I'm Only Here for the WiFi (11 page)

This isn't to say that being an Irving, for example, is necessarily a bad thing. If you are most intrigued by being a free spirit who cares nothing about another person's emotions, that's fine. There's an ass for every seat, as my classy grandfather would say. There are surely many other people who want to share with you your love for white-person dreads and four-hour-long monologues about music that no one has ever heard of. For every guy who insists on changing the song constantly at a party to suit his incredibly esoteric tastes, there is certainly someone out there who swoons at the idea of being told what is cool by someone who rarely answers her text messages. That's fine.

But the problem arises when people who are looking for genuine love start falling for Indie Asshole Irving and those like him. The cold truth of the matter is that society now, more than
ever, encourages people to foster their inner selfish seven-year-old. Running around with no plans for the future and a complete disregard for the emotions of others—even others you may occasionally claim to love—is just considered par for the course if you're twentysomething and living in a big city. Even those with a prestigious or lucrative job and the potential to comfortably finance a house or family are not in any way expected to do so (which is fine on an individual level, not so good when you're with someone who strongly desires these things).

It's understandable that someone who has taken the concept of playing hard to get and transformed it into an entire lifestyle—spilling over into the work, social, and romantic sectors—might be the epitome of attractive to someone who's always enjoyed a little cat-and-mouse. Irvings, however, are the land mines of today's romantic landscape for anyone looking to settle down. Identifying and avoiding them are essential to maintaining a semblance of self-esteem.

And self-esteem is the essential thing here, because we can't change what other people are going to do with themselves, and it's not our place to force someone to want the same kind of future we want (as though that were even possible). I think we've all wasted a decent amount of time on an Irving, waiting for the soft, malleable heart of gold that must have certainly been under all those emotional-guy-lyric tattoos to finally show itself and make all our hard work worth it. But that never comes, and it's no
one's fault, really. Speaking personally, I recall one evening spent within a block of my then-boyfriend's work as he promised that he would be leaving within the next twenty minutes to go out to an event with me. Two hours later, I come to find that he had been drinking beers with several friends for the past hour and a half with some coworkers/friends and had not even bothered to inform me of his whereabouts. When asked why he hadn't answered my calls, he told me without even an ounce of remorse, “My phone was on silent.”

At the time, I was furious with him for having treated me that way and making me, once again, look like such an enormous ass in front of everyone when all I wanted was a bit of his attention. Now, looking back, I am mostly angry with myself for having continued to waste any time on someone who was so clearly not interested in being a decent person. In all seriousness, it's not your job to make anyone else suddenly morph from frog to prince with your magical genitalia. It's by far the best decision to find someone who, right out of the gate, is at least a moderately good person who won't constantly leave you shakily checking your phone like some lovestruck cokehead.

So who do you date? Where do you find him? And how do you know that he is the right person for you? Now that we are no longer in the alcohol-soaked constant socialization-demanding confines of higher education, the opportunities to meet people organically have become increasingly slim, and society has more than decided what kinds of qualities are going to get you a gold star in the dating pool. (Of course, desiring and expecting to find any or even most of these qualities in a single person—and magically making them fall in love with you—is every shade of absurd, but dating is nothing if not an efficient way to make us all feel ludicrously inadequate.)

And keeping in mind that the search for this perfect match will include stringently avoiding Irvings, there is not a moment at which your eyes can be too peeled. But there are distinct pros and cons to each location at which you will potentially find a date, and you'll likely have to navigate all of them to finally kiss your Prince(ss) Charming.

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 You are in constant proximity with one another, making organizing your time spent together fairly easy.

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 There will always be stuff to talk about, even if it is tedious office gossip.

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 You get that hot, forbidden, copy-room fondling that undoubtedly fuels the libidos of 70 percent of office romances.

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 The air of “Do they or don't they?” floating around your
coworkers makes you temporary celebrities among your team.

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 Lunch hours at the taco truck are made infinitely more romantic.

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 You might have to eventually report this to HR, which will undoubtedly take away some of the “sexy” factor.

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 Talking about work is a fairly redundant activity, given that you both experience more or less the same thing every day.

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 You are in constant proximity, which, let's be honest, can get kind of grating after a while.

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 Should you break up, your entire professional life will get kicked up several notches from “somewhat boring but pretty good, all things considered” to “absolutely unbearable, why do I have to work two cubicles down from someone who was inside me a short two months ago?”

