Auntie Seraphic & Don't Crush On Me

Dear Auntie Seraphic:

A friend of mine is newly single, and seems to be paying me extra attention. I’m not sure whether he just wants more emotional support, or if he is crushing on me, but knows enough not to jump into a rebound relationship. Either way, I want to discourage him. He’s a wonderful person, and we have some nice things in common, but he is a bit too young for me, and just not someone I am attracted to in that way. I really cannot ever see this going beyond friendship.

This is someone I see nearly every day, as part of a small circle of friends who share class and social time. We are all in our mid to late twenties. I want to continue my relationship with the group as a whole, which is very supportive and important to me. Yet, when he is there, I feel more constrained and not quite able to be myself because of my suspicions.

I know that in the end, I can’t stop him from crushing if he’s bound and determined to do so. But I know how much it can hurt when someone leads you on…or even when they are oblivious, but kind of dumb about their boundaries. Is there any way I can be clear that I’m not interested in him without confronting him directly? Do your male readers have any tips?

Thanks,

Don't Crush on Me


Dear Don't Crush on Me,

Just as you cannot make a man fall in love with you, you cannot make a man not fall in love with you. This is the annoying thing about men: they do not come with a remote control.

One good thing about men, however, is that in many countries they are not allowed to touch you, take you out to dinner or marry you without your consent. They can think and wish whatever they want, but they can do nothing involving you without your permission.

It is not a tragedy that your young friend is paying you extra attention. At best, it is a compliment and at worst, it is slightly boring. But you can discourage him as soon as he gives you the first opportunity, e.g. when he actually asks you out on a date, if he ever does, or actually tries to hold your hand. The only "middle ground" I can think of--where it is not clear that what he might be feeling actually affects you in any real way--is if he is staring at you. If he is staring at you, go ahead and say "What?" in an aggrieved tone.

Continue to be just yourself, and for heaven's sake don't blame him for having a crush on you. A crush is as ordinary, and can be as brief, as a cold. Meanwhile, the best way to keep the group together and happy is NOT to create a drama out of this situation by talking about it to the group. For his sake, your sake and the sake of the group, don't gossip about your suspicions. And, of course, don't go out of your way to text, email or call him, for an extraordinary gesture is what is most likely to make him think you like him back.

Never forget that the magical words "No, thank you" keep you from going on dates or having to hold Mr Wrong's clammy hands. All you have to do is wait for the opportunity to use them.

I hope this is helpful!

Grace and peace,
Seraphic

One of the joys of people-watching is realizing who in your set has a crush on whom. There is, of course, an ethical dimension in trying to read the minds and hearts of those around you, so whatever you think you find out by observation, you should keep locked in your head behind the barrier of your teeth. The lesson to be gained from the exercise is that almost everybody--not just you--comes down with crushes, and also that people recover from their crushes, often very rapidly. It is very embarrassing when you discourage a guy with a crush on you, only to change your mind two months later and then discover that he has completely recovered.

Type Versus Reality

I had a hilarious conversation with a married friend the other day. For some reason we were talking about boys. You would think that married ladies over thirty would get tired of talking about boys, but we haven't. At least, I haven't, and maybe the other married ladies over thirty are just humouring me.

But anyway we were having this hilarious conversation in which the subject of Our Type came up. If you have lived more than twenty years, you know what I am talking about. Perhaps you have even said (for example) to a friend, "You know, My Type is six-feet-tall-or-over, dark-haired, blue-eyed, athletic but also intellectual." And your friend may have said, "Oh, well, I don't really care about height, but My Type is dark-eyed and muscular."

These do not, by the way, approximate Our specific Types. I can't tell you what Our Types are because of the next part of the conversation, which was when we fell about laughing because in the end we married men who didn't look at all like Our Types.

I wonder if this is a sweeping phenomenon, this being attracted to One Type and then happily falling in love with another. And I wonder if it is related! (A sudden look of existential horror has passed over Auntie Seraphic's face.) What if the very fact that we are attracted to Type A gives us the exact right amount of indifference towards Type B that makes Type B go to vast lengths to impress us?

And since the more attractive examples of Type B doing the human version of the blue-footed booby dance are demonstrably more lovable than dumb ol' hot-but-haven't-noticed-we're-alive Type As, could it be that our psyche gives up on Type A and just falls in love with this highly attractive example of Type B? Or is it that our psyche knows that Type A is fun for dreaming about, but that this particular Type B guy is the real eligible deal?

I don't know. I haven't done any social-scientific research on this. I almost never do any social-scientific research on anything I write here, poppets, which I hope you remember. I work from instinct, curiosity and memory, like Miss Marple.

By the way, when I talk about forgetting about Type A long enough to fall in love with Type B, I am not talking about settling. I am never talking about settling; I hate the whole concept of settling. This is the 21st century, and you shouldn't have to settle. In Western cultures, you either marry in an exuberant spirit of friendship-on-fire or you don't marry.

