March 10, 2024

Another International Women’s Day has come and gone. I spent the day teaching a class on building a personal brand, and then briefing some math stuff to some potential future clients. I was wearing a homemade sweatshirt that said “Empowered Women Empower Women”. In a sick twist of fate, when I was up late on Thursday night making these sweatshirts and some cute pencil pouches and other swag for my lady friends at work, my smoke alarm started chirping. I took my step ladder down to the bedroom to try to replace the battery and I couldn’t reach the alarm to do so. Around 1 am, I gave up sleeping through the chirping sound and jumped up to rip the damn thing off the ceiling and finally got some relief. How ridiculous. A homeowner who claims to be self sufficient found herself in a position where she was nearly driven to madness by a chirping smoke detector. I didn’t feel that empowered after all.

I don’t feel empowered today either. I met a man at a bar on Friday and he seemed pretty excited to take me on a date today, but of course he has since ghosted me. I know this is the 900th time I’ve told you guys about something like this and there’s nothing you or I can do to change this stupid dating culture. But all I know is that it really hurts. These things happen enough that I start to think there really is something wrong with me. Maybe I am a walking red flag (see previous post) and there is no man out there who will want to spend time with me. Such a red flag that I don’t warrant a text that says “Hey Rebecca, I’d rather not go to lunch today. You should make other plans.” Anyway, I’ve been sitting in my house listening to the wind howl all day, napping as much as my body will allow. Empowered, my ass.

I try to be a role model for the women around me, especially at work. I try to lift them up and encourage them and make them feel important. One girl sent me a note on Friday saying “Thank you for making every day feel like Women’s Day!” and it was one of the greatest notes of appreciation I’ve ever received. These ladies are so smart and funny and kind and tough – I want them to feel special every day. So when I get like this – all down on myself and upset about men or loneliness, I feel like I’m failing at my mission. An empowered woman probably wouldn’t take Benadryl to sleep through a Sunday because she’s so hurt over a man she spent about 90 minutes with at a bar. An empowered woman wouldn’t cry in the car over a Bumble message from a man who decided that the two of you were incompatible without ever speaking to you. An empowered woman wouldn’t be like this. An empowered woman would make herself feel special and validated rather than crying about all the men who don’t want to do that for her. An empowered woman would spend Women’s History month celebrating the capable, strong women around her instead of lamenting the men she tries to date and some of the predictable things they do.

So I guess I’ll take a second and empower myself to think about women and what they mean to me.

My best friend is a woman. She is a teacher, a great wife, a beacon of strength, a calm force to counter my chaotic nature.

My mom is a woman. She is tough and spunky and makes the best baked beans and fried potatoes. She gives me tough love when I need it and unconditional love every other second.

My sister is a woman. She is so creative and the nicest person I know. We have the same hair color and crippling anxiety. She’s a great friend. She’s an awesome mom.

My niece will be a woman soon enough. She is funny and athletic and crafty. Her love language is giving gifts and every time she sees me, she has some sort of jewelry she has made just for me.

My friend Jessi is a woman. I love to talk about books with her and she always makes me feel special and heard. She is an advocate and an ally for people around her.

Some of my coworkers are women. Brenna is wise and brilliant and always on my team. Lacey is tenacious and creative and dependable. Arthi makes me smile and feel loved. Brooke keeps me in stitches and is a great mentor.

A dear friend that I miss terribly is a woman. She is hilarious and emotionally intelligent and caring. I hope she knows how much I miss her and want her to thrive. I messed everything up. I’m sorry.

These are just a few of the women I woke up thinking about on Friday morning. I see you all working hard, taking care of your kids and/or the people around you, making sacrifices. I see you doing your best to grow and learn every day. I see you trying to make the best of this messy, imperfect, fucked up ride called life. I see you and I appreciate you and I thank you for everything you’ve done for me and will continue to do in the future.

I hope you take a second (or much more than a second) to pat yourself on the back and appreciate all the good you bring to the world. The world would be so much duller without you in it. And I’ll do the same for myself and recognize that I may not feel like an empowered badass every second of every day. I’m not always as strong as I want to be or as classy or as slow to anger. But I can always empower myself to shift my thinking, change my mind, and make better choices next time. And when in doubt, I can model my behavior after some of the amazing women I am blessed to know.

March 2, 2024

Hellllllllllo blog people in the year 2024! It’s great to be here again. I took a little break and made my site private for a bit, but now I’m ready to get back in the over-sharing, self-depreciating, under-whelming-the-masses-with-my-prose, connecting-words-with-dashes, swing of things. Thanks for stopping by!

I had a lesson in red flags this week. If you follow me on my Facebook page, I posted a true little story about dating in the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia for you Kentucky rubes). To jog your memory:

“I was on a date where I had to drive about an hour to meet the guy. We met at his house and he drove us to dinner. Then when we got back, I asked if I could use his bathroom before I hit the road. He showed me inside and upstairs to his bathroom, and then said “Goodnight, get home safe.” He and his dog went in his bedroom and shut the door. I shrugged, peed and and headed down the stairs. I was internally debating if I should offer to buy something like I would after using the bathroom at a Shell station or if I should just steal something to thicken the plot. I was wearing socks and the stairs were carpet, so in the middle of my scheming, I slipped and fell halfway down the flight of stairs. I stood up, took a deep breath, and took another step- then slipped again and fell the rest of the way down. I know that man heard me fall down his staircase, but he never emerged from his bedroom. So I stood up, dusted the dog hair and dust off of my ass and limped out to my car – too embarrassed to steal a Knick knack or leave a 20 on the coffee table. My knee is still very sore but I don’t think I’m out for the season. Should be back in the game in time for March Madness.“

You guys really thought it was a funny little story, so I posted it in a Facebook group for my favorite podcast called “Shit talk Sister Wives”. Shit Talk is hosted by a couple who got a little fame from podcasting about the show on TLC called Sister Wives, but they have since acquired a cult-like following on their Patreon and they recap shows like Dateline, Love is Blind and Toddlers in Tiaras. It is the best group I’ve ever seen on social media. People post about really crazy stuff on there and people are always nice. I posted my story there and got so many positive comments about my story telling, I was feeling feisty and confident. So I went to a local Facebook group for people who like to drink in northern Virginia, correctly named “Drink NOVA” and posted the story there.

My post in the NOVA group took off. I blinked and I had 500 reactions on there, with most people saying that it was hilarious and also saying that my male co-star in the story was rude to me. But another wild thing happened. I experienced my first taste of hate on social media since the election of 2016. I stopped posting about politics in 2016 when my high school pre-calculus teacher made a comment on my page saying that I am bad at my job in a chain reaction that followed from me running my mouth about Gary Johnson’s infamous “What is Aleppo?” interview. Remember that guy? He was the Libertarian candidate for president back when Trump and Hilary were duking it out. Anyway, I was making fun of this poor guy and made my former teacher mad. I’m glad midterm grades are permanent once submitted because if not, I might have retroactively lost my 4.0. The horror. I deserved it. You find yourself acting as a keyboard warrior trying to defend your intellect against a high school math teacher from middle-of-nowhere Kentucky, and you take a step back and evaluate your life choices, is all I’m saying. So I took a break from posting controversial opinions about worldwide current events and started just trying to post about funny things that happen in my life (and selfies!) – like any real narcissist would do. Roe v. Wade got overturned and I broke my rule that day, posted a little something, made an appointment to get an IUD, and returned to my politics-free posting.

