. Undoubtedly, the rawer, recent part of it is. But part of it is residual,--the infectious, previously latent remnants of the other disappointments that litter my mind, the other potentials who never actualized, never became anything of substance. Not fair to make him the lightning rod for decades' disappointment; still I feared his reaction like terrorism. Somehow I knew that unspoken, my meaning would sweep by him as airborne intangible; he'd judge the longing as irrational, nonspecific and dismissable--even amid protestations of my greatness, dismissing me in the process. Compared to war, hunger, crime, poverty, suffering, death…I know this disappointment is a luxurious indulgence, my grief only a whisper of a truer heartbreak: my caught breath and swallowed tears are hyberbolic nothing. But there’s no pretending that the sadness doesn’t go deep. Deeper than canyons seen from airplanes or betrayal or deceit or chasms of misunderstanding or relationships you overimagined. Back then, I took in the ambiguity willfully, like clichés, or carbon monoxide. Part of me preferred to live with a desperate unstable hope in ambiguous silence. While uncertainty is torturous immobility, it also preserves possibility. In immobility, new wounds cannot be inflicted: past stays past, potential seems horizon-limitless, and futures seem more hopeful. Instead, I seized the reins, demanded truth. Received my certainty with a side of heartbreak. Here, where I am now, feels like a place of impossible and insatiable thirst—tired and irritable, I’m parched for contact. In some moments, hairline fractures in my heart belabor vital breath and it feels like I’m eroding. Now, having never begun, it's over. Lesson learned: that if you ask for nothing you get nothing. But sometimes, even when you ask, you still get nothing.

Florida? London? Israel?...All Jewtopias

That's right, everyone's favorite Jewtopians, Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson, are going international. According to the Jerusalem Post, in addition to the NYC and Chicago productions that are currently running, and the screenplay that's in development, the duo has plans to launch productions in Florida (a natural), London (alert the Bloghead), and Israel (where it will undoubtedly be greeted with mixed reviews: "it's hilarious!"... "it's a threat to Judaism!"). Now, if only they had a blog, they'd be really huge news... And this is beginning to inspire me to get back to writing my JDate musical...

Kosher Prom Dates?

Well, most of you already know about My Secret Yeshiva Prom. (Which, I guess, means it ain't a secret no more.) But although the event itself was a little underground, I'm pretty sure that everyone's date was Jewish. But according to this article in the Jewish Week, a Westchester area Solomon Schechter school (Conservative) announced that students would only be allowed to bring dates who were Jewish:

While the school saw the directive as a way to stave off interfaith dating, Bertrand [a student whose father was Catholic when her parents married] and other students at the Hartsdale school said it encouraged creating a “self-imposed ghetto” that could generate resentment and even stoke the flames of anti-Semitism. “It was intended to promote Jewish continuity, but instead it insults non-Jews, it insults Solomon Schechter students, and it doesn’t reflect well on the school,” Bertrand said of the Jewish-only prom policy, which remains in place today. Worse, she said, the decree might inadvertently prove racist. “Most people can pass as Jewish,” said Bertrand, now 18, noting that school officials would be hard pressed to determine at the door who was Jewish. “If the school was going to investigate students they suspected brought non-Jewish dates, the only red flag would be if someone was another race.”

And I was worried about bringing someone Conservative to my underground yeshiva prom...

The Week in Dating

This week has been a varied and interesting one for bloggers who date or post about the single life: Chayyei Sarah gets called back by a man. Really. It happened. But like I told her, it sounds kind of fishy, because that never happens in New York. So I have a call into the urban legends sites, just to be sure. Nice Jewish Girl (“34 and never been kissed”) posts an update on her struggle with Orthodox Judaism and her desire for physical and spiritual companionship. The Anonymous Blogger has a “dating emergency,” in which a woman writes him for advice. Read the post and his readers’ comments here. An anonymous reader shared info on “G-Spot,” the newest Canadian attempt to replicate the saucy success of Sex and the City. This info from TVTome is about episode 5, in which:

Well, that's it. Gigi's only doing Jews from now on. She doesn't care who they are - no one goes down on her unless they go to Temple! With Roxy's help, she takes matters into her own hands and enrolls in a Jewish internet dating site.

All of JDA's Canadian readers are invited to send their reviews of this series to me. Plus, is the old "When Harry Met Sally" adage true? Is it impossible for men and women to be friends without "the sex thing getting in the way"? Dr. Janice revisits the issue of friendships between men and women. Read the bulletin board postings and post your reactions here. And if you enjoy watching brides humiliating themselves for cash (and what red-blooded American singleton doesn't?), then you missed a bridal bonanza yesterday, as Bridezilla sponsored a contest in Times Square for brides to find a $50,000 check in a wedding cake. (How many Points is that?) Ah, dignity. No word if “cake-diving” is going to become a national pastime. This only would have been better if, during the cake-scavation, all of the brides’ bridesmaids had been on hand to beat the brides over the head with their own bouquets. (Not that I’m encouraging anti-bride violence.) Now that’s entertainment.