I once spoke to a deserted husband who said "I've known for some time that I wasn't the kind of man she wanted" and I felt so awful for him. No woman should marry a man with whom she is not madly in love. It is not fair on him, no matter what he says beforehand. He can't love enough for two, and I wonder who came up with that particular bit of nonsense.

No, all I am saying is that we women may have certain Types that we recognize when we see them, but that they have little to do with the flourishing female life as it is actually lived. And thank goodness that's true, or English-speaking men under 5'10" would never get married. I have never in my life heard a Canadian, American, Australian or British woman describe her Type as "of small or medium height." Yet men of small or medium height can make great husbands, as I happen to know first-hand.

And don't write in saying "But what about men?" because men aren't women. I believe, and this is based not on science but on hearsay, circumstantial evidence and personal experience, that men are much less likely to fall in love "out of Type." Nope. When Type B starts doing his blue-footed booby dance, it is because his psyche has perceived his Type A before him.

Thanks to the Poppets!

Thanks, kids. You did it. Intention answered. All smiles.

I'll tell you more when I can.

Grace and peace,
Seraphic

Happy Saint Andrew's Day!

Today is Saint Andrew's Day, and as Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, there was a lot of running around for me today. Plus one of my pals leaves Scotland tomorrow and another is about to have a baby. So the Scotland-leaving pal and I went to see our baby-having pal between bouts of going to Mass. First we went to the Ordinary Form at the Cathedral (celebrated by our Cardinal Archbishop and involving relics of Saint Andrew), and then we went to the Extraordinary Form in a chapel (celebrated by our chaplain).

Thus I don't have much to say about the Single Life today. But thank you for praying for my career-related intention--and you can keep on going, if you like! I don't know what is going to happen, but I'm feeling a lot more calm about possible outcomes.

Auntie Seraphic's Intention

Listen, poppets. Your Auntie Seraphic has a very big prayer intention.

It is not about babies. I had a conversation with the Lord on Sunday about babies.

"How come you never send me a baby?" I asked.

Eventually He got around to answering.

"I want you to take care of other people's babies right now," He said. "Okay, some of them are six feet tall, but they need your help and I want you to give it to them."

"Oh," I said. "But can't I have a baby AND take care of other people's babies?"

But He had said all He wanted to say for the time being, so that was it.

No, this prayer intention has to do with my career. And I think the very best thing I can do, since I feel more-or-less powerless in this situation, is to ask you to pray for my intention. I ask particularly those who have written me letters because, whereas although obviously the Lord doesn't forget stuff, prayers that begin "Lord, could you help Auntie Seraphic because she helped me" sound kind of convincing---to my ear, at least.

A Nice Bunch of Flowers

Oh poppets, I have been looking at a lovely bouquet of flowers all weekend. They did not come from B.A. but from a friend whose thesis I had a look at before he handed it in. How very nice that in all the fuss around his degree ceremony he thought of little me.

And this reminds me of how important it is to have all kinds of relationships and how terribly we overlook and undervalue them. In A Whole Woman, Germaine Greer suggests that we have grossly undervalued even motherhood and that the be-all and end-all identity of woman is now Wife.

But there is something else going on in English-speaking societies, and it is the devaluation of the different degrees of friendship. I suppose the biggest example of what I mean is "Facebook" where a list of all the individuals who have full access to your page are called "Friends." However, I very much doubt all those people are your friends. Most of them are probably Acquaintances, and there is nothing wrong with that. It's good to have a wide range of acquaintances. You just shouldn't act like they are your friends.

Aristotle was very strict on the concept of friends. He thought that only men of excellent character could be true friends, and then only to their social equals. He didn't think men and women could be friends because they were not social equals. Ancient Roman aristocrats, however, did not agree with Aristotle on this one, and as a matter of fact very often the only person a Roman aristocrat trusted was his wife. In an intensely competitive and violent society, his best interests were her best interests, and they both knew it.

But let's get away from marriage, although not before I say that what holds marriage together is not romance, which is its agreeable starting point, but friendship with various benefits. Marriage is something very odd, for something so ancient and universal, and I am not going to write about it. Instead I will hint about the different kinds of friendship and acquaintance there are.

First of all, as hipped as we are on the idea of loyalty and fidelity, various people have waxing and waning importance in our lives. Christmas card and wedding invitation lists are very sweet for they honour not only those who are most important NOW but those who were most important THEN. Meanwhile, I think fondly of various women in various offices I have worked in, but I don't think of them as friends, past or present. They were good colleagues and made boring jobs more enjoyable. But we have passed completely from each other's lives.

This suggests that you, too, will have waxing and waning importance in the lives of others. I was a tremendous social asset in my Canadian theological school; I threw myself into the life of the school and achieved a kind of local fame. Various people told me how much I would be missed. My most heartfelt ambition was to return as a professor and continue on where I left off, but this was not to be. Now as far as 99% of the school is concerned I am just a photo on the wall. But this is okay, for I have new roles now, including Safe Grown-Up To Whom To Appeal in Emergency.