My new and exciting 2024 internet hate had a few themes: You make bad decisions, you’re desperate, you’re a slut, you have red flags, you’re a sloppy drunk, you’re not funny.

Ok – I kind of understand how some criticism could come from my little story at face value. One read-through might suggest that I drove to this man’s house on a first date – but it was actually a third date. I left that detail out. We had a couple of really fantastic dates before – both at Mexican restaurants where we compared and contrasted the margarita and fajita situation at the two spots. I brought him a slice of key lime pie on the first date because he said he liked key lime pie. We ate pie and drank margs. It was awesome. So when the folks in the Drink NOVA group wanted to know why I would go to a stranger’s house on a first date – I told them it was a third date, not a first. We had spent many hours together prior to this date. Most people understood that, but one woman doubled down that going to a man’s house on a third date is also stupid. I ask you, dear blog readers, WHEN THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO SEE A MAN’S HOUSE? On the wedding night? This whole thing about “OMG it’s so not safe to go into a man’s house, he might kill you.” is so funny to me. Do you know how many instances of domestic violence happen between couples who have known each other for YEARS? When exactly is it safe to be in a house alone with a man? The answer is never.

Date three went just as well as the first two, so the ending really confused me and made me belly laugh on the way home. Well, first I cried for just a few minutes. But then I belly laughed. It was a long drive, so I had plenty of time to process my emotions. Another key detail of the story is that I was not drunk when I fell down the stairs. I had 1.5 drinks over the course of a 6 hour date and actually sipped on a coke for the last hour or so because I knew I had to drive home.

Another burning question that the great Drink NOVA folks had was: why on earth would you drive an hour to meet a man?? He’s supposed to drive to you, dummy. He’s the man. I’m sorry, I don’t buy into that whole idea that women shouldn’t have to lift a finger in dating. If I might make a connection with someone, I’ll drive an hour. I have a nice car and a long podcast list. But apparently driving to him means that I’m desperate or also potentially a stalker. I thought it was a nice thing to do because he said he had to be at work at 3 am the next day. But no, Rebecca, it’s not nice, you’re pathetic. Way to put yourself in a stupid situation, idiot. Look at all those RED FLAGS!!!! Wow, that guy dodged a bullet! One woman said she was glad that the guy didn’t come out of his room to check on me because I would have accused him of something. Then the Red Pill guys arrived in the thread and I was like “LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE, LEYA!!!!” She also thought I was serious about thinking about stealing something. I thought that was an obvious joke – you know, it’s funny because the man left me alone, unsupervised in his home and I could have walked out with anything. I would obviously never do such a thing.

See what I did for the last three paragraphs? I just wrote a 3 point essay trying to convince some people who don’t know me from Adam on a Facebook group that I’m not a dumb slut who deserves to fall down stairs and cry half the way home. And this is what I was trying to do in my responses on the post when I gave up and deleted it altogether. My intention all along was to share a funny story on a Thursday that I thought really highlighted how humans are imperfect and messy and clumsy and find themselves in awkward interactions, yet we survive them and laugh about it later. I wasn’t even mad at the guy…I haven’t heard from him since and I think that’s for the best. We had big mismatches in our values, and while it would have been nice for the guy to walk me to my car and hug me goodbye, I’m not upset with him. Actually I remember telling my friend that I was almost relieved that I sobbed for a minute on the drive home. My new medication (Lexapro baybeeeee) has helped me so much, I hadn’t really felt a strong emotion in 2024, so being able to sob and feel really sad for a legitimate reason felt so good.

But then I found myself trying to defend my character against people who don’t know me and never will. I hate how susceptible I am to that. Someone says some blanket statement about me as if people are black and white, perfectly good or perfectly bad, and I start to believe them. I even went to work the next day and asked my friend earnestly “Do you think going to a guy’s house on the third date is slutty? Dangerous? Would you judge a friend for that?” And she said “I wouldn’t judge my friend if she went there on a first date. I wouldn’t have judged her if she was drunk when she fell. I wouldn’t have judged her if she drove two hours. I would have asked her if she was okay and told her that she deserves to be with someone who will walk her to the car at the end of the night.” That about sums it up, right?

How cute was my outfit though?

Stay tuned for this all new season of “The Days of Rebecca’s Life”. We are guaranteed to have a lot of emotional spirals, lessons learned from this journey called life, and belly laughs to help us cope. Join me if you dare.

September 12, 2023

The Crystal City Sports Pub (CCSP) is an American institution. Okay, it’s actually a family-owned (and family friendly!) sports bar in a neighborhood in Arlington, VA that is two metro stops away from the Pentagon. It’s on a hip little street (23rd) surrounded by other restaurants and bars, a consignment shop, a tailor, and one ambiguous place called “The Flirt Lounge” which I believe is a hookah bar but is absolutely not a place I personally would go to “flirt”. CCSP is also right down the street from a well-known strip club called “The Crystal City Restaurant”. People often get the two establishments confused. When I lived in Arlington (Pentagon City), I would tell gentlemen on Bumble that I loved the CCSP, and they would be a little bit confused but also altogether too excited that I was a strip club aficionado. Unfortunately for them, I am actually a mediocre-bar-food aficionado and gravitate more toward the well-lit sports pub.

I’ve had some really amazing memories at CCSP. I went there by myself on Halloween one year, all dressed up in my Rockford Peach costume. The owner’s wife was my waitress that night and she was very upset when I said I was trying to emulate Dotty Henson. “Clearly you’re Kit”, she said. People at the bar kept shouting “There’s no crying in baseball!” as I enjoyed my buffalo chicken tenders, a baked potato and a Mountain Dew. My ex and I used to go there a lot, especially on evenings when a local band called “Junk Food” was playing on the 2nd floor. The lead singer of that band would sometimes have solo sets there, and he had a whole gaggle of groupies that showed up for every show. They would all get sloshed and dance around the tables. I think most of them were related to him in one way or another, and like clockwork, there would always be a moment toward the end of the evening where he would invite his blonde sister-in-law up to the microphone to do her incredibly mediocre rendition of Miranda Lambert’s “Tin Man”. That song is depressing when Miranda sings it, but when someone with far less talent sings it, it’s damn near unbearable – especially the 40th time you’ve heard it. Josh and I would be crying laughing every time we got to witness this one-trick-pony.

When I started at Deloitte (gulp…seven years ago), my first project was on a three-man team. One of those teammates was my good buddy, Matt. Matt is one of the sharpest data scientists I’ve ever met, and we really got along from jump because we both come from small town America. He’s from South Dakota and like me, found himself living in a large metropolitan area for a fancy job. I can’t really recall how our friendship unfolded. I think I met his girlfriend Jessi at a Christmas party once, and it seems like the rest is history. They have become two of my absolute favorite people. I love how unequivacally authentic they both are. I love that when I hang out with them, I never feel like a third wheel. I love how good they are to each other and how much hope they give me that I, too, may find my “person” some day. I love that they are always down for tacos at Eastern Market on a Saturday and a stroll through a bookstore.