Interviewees Needed: Falling For "That Jerk"

Renatt Brodsky, a fellow freelancer, is working on an upcoming Glamour story titled, "Hate at first sight" - It's about women and how they ended up falling for "that jerk!." She writes:

I need quotes from women in their TWENTIES about their personal experiences with a guy who did something so unbelievable that they just can't believe they wanted to see him again and give him another chance. Like... insulted her, called her fat, vomited on her, tripped her, accidentally set her hair on fire... :) you get the picture. Here are some good examples:

"I thought RD’s accent sounded just like Forest Gump when I first met him at a work event, and he was everything I swore I would never date--he was a hunter, drove a pickup truck, and liked chicken-fried steak. Still, I thought he was cute and a few days later we were emailing and talking on the phone. Because I didn't write him off, I found out that he was witty and smart. And even though my gastronomical parents are horrified, six years later, I actually like chicken-fried steak.” - Marcy John, 26, Dallas, Texas "I met this guy on vacation in Cabo San Lucas. He was acting like a total frat boy--talking really loud and telling jokes that weren't funny. Then he bought me a beer and spilled it on me! After the trip, we reconnected again back home in San Francisco over email (he was on an email list of people I met on the trip), and a few days later I reluctantly invited him to dinner with some friends. Everyone thought he was so great and said I was crazy if I didn’t go on a date with him. It turned out, though, that away from the beer and the bar, he was charming and down to earth. Forget Mexico, he turned out to be the great treasure of San Francisco." -Michelle Marlin 29, San Francisco, California If you have a great anecdote about a jerk you lusted after again and again--please email me the following information by Wednesday, June 8 2005, 9 a.m. 1. first and last name 2. age 3. city, state 4. email 5. number 6. your quote.

Please email her with any questions, and tell her you found out about it from Esther, from JDatersAnonymous...

Up Late

When you're up late, you say and do things you shouldn't. You contact people you'd be better off without, at least in the short term. Because the interactions, long awaited, are never what you'd expected or hoped for. They fall short. And the disappointment scrapes off any scab over the wound, and you feel it all over again. You might have thought that you were on the road to recovery. But you feel as lost as ever. And all you want to do is sleep. But you can't. Because you're still clinging to the hope that the next time will be soon, and better than it was. And now you've done it. You've brought it on yourself now. It's fresh. And man, does it hurt.

The Single Gal's Survival Guide

...to disappointment: 1) Cry. It's all right to cry. Crying takes the sad out of you. OK, so it doesn't. But it still beats holding it in for years and having it surface during an NBC re-airing of Titanic. 2) Phone a friend. Important to have someone there to counter the self-deprecation and negativity that you'll undoubtedly hurl at yourself. Also important to make sure that you're not alone when you... 3) Find glass, add ice, pour Jack Daniels into glass. Consider adding Diet Coke, but you only have caffeinated and you don't want your elixir to keep you up all night. 4) Turn off all instant messengers and screen your phonecalls. Make outgoing calls to female friends only; male friends who are married are okay to call too. But do not call or otherwise communicate with single male "friends." You don't want to drink-and-dial (or imbibe-and-IM) when you're in this state of mind. This way, madness lies. 5) Go to bed earlyish, and realize that you haven't been to sleep before midnight in months. Resolve to get more sleep in the future, even as you know you're swearing oaths to yourself that you'll never keep. As you fall asleep, listen to music that contains a soothing rhythm, soaring passion, and a subtle melancholy. 6) Wake to find yourself in possession of two empty boxes of tissues, two puffy eyes and one big headache, which you decide to address by the name of Mr. Daniels. Promise yourself that yesterday's frustration will fuel today's workout, and load up the MP3 player with blisteringly popalicious Top 40 tunes mixed with old school heavy metal. 7) Go through the motions, even as you realize that there's still lots to work out, and that only time, if anything, will remove the splinters of pain and disappointment from the soft undersides of your feet. You know that every step will hurt until it doesn't. Buy insoles. Cover nascent blisters with band-aids. But do everything in your power to keep walking.

Ari's Thoughts

My girl Ari, who was the first to cross over from my blog-life into a three-dimensional plane, is a true original. Sassy, smart and irreverent, she is devoted to her friends, and just like the rest of us, thinking too much. Go on over. Say hi. And tell her how great she is.

She Says Yes...

In case anyone was concerned for Seth Menachem, who proposed to his girlfriend in a Singles column, he's written another column in which he reveals that she accepted the proposal. Mazal tov to the happy couple.

Dear Dating Diary: Today I Was "Reclassified"

I struggle with labels, really I do. I’ve long said that everyone these days seems eager to slap a new and inventive label (Hippiedox, Conservadox, Flexidox) on themselves in order to describe their uniquely complex and nuanced relationship with Judaism ( e.g., “I go to an Orthodox shul, but go to the gym Shabbat afternoon, and will take the subway because, like a Shabbat elevator, it stops at every station anyway”). As a result, no label really means anything anymore. So, during my brief period on Frumster, I aligned myself with the most newly founded and most liberal category or label: “Traditional and Growing.” I chose this label because not choosing a label was not an option, and because this seemed like the most moderate, the most liberal, the most (if not exactly) resemblant of my observance. All the other labels included terms that I would never use to describe myself: yeshivish, black hat, ba’al teshuvah, etc) Because the people contacting me were never people I could see myself with religiously (and because none of them seemed to possess anything resembling a sense of humor), I deactivated my Frumster profile last month, but today, got this message from their customer support team informing me that I’d been reclassified.”

