On meeting a mate
Apropos of my recent Huff Po piece on Holly Peterson's novel The Manny, I wanted to share some thoughts on a prevailing female fantasy: the idea that Mr. Right is somewhere out there in public.
'In public' is a really bad way to meet romantic partners.
In the book, wealthy Upper East Side working mom Jamie Whitfield hires a male nanny, Peter Bailey, then falls for him. Jamie and Peter first meet in Central Park, where Peter is teaching a group of underprivileged kids how to play chess.
It’s hard to imagine any Upper East Side yummy talking to a strange guy (however cute) in Central Park, much less asking him to babysit her kids.
The probability of meeting your future partner in public is pretty remote: only 9 percent of women and 2 percent of men say they’ve formed a relationship with someone they met in a public place (including a bar or club), according to the 1994 book Sex in America: A Definitive Survey. The majority of successful couples meet through mutual friends, school, church or work.
When the meeting place is Central Park, it’s even more unusual that the guy isn’t completely nuts. The one time I went out with a guy I met in Central Park, he turned out to be a professional harmonica player with a sister who used to be his brother. He spent a good ten minutes of the date making fun of my keychain. Need I say that we never went out again?
'In public' is a really bad way to meet romantic partners.
In the book, wealthy Upper East Side working mom Jamie Whitfield hires a male nanny, Peter Bailey, then falls for him. Jamie and Peter first meet in Central Park, where Peter is teaching a group of underprivileged kids how to play chess.
It’s hard to imagine any Upper East Side yummy talking to a strange guy (however cute) in Central Park, much less asking him to babysit her kids.
The probability of meeting your future partner in public is pretty remote: only 9 percent of women and 2 percent of men say they’ve formed a relationship with someone they met in a public place (including a bar or club), according to the 1994 book Sex in America: A Definitive Survey. The majority of successful couples meet through mutual friends, school, church or work.
When the meeting place is Central Park, it’s even more unusual that the guy isn’t completely nuts. The one time I went out with a guy I met in Central Park, he turned out to be a professional harmonica player with a sister who used to be his brother. He spent a good ten minutes of the date making fun of my keychain. Need I say that we never went out again?
posted by meredith at 3:35 PM
2 Comments:
With so many people meeting on-line, this sabotages things for writers who need to come up with cute gimmicks for fictional couples to meet, like bumping into each other in Central Park. How do you make meeting on E-Harmony interesting in a book or movie?
(This really belongs at Huffington, but comments are closed there.)
I classify men into four types. Type 1, who won't do anything. Type 2, who still won't do anything but do feel guilty about it. Type 3, who will do what you ask and only what you ask. Type 4, who are actually equal partners not only in doing the work but in seeing that it needs to be done.
Me, I'm somewhere between 3 and 4, depending on the phase of the moon and other things.
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