Matt and I also connected pretty early on in our relationship over a mutual love for the Crystal City Sports Pub. There’s a really terrible app called Fishbowl that a lot of professionals in the consulting industry use. If you remember the really toxic app called Yik Yak from college, it’s similar. People on the app are anonymous and your handle on the app just describes what company you work for (the usual suspects: Deloitte, PWC, BCG, BAH) and your level in the company. To absolutely no one’s surprise, the anonymity makes people behave like monsters on there. I was on that app for about 24 hours in 2017 and then deleted it forever because I saw a post where people were comparing how much wealth they had in liquid assets in the public forum and it left a bad taste in my mouth (and made me feel poor). While I was serving my 24-hour Fishbowl sentence, I saw an innocuous post on there where someone was asking about dining options in Arlington. I saw a reply on that thread: “I’ll die on this hill, Crystal City Sports Pub is the best Arlington has to offer.” I came into the office the next day and said “Matt…was that you on Fishbowl last night?” It was! I’m telling you, this friendship was handcrafted by the universe.

We are all super busy, but Matt and Jessi and I usually find time to meet up every couple of weeks. They live in DC and I love that they encourage me to come to the city for tequila festivals, lego exhibits at the building museum, fancy Mexican restaurants in Takoma Park, and the aforementioned Eastern Market burrito stand. But sometimes Jessi and I will text during the week and realize that we are tired (and hungry) and we need an evening at the CCSP. We met up there on Labor Day last week and I was telling them about my most recent romantic disaster. I was telling them about a man I met at a bar who complimented my red high heels by asking me “If you click those three times, do you think you’ll go home?” We went on a few dates and then he kind of disappeared. I was lamenting it to them saying “I dunno, it was nice to meet someone in the wild instead of on an app and I thought things were going well. And he has a job and a 401(k)…or at least a thrift savings plan. But he is basically homeless. He’s couch surfing on friends’ couches because he sold his house a while back and hasn’t decided whether to rent or buy next.” Matt interrupted me to say “People have 401(k)s, Rebecca! We have to raise the bar here! We aren’t in small town America anymore, people have 401(k)s!” See, these are the truths I need friends to shout at me over chicken fingers and beer.

I went out this weekend and smiled at a man wearing a green shirt. He smiled back. All I talked about with my friend for the next hour was how I was confused as to why that man smiled at me and then walked out of the bar without talking to me. The absolute audacity! I swear men are 70% water and 30% audacity. Then he reappeared, like Mr. Darcy walking through that foggy field to find Lizzie Bennet at the end of Pride of Prejudice (the movie, that shit didn’t happen in the book). Except imagine that Mr. Darcy was realllllllllly drunk. Anyway, he walked through the proverbial fog, up to the bar to order another beer and then turned to me and said “Hi.” We started chatting with him and his friend and quickly learned that he is a Principal at BCG. This job title may not mean much to the masses, but to people in consulting, it means something, and to me it means this: He is a successful man who likely makes more money than I do. Weeeeeeee! The rain started pelting my parade float when he told me he actually lives in Las Vegas and was just in town for his friend’s birthday. DAMMIT. A nice man with pretty green eyes and a GREAT job thought I was pretty (at least he did when he was 7 beers deep) and he lives all the way out in Sin City. Thanks, universe. Anyway, this tidbit of information apparently didn’t stop me from making out with him in a parking lot at 2 am. The whole next day I was feeling pretty proud of myself for finally kissing a man who is more successful and important than I am, even though he walked out of my life forever shortly after. I texted Matt and Jessi to tell them about the exciting event.

See, Rebecca, people have 401(k)s.

I don’t know if this blog was an ode to Matt and Jessi, CCSP or green-eyed men with 401(k)s – but maybe I just want the world to know that I appreciate all of them.

September 27, 2023

Ok folks, our first installment of Rebecca’s Love Equation is going to be a recap of a day in the DC for Oktoberfest. Two weekends ago, a friend and I took to the big city to see if we could find eligible bachelors in the Nation’s Capital. Here’s a quick run down:

10:45 Brunch at Republica Cantina. Brunch is a strong word because we wanted street tacos from Eastern market and didn’t want to “spoil our lunch”, so we ended up eating chips and queso with a couple of stellar spicy margaritas. We were tipsy by the time we left. 10/10 highly recommend, very cute place in the NoMa neighborhood. My waiter was wearing a Bass Pro hat, but was very confused when I asked him if he likes to fish. No eligible bachelors in sight.

12:00 Wunder Garten. Hands down my least favorite commute of the day. It was just a ten minute walk between the restaurant and the Biergarten, but on the way, a man shouted at us “Y’all don’t own the sidewalk, MOVE OVER.” Being the well-bred, and easily intimidated women we are, we moved over a bit (mind you, this was a huge ass side walk and we were not in this man’s way at all) and said nothing. Then as he passed us he looked over his shoulder and shouted “Yeah I said it, go and call your boyfriend and tell him.” You see sir, that’s the thing. I don’t have a boyfriend or any man in this metropolitan area who gives one damn about my safety, yet here you are, screaming at all 5’0″, 125 lbs of me on the street like an absolute lunatic. He was carrying what looked like the entire inventory of the local TJ Maxx, so I guess his arms were tired. Another stranger on the street made up for it when he passed us (slowly) on his bike and said “Man I don’t understand. Y’all are out here looking fine as hell and these white men won’t talk to you.” We both instinctively yelled back “RIGHT?! THANK YOU!” Anyway, Wunder Garden was my favorite stop of the day. This place is so beautiful. It is covered in plants and has all kinds of festive seating areas. They had Barbie boxes set up where people could pose like a doll. I opted to have my picture taken in a giant flower. I drank two orange crush vodka drinks because they didn’t have any sours on the menu. 10/10. No eligible bachelors.

1:30 Eastern Market. We took the bus to Eastern Market so we could stop by my favorite taco stand for some tacos. No eligible bachelors except for a man who I think was trying to hit on my friend and offer her some flowers he bought in the market but we rudely ignored him because we thought he was trying to sell them to us. Oops. 10/10 for the tacos. No eligible bachelors that didn’t look like flower salesmen.

3:00 Blue Jacket. Our next stop was the Blue Jacket brewery in Navy Yard. Look. There was exactly one good looking man in that place who didn’t appear to be there with his wife and small children, and he was on a date with some woman. After a day of not see any straight men with potential (and many many drinks), this was apparently enough to throw me into a blind rage, asking hard hitting questions to my friend like: “How the hell did she get a date with the last single man in DC?”, “What’s she got that I don’t?!” and “Why are there so many f**king children here? That man just paraded that child around this brewery like he was a f**king prodigy and then handed him back to his wife – heaven forbid she get to enjoy her beer and sandwich even though she’s been watching that f**king kid all day.” You get it. Completely rational and sober thoughts coming from me. After some potato skins and a giant glass of water, I felt better and we were off to the next stop. 8/10 for the food and atmosphere. No eligible bachelors.

