Dad’s House

More than one person commenting on my Calling All Matchmakers post said that men who cook, read, and try tantric sex are perceived by women as unmanly. One came right out and said those behaviors are gay. No offense to homosexuals, but a man perceived as gay is assumed to date men – not women. These readers suggested, if I want to date more women I need to take a more manly approach to life than preparing my own food, talking about books, and trying sexual positions beyond missionary.

Please tell me they’re in the minority.

Cooking - As a single dad with half-time custody of two kids, I wonder what my manly dinner options would be?

a) Restaurants and take-out every night
b) Grill steaks every night
c) Remarry quick! Let my built-in cook/housekeeper prepare the meals

Sorry, but I’ll take the unmanly approach of cooking. And I won’t be heating cans of chili or stew. I want good food and real recipes to fuel my marathon running and century bicycle riding and keep me healthy in general. (Maybe a beer gut would be more manly than my fit physique.) Aren’t there enough famous chefs on TV – Wolfgang Puck, Bobby Flay, Rick Bayless – that male cooking is mainstream?

Books – I know most men prefer techno-thrillers. But since when are men who read literary fiction and books on spirituality considered unmanly? Commentors mentioned SNAG as the real unmanly culprit – Sensitive New-Age Guys should be friends, not husbands or lovers. Last I checked, men have been reading for eons, both literary and spiritual stuff. Reading is not New-Agey. Maybe it’s the talking in the kitchen with any senstitivity about books, rather than grunting about sports on the backyard patio. Hey – if there’s a conversation about Serie-A or World-Cup soccer, I’m right in the mix. But I find American sports boring – overpaid crybaby athletes acting like boys. Who’s the unmanly one here?

Tantric sex – it’s ancient, not new-agey. The act of using sexual energy for transcendence and connecting with God is mentioned in the Old Testament, the Koran, and other spiritual texts. Countless celebrities have tried tantra, from Sting to Scarlett Johansson. I’m guessing anyone who summarily dismisses tantric sex as weird simply hasn’t tried it.

Destructive thought patterns are hard to break, especially when they are deeply rooted in our culture. There are characters in best-selling books (unmanly!) that perpetuate outdated stereotypes. Tom Perrotta takes a wack at single parents in The Abstinence Teacher, with a single-dad character incapable/not-allowed to raise his daughter, and a single mom whose only male friends are gay. There are plenty of other books and movies similarly stuck in the stone-age. With drivel like that, how can our culture evolve?

Cooking is sexy. Reading is sexy. Tantric sex is sexy. It’s the fast-food guzzling, sports blathering, selfish lover sorts of men who are unmanly.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:

• A New Earth - Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
• A Creepy Writing Vibe
• How To Grill Asparagus
  

© 2008 DadsHouseBlog.com. All rights reserved.

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If you’re like everyone else and his brother (or you’re a 2008 Stanford grad), you know all about Oprah’s book club selection earlier this year of Eckhart Tolle’s best-seller, A New Earth – Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. But if you’re the bastard second cousin who just says no to Ms. Winfrey’s literary recommendations or TV show, perhaps I can fill you in.

A New Earth is Tolle’s follow-up to The Power of Now. His essential premise is that the ego-based thinking most people do – you know, the part of you that wants this, hates that, needs something else to happen before you’ll be happy – is a dysfunctional way to live. Rather than dwelling on past and future events and resisting the present moment, you’ll best find peace and happiness through living in the now, the current moment. Being present.

What on earth does this have to do with parenting and dating? A lot.

If you’re pissed off about your circumstance – being a single parent, being divorced, lacking a relationship, enduring online dating, lacking booty, lacking intimacy, having a sexy moment interrupted by kids, feeling your opinions attacked, whatever it is – and you’re wanting, craving, lashing out, demanding change, then you’re stuck in thought and missing out on the simple joy of Being.

As Tolle writes, The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event - through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you - ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.

This doesn’t mean your situation won’t or can’t get better. It just means for right now, life is what it is. You exist. Why not enjoy it? Stop minding so much.

There are tons of books on learning to live a heartfelt life. What I like about A New Earth is Tolle’s mix of philosophy and straight-forward advice. For instance, he suggests when a parent is with a child, if the parent can be alert, still, completely present, not wanting anything other than that moment as it is – then you make room for Being. You stop being a father or mother, and you become Presence, beyond form, the timeless I Am. When the basis for your actions is inner alignment with the present moment, your actions become empowered by the intelligence of Life itself. Applied here, it sounds like a prescription for getting along with and loving your kids.