For more, read the post and its 85 comments at Jewlicious. The site's undergoing renovations, but the content's all there...

Fear Factor: The Non-Date

If you haven't been there, you're lucky. I have been on non-dates more times than I can count. Now that I think about it, most of my dates (and all of my best dates) have been non-dates. It always starts off as fun, promising, with a palpable potential, that by date's end (or "non-date's non-end" as the case may be) you're emotionally shredded by your confusion, self-doubt and by the messages that you're perceiving as mixed, but which in fact may not be clear, but which you are certainly resisting absorbing. It's like an episode of SNL's "It's Pat," where you're trying to figure out what that person is, and how they fit into your understanding of your life, and everytime you get a (romantically or) sexually charged clue, the person counters it with a term of neutrality. So why not just ask? Just summon up some courage from a nether dimension where courage abounds as a natural resource, and spit out the words into the air? Because courage is in short supply, and we're petrified. And we have good reason to be scared. Most declarations of romantic intent are met with a less than enthusiastic reception, and whatever friendship was beginning to take root usually ceases to grow; it's like our expression of honesty and yearning was death to fertile soil, the emotional equivalent of sowing the earth with salt, so that nothing will ever again grow there. Or, as Ken puts it:

So, instead of making a fool of yourself, you go on a series of these nondates and with each passing one get progressively crazier, act increasingly weirder--you fret, you hope, you worry, you moon, you envy and, yes, you even pine--until finally you just snap and say "HOLY SHIT I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE. YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY AND I THINK I LOVE YOU." And when that happens? Well, there's a very, very slim chance that the other person will say, "Oh my god. Me too!" But the smart money goes on the other response: He or she shouts "Hey, look over there! It's Steve Perry from Journey!" and then, the minute you turn your head, runs away, never to be seen from again.

Or, in the case of living in a densely packed community like the Upper West Side, you will continue to see that person everywhere. At every social event, at ever synagogue you visit, at every Shabbat dinner everywhere. Frankly, you're going to see them anyway, so there's no point in accelerating the misery by making them uncomfortable too. Better to pull away slightly, for the sake of your own sanity. Besides:

If you find yourself on the third or fourth hang-out, nondate or whatever, chances are you are dating this person only in your own mind. If the other person were as into you as you are into him or her, you'd already be holding hands on the subway, playing tonsil hockey in the park and generally making a nuisance of yourself in public.

And you, being a smart person, have realized that you are doing none of these things. Even if the other person makes you feel like no one else, even if there's a connection there you haven't felt with anyone in years, even if you have a strange conviction that this person is someone who was meant for you, you stay quiet. You wait for the signal, the one sign that will translate into a romantic green light. Sometimes you see glimmers of this everywhere...hints that the feelings run deep on both sides. But nine times out of ten, that's called denial. The signal you're waiting for will never come. You learn that marinating in your own misery is preferable to cutting yourself open and plucking out your heart to offer it to a non-receptive audience. You continue your pining and mooning, and everything else, but treat it as a process of grief. All you can hope for is that after your denial and anger, eventually acceptance will come. In the interim, you paint on your smile, hope it fools everyone else, and try to beat back the sadness. [Inspired, obviously, by Ken's post.]

Singles Writer Proposes in Column

I don't know what to think about this. Seth Menachem, at the end of his singles column about commitment and finding the right girl, proposed to his girlfriend Carrie. The hopeless romantic in me is weeping tears of joy for the happy couple. And the cynical single in me is calling the whole thing too cheesy for words. To sum up, this proposal is either: a) the sweetest thing ever b) vomitatious Of course, wishing the happy couple all the best.

Romance, Religion, Kidnapping and Craigslist

Sometimes, I find myself wishing that I was born into a more religious community, where dating would be different, and I thought, easier. A community where there is less emphasis on romantic choice, and therefore more likelihood that I would be in a different stage of adulthood by now, raising my children in perfect faith within a community that shared my values, even if I never had the chance to challenge them through emotional inquiry. But being super-religious isn't all fun and games in the romance department. This story has already been circulating for a few days, but I felt the need to have it here too as part of this week's romance roundup.

The wayward son of a powerful rabbinic family kidnaps and violently abuses his teenage sister's would-be suitor to prevent an affair that violates the family's strict religious codes. The real-life tale culminated in the arrest earlier this week of the wife, daughter and son of Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, and two alleged Bedouin accomplices. The family members were suspected in the abduction and assault of a 17-year-old, ultra-Orthodox youth because they reportedly objected to his relationship with the rabbi's 18-year-old daughter, Ayala, whom he met in an Internet chat room.

"In our society, as long as people are not married ... no contact between a girl and a boy is acceptable," [another of the family's sons who was not involved in the abduction] said.