5:00 Dacha Beer Garden. Our final planned stop of the day was the Dacha Beer Garden in Navy Yard. We walked in and saw a lot of people in the tent, a few even dressed up in their Oktoberfest attire. I ordered a sour that tasted like a granola bar, and we were pretty quickly approached by a man named Frank. He was wearing these sunglasses that he had pulled down onto the bridge of his nose so he could look over them to talk to us. He was nice? I guess? I told him about my plan to go to football bars on Sundays to meet men, and he seemed pretty sure it wouldn’t work because those were not “men of substance”. Frank was pretty caught up on people of “substance”. He’s one of these guys who talks a lot about how his job used to be “Call of Duty in real life”. Now, I don’t know everything and maybe Frank has killed a thousand men with his bare hands or something, but I know a few men who used to do “Call of Duty in real life” and one thing they never talk about in bars with strangers is how they used to do that. When I mentioned to Frank that I live in Northern Virginia, I might as well have said “Siberia” because he had the same reaction. He’s just a…what’s the word…dingus?

His friends showed up after he kindly bought us both drinks. Two of the friends seemed so drunk that weren’t really sure what was going on. The other friend was a man who was roughly a million feet tall. I can’t remember his name. He was trying to talk to me about his job in IT, but I was yelling up to him like Prince Charming yelling up at Rapunzel in that tower, and I don’t think he heard a lot of what I said, and I sure as shit didn’t hear him. Frank told me that tall-man is a math genius and makes a lot of money – a real man of substance. At one point, Frank wandered over to talk to some cute blondes who were dressed up in matching Dirndls. They looked adorable and pretty, I loved their costumes. When Frank returned to our table, he invited us to follow him and his friends to their next spot of the night – an outdoor bar called The Cove. I asked him genuinely if he’d rather invite the cute dirndl girls, because I knew that neither me nor my friend were really attracted to any of these men. He said “No, those are just a couple of bimbos.”

Bimbos! Because they are pretty with blonde hair with their boobs out? Because they are dressed up and having fun on a Saturday? My shirt was way more revealing than the dirndls these girls were wearing. Why were they bimbos but we weren’t? Because we each have brown hair? Because we were the flavor of the moment and every girl he’s not talking to in the moment is a bimbo? I know I spent the whole day trying to find eligible bachelors, and Frank was as eligible as they come – not bad looking, seemed to have a good job. But I can’t abide by this attitude that all pretty girls are bimbos and that men who watch sports aren’t “of substance”.

I think this way of negging all of the people around you, or shit talking others to make yourself seem more attractive is pretty rampant in dating, especially in the bar scene. I’ve met people like Frank who have strong opinions on what does or doesn’t indicate that someone is smart or worth speaking to, and what does or doesn’t make a woman a bimbo. I’ve met people like the man who told me that a beautiful woman was “like talking to a brick wall,” to try to get my attention by putting her down. I’ve had men chastise me for not traveling enough or eating the right foods – “Girl, when are you going to start LIVING?” I even had one man criticize my posture on Saturday night. He brought it up in front of a crowd like he was talking about the weather, and then seemed baffled that I didn’t like that. It is an absolutely BANANAS way to interact with the world, in my opinion. You go through all this effort to look nice to go out, put on your cologne, then go out in the world to try to present the most confident, put-together version of yourself – only to find that confidence by tearing down other people. Out loud. For everyone to hear. And not based on their character or actions (like the way I’m judging Frank right now), but based on their harmless hobbies like watching football or wearing costumes to Oktoberfest, or not living in a sky rise apartment in DC or not sitting up straight. Go find some people of substance to talk to and leave bimbos like us alone, Frank. 10/10 for Dacha beer and atmosphere. No eligible bachelors upon further inspection.

Justice for the bimbos. For all of us.

7:30 Home. We both had tummy aches by the time we left The Cove (a nice spot on the river front in Navy Yard, lots of young single people, probably absolute hell when it rains). I was in bed by 8:30 and had to keep my bottle of Tums on my bedside table all night.

It was a perfect day. 10/10. No eligible bachelors.

I am still collecting challenges and reccomendations for Rebecca’s Love Equation. Please email us at rebeccasloveequation@gmail.com or drop some recommendations at this link.

October 23, 2023

Every time I actually use the little water filter on my refrigerator (which is rare because I don’t have the patience for it when the water from the tap on my sink comes out so much faster) I make the same mistake. Due to my impatience and inability to stand still, I push the glass up against the button that makes the water come out, and leave the glass on the little ledge and walk away. I tell myself that I can walk over to another part of my kitchen and do some other chore – wipe off the counter, throw something away, fill the puppy’s water bowl or whatever – and then I’ll come back and grab the glass before it is full. Yet, I always walk away to do the other chore and then immediately forget that I left the glass on the ledge until I hear that awful sound of water hitting the floor. I shout at myself “Dammit, Rebecca!” every time this happens, yet I never learn my lesson. I’ve done it twice already today. I was cooking chicken for lunch and then turned around to see a huge puddle under the fridge. I got so exasperated with myself, I just threw a towel down over the puddle and put the glass of water in the sink without drinking a drop. That’ll teach you, you thirsty bitch.

This is such a metaphor for my whole life. I make the same mistake over and over and never learn from it and instead have learned not to trust myself. I’m on the path to dehydration because I can’t trust myself to fix myself a glass of water without making a mess. Just as I can’t be trusted with the simple task of pushing a button and standing still for a few seconds, I can’t trust myself in love and relationships. A few weeks ago, I was working on a project on this blog called “Rebecca’s Love Equation”, where I was going to try to make dating more fun and less stressful. Shortly after I published those posts, I met a man in the wild when I wasn’t even trying. We were at a concert for a Led Zeppelin tribute band and I walked up to him and asked simply “Are you here by yourself?” and it was one of those organic meetings that felt like a great story we could tell at parties one day. He pursued me heavily, and we dated for a few weeks. Friday night I was telling one of my girlfriends that I felt so secure with him and felt so certain that he wasn’t seeing anyone else. I was planning to bring up the subject of exclusively dating with him this week. I was so sure that this was the beginning of something special, I deleted my love equation posts on this blog and all of the dating apps. Then Saturday morning, I got a text. “Hi Rebecca, I’m sorry, I can’t see you anymore, I’ve decided to be exclusive with someone else.”

One text ruined my whole weekend and I’ve been so upset. I can’t figure out if it’s because this guy was so wonderful and I really connected with him – this doesn’t happen often for me – or if I am just devastated because I had the audacity to be hopeful this time. He was treating me the way I wanted to be treated and made me feel happy and comfortable with him. I started allowing myself to be excited. I tricked myself into thinking that the way he treated me was special and that the words he said to me actually meant something. I tricked myself into ignoring all the red flags, justifying some of the things he did, and assuming that a father of two with full-time custody couldn’t possibly make time to date more than one woman at a time. I was wrong about all of it. I tricked myself into thinking a future could be possible with someone, just the way I trick myself into believing that I’ll remember to remove the water glass from the ledge before the cup runneth over. I’ve done this to myself time after time.

