Up next on things you don’t expect to be debating during work hours when you wake up that morning:
Me: “So, what about single people? We need an explanation for them in this section. Who will stroke their genitals?”
Doc: “It doesn’t have to be a romantic partner; they can get a friend to do it.”
Me: “Um. I honestly don’t think that’s a good option. There’s got to be a solo way to handle this.”
Doc: “There isn’t. They can just call a friend to come over and follow the protocol.”
Me: “There’s literally nobody I would ever call to come to my home in a pinch to stroke my genitals.”
Doc: “I could actually think of at least two people who would help me with this.”
Me: “I can actually think of a dozen single friends living in NYC who, like me, would not phone a friend to work over their private parts as a favor.”
The doctor did eventually explain an excellent and viable solution we could write about and made the point that there were legitimate organizations that would help address the issue of not having a stroker, as well as a way of making single people not feel weird.
When I take on a client with a self-help, health, or wellness premise, I practice the author’s diet plan or their personal improvement regimen. I really live it, so I can assess it. If it’s a workout or journal ritual as they would prescribe it, then my experience with it helps me explain the hiccups experienced along the way. (NB: I did not take this approach with the aforementioned sex book, meaning no probes were inserted in my person for the making of that proposal.) Instead, I asked single people I knew who they would call to stroke their genitals. Nobody. Even a coupled-up friend was clear: “I don’t think I’d even ask my boyfriend to stroke my genitals for science.”
The sex book was the anomaly. The rest, I lived. Simply put: The more books I wrote, the more books I fully experienced. I lived them all. Deeply. Occupational hazard: The more books I wrote about fixes, the more and more holes in myself I found that needed plugging.
As I started a new career, I began growing increasingly susceptible to the fix-me brigade. Life in general, plus all the entirely different set of anxieties that come from working for oneself, made me vulnerable. My self-employed friends and I refer to those stresses as “freelancer’s syndrome”—a constant state of heightened anxiety, based on the misplaced certainty that nobody will ever contract you again and that you will starve to death while living in a box on a street corner.
Still, betting on myself gave me more power to avoid living in that box. People who got laid off in 2008 got laid off again and again in the wake of that economy.
Later, as I was writing this book, I asked one of the authors I worked with—also one of my favorite humans—Dr. Ramani Durvasula, why we flock to the fixes and the books. She said there are multiple reasons. We don’t like uncertainty, so we call upon psychics to give us some answers. And when we go through struggles, we want to know we’re not alone. If there’s a self-help book out there offering to fix an ailment, that means perhaps 100,000 other people are feeling what you’re feeling. Therefore, those books got popular because they provided a collective belonging we all crave.
That resonated with me. I was never a fan of the unknown, and it was true, as I wrote and as I read, it was nice to know that what bothered or challenged me challenged a lot of other people too. And that it was all okay to discuss, or even ponder.
It was suddenly my job to live self-help. Upgrades, classes, coaches, books—tax-deductible research! A new mission emerged in my life—learn it all and then fix it all. Halfway, or moderate, is not a speed on my gearshift. I was getting paid and I was basically getting boatloads of free advice.
But my need for a stronger self-help high eventually ballooned beyond the one-dimensional pictures of a vision board or the words of my clients. So began an insatiable craving for multiple fixes, such as juice-fast retreats, coaches of all kinds, full weeks spent Marie Kondoing my house, journaling protocols, psychics, workshops, and a range of books. The world was force-feeding me spiritual seminars, specialists, and life-altering reads, and I grabbed at them all, hoping for, well, some monumental change that would make me better in every way humanly possible. It was coming at me hard. And all the fixes offered up were incredibly radical, too. No small steps; instead, massive overhauls were promised with a few weeks of effort. They wouldn’t be pushing these major remedies if I didn’t need them or if they didn’t work, right? That’s what I told myself.
Voilà—a career based on self-help was born.
And so was my new habit.
dating
By the time I reached my forties, it became painfully clear that dating had become like shopping at Marshalls or TJ Maxx. Everything was picked over. The inventory was low and discounted for a reason. All that was left on the shelves were the seconds—damaged, flawed, and ill-fitting. The stuff on the racks was there mostly because nobody else wanted it. At first glance, it was hard to tell what, exactly, was wrong with the goods, but there was always something. (And I’d find it eventually.) Still, I’d try it on anyway, hopeful. Sometimes I would even buy something just to buy something. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it was there, so I grabbed it while I could.
Like discount shopping, dating in my forties meant grabbing the most passable thing I could find because one can’t leave empty-handed, but by the time I got home, exhausted from scouring the discount racks for something I didn’t even really love, pretending it would work, I was always left with nothing but regrets. Sure, I’d use it once or twice, hoping it would eventually fit, or look better than I expected. But each time, I learned it was never going to change. Frequently, it just came up short and I eventually discarded or donated it, disappointed yet again.
When I was in my twenties, trying to find a partner felt easier, not that I landed one. Dating in your twenties is more like going through the racks at Bergdorf or Saks. The available inventory is generally high-quality, and there’s so much more of it—lots of styles, sizes, and colors. You can take your time and look through the racks, try on ridiculous things for fun or things that you know will be great, and consider some wackier ones that you’re not sure about. You can splurge and buy something crazy without worrying about the long-term ramifications of having spent your money on a feather-trimmed go-go bolero jacket and having none left for practical black work pants that will last you a decade.
When you are young, you might even be brave enough to buy something you can’t quite afford, but that dazzles you, then wear it once and return it with the tags still intact. And if you’re broke, you can still window-shop and never actually commit to a single item. There’s joy in that.
I dated like that when I was young, but what I didn’t realize was that I wouldn’t always have the luxury of making foolish or frivolous purchases. Time runs out on that eventually.
When