That's in Israel. But here in America, on the internet juggernaut that is the Craigslist M4W board, we have seen posts from religious people seeking sexual liaisons with people outside their community and outside their marriages. Now (hat tip: Dov Bear), a prophet of old seems to have emerged, and has taken on Craigslist as his personal shonda (source of embarrassment) to be eradicated through the time-honored technique of tokhakhah (rebuke for the purpose that the miscreant should repent). Here's an excerpt (spellings preserved, translations mine):

Aishes ish [relations with another man's wife] causes mamzeirim [bastards] in klal yisoel [klal yisroel: the Jewish people]. Cheating on one's wife is also ASUR [forbidden]! Imagine what you are doing to your children - to your families! Giluy Arayos [forbidden sexual relations] is yahareg v'al ya'avor [a sin you are commanded to die for rather than commit]! Arayos is one of the three cardinal sins - on par with muder and idolatry. This is the downfall of our society. Even if they are strictly amongst single people, it is terrible. Even if the ads are not real, they are still a terrible chilul [desecration of God's name]. Even if you think nobody knows, it is still terrible. Even if you think nobody will ever find out, besides for you being wrong, it is still terrible.

You know I'm more moderate than the people who posted both the ads and this rebuke to the people who are looking for these liaisons. But I think that what they point to is the power of the Internet to reflect things about ourselves, and even in our most religious communities, that we wouldn't cop to in real life. Married people looking for no-strings sexual relationships with other people should be working on their marriages; maybe the two people were never suited for each other anyway and only got married because of parental/communal/social pressure. ("I can't believe I'm 20, and haven't met my bashert yet!") Maybe they grew up thinking that boys were liars and girls were stupid. Or maybe the kids in question weren't fully-cooked individuals and shouldn't have committed to a relationship with someone else that was supposed to be forever while half-baked. Whether or not there's rebuke involved, the mere presence of these ads and the story about the kidnapping illustrates that life isn't always greener on the other side of the religious spectrum, and that a more restrictive and isolated lifestyle isn't always to be envied. Relationships are hard, and when it comes down to it, maybe the success of the relationship is really up to the two individuals who are trying to make it work.

"Instant" Gratification

My new singles column, "'Instant' Gratification," is now online.

In the age of the Internet, who writes love letters anymore? The romantic epistolary tradition has gone high-tech; online love is all about the Instant Message (IM) window, with its unique language of shorthand endearments: BRB (be right back), IMHO (in my humble opinion) and the ultimate phrase representing devotion and commitment potential, the coveted LOL (laughing out loud). But at the end of an e-communication, can we trust our memory of what happened? Absent of intonation and physical cues, how do we discern if a sentiment is mutual? And how real is the connection for today’s daters?

Click here to read the article in its entirety. Thanks to all of you who helped out with this article by emailing me or leaving your comments here. This is one of those columns that has your names written all over it... Enjoy!

Reason #34: YOU CAN NEVER NEVER NEVER TRUST A BOY

I try to be open-minded and respectful, really I do. Occasionally, I slip into an area that's more of a loving lampoon than an angry tirade, which is just part of being single, I think. I especially try to be open-minded to Jewish or religious ways and views which are not my own. (For instance, although I don't choose to share her lifestyle, I linked to Nice Jewish Girl and could appreciate what she had to say. I thought it was incredibly brave for her to explore her heart's desire in the context of her religious commitment. Others disagreed with me on the bravery front, but still...) I'd like to be that person who can get along with Jews (and in fact, non-Jews as well) of all religious stripes. It's all good, and it's all about love. But today, I came across this list on FrumTeens.com, a website for religious teenagers to discuss various issues. The list (located in the "Long Skirts and 'Platonic' Relationships" forum of the site) is titled "71 Reasons Not to Talk to Boys." And aside from the appalling spelling (and I mean, appalling), I'm a little frightened. I'm not saying this to ridicule the members of the list, God forbid. I just don't understand how advocating a complete separation between the sexes until it's courtship time can be a good thing. Some examples (spelling and punctuation preserved)... 3) You risk getting caught by, and being thrown out of your school Maybe because it's not my community, but I don't understand how talking to a boy leads to expulsion from school. In my yeshiva high school (which admittedly was co-ed), I was reprimanded for cuffing my friend Mark on the shoulder once (a rabbi saw me, and gave me a "you know you're not supposed to touch boys" speech). But I never got the feeling that I was in any danger of expulsion. 6) You WILL NOT stay shomer negiyah [not touching the opposite sex], which is also assur [forbidden]-(a yaharog veal yaavor[a sin so grievous that you should be killed rather than transgress it]) Much discussion follows as to the exact origin of the prohibition against opposite-sex discourse, with some people disagreeing as to the character of the sin as yaharog v'al ya'avor. 7) The guy is 100% talking bad about you to his frineds in one way or another I think this breeds a distrust of all men for all time. How do you go from being paranoid about all boys to trusting one man enough to spend your life with him? And it's not like girls are never mean to other girls. If you can't trust boys and you can't trust girls, who does that leave you with? 9) Every boy is a liar, a pervert, a jerk, and you will eventually find this out OK. I've got no problems with this one. I'm kidding. I would say we can all be liars, perverts and jerks, boys and girls alike. And this one, like number 7, breeds a mistrust of all men that will undoubtedly follow the girls into their adult and married lives. 26) a guy will prob @#$% %** cus of you,, and thats like one of the wosrt averriois [sins], and im sure we get part of it I'm guessing that missing word has something to do with self-love, but to me the concept that girls shouldn't talk to boys because said boys might go home and think of the girls when they, ahem, you know is like saying that we should stop producing peanut butter because some people are allergic to it. OK, so it's not a perfect analogy, but that it falls to girls to prevent adolescent boys from pleasuring themselves? Please. And of course, there's #34, the one that inspired my post here today: YOU CAN NEVER NEVER NEVER TRUST A BOY How many "never"s is that? I'm with Maidel123, who points out: While I agree that there are many negative elements of guys and girls talking for no particular reason it is also important not to paint the opposite gender as evil or anything of that sort. Not just because it's not nice, but because I'm not sure I understand how, for example, a girl would make the change from thinking guys are scum etc. etc. to thinking that THE guy is the one with whom you'll share so many things-a relationship as a couple, builders of a Jewish home, builders of a Jewish family...so while members of the opposite gender may not be APPROPRIATE they are not inherently CH"V [that's an abbreviation for chas v'chalilah, which means God forbid] evil. Much discussion on the boards ensues, from both boys and girls (and I suspect there are some older men and women there too, as the spelling and sentence structure is vastly improved in some of the subsequent responses). If I were still in my yeshiva high school, as constricted as I felt there, I know that this bulletin board/forum would have been way too right-wing for me. I just hope that these girls and boys don't grow up so scared of each other that it creates marriages that are built on foundations of mistrust and fear. (Hat tip for the list, even though he may not like what I've done with it: Seraphic Secret)