I told my friend about this and he said “Why are you all worked up? This guy sounds like a loser.” People love to say things like this when they are on your side and they want you to feel better. But he’s not the loser, I am. No matter how on-my-high-horse I can be about the fact that he led me on and wasn’t honest about his intentions, I’m still the loser. Sure, he had to break the news to me and listen to me angrily responding on the phone for a few seconds. But after that, he got to go hang out with his kids and his new girlfriend. The one he chose over me. The winner. They won and I lost. I have a feeling he didn’t take Benadryl at 3 pm on Saturday to try to fall asleep and feel better. I have a feeling that he didn’t exhaust and exasperate his friends and family by trying to call them and tell them about it. I have a feeling that he had a really lovely weekend while I was here in hell. I’m the loser.

I know I sound like that girl who inspired the shenanigans in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” – you remember, she missed work and was crying into Kate Hudson’s shoulder.

“You only dated the guy a week…“

“It was the best week of my life. *sobs*“

I know it’s ridiculous. I went on a date yesterday and that was also a big mistake. I was trying to run from this disproportionate amount of pain I’m feeling, and thought maybe I’d just go out with someone random from Bumble and we’d hit it off and everything would feel alright. It didn’t work out that way. All I felt was sad and then I felt like a piece of garbage for putting this innocent bystander in the middle of my mess. He was perfectly nice and we split a chicken wrap at the bar, which was the only real meal I had all weekend. I regret wasting his time – I did pick up the check, so I guess he got a free, mediocre meal out of it.

I wish dating were a little more like my job. At work, we get these “Snapshots”, where you work some hours on a project and submit a Snapshot to the team lead. They rate you on a scale of 1 to 5 and then write comments basically saying what you did right and whatever you should do differently or better. Feedback loops like this are never perfect, but there’s not a lot of ambiguity there. If you’re doing well, you’ll know it. If not, you’ll know it. As a team leader myself, giving this feedback is never easy because it can be painful for the person receiving it. But it’s kind of like some of the pain in your body – a lot of times, your body will send you pain signals as a sign that you need to take action. If your head hurts, you might need to drink some water (room temperature water from the kitchen faucet unless you want to make a huge mess). If you accidentally touch a hot stovetop, you feel pain and then you know to get away from the heat. If your knees hurt while running, you might need to change your form or try a different exercise. You get it. I wish pain from dating could be more like that for me. If I’m going to cry and feel this way, how can I take it and learn from it? Can they start filling out an exit survey? What can I do so I can stop being someone’s second choice? Or third choice? Or booty call? I wish I could get some feedback or read an article like “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” that doesn’t end with Kate Hudson proclaiming her undying love for Matthew McConaughey. I’m really sorry if I spoiled the ending of that movie for you.

I keep trying to replay how the last few weeks happened so I can make some kind of list of “what not to do”. So far, my list has one bullet – “Stop ignoring red flags”, and even that one is not really actionable because red flags are so subjective. I think there should be a separate “what not to do” list for how to react in the fallout. I need to learn to resist the impulse to sequester myself off from the rest of the world. That “Do Not Disturb” setting on the iPhone is nice but also dangerous, especially if you pair it with a little self medication. You know how I said earlier that I put my glass of water in the sink? I was really thirsty, but my impulse was to punish myself because I was angry over my mistake. Which is exactly what I’ve been doing all weekend – punishing myself for a choice HE made by cancelling fun plans and hiding under my covers. I feel so disappointed and embarrassed because I told my friends about this person, I’ve allowed myself to spiral into this place of deep shame and regret.

The only thing that gives me a little peace is that I was honest and open with this person. I showed him affection that I didn’t know I still had inside of me. Maybe I’m a full blown crazy person who cries over something like this. Maybe I keep making the same mistakes and getting attached to the wrong people. Maybe I’m more like Kate Hudson’s friend than I’d like to admit and I’m making mistakes in dating that cause men to walk away from me. But maybe the right person won’t be bothered by my mistakes and he won’t think I’m crazy. And he damn sure won’t lie to me or keep me around as a backup plan. Maybe you can’t lose the right one because the right one will stay.

Authored by Rebecca Crouch, PhD

*Peer Review Pending*

Abstract: In this experimental trial, a woman receives a series of text messages from a man who has been known to exhibit symptoms of very high audacity levels. The 35-year-old male experimental unit has not reached out to our female particpant in over 3 weeks and she has lost interest due to a fortuitous meeting with a handsome man at a Led Zeppelin Tribute Band concert in September. The scientific term for this is that she “has no f**ks left to give”.

Body: The female participant received texts from the experimental unit on Saturday 14 October 2023 between 11:48 pm and 12:02 am on 15 October 2023.

Saturday, 11:48 pm – “Hey, things really kicked off at work since the last time I saw you.”

This is the first and perhaps most vital part of the apology anatomy. We call it The Booty Call. He’s waiting until the participant is either nice and drunk on Saturday night OR she is 33 and has already been asleep for 2 hours. Women who are drunk or sleepy or both are therefore more vulnerable to the BS. He wants the participant to respond immediately and invite him over to her Barbie Dream House. The woman in this experimental trial was in fact asleep and did not respond.

Saturday, 11:50 pm – “It’s okay, I get it”

We call this text the How-Dare-You-Fail-to-Respond-Immediately (even though I (the experimental unit) usually take 24-48 hours to respond to your “Hey how’s your week going?” texts, or more frequently, I simply don’t respond at all BECAUSE F**K YOU). The experimental unit is setting the scene for playing the victim card by sending this passive aggressive text.

Sunday, 12:02 am – “I’m sorry, this is shitty. All my random texting, etc. I just thought you would understand but I guess I was wrong.”

This final text is the richest of the three. First, the experimental unit has a strong opening by saying he is sorry. He then adds a small amount of detail about what he’s actually sorry about by saying “my random texting, etc.” As our female participant was snoozing and could not respond to this, she did not inquire to the experimental unit about what behaviors are included in the “etc.” but one could infer that he does not know and probably could not name any examples. Finally, in the last sentence of the text, he flips the script masterfully and cashes in on his previous attempt to play the victim. Even though he is sorry for his own “shitty” behavior, the fault really lies with the female participant because she “like, just doesn’t understand, bro”. It is unclear what he expected her to understand – perhaps he wanted her to understand that his job is demanding and he has no time to reply to texts or take her on dates. Perhaps he wants her to understand that he expects a response to midnight texts within 2 minutes because he’s worth that boundary. Again, the female participant did not respond, so no further data were collected in this trial. We do hypothesize that at the time of this text exchange, the experimental unit was at a bar or club trying to pick up other women, failing miserably and feeling very sad.

Clearly, further experimental trials are necessary to fully understand this communication sequence. We leave this matter with our peers in the field of study, as we are moving on to other academic endeavors.