These concepts may be heady stuff for anyone who hasn’t delved into spirituality, especially Eastern modes of thought. But Tolle breaks it down further, suggesting there are three modes to help you enter life through the present moment, and align your life with the creative power of the universe.

• Acceptance – accept life as it is. Don’t assign blame. This doesn’t mean things can’t or won’t change for the better. It simply encourages a stillness to emerge. That peace is consciousness. Consciousness is your own responsibility, and it’s the first step toward self awareness.
• Enjoyment – enjoy what you’re doing. Don’t wait for something joyful to happen. You don’t need an event to occur. Joy is an aspect of Being. Infuse your activities with joy. It comes from within you. Allow yourself to feel that deep sense of aliveness.
• Enthusiasm – this is joy directed toward a goal. You’ll feel intensity and energy behind what you do. That’s the universal spirit. If the goal becomes more important than enjoying what you are doing, you’ll feel stress.

Things, emotions, thoughts, struggles – these come into our lives, seem all-important for a time, then disappear, dissolving back into the nothing-ness from which they arose. Resistance is futile and leads to intense unhappiness. Non-resistence brings freedom.

So - got a pile of dishes to do and no spouse to do it for you? Don’t bemoan your lack of a partner, or the present mess. Accept that you’re on your own right now. Enjoy the act of creating a clean and healthy environment for you and your kids.

Friday night and no date? Embrace it. Pay attention to sites, smells, sounds around you. Maybe you’ll read a good book, hit a coffee house, have fun at a bar, meet someone new at the supermarket. You won’t do any of those if you’re sulking, angry at the past, wanting a different future.

Cranky kids got you down? Acknowledge they are young, immature, childish. Be happy and grateful they are exploring their lives and surroundings, discovering their feelings, dealing with emotions, whatever it is. They are living. You are present.

I can’t possibly boil down Tolle’s book into a single blog post, but hopefully I’ve given a fair overview. It’s definitely a good read. And on that note, it’s time to get off my new-age soap box. Dad’s House will now return to non-Oprah programming.

(Is texting an ex for booty okay if it’s done with joy and enthusiasm?)

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:

• Single Parent, Empty House, Full Life
• How to Date Four Women at Once
• Tantric Sex (Dad’s House post on Silicon Valley Moms Blog)

© 2008 DadsHouseBlog.com. All rights reserved.

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SingleWorkingMommy recently had this to say about my writing in the comment section of my How To Grill Asparagus post:

You’re a great writer (and I’m an editor, so take that for what you will)–I could picture the restaurant, the setting, the mood. I could almost feel your gin-induced fog. Great piece.

Except I get this “cree.pee” vibe from you. Is that weird? Am I just a prude? Please don’t be offended. I could very well be a prude. And maybe it’s because the only other post I’ve ever read was the one where you tried to take your online girlfriend to the woods during a hike and have your way with her. J/k. Except for the cree.pee part. I do get that. K. bai.

To which I’m responding here, because I would love to hear other reader reactions. (The Hiking post she refers to is What’s More Natural Than Nature? – Confessions of a Serial Online Dater, part 3.)

Chime in! Give me the good and bad.

First off, SingleWorkingMommy: thanks for the writing props. With respect to the vibe - as a longtime writing teacher often advised me, if a writer can elicit a strong reaction from a reader, even a reaction that is creepy or makes them cringe, then that writer has connected with that reader on an emotional level. i.e. it’s a good thing. It’s what writers strive for. I’m glad I made you react emotionally.

I assume the part that made you cringe was me ogling the bachelorettes and even projecting onto them the need for a man. I have a wry smile as I write that, because approaching a table full of bachelorettes in front of my kids, or pretending to know what those women are thinking, is the last thing I’d ever do. I know they weren’t all needing a man to join them. They certainly didn’t want a single dad with two kids in tow interrupting their evening. They were reveling in sisterhood, and I was fantasizing my male role in their lives.

But was I that far off the mark? In a brilliant piece titled Rockabye Baby…I Want to Kill the Barnes & Noble Lady, MsSingleMama desperately wants the cute man behind the counter to be the one who rings her up, and I don’t think it was for reasons of commerce. For a woman to admit she needs a man reveals vulnerability. Perhaps I played on that a bit. But what if instead I’d written that I need a woman? That I desperately wanted one of the bachelorettes to get up from the table and come talk to me, or even acknowledge my existence with the merest glance? You might question my masculinity. Turning that longing into a projection was a device to protect my aura of manliness (i.e. my ego).