Technology: Dating Friend, or Foe?

I need your help, my readers and friends: Does Internet-based technology (email or IM) help or hinder romance?

1. How far into a relationship do you exchange email/IM info?
2. Do you think people communicate better or worse over email/IM?
3. How do you prefer to communicate with potential dates? (Phone, email, IM?) Why do you prefer that method over others?
4. Have you ever misunderstood someone in IM/email that has led you to heartbreak or disappointment?
5. Do you think the IM window is a better or worse way to get to know someone?
6. Have you found that your online impression of someone (through IM or email or even through blogging) is different from how they really are in person? Has that been difficult for you to accept?

Feel free to leave your answers in the comments section, or email me with your response. Please indicate your age, location, profession (especially if you're in a tech field) and whether you'd like to be quoted by name or by a pseudonym. Your help is appreciated!

Can a Blog Have a Paper Anniversary?

If it can, JDaters Anonymous's Paper Anniversary is today. One year of kvetching about dating, online and off, sharing ideas and stories with others who are struggling and who have struggled in their searches for love. One year of discovering the quirks of JDate and the quirks of the people who inhabit the site: some are people who are very much like us, and others are, well, not. I've learned a lot this year. Hopefully, you have too. Let's recommit to the community we're becoming. And to the prospect and hope of finding someone to love. If these crazy kids can make a go of it, maybe we can too. Happy birthday, JDaters Anonymous!!

Lies Lies Lies, Yeah

And now, from the "News That Isn't Really News" Department... TrueDater.com just released a study that confirms what we already suspected to be true: that online daters lie about what they really look like. I know what you're asking: What's TrueDater.com? Think of it as Epinions for online dating profiles:

TrueDater.com, providing today's online daters with the ability to read or review the truthfulness of people¹s dating profiles, asked its users which quality online daters are most likely to exaggerate in their dating profiles. Men and women both said the two qualities most likely to be misrepresented were weight and overall physical appearance.

"Amazon has book reviews, TrueDater provides dating profile reviews. Based on ourfree service, we are encouraging online daters to pledge honesty not only in their profiles, but in their everyday lives and a growing movement is championing this effort," said Jason Jordan, TrueDater Co-Founder.

Users were asked what qualities online daters exaggerate or lie about most often. Choices were: height, weight, age, income, marital status, physical appearance and "other."

• 34% of the respondents chose weight, with physical appearance coming in at 27%.
• Male voters ranked weight first with 45%, and physical appearance second with 20%.
• Marital status ranked third with 13%, all others received 10% or less.
• With female voters, general physical appearance ranked first with 36% of the vote, followed by weight (19%) and age (16%).

Surprisingly, female voters said men were more likely to exaggerate weight and appearance than height and income level. Also, more men than women complained that online daters had been dishonest about their marital status.