September 20,2023

While reading the Washington Post this weekend, I saw an article titled, “Washington is full of rats. These dogs are happy to help with that.” Okay, I’m listening…tell me more. The article was a ride. The first two lines were some of the best journalistic prose I’ve ever read. Listen to this:

“The sound of a rat screaming in the jaws of a terrier is the same sound that a stuffed squeaky toy makes.

It seems so obvious. Of course the toys sound that way, because that sound awakens something deep in a docile dog’s neurons that says: Shake it. Shake it till it’s dead.“

Ugh, that’s so good. Anyway, the article is about a group of vigilante rat killers in Washington DC who call themselves The Ratscallions. The Ratscallions are a group of Rat Terrier dogs and their owners who take to the streets at night in Adams Morgan – a neighborhood in DC that I am only slightly familiar with because I had a first date there once. The story there was that I showed up for my date, and the man (who looked shockingly like Hugh Jackman) informed me that he also worked at Deloitte. I knew the relationship was dead-on-arrival because of this, but we got very drunk together on our own mini-bar-crawl of the local Adams Morgan establishments. It was a good time, but he did make a comment about how I “ordered the only drink that wasn’t on the happy hour menu.” After he made that jab, I went to the bar, started my own tab, ordered him another beer and myself a plate of loaded tater tots. When my tots came out a few minutes later, Wolverine reached for one, and I slid the plate away from him. I made that man watch me eat every tot on that plate. Honestly, 7/10, not a bad first date. Alas, I digress. The rats! Yes, these poor disgusting, diseased, vile rats are murdered in cold blood exterminated on the streets of DC by a bunch of good dogs bois and girls. The dog owners wear gloves (and long, non-baggy pants because “a rat did run up a gal’s pant leg once”, omfg) and place the little rat bodies in a trash bag for disposal at the end of the night. DC District officials made a point to state that they do not support or fund the efforts of the Ratscallions – because all of the rat abatement efforts they DO support and fund are clearly working so well.

You can read the rat article here.

That article had me so enticed, I read it out lout to my dad over the phone and dramatized the most exciting bits. Later that evening, I was trying to pick an audiobook to listen to while falling asleep. I already finished Jill Duggar’s book “Counting the Cost” where she tells the cheerful tale of her dad exploiting her and her siblings on tv for a decade while covering up the misdeeds of the sexual predator who shared her childhood home, Josh Duggar. When I couldn’t think of any new titles I wanted to buy with my Audible credits, I recalled my rat story and made the leap to my favorite book about plagues. The book is called “Get Well Soon” and it is a delightful (pre-covid) joyride through some of the most devastating plagues in human history: Bubonic Plague, Antonine Plague, Typhoid, Syphilis, Leprosy, Cholera and several others. She even has a fun chapter on Phlebotomy – which is not exactly a plague, but was a prime example of medical malpractice. The people who subjected their loved-ones (usually women) to the Phlebotomy treatment to cure mental illness, headaches or “female hysteria” were nearly as monstrous as the physician, Dr. Walter Freeman who profited from the practice.

One of the recurring themes of plague stories, is that throughout history, humans have created some pretty amusing theories on the causes and cures for disease. During the Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death, the most widely accepted theory of disease was the miasma theory – the idea that poisoned air or bad smells in the air make us sick. Now obviously, this isn’t that ridiculous because we now know that disease can spread through the air – this is why our moms smack us on the back of our heads when we don’t cover our coughs. But the idea that diseases can vary in the way they spread was unknown at the time. We now know that the Bubonic Plague was primarily spread by fleas carried on rats (hence my inspiration to pick up the topic after my rat article), and that sometimes the infection spread to the lungs, making the disease airborne as well. But the people in the 14th century dealing with the plague didn’t know that. All they knew was that bodies were piling up in the streets. Most of the written accounts from this period refer to the end of days – people who somehow survived the worst part of the plague, believed the world was literally ending. We are talking about a disease so deadly that mothers locked their infected children out of their homes to save the rest of their family.

No one knew how to cure the plague, but that didn’t stop people from trying a number of home remedies, all ineffective, but each of which were varying degrees of horrific. These “cures” typically fell in a few categories: 1) Animal cures: Think things like plucking the tail feathers off of a pigeon and placing it on a Bubo (a sore/swollen lymph node caused by the Bubonic Plague) and allowing the pigeon to absorb the “poison” until it dies. Rinse and repeat. They also did this with frogs, but the frogs allegedly exploded from the poison. 2) Bloodletting. You know this one. We saw how it worked out for George Washington. 3) Persecution of marginalized communities. Jewish people were blamed for the plague and many were subsequently murdered. 4) Freshening up. Cleaning the streets to remove the bad smells. 5) Eating weird things. Some cures called for ingestion of onions. Others called for fruits, vegetables and eggs. A healthy, balanced diet couldn’t hurt, but this cure is equivalent to preventing the flu with Emergen-C packets. 5) Quarantine and social distancing. This is the only one that could work, although, staying away from infected people doesn’t do much about those pesky rats. And they didn’t have the Ratscallions.

It’s easy to look back on the plague as I sit in my master bedroom with a bottle of Mountain Dew and Excedrin PM on my bedside table (which reminds me, I need to finish this up FAST because that shit is going to kick in soon). I know that if I wake up with a sore throat tomorrow, I can go to the doctor and get some of the very same antibiotics that would have been immensely helpful in battling the Bubonic Plague. I can take tests that will identify what kind of germies I have hanging out in my body, and get fast treatment for ailments that might have killed me a few centuries ago. And I’ll still whine about feeling sick and missing work. The treatments they used seem silly to us, but perhaps now that we’ve lived through our own deadly pandemic, we can understand a small degree of the desperation and fear that led them to try anything and everything. I, for one, can see myself being that person who goes “why don’t we catch that frog and see if it will help?”

Another plague-themed book that I love is called “The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic-and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World.” I know that title is a mouthful but it’s a wonderful story. I listened to the audiobook on my ten hour drive from Virginia to Kentucky for Christmas one year – because there’s nothing as holly jolly as a book about people shitting themselves to death. Sorry for that. The book is about Cholera, and unfortunately that’s the way people died from Cholera. They had diarrhea that was so severe that they eventually died of dehydration. Cholera is still around – thousands of people die from it each year. Luckily for us in our developed nations, it is highly unlikely that we catch it because our water is so clean, and even if we did catch it, we’d probably survive due to unlimited bottles of Powerade and doses of Imodium available at your neighborhood Walgreens (even available at the touch of a finger on Uber Eats).

The book is set in 1854 London, which was becoming one of the first “modern” cities in the world. That summer, the city experienced a deadly outbreak of Cholera. Despite the fact that this occurred several centuries after the Bubonic Plague, the miasma theory is more prominent than ever. Everyone believes that the Cholera is spreading through the air – by bad smells in particular. One of the more convincing arguments is that when you smell something rancid (think corpse smell, bodily fluids, garbage) it can cause you to become physically ill (you might gag, vomit or feel nauseated). So of course, bad smells make you sick. Like I said, we know this is silly today and that just because a bad smell can make you feel sick, it doesn’t mean that all sickness is caused by smell. The powers that be in London at the time took great care to scrub the streets and make sure they were smelling fresh. Yet more than 600 people in London died from Cholera that summer.

