Picnics and dating serendipity

[garote]

The picnic was well and truly underway, with snacks and drinks all around us and the sun twinkling on the blanket. Moving on from politics, we started to talk about dating.

Her friend said, "I'm in a new kind of phase, I think. Maybe it's because I'm older. I don't want to force anything. I mean, I want to meet someone serendipitously. Like, bump into them at some kind of social event and start a great conversation by accident. But there aren't any good options for that. Even without COVID. Where do you go?"

"Well, it's always been difficult for adults," I said. "The solution last century was lots of singles-only clubs and vacations and mixers, and they were always portrayed as these dank things full of people who were either a little too desperate, or somewhere on the creepy scale. But now the internet has blown that all up. It's created a renaissance for older people to find each other and connect -- even to connect in person."

"But it all seems so deliberate. You open this app that's designed specifically for dating, then flip through people and press buttons, and then you both deliberately go to a place and it's basically a first date. I want to just meet someone randomly, and then maybe the idea of dating them can occur later on, or it won't. I'm not saying 'friends first' exactly, I'm just saying, I want the idea of dating someone to feel spontaneous instead of planned."

"Well, I guess you can go for that," I said. "But speaking for myself, I'm way done with relying on serendipity to connect me to people. I find that the more I engineer my luck, the better it gets."

I gestured to my girlfriend, sitting next to me. "We apparently sat in the same coffee shop for as much as a year before we met, and there's a chance we might have met anyway, but the prompt of a date online actually put us together, and that combined with our relaxed and ready states of mind, and we had a really great couple of first dates. Only later did we learn that we often went to the same coffee shop. So, we were compatible and only a few feet away, but things clearly needed a little social push. Without an app to make us stand out in the coffee shop, I would have kept right on poking at my laptop, and she would have kept right on reading hew New York Times, and the most that would have happened is I might have admired her butt as she walked outside."

"Huh. I can see that but it also sort of proves my point. People hang out in coffee shops all day long, but they don't talk to new people there. If they did, things could be more spontaneous."

"Maybe there's a way to get that back. But I'm not going to stop engineering my luck. If there's an app, I'm gonna use it."

We talked for a while longer, then wrapped up the picnic. We saw the friend to her car, then we walked back the way we'd come, chatting about wanting ice water, and about dating experiences in the modern world. She bought some soda water for herself and a bottle of water for me at the cafe near the top of Bancroft.

"That's one good thing about online dating," she said. "If you're in that mode where all you can handle is a one-night-stand you can find one easily. There are lots of men out there who are nice for a couple of dates and that's about it. And they'd make terrible fathers."

"Hah!" I said. "Same with women!"

"My book about hormones calls it 'Cads Versus Dads'. Some men you like because they have good genes for making a baby. Some men you like because they'd actually be good parents."

"There's a similar thing for men too. If I was just describing it in a reactionary way, by standing the stereotypes for cads and dads on their heads, it would be this: Some women are fun for getting pregnant. They seem to invite and enjoy sex, without a lot of fuss, or they've got a really good body for manufacturing a kid and seem to be making it available, for some kind of price you can pay. Then some women are fun to be with long-term, and would make excellent mothers and companions."

"That sounds about right," she said. "It's sad, but there's still a lot of social stigma about the women who just want to enjoy sex. Like, the idea is, either you enjoy being a mom, or you don't and you're some kind of monster."

"Yeah. It's easier being a cad. I mean, everybody has a ready-made cultural box for men who just want to sleep around and have fun, and it comes with some stigma and judgement, but at least it's a box. It's a place you can be. There isn't even a place like that for women. At best you get, like, a bus stop. You've expected to hang out there for a while and then get serious and catch the bus to Motherhood City."

"Yeah. And there's women in the middle too, in these weird ways," she said. "Like, I've known women who really like being pregnant, and really like having a little baby around, but then they make horrible parents once the kids start growing up, so they call in aunts and uncles and grandparents and end up almost abandoning their children to the extended family."

"Ugh," I said.

"Then they suddenly want to be pregnant and have another little baby around, so they find a guy..."

"That's kinda gross. I've been lucky enough to avoid those women, I think. Or maybe I've just been good with my birth control."

"Birth control is great," she said emphatically.

"You know, ideally, I think the best long-term partner is someone who has some dad qualities but also some cad qualities. I mean, I don't think anyone can hit the exact bulls-eye on both those categories. I think if we all dig down into our heads we start finding things we like about cads and dads that are mutually exclusive. Like, our ideal cad rides a sweet-ass motorbike, but our ideal dad drives a volvo with crumple zones all over, so he won't suddenly turn into a quadriplegic on some random morning commute."

"Yeah you can't have both."

"So, I know I fit some of the dad qualities. You'd told me so. And I like that. But I also think it's important to have some cad qualities. Do I have any of those, from your point of view?"

"Oh, I think so," she said. "Definitely some exciting cad qualities. What about me? What's my balance?"

I thought for a bit. "I don't know. I might have to sit down and really work it out, but off the top of my head I'd say you have a balance. Or, maybe 60-40, with 60 in the mom category. You'd make a fine mom, I think."

"But I have cad qualities too, for sure. Like, sometimes I just say, 'argh I need to be alone and meditate, go away!' "

"I wouldn't put that in the cad area, really. I think that's just introvert stuff. I think your cad qualities are more ... exciting? I mean, it's probably obvious from my description before: To guys, cad qualities in a woman are mostly about sex appeal and liking sex."

At this point we were back in the car, and driving down the hill along College Avenue. Students were going about their business on the sidewalks, dressed lightly for the sunny day. They all looked so young. "They're probably all half my age, or younger," I thought.

"Ugh, how are all these young people ever going to work this stuff out?" I said, gesturing out the window.

"Same way we did."

"You mean, make a whole bunch of mistakes and try a bunch of stuff that doesn't really work?"

"Exactly."

"Yeah; I don't know. I still worry about it. I worry about them. All this history, repeating all around us."

"But it's not exactly repeating," she said. "It's got differences."

"Hah! Well hopefully not so many cads!"