Very interesting results. Although the imbalance noted in the last paragraph (anecdotally, I know the situation to be just the opposite) has me wondering how many people they interviewed for this survey. One last note that will sound familiar to my regular readers. There are certain elements of physical appearance that are objective, and will be learned/observed/discovered when we first meet someone. Height is one of these elements: if you're 5'5 and tell me you're 5'8, and if "5'8" you and "5'5" me are looking into each other's eyes without the aid of heels when we finally meet, then I know, you've lied. Does the height matter that much, especially if the personality and humor are a match? Not to me. (Especially on JDate: I tend to automatically deduct 2-3 inches from the stated height in a JDater's profile. For some reason Jewish guys seem to have no idea how tall they are.) But the fact that you lied? That matters a bit. And it might make a girl wonder what else you're hiding... And in terms of the lying about weight thing, I just need to reiterate that while weight is by definition an objective measure (even a non-science oriented person like me understands that a pound is a pound), weight looks different on different people. It can depend on how muscular a person is, how tall s/he is, the build, where s/he wears his/her weight, etc. Because of those variables, I think the "frame" descriptor is better than listing a numerical weight. Unless I'm your boxing coach (or you're mine) and we're prepping for a match, I maintain that there's no need to determine whether we're lightweights, middleweights or heavyweights. I also think it goes without saying that sometimes an internal attraction can alter a perception of physical beauty. There's also another component...I'm reminded of that scene from The Matrix, wherein Neo is in the simulation for the first time, and he sees himself in a certain way. Morpheus explains to him that this is the way he sees himself (even though in the "outside" world, he wears sackcloth and has all these connectors up his spine and in his head). Because we all see ourselves a certain way, we may be unable to see why a photo might be construed as an underestimation or overestimation of our physical assets. I may (theoretically) see myself as "fit" or "muscular" while someone else might describe me as "average," "overweight," "medium," or even (in the Jewish world with my 5 feet and 5 inches) "tall." In our heads, we're all individual Neos. But how each individual set of eyes in each person in the world sees us? We can't control that. As for Truedater.com, who knows if it will take off. I guess that depends on how many people feel they'd like to review their dates for the site. And how many people will tune into this new site as a vetting process to decide whether or not the person's worth going out with. And whether people will be able to distinguish the lies that matter from the unwitting misrepresentations that we undoubtedly all make when describing ourselves to others.

Welcome, New Readers

Just wanted to welcome any new readers who might be here because of Ken Wheaton's Metro article about bloggers who blog their dates... Posting's a little light this week due to Passover, but there's lots of stuff already here, so stick around, peruse the archives and new posts will be with you shortly! Got questions? Email me, and I'll gladly answer. Thanks for visiting!

Wookin' Pa Nub

I'm sorry, I cheated on you. I did a blog post over at Jewlicious that I thought the boys there would consume with a sharklike frenzy. But alas, it received no love. I was, as Buh-weet might have sung back in the day, "Wookin' Pa Nub in Aww Da Wong Paces." Was that because the post itself wasn't as compelling as I'd thought? Or because it was overshadowed by subsequent posts about the election of a new Pope? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was blogkarmic retribution for not looking for love somewhere other than in my own blogyard... I've learned my lesson. Next time, if it's a good JDaters post, I'll post it here first (and cross-post it later...) Putting the "Man" Back in "Afikoman": Craigslist Personals for a Satisfying Pesach

Tired of Endless Dating? Might As Well Eat...

According to Reuters in London, speed dating is out, and "feed dating" is in, "where the love-hungry can at least enjoy a good meal if they don't find romance." Meeting people at dinner parties has become the most popular way for Britons in their 30s to find a new partner, according to a survey by food firm Geest. Of 1,000 single people, 34 percent said they wanted to combine food with flirting -- with a safety net of having friends with them if the dinner date went pear-shaped. Because JDaters Anonymous is a service-based weblog, we are pleased to provide you with this handy list of things to avoid when "feed dating": 1. The Blooming Onion (greasy oil all over face and hands is almost never a portent of romance) 2. Any garlic-based dishes (no explanation is required, is it?) 3. Pesto (believe me, this one is bad--no matter how many times you try to dislodge the stuff from the crevices between your teeth, it's not coming out until you brush it out with some Crest or Colgate later at home...) 4. Poppy seed bagels (see "pesto") 5. Deli (deli is not sexy...except maybe pastrami, with its blend of pungent spices, which can get stuck in your teeth, see "pesto") 6. Red wine (it stains your teeth almost instantly, and certain colors of long-wearing lipstick actually can also pick up the tint, creating a "clown mouth" effect...don't ask me how I know that...) 7. Grapefruit (no way to eat this and not spritz your date in the eye with a blinding spray of citrus) 8. Chocolate (because of the teeth thing--see "pesto"--, and because it may remind you that you have no need for companionship of the opposite sex) 9. Matzah (crumbles into a million specks that will instantly adhere to clothing and make you look like you suffer from gargantuan dandruff) 10. Pasta with red sauce (because you will ALWAYS spill it all over yourself, especially if you're wearing white) Not quite the Ten Commandments. But I think they're decent suggestions.

Equal Time: Enter the Anti-Gump

Usually, we present the female perspective here on JDaters Anonymous. But I read this article by Matt Lipeles in the Jewish Journal and thought I'd share it with you, in the interest of equal time and for the purpose of discussion. In the article, titled "The Love Impaired," Matt writes: But it really got me to thinking, what is love anyway? I bet you thought I was going to answer that question, didn’t you? Well, I can’t. That’s the point. I don’t know. I’m 37 and single. I’m a relationship moron. I’m romantically impaired. I don’t know what I’m doing — at all. (Matt, don't worry. None of us know what we're doing. Partially because everyone's different. And partially because of John Hughes movies and Sex and the City.) He continues: But, before we go looking for solutions to this problem, maybe it would be worthwhile to take a look at past generations. Why was it so easy for them anyway? Maybe it was because they had matchmakers and arranged marriages. It used to be that your parents would arrange a match for you and, unless you found your intended completely repulsive, you married them. Boom. Just like that. So Matt got me to thinking...would it be better/easier/more results-oriented for us to revert to a more antiquated system of relating, dating and mating? Then we could spend our time worrying about things other than dating and emerge from whatever bubbles of insecurity that we've been hiding in throughout our dating years...romance could be created within the context of a relationship between two people who are empirically likely to be compatible. Or would you change nothing, and maintain the agita, the slings and arrows, the misunderstood emails, misconstrued IMs and misinterpreted gestures of the dating process? Your ideas to be discussed here, please...