Dr. John Snow, (not to be confused with the brooding heartthrob from Game of Thrones, Jon Snow) was an obstetrician who had long believed that Cholera was caused by particles in water, particles from sewage contamination in particular. He kept trying to prove this theory to the medical community, but no one believed him. Snow was not the most popular man in town, which didn’t help his case. He was a teetotaler who was very into his diet – kind of like a fitness bro before fitness bros were a thing. I think he was very…opinionated, and not particularly shy about sharing those opinions with people. It’s annoying, right? But he was certain of his theory and wanted to help put a stop to the epidemic. When he learned of a bad outbreak of Cholera in the Soho neighborhood of London, he started making his map. He noticed that a lot of the deaths in the neighborhood were in the vicinity of the Broad Street Water pump. In fact, about 500 of the deaths in less than ten days occurred within 250 yards of the pump. Seems like a strong correlation, right? But Snow knew that to convince others that the pump was the nucleus for the outbreak, he’d have to explain every Cholera death’s connection to the pump.

He worked tirelessly to track down information from hospitals and public records to figure out if the victims drank water from the Broad Street Pump. He made a map of all of the deaths and then investigated every single case to determine if there was a connection to the pump. Most of the deaths were easy to connect to the pump – people who lived nearby used the pump. Others deaths occurred because people who didn’t live near the pump ate at restaurants that used water from the pump. A coffee shop owner served water from the pump with meals, and 9 of her customers contracted Cholera. Some people contracted Cholera after purchasing “sherbet” from street vendors, who made the fizzy drink with water from the Broad Street Pump. One woman who didn’t live near the Soho neighborhood at all died after drinking water that her family sent to her because she loved the taste of the Broad Street water so much. While he was making his map, he not only found that every Cholera fatality had water consumption from the Broad Street pump in common, he also discovered the first Cholera case in the neighborhood. A mother dropped the dirty diaper of her Cholera infected baby (who later died) into a well near the pump, and contaminated the water supply, resulting in the outbreak. When Snow had finished gathering his evidence, he presented his findings to the city, and the handle to the Broad Street pump was removed – saving countless lives.

People in science often talk about the symbolic “Handle of the Broad Street Pump” when they want to find the underlying cause of something or the simple fix that will change everything. Snow’s map was really meaningful because it was a demonstration to the medical community that the public health is sometimes influenced most by considering all patients/cases as part of their larger environment, rather than individual people needing care. Basically, he was looking at the big picture. He didn’t wait for individual sick people to come to his office for treatment, he instead went out to seek the big, systemic changes that could impact many people at once. We saw these ideas come to life during the Covid outbreak as we all dealt with stay at home orders and mask mandates – these may not have been as immediately effective as removing the handle of the Broad Street pump, but I believe they were inspired by the same goal. John Snow was such a baller-shot-caller and an eligible bachelor. Prove me wrong.

So why did I write so many words about disease and plagues and rats tonight? I know what you’re all thinking. Rebecca, you’re not that kind of doctor. You’re not the helpful kind, remember? Yeah, yeah I know. I guess I often think about my life in terms of the Soho epidemic. Hear me out. I haven’t been doing…well…lately. I came home from work last night around 6, and took some Zzquil and slept for about 14 hours before I got up to begin another work day. To be honest, I was planning to do the same tonight after work but I thought I’d spend three hours writing about this bullshit instead. Things for me personally are no worse than usual. A man I like doesn’t like me back. Friendships are hard to navigate and I’ve been out of practice thanks to a move to Virginia from my home in Kentucky and a pandemic. I don’t get many dates these days, and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m getting less attractive as I get older or if it’s because I don’t have as much energy to try. Usually my job is that one shiny beacon of light in my life. I’ve always been so good at it and so energized and empowered by my work. But these days, it doesn’t feel like that. I feel like I’m working hard but not on the right things. I feel like I’m trying my best to impress but still letting people down. I wake up and don’t feel excited to go to work like I used to, but I also don’t feel excited to go home. Because when I get home, no one is there and I just have to face a different part of life where nothing is enough there either. It’s been a tough season. And I think I keep telling myself that I just need to find the handle for the Broad Street pump. If I can find the one thing that makes me happy, everything else will fall in line – or at least nothing else will matter as much. If I find a boyfriend, then everything will be different. Or if I get some validation from my boss, then everything will feel better. Or maybe I need to adjust my medication, then everything will feel okay. Or maybe a different therapist will do the trick. Maybe if I go on a rat hunt in Adams Morgan, I will finally be happy.

But the truth is that none of those things are going to fix everything. Hell they may even make things worse. Nothing like a rat running up your pant leg to make you need to adjust your medication some more. Sometimes life is like one big experiment, where you form a hypothesis, try something out, and then see what the results are. You stick a frog on a Bubo, watch it explode and then grab a pigeon. Rinse and repeat. There likely is no handle for the Broad Street pump here. But maybe that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take a note from Dr. Snow. Maybe the trick is to try to look at the big picture while tracking down individual problems one at a time. Maybe it’s getting to the bottom of one thing at a time (just like Snow considered one patient at a time) and but make some sort of map to see how all of the individual causes/fixes fit together. Small picture action, big picture thinking?

I’m not sure. Mostly, I just wanted an excuse to tell you about the rats. Please read the story about the rats.

September 15, 2023

I got invited to do a “hot sauce interview” at work. We filmed it today. When I read the invite for the initial discussion about the “hot sauce interview”, I shrugged and thought “must be a code name for something.” In my line of work, projects often have funny little names – lots of teams named after wineries or kingdoms in Game of Thrones. I once had a teammate in utter agony, trying to come up with a code name for a dataset we generated synthetically before he named it “slip n’ slide” or something like that. But when I got on this informational pre-interview call, the man on the phone said “Well, it’s pretty simple. I’m going to ask you three questions and make you eat hot sauce on a chicken nugget in between each one. The sauces will get progressively hotter, and it will be funny to watch you give meaningful answers about our Analytics practice at Deloitte while your eyes tear up and your mouth is on fire.” Look, I think he may have underestimated who he was dealing with because I have never met a spice I couldn’t handle. I am a consumer of spicy pickles and salsa made with Carolina Reaper and Ghost peppers. I have never been satisfied by the spice level of a spicy margarita. My mom made me some spicy salsa last weekend and texted me “I thought it was going to melt my pot!” On average, I’d wager that I eat an average of one jalapeño per day. The hot sauces they provided during my interview didn’t bother me at all – the one in the little black bottle called “The End – Flatline” made me take a drink of water, and my mouth watered a little bit. All in all though, I crushed it. My stomach is made of iron. I was also proud of the banter and personality I brought to the interview. I made the interviewer laugh a few times with a few silly topics (e.g., my “pickle guy” who moved to Chile last year, my love for the “Chicago Brown Bears”, and how much sauce on the “chicken nuggie” is considered brave). I really tried to lean into the spirit of the interview, which seemed to be “let’s talk about serious topics, but also, let’s not take ourselves too seriously.”