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 The awkward “Let's integrate one another into our respective friends groups” is not necessary, as you both come from the same primordial friends soup, so to speak.

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 Hanging out is easy and convenient to organize.

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 You likely know each other fairly intimately, and are therefore less likely to be surprised with things like a tendency to nit-pick
about irrelevant things, or a burgeoning murder-and-dismemberment hobby.

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 The dividing of your social life between your two respective friend groups is a headache you won't have to endure.

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 You have fewer people to invite to your wedding, therefore cheaper.

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 When you break up, literally everyone you know mutually is going to have to endure an awkward “Let's decide who we love more” dance in which they try simultaneously to offend no one and please everyone, resulting in everyone hating each other. Depending on the ugliness of the breakup, this precarious picking sides routine could result in the complete dissolution of some of said friendships.

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 Almost every local haunt you enjoy is now going to be forever colored by the memory of your failed relationship.

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 You may very likely have to bear witness to your ex now dating yet another in your mutual friends group.

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 Social gatherings are guaranteed to be uncomfortable for at least a month, if not much, much longer.

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 You can hide behind a profile that only presents the most palatable parts of yourself, letting unsuspecting strangers fall in love with you before they get the full picture of that weird thing you do when you laugh and your tendency to send back food on almost every order at a restaurant.

•
 Highly advanced algorithms are there to reaffirm what you already suspect: The guy with the fedora in his profile picture and
Atlas Shrugged
among his favorite books may not be the perfect match for you.

•
 You have a catalog of potential mates to choose from at your disposal, making the rejection of someone for rather superficial reasons less of a risk than it would be in real life. (Now you finally don't have to marry someone with a wonky toe simply because she fulfills every other need you have! The future has truly arrived!)

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 Your self-esteem is in for a daily boost from a veritable army of suitors who send you unsolicited and ham-handed compliments that you promptly delete with a haughty laugh.

•
 From now on, when you're asked by older, less hip loved ones where you met your partner, you will be forever obligated to mumble under your breath the name of a dating site that you
are terribly ashamed to have used.

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 You won't have a cute meet-story to regale to your future children.

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 The thrill of getting to know someone little by little is somewhat dulled, as you start things off with a pretty expansive knowledge of each other's personal tastes and at least several flattering photos of each other.

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 There will always be at least one asshole who judges you for having met the love of your life on a website.

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 You're drunk, so whatever normal filters you put over yourself to make things nice and presentable for someone you're interested in have been completely numbed. If he falls in love with that version of you, he's ready for anything.

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 Chances are high that your cute meet-story may involve dancing to “Thriller” under the sparkling light of the dance floor.

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 You know this person knows how to go out and have a good time from the get-go.

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 No one makes a pretense about the fact that this place is entirely designed for picking people up to have sex/find romance, making starting the conversation all that much easier.

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 You met at the bar, which is kind of skeezy.

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 People you meet at a bar are generally not the people who you one day see yourself starting a family with. Or, if they are, they are certainly not putting the “Let's get married and take out a mortgage together” foot forward while wobbling toward the bathroom.

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 There is a more than decent chance that you will be wasted when you first meet each other, and if someone is really that into Drunk You, do you trust him as a person? I mean, I know Drunk Me, and she is kind of awful.

I've met people in all these situations, and have found assholes and princes in each one. The truth is, we have more ways than ever to put ourselves in proximity with new people and present ourselves in the way we want to. We can be a totally different person on a dating website than we are at a bar, which is also totally different from the person our friends know and (mostly) love. Is this a good thing? Debatable. But it certainly means that the “other fish in the sea” platitude that is so far from comforting when you are covered in snot and mascara, crying over a devastating breakup, is more true than ever. You can organize a week full of dates, one each night, if you are so inclined (and I know more than one person who does that, because why the hell not). The end of a relationship is just that, a brief end to something
that could be the beginning of a million new, infinitely better, experiences.

We even have places like Missed Connections pages, where the people who stared at each other for a little longer than would be considered appropriate in the produce aisle of the local grocery store—people who only a few short years ago would have gone the rest of their lives only thinking of each other as “asparagus hottie”—are now able to potentially find each other once more and start what could be a lifelong romance. Technology and people's growing confidence to approach one another have made this possible. It's insane, the degree to which we are all constantly able to connect.