Desire Digest 003

A dating app that maybe works, the desirability divide and an update on this newsletter.

Hello and welcome to another installment in the Desire Digest. We’re deep in the summer doldrums, something I am feeling pointedly in my work. The vaguely cool evening breezes suggest change is imminent, but for now I am spending much of my time painting by numbers (not figurative). August is a month for boredom, for accomplishing little of substance in a way that hopefully ends up being not only restorative but productive in the long run. I also got a road bike.

I’m now in my hometown in western Massachusetts for the weekend, another ideal location for this sort of August boredom. It’s a bit harder to be connected to whatever “discourse” is circling around online (the type that I’d write about here), which is something of a blessing. In any case, here’s what I’ve been thinking about.

The Marriage Material/Hookup Divide

Over the weekend, Twitter was divided over a story that had been shared from Reddit in which a woman told her boyfriend of two years that he was not someone she would want to have a one night stand with or be friends with benefits with but sees as marriage material, instead. Her boyfriend did not take this well, and it seems it could be the end of the relationship. While I think it’s a simple case of miscommunication — her choice of words were likely poor and became misconstrued, but he was reasonable to be upset by them. The dialogue over this situation online, though, highlights the divide between how men and women interpret desire. It is a compliment to be told someone would prefer to marry you, yet men see it as a statement of their lack of sexual desirability, especially when presented with the idea that there might be other men with whom a woman would have a one night stand. Ideally, wouldn’t you want a woman to find you so sexually desirable that she doesn’t simply want to sleep with you once or a few times, but for the rest of your lives?

Again, I can understand how this optimistic interpretation is not shared. For women, the idea that a man would want to sleep with you in a no-strings-attached dynamic is practically a given. It is not a compliment that a man would hookup with you and not marry you. For men, this is not the case. Their perception of their own sex appeal hinges more on immediacy in competition with other men. I’d like to go longer on this theme of men’s sense of desirability and how delicate it can be, but for now I’ll leave it here as a unique example of the disconnect and lack of emotional awareness of others that plagues us.

Some Dating App Successes and Failures

I’ve expressed my suspicion toward our constant inclination to reinvent the wheel when it comes to dating. I’m not sure we need new dating apps but rather to do away with the app model entirely. Regardless, I’m glad when they work. A friend affiliated with Cuffed, a members-only app currently live in NYC wherein users are only able to speak with one match at a time, reports that 25 percent of matches result in in-person dates. That’s not bad! Maybe if we are going to continue forward with app dating, we need to do away with the sense of unlimited choice and opportunity they often present.

Meanwhile, traditional apps like Bumble are reporting a “existential crisis” as shares dropped 30 percent last week. As Katherine Dee wrote for UnHerd, there are strong signs that an in-person dating revival is here.

Thank You For Sharing

Last Thursday, I caught a screening of a new documentary called Thank You For Sharing. It explores the history of contemporary mental illness, how its classified and the last few decades of awareness campaigns surrounding it. The general conceit is that for all the lip service we’ve given to mental health, all the money spent on pharmaceuticals and destigmatization, we are perhaps collectively more mentally ill than ever. All of this has lent to a condition that causes us, as commentator David Cayley said, to “cease to be the subject of [our] own experience… you lose the ability to be able to describe your own state.”

Surely, much of this could speak to our current sexual state, too.

An Update on This Newsletter

Last week, Emily Sundberg published an essay critiquing (in part) the diary-esque model of Substack newsletter — a model that this newsletter here somewhat follows, having taken inspiration from her specifically. Substack isn’t just a home for good writing, but increasingly, a place for people to monetize their writing whether it’s actually any good or not. It’s more about curating an identity than anything else. One could even say this extends to a sexual identity in some cases, as well.

Whatever you think of my writing, this sort of identity-centered format is, to some extent, what I’ve done here. All this makes it particularly gauche timing for me to say that I am planning on leaning in even further on paid subscriptions. My dream is for this to be one of my primary sources of income, if not the primary source of income. Websites and magazines keep shuttering, budgets are cut, and their are fewer places to do this type of work. But more than that, Substack has become my favorite place to write. I crave writing here. I so much prefer to do this on my own. I do like incorporating my identity into my work in the way this platform allows, and I’m not too ashamed of that!

All this is to say, I am hitting a groove on publishing here more consistently, and intend to keep this up. As I do this, though, I’d estimate that just under half will end up behind a paywall. Moreover, I am eventually going to be increasing subscription prices by a dollar or two a month. BUT: If you are already a paid subscriber, your rate will be locked in. If you become a paid subscriber before the price increase, your rate will also be locked in.

So, now is a very good time to support this newsletter.

Thank you to everyone who reads me, paid or otherwise. But, you know, extra thank you to the paid subscribers :-)