Good News for the Single Druse

Welcome to DruzeDate.com. (I know what you're thinking: "They don't look Drusish.") In a culture distinguished by its privacy and closely guarded traditions, Web sites like DruzeDate.com are revolutionizing the Druse dating scene. The Druse are a small and distinct religious group that broke with Islam about a thousand years ago; their communities are mainly in Lebanon, Syria and northern Israel. Because the Druse do not accept converts, a strong emphasis is placed on self-preservation through marrying within the Druse community. While DruzeDate.com is the first all-Druse dating site, there is evidence that Druse singles have been using the Internet as a dating tool for years. A quick look at the message board of the American Druze Society in Washington, DC (www.adsdchouse.com), shows personal ads being posted on the message board as early as 2000. While most of the ads list the typical requirements – apparently "nice face" and "slimness" play an equally important role in the American Druse community as in the general American one – many ads rant about the "closed-ness" of the Druse community. "Druse girls are impossible to date," wrote one frustrated user. "They expect so much and think they can be so picky. I am going to give up on them soon, and start dating white chicks!" That whole construct of men wanting women to have nice faces and be slim while complaining that it's the women who are picky? Sounds awfully familiar to me. I really wonder how many of these complaints are universal dating issues, how many are indigenous to strongly affiliated tribal cultures, and how many are 21st century societally impacted. More at Jewlicious.

Where the Pets Go

So, we all knew that there was an online dating site for everyone under the sun, with every conceivable interest. Now, pet lovers can find lovers who love pets and love to pet the pets and their pet-lovers: Pet-love sites are the latest of the breed. AnimalAttraction--"the meeting place for pet owners"--says it is reaching out to the estimated 40 million people in the United States who walk their dogs or curl up with their cats alone. Meanwhile, at SingleDogOwners.com, a site with about 400 subscribers, Bruno the Chihuahua greets singles with the site's motto: "Date me, date my dog." Not to be confused with "Date me, even though I'm a dog." Just sayin'. Hat tip: Chicago Tribune

The More You Know, JDaters Anonymous-style

A friend wrote me yesterday about a friend of hers. I'd file this under "Be Careful" and "The More You Know." And just to clarify, I'm not saying that this kind of thing only happens on JDate. It just pays to be careful. Last week a friend went on a JDate. It was a her first date with the guy. He took her to dinner and a bar. He walked her home and asked to use her bathroom. She let him up and he proceeded to brutally rape her. The DA is working on the case so I can't reveal much but I do want to warn you. His name is Devon or Devin, he's 33 and lives in Brooklyn. Apparently his profile is still up but I don't know what it is. Please be careful and don't let anyone up to your apartment if you do not know him!

April 6, Rants & Raves, 7pm (JCC of Manhattan)

For readers in the New York area: REMINDER--APRIL 6, 7pm JCC of Manhattan (Upper West Side) "J-Dating in NYC" Rants & Raves dating discussion moderated by JDaters Anonymous proprietress Esther D. Kustanowitz $10 members/$15 nonmembers (includes wine and discussion) Program description: It started with JDate and now we’ve got Jmerica, JKarma, JSoulMate and JGreat. Raise your hand if you need a break! Join a group of other 20- and 30-somethings for some ranting and raving about dating, living and loving in New York City. New York Jewish Week singles columnist, Esther D. Kustanowitz, who knows this terrain, will moderate. She is proprietress of two blogs, My Urban Kvetch and JDaters Anonymous. BYOD (bring your own dinner) and we'll provide the wine! Old Program Code: RANTS/JYOW5 Click the above link to register, or just show up at the door. Hope to see you there!