Last night, I was spamming my Microsoft Teams chat for one of my projects trying to get some emotional support for the hot sauce interview. I was a little nervous about being filmed. The last time I did a video for work, they made me do finger guns and I remember having to watch myself on a giant screen at an all-hands meeting just a week or so after my last breakup. I was feeling…ahem…less than confident. I saw the finger guns and my stupid, ugly face on that screen and cried in the bathroom a few minutes later. So, I found this interview where I was supposed to be filmed looking a little uncomfortable and silly to be a bit daunting. Most importantly, I needed guidance on what to wear. My only instructions were that I shouldn’t wear black because they were going to use a black backdrop for the filming. My friend Lacey said I should wear blue since the hot sauces would be orange (except for one that was actually BLACK)…blue and orange are complementary colors, you see. She knows these things, she’s a graphic designer. After my outfit was selected, one of my other teammates said “I’m going to need a link to this video as soon as it is available.” I replied, “They’ll play it at my funeral. You can watch it then.” Lacey “responded” to my message with the “laughing” emoji, so I knew she enjoyed my banter.

Banter is my favorite form of communication. Whether it’s on Teams chat, in person, on dating apps, via text message voice memos, or through inappropriate one-liners in the comments section of every picture my friend John posts on Facebook (one time he posted a picture saying he smuggled bacon into his country and made Carbonara and I posted “I wish you’d smuggle me into your country and take a big bite out of me”), I love it. I was dating the nicest man I’ve ever met in July – he sent me flowers, he planned cute activities for dates, he cooked for me, he brought me dinner one night when I had a migraine – the man brought me my own loaf of bread. He was like a handsome ass Uber Eats driver that I didn’t have to tip. NO man had ever given me a loaf of bread before him. He was just so kind and was always calling me beautiful and stuff like that. But I had to break it off with him because there was no banter. That’s one thing I’ve learned about myself in my 30’s: If you can’t make me cry from laughing, I will not be attracted to you. It was horribly unfortunate because this guy was a saint and there are a lot of other men on this planet who love to make me cry from anything but laughter. He was so graceful when I told him it wasn’t going to work out. That situation was a huge bummer. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that having a sense of humor is extremely important to me and I’m sometimes all too eager to make fun of myself and the people around me. I love telling stories about myself and frequently tie my own trauma up in neat little packages and present them to the people around me as banter. Men love to put “I’m looking for someone who doesn’t take herself too seriously” in dating profiles, which makes me very uncomfortable because it’s toxic-date culture language for “I want to treat you badly and have you not get upset.” But, despite my feelings on this, I do think I am a person who generally doesn’t take herself too seriously. I love to poke fun at me and other people, and it’s sometimes how I show affection. My humor is one of the things I like best about myself, followed closely by the warmth I can provide when I am comfortable with someone.

You know who was “taking herself seriously”? This woman I met at a bar the other day. She was absolutely lovely. One of those beauties who walks into a room and all the men stare. She saw me scanning the bar for a seat, and waved me over, “this one is open!” I sat down, and she introduced herself. She was wearing this stunning little white jumpsuit, and I complimented her on it. She said “OH it’s so soft” and grabbed my hand to implore me to feel the fabric. It was soft. She chatted with me for just a few moments before she abruptly got up, told me to have a good night and left the bar. I looked over, and saw that there was a man who had been sitting on the other side of her all this time. He tried to strike up conversation with me by saying “I left my crew to come over here and talk to that girl and it was like talking to a fucking brick wall.” Hmmm. A brick wall. I wondered if we were talking about the same woman. She was vibrant and fun and warm. Anything but a brick wall. I wasn’t around to see their interaction, but my best guess is that something about her conversation with him caused her to build a brick wall around herself. See the difference? She’s not a brick wall, she’s standing behind a brick wall to protect herself. I think these moments are often the ones that prompt people to beg others not to take themselves too seriously.

Have you ever experienced this? When you’re meeting someone for the first time or perhaps seeing someone under new circumstances and every part of your being colludes to build that brick wall that stalls productive conversation and all hope of enjoyment. If you’re like me, you know who you are when you’re comfy. I know I’m funny and sweet and vibrant, just like the woman I met in the white jumpsuit. I know I’m intelligent and witty and can make you double over with laugher. I know it. Yet I’ve found myself interacting with people with a personality that is blurred by that brick wall. All the good things about me, all the parts of me that make me warm and interesting get numbed by…something. Is it fear? Panic? General discomfort or unease? Lack of tequila? If you have a dog, you may be able to relate to this. Sometimes Maudie gets uneasy about things, and I don’t think she could explain it to me if I were able to get into her doggie brain and hear her speak in plain English. When I take her to the groomer, her whole little body starts to tremble and she foams at the mouth. No treat, no hugs from mom, no sweet reassurances of “It’s okay, baby, you’ve been here before” will calm her. I don’t think she’s capable of reasoning “I hate taking baths, therefore I hate this place. I am uncomfortable.” but her body reacts. She builds a brick wall. I’ve seen a more frightening version of this when we go out on walks, particularly at night. Typically she’s such a people-dog. She loves to give snuggles and kisses to everyone around her. But sometimes we pass a person on the street and she stares and growls and pulls on her leash as if to get me away from them. I’m sure she doesn’t know why. She’s just reacting to her environment. Something about a person’s vibe – their stature, posture, walking tempo, voice, clothing, whatever – puts her on high alert.

I experienced this the other night. This man who was about my age was at a bar with a man who was about my father’s age. They walked up to me, obviously trying to hit on me. Now, believe it or not, I have been approached a time or two by men who I did not find attractive. In these cases, I have always been “myself”. I’ve always politely responded to conversation starters, answered questions, politely declined free drinks. I can smile at them and laugh when they are funny. It’s all very human and normal. But when these two men approached me, I felt my body start to build that brick wall. I stared at my shoes. I did not smile. I did not respond to their questions in any meaningful way. I remember my inner voice telling me to be polite and then excuse myself, but it was like I was paralyzed – not physically but like…my personality was paralyzed. My heart was beating fast. I wanted them to walk away from me. At one point, the younger man got frustrated and said “Oh well, it’s obvious that I am the only good looking person in this group” to which I said “Hey, why don’t you go fuck yourself?” He laughed and said “Lady, haven’t you ever heard of banter?” Man, yeah, I have. I just physically can’t do it, not with you.

Even now as I reflect on this moment, I can’t describe it. I don’t think these men threatened me in any way. They were no more unattractive than the many men I’ve had polite conversations with in crowded bars or on bad dates. They didn’t offend me until well after I had finished construction on my brick wall. But my gut told me to keep my distance. And as we established above, my gut is made of iron. Maybe I should just trust it and move on. I should add this to my dating profile. Rebecca, 33, Atheist. My gut is made of iron and I am sometimes as easy to talk to as a brick wall. I have many opinions on aioli and various creamy sauces. Small boobs, big heart, bigger ass. I’m a writer.