Cougars and Cubs

This is pretty much unrelated to my normal line of blogging, but I've mentioned "cougars" once before so I thought I'd share this story I came across today on the Huffington Post: "Carnival Cruises Bans 'Cougars,' 'Cubs' From Future Trips."

Basically Carnival wants to keep its family friendly image, so it has turned down the request of a singles travel club to have a second "cougar-themed" cruise. What do you think? Should Carnival have done this? Do you want me (and everyone else) to refrain from mentioning "cougars" ever again?

Real Simple's "Love Rules"

In the issue of Real Simple delivered to my apartment today, there's an article ("Love Rules") which examines common beliefs about love and relationships. They picked 13 "rules" and then had nine "experts"—including a founder of the dating site I use—discuss them. Since some are about marriage and/or kids, I will exclude those from my musings; I will, however, work through about ten over the next few days. Here are the first four.

1. Say "I love you" every day.
I think this is really important but, as psychologist Nancy Kalish says in the article, "it should be said often but it should be said sincerely, so it means something. Not just “Good-bye. Love you.” I think this is a good thing to keep in mind for a lot of words and phrases (curse words, in particular).

2. Play hard to get.
What's the point? I'm not in the business of wasting people's time. I completely agree with Sam Yagan, the co-founder of an online dating service: "Playing hard to get starts the relationship off on a deceptive foot. If you want your relationship to be based on trust, honesty, and communication, why would you begin it like that?"

3. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Short absences, perhaps. Long-term ones, I don't know. If we're talking a business trip or vacation, something with a definite end, I think I could handle it. If it's a nebulous, "I'll be away for a while and I don't know when I'll return" kind of thing, I think I'd have to do some serious soul-searching (as would, I think, the other person in the relationship).

Sociologist Pepper Schwartz had this to say on the matter: "To a point—and then absence makes the heart go roaming. You need a steady diet of intimacy and the other person’s presence to remember why you’re in the relationship. If you don’t see each other often enough, you can start to lead parallel lives instead of lives that intersect."

4. You can learn to love someone.
I'm going to agree with Greg Behrendt (co-author of He's Just Not That Into You) on this one: "No, that sounds like settling. I don’t believe in settling, because it’s not fair to the person you’re with or yourself. It’s not like settling on an apartment you don’t love but can live with." I think this is how I felt about Sandy. I really wanted to be in a relationship with him and he was giving signs that he wanted to be in a relationship with me, so I fooled myself into thinking that it would be great, but really I don't think it ever would have moved from like to love.

Next time I'll tackle these points:

5. Never go to bed angry.
6. There is such a thing as love at first sight.
7. Always keep him guessing.
8. You can never be too close.

Until then, I'll leave you with yet another reference to cougars. It's a title of a Craigslist post that I came upon tonight: TENDER PREY WAITING FOR A HUNGRY COUGAR - 35. What is it with cougars all of a sudden?

The ultimate cougar? No just a really sweet story.

You may have heard by now that there is a 107 year-old woman in Chongqing, China who is finally looking for a husband. Apparently she was very traumatized as a child when she was frequently witness to her uncle beating her aunt and, because of that and China's deeply patriarchal society, she never wanted to marry. Until now. Read the whole story here.

Given that I just wrote a bit about cougars, the first thing that popped into my head when I heard this story was that she must be the ultimate cougar. She could be the great grandmother of some of those women from yesterday's story. However, this woman is going to look only for another centenarian, so that they have as many things in common as possible.

According to the story, she'll be looking at nearby old-folks homes for a mate. Too bad online dating isnt' an option for her. Even if there were centenarians who wanted to look for love online, most dating sites allow only for two-digit ages.

Thai Food and Cougars

In my unofficial quest to message one new person every day, I messaged a guy from the dating site who said on his profile that he's trying to find the best Thai food in the city. This being a topic I know a lot about, I wrote him to say that I'm always looking for good Thai food and asked if he'd like to join forces and look together. I also sent him the link to my Yelp list of Thai places I've reviewed.

Lo and behold, I got a response from him—he'll be Ryan on this blog. We've bandied a list of places to try back and forth, and it looks like will be going out on Saturday. I like that there's a point to the date (try to find some good Thai food) but that there's been nothing personal to our e-mails. If we hit it off, great. If we don't, at least we get to share a meal with someone new. Oh, and if we do like each other, there are at least 100 more Thai restaurants in the city…

In other news, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story in yesterday's Living section entitled "Cougars—unyoung women on the prowl." The article describes a singles event ($10 admission fee) for women over 50 and the (primarily) younger men who wanted to date them. My parents are almost 10 years apart, but, as my mom recently put it, she'd "been around the block a few times" before she met my dad and was, at that point ready to settle down. That said, my dad is the older one, not the other way around. This is all to say that I grew up knowing that I might find someone who was perfect for me that was not exactly my age.

However, as I read this article and looked at the accompanying photos, the only thought I had was: "These women are old enough to be the mothers of these guys." I don't know about you, but this just makes me uncomfortable. I watched "You've Got Mail" yesterday—more on that soon—but the whole "Annabelle is my sister and Matt is my uncle" part is completely unnerving. I don't think I could handle knowing that a friend of mine was dating a woman old enough to be my mom.

What do you, my lovely readers, think?

Finally, for today's interesting CL ad:

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Don't think too much about subject line, it performed its function.

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