Second, it is okay not to be everyone's best friend. Heavens. The idea. But it is pleasant to have people with whom you meet up for the occasional coffee, and people with whom you meet up for the occasional drink, and people whom you invite for dinner, and people with whom you go on holiday. Social life seems to me to be a series of rings, and people move into the inner rings or out into the outer rings, depending on what happens in your life.

Third, we don't have to be so serious all the time. When I am sixty, I will probably be telling good-humoured young men that it is a terrible shame that we were born forty years apart. They will agree, and we will all know that we are lying, but we will also know that it is amusing to say things like that.

What everyone who met her apparently loved about the Queen Mother is that she gave everyone the impression that she really was interested in him/her and what he/she had to say, quite as if she had come there on purpose to see him/her and him/her alone. This was not fakery but charm. I think the only way to master such a wonderful skill is to practice.

I am very sorry to say this, for I married so late, but I did not become such a marvellous flirt until I was safely married. Now I can say outrageous things from the ramparts of my fortress of marriage, and am thus popular with the sort of men of whom I used to be afraid. If B.A. should shuffle off this mortal coil, however, I fear there would be a general stampede out of town, but oh well. I might not want to see them anyway. B.A. is unlikely to shuffle off until I am old, and perhaps by then I will not at all be interested in men but only in television and sweets.

Fourth, it is good to exchange greetings and remarks with simply everyone in your life, including bus drivers and assistants in the butcher shop, so as to fight against the forces of loneliness: not just your loneliness, but the loneliness of the bus driver and of the assistant in the butcher shop. When I worked as a teenager in a cafe, working before and after school, I very much enjoyed greeting all the regulars, for they livened up a lonely time in my life, and some very much enjoyed being greeted by Seraphic, age 17.

When news that I was leaving reached the regulars, one wrote me a letter. Apparently he had been suffering the end of his marriage, and the one thing that got him to work in the morning was the fact that someone was happy to see him, said "Good morning" like she meant it and remembered his usual order. So you never know how much good you can do just by smiling and saying good morning. "Favourite Cafe Waitress" was for one person the most important role I played in life, and by saying thank you, he now stands out in my mind as "Favourite Cafe Patron."

Auntie Seraphic & The Catherinettes

Thanksgiving Dinner Report post below.
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Hi there, Seraphic!

I teach French to little kids, and today this involved celebrating St. Catherine's Day by making taffy. Not being francophone myself, I had to look up the French Canadian tradition, and I noted that St. Catherine's Day (November 25) seems to have a lot connected to it with regards to single women.

Apparently her intercession has been invoked for the past 8 centuries by single women wanting husbands, with varying degrees of desperation. It also seems that unmarried women over the age of 25 were dubbed "Catherinettes" on St. Catherine's Day. Catherinettes would take the opportunity to send cards and treats to their fellow Catherinettes.

This made me think of your Operation Valentinus, and thought it would be fun to bring it up on your blog. Mind you, I suppose celebrating St. Catherine's Day in this way might be an unnecessary reminder of one's singlehood, and being dubbed a Catherinette might be somewhat scarring...I think it's a fun name, but then again I am still one year away from being a Catherinette myself...

Here is a link to the ever-so-reliable Wikipedia...read the sections on Canada and France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Catherine's_Day

Anyway, I thought it might be something fun/questionably relevant to bring up on your blog tomorrow (or rather, today, since for you it must already be Nov. 25th!) I will not be offended if you don't bring it up though!

God bless,

A Reader

I did not know any of this, so I am grateful to my reader for sending this email. I strongly support the notion of Single women sending each other cards and treats to affectionately mark their shared Singleness. Sisterhood is powerful--when it really is sisterhood and not some men-are-scum-rah-rah political pose.

I am struck that a Catherinette is (or was) a Single woman who has had her 25th birthday. Some sort of black magic seems to be attributed to one's 25th birthday, which is absolutely bonkers from the point of view of a 40 year old. When I was 25, I was not very smart, but at least I had tremendously beautiful skin, no grey hairs at all and probably hundreds of healthy little eggies hidden away. You would think that, given the improvements in women's health, looks and life expectancy, we'd now go into a panic before our 35th birthday instead of our 25th, but no. Thirty-five is not-such-a-big-deal and twenty-five is woe-is-me.

Why this is, is less of a mystery the more you discover about the history of turning 25. But I think it may also be that adolescents are rather anxious and adult women rather less. You have the impression that your youth will be over when you turn 25, but then you reach 25 and 26 and 27 and realize it isn't.

If you don't have children, your youth can go on and on and on, which can be either good or bad. In my case it is good because I can hang out with twenty-somethings without them treating me like their mothers, but it is bad because in some ways I remain a feckless human being. I am sure I would be a better person if, like my mother, I did laundry every Monday and ironed it all until it was done.

Below this post is the Thanksgiving Report Post, so if you collected points yesterday, report them in the combox for that post. Meanwhile, happy Feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria!