Still an Outsider, It Seems
The last couple of days I've been exchanging e-mail with a friend of mine. He's getting divorced, but apparently had a date earlier this week that went very well, surprising him in part because the woman in question possessed some characteristics that he generally wouldn't have been too fond of. We ended up exchanging a few messages about dating, and I expressed to him that my guidelines for the type of person I think I'd like to date are pretty rigid; not necessarily high standards, mind you, but certainly weird standards.
My main interests are reading science fiction, reading and collecting comic books, and putzing on the Internet, with secondary interests of following baseball, playing games (and not just Monopoly-type games, either), listening to rock and folk music, and bicycling. Plus I have cats, who aren't really an "interest" per se. I think it would be difficult for me to have a fulfilling relationship with a woman who didn't share at least one or two of my major interests, and one or two minor interests.
Problem is, most of my interests are pretty clearly "guy"-type interests. Relatively few women read science fiction, and a very small number follow comic books more than casually. (Since I've been buying comics since 1975, I'd say that comics are in fact my paramount interest.) Also, most of my interests are fairly solitary things. It's tough to, say, read a book together.
On the other hand, there are certain things that I'm just not into, no-how, no way, such as drinking (I drink a very small amount, but I almost never go out to bars), smoking (in fact, ambient smoke in the air can drive me from a room, coughing; I'm very sensitive to it), and dancing. I watch very little television, and I've recently admitted to myself that I'm not really a movie person (I've seen one movie in the theater this year).
And, of course, I have little-to-no interest in having kids. I think that intellectually I realize that I would not be a happy person if I had a child, but that biological impulse prevents me from saying that I have no interest in spawning.
I've said before that it's exceedingly rare for me to so much as meet a woman I'm seriously interested in. I meet women whom I find attractive on a superficial level, but it doesn't usually take long to realize that we don't have a lot in common. It's been a couple of years since I met a woman I was actually interested enough in to ask on a date. It's rare.
It's hard to come to terms with all of this, though, and it's nigh-impossible to get myself to broaden my "standards" (if that's what they are). Each woman I've dated has tended to make me a little less open in that way (okay, it's not her fault, it's just part of what I take away from a failed relationship or dating experience). I place an incredibly high value on being who I am and not being someone else that someone wants me to be. A strong sense of self-identity, I guess.
It can be a pain, though.
We also picked books for the next two months, a couple of Hugo Award nominees: Michael Swanwick's Jack Faust, and Walter Jon Williams' City on Fire (which sounds like it's more a fantasy than it is science fiction).
Meanwhile, I'm about 1/3 of the way through Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue (a friend of mine says it has a very "1970s feminist perspective", and she agreed with me when I said that it's a sort of "every man is out to get us" viewpoint; it's not bad so far, though).
So I eventually did change it back, but this certainly didn't leave me with charitable feelings towards this person.
Arrghh.
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