Why on earth would I blog like that? I know the majority of my audience is female, and a lot of women love to read men who write in a metrosexual style, like a woman talking to her best female friend. It worked wonders for the main writer of Sex and the City (a man). It seems to work for bloggers like Manslations. But not all men are like that!

Look at Lance from Honey and Lance, or the author of What Men Think. They sometimes make women cringe in a “cree.pee” way. They are men giving honest glimpses into the male mind.

Want a more literary take? Joyce Carol Oates wrote a novel that was a Pulitzer Prize-finalist: What I Lived For (which I referenced in one of my most-popular posts: Boys are the New Girls, Women are the New Men.) Ms. Oates gets inside the male protagonist’s head, expressing thoughts like “Women are kleenex”, you use them and discard them. Egads! That makes me cringe. But like Oates, I refuse to pander to readership tastes. A strong reader reaction is a good thing.

In short – thank you for your honest feedback! I know some women get the creeps from my stories, and I’m okay with that. I’m happy and grateful to have anyone reading me at all. More than that, I’m thrilled to learn I elicited an emotional reaction.

And on that note, readers wanting to comment on my writing can fire away…

© 2008 DadsHouseBlog.com. All rights reserved.

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Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laura Sessions Stepp gives a detailed look at the hookup culture that is permeating social scenes in American colleges and even some high schools.

Hooking up involves two people getting together for sex without commitment or attachment. Ms. Stepp suggests hook-ups have replaced dating for the young-20s generation. The reasons vary: students preparing for lucrative careers refuse to be distracted by relationships; children of divorced parents don’t trust relationships; the new generation doesn’t value love; dependence on a partner is seen as a weakness; working on a relationship is less important than working on yourself.

Great insights, but I have some news – hookups aren’t confined to bright young women on college campuses. They’re everywhere. As a 40-something single dad, I’ve hooked up with women of all ages and various life stages. (Craigslist is a great resource for casual dating.)

There’s the mid-30s Burlingame woman, an ivy-educated finance professional currently pursuing an MBA. She told me over dinner on our initial meeting that between work and school she didn’t have time for a dating relationship. She then invited me back to her apartment for a sleepover and first-date sex. (Given the attraction and chemistry, I accepted.) In the morning she ushered me out, kissing me goodbye and thanking me for a fun time. In subsequent days and weeks, I tried asking her out again, but she didn’t return my calls.

There’s the early-40s single mom in San Mateo. We flirted over drinks at a restaurant bar, then she invited me to her place to fool around. We made out on the couch, then she kicked me out promptly at 11pm so she could go get her son from a friend’s house. I’m a single parent, so I could relate. When I asked to see her again, she laughed and said her dating days were long past, but promised she’d call me when the mood struck for another hookup. I need more than that from a relationship, and told her don’t bother.

There’s the late-20s San Jose nurse who works at a hospital near my house. She’s searching in earnest for a potential husband close to her age. While she enjoys coffee and dinner dates with her suitors, she doesn’t hook up. Instead, she asked me – a charming, fun, respectful, experienced, older man - to be her monogamous lover while she looks for a mate. (The single dad as booty call partner is something I’ll definitely blog about in future posts.)

I have to admit, I’m mulling this last option. As a single parent protecting the family unit I share with my children, I’m selective about who I bring around. Only two girlfriends have met my kids, and then only after we’d been dating a few months and there was long-term relationship potential.

While I’m not sold on the hookup culture – it’s unhealthy, and ultimately unfulfilling, and I know from experience that intimacy is heightened when two people truly care for each other, when the emotional and spiritual connection is deep – I also know that No Strings Attached (NSA) hookups serve a purpose. In between serious relationships, they’re a way to touch another person, share some intimacy, stay sane.

Hookups are everywhere, even in popular music. When I hear Radiohead’s Thom Yorke croon on the song House of Cards - I don’t want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover – I give a knowing nod and sing quietly along with the tune.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:

• Single Parents are Missing Out on Intimacy
• You-Know-What-us Interruptus
• Who Needs Protection? It’s Only a One Night Stand
• There’s an Order to a Single Parent’s Relationship Universe
  

© 2008 DadsHouseBlog.com. All rights reserved.

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