CoolSJF’s IM chat From Hell

CoolSJF (a pseudonym), a longtime reader of JDaters Anonymous, writes: I've been a non-paying member of jdate for a couple years now and a friend finally convinced me to pay for a month. Believe me, I'm regretting it.... Please see the below, very upsetting IM conversation iIhad with a jdater. I wish there were some way to have him blacklisted. Maybe I should contact Jdate?? What are your thoughts? Should I do anything or just forget about it? [J.A. note: all names have been changed. Some offensive language--and tons of offensive typos-- follows.] weirdosjm: hi coolsjf: yo weirdosjm: whats up beutiful coolsjf: not much. i wish itwere a beautiful day out like it was on monday weirdosjm: i know right coolsjf: i know we've chatted b4, but will u remind me where we met / what your profile is? weirdosjm: jdate, IMmeNow coolsjf: aha that's rigth weirdosjm: good weirdosjm: remember i liked ur smile coolsjf: indeed weirdosjm: so whats up coolsjf: just chillin'. still recuperating from the wkd weirdosjm: i c weirdosjm: so re we going to get some coffee some time? weirdosjm: hello? coolsjf: HA I KNEW IT coolsjf: sorry wrong IM weirdosjm: what? weirdosjm: so r we? weirdosjm: hello? coolsjf: well... coolsjf: the thing is... i'm sort of seeing someone right now weirdosjm: no ur not weirdosjm: y r u on jdate then coolsjf: b/c i just started seeing him weirdosjm: so it dont mean anything coolsjf: doesn't weirdosjm: so y cant we hang out coolsjf: things are pretty crazy weirdosjm: whatever weirdosjm: alot of girls tellme this nad 2 weeks later they r back on jdate coolsjf: fine. coolsjf: well #1 i am seeing someone coolsjf: #2 i am just not that interested weirdosjm: ur not seeing nay one coolsjf: but it's hard to tell someone that coolsjf: i am. weirdosjm: c not interested weirdosjm: i told u coolsjf: but it's 2 reasons weirdosjm: its ok i'll put in that category any way coolsjf: it's a guy in jersey who has come to the city multiple times to take me out. coolsjf: and i think it might be going somewhere. weirdosjm: plus i just looked at ur pic any way weirdosjm: u think? weirdosjm: ok n ever mind, ur oic says it all any way weirdosjm: pic* weirdosjm: ur probabnly a virgin any way coolsjf: so now you are resorting to insulting me? coolsjf: sheesh. weirdosjm: and not clean shaved coolsjf: like that would be a character flaw even if it were true. coolsjf: come on. weirdosjm: yup coolsjf: take rejection like a man. weirdosjm: i c u have no experince weirdosjm: u call that a rejection? weirdosjm: u really have no experince weirdosjm: no wonder ur on the site coolsjf: i am a very fun social girl with a lot of friends and no lack of interested guys. weirdosjm: thats ur problem coolsjf: read it again. coolsjf: try to comprehend. coolsjf: where did you go? YU? weirdosjm: hell no coolsjf: or a technical school that doesn't actually award bachelor degrees? weirdosjm: i am getting my licensce soon and wil make more than people with masters coolsjf: license coolsjf: but at least they can spell coolsjf: and come across as competent, intelligent and caring. weirdosjm: its a c omputer moran coolsjf: moron weirdosjm: i'm chatting with 6 people coolsjf: mazel tov weirdosjm: ;-) thanks bitch coolsjf: so let's stop talking. it's a waste of my time. weirdosjm: ur time? weirdosjm: ok cunt go weirdosjm: and some advise change t he pic on ur profile coolsjf: ADVICE coolsjf: why? 'cause i dont' wear make-up? 'cause i'm honest about what i'm like? weirdosjm: no its more than that coolsjf: don't worry. i've attracted guys who i'm interested in weirdosjm: i'm sure u have that y ur on it every day coolsjf: i'm not going to stoop to insulting you, but your profile is nothing to brag about (pictures and content) coolsjf: actually i'm not,but even if it were true, how would you know it? it would mean that YOU'RE on every day weirdosjm: u know how many emails i get everyday weirdosjm: and its STOP weirdosjm: not stoop coolsjf: no it's STOOP, you imbecile. look it up in a dictionary. weirdosjm: i am on every day the more pussy the better coolsjf: i'm not going to STOOP to insulting you. weirdosjm: u can keep goin coolsjf: stoop as in bend down, get so low and pathetic as to do something. coolsjf: that's the literal definition. the way i used it was figurative. weirdosjm: good so go teach then coolsjf: why don't you go on craig's list if all you want is action ? weirdosjm: i hope this guy see's ur on jdate everyday coolsjf: SEES weirdosjm: whats craigs list weirdosjm: ? coolsjf: oh here you go. please leave jdate forever. go to newyork.craigslist.org -- they have personals sections. it's all free. you can go to "casual encounters." it seems like it's more your speed. weirdosjm: k thanks coolsjf: oh check it. there's a website called f*ckbuddies.com. just what you need. it's for slimey losers who can't find a real relationship. weirdosjm: i dont do that stuff those people arent clean coolsjf: and you are? when were you last tested? given that you say: "i am on every day the more pussy the better" Previous message was not received by weirdosjm because of error: User weirdosjm is not available.

Momo Lifshitz Wants to Pay for Your Wedding...

...that is, if you and your intended meet on a birthright Israel trip. According to Tampabay:

When Shlomo "Momo" Lifshitz [head of Oranim, a tour provider for birthright], finds himself in front of young American Jews taking part in his educational tour of Israel, including some from the Tampa area, the plump, balding man doesn't hesitate. He welcomes them with a simple message: Marry Jewish and "make Jewish babies." And he's willing to pitch in to make it happen. "If you meet your husband or wife on this trip, I will pay for your wedding and honeymoon," he promised a group of more than 100 young adults from the United States.

Some people on the trip found it endearing, but for some participants, "the matchmaking was too much. They joked that organizers were "trying to get us pregnant on the bus." Now there's an image. Who's in? What? You can't go to Israel with birthright because you've already been there? Or you can't get away from your life for that long? Perhaps a Jewlicious conference is more your speed....you're in luck! Click the button under "Cool Ads" for more info...