The Sexual Education of a Beauty Queen

by Taylor Marsh

  This means that when you go to your first meeting or date, if you like wine, or perhaps prefer one coffee shop over another, let him know. The good news for him is that this is easily deliverable for him. The good news for you is that if he can’t pass this test, you can cross him off your list early. This is a common-sense tactic that works and saves a lot of time that might be wasted on losers.

  Even if the guy who’s asked you out doesn’t really do it for you, practicing this doesn’t hurt, because you have a full life and it’s not worth wasting your time on low-expectation relationships. Attachments can be costly and not get us what we want. The time we waste in loser relationships can exact an emotional toll. The bad habits you form and the destruction a loser can have on your confidence can end up being explosive.

  If the man takes you to your favorite coffee house, or you meet there, or your date with him leads to you enjoying a glass of wine and great conversation, his reward is your happiness that he can easily see, because he delivered what you asked of him. You rewarded him by smiling, laughing and simply enjoying yourself.

  On the flip side, if you meet him and he botches this simple task, he doesn’t deserve your energy or your time. He likely knows he’s not come through, unless he’s stupid, but is either being stubborn or allowing his ego to run the show. Forget these types of guys and move on.

  The next move after the first date is his. However, it might not come immediately, which can mean several things. If you have a great first date, but he never calls, it’s because he’s not ready and his own life isn’t in order for you to walk in. It has absolutely nothing to do with you, unless you show up and dump your problems in his lap, act like a crazy person by interrogating him, or talk about an ex-boyfriend. If he doesn’t call soon after the first date, keep living your life, and by all means keep dating. If you haven’t heard from him after a month, let him go.

  When your girlfriend asks about the date, unless she’s one of your most trusted and loyal confidantes, keep your thoughts to yourself. The stories of our romantic encounters tend to take on a life of their own and can become oversized very quickly. Do not check his Facebook page. Do not make any public notations in your social media network about the meeting, unless you want to talk about the restaurant or coffee shop you went to. That’s a completely neutral comment, and if you enjoyed the place it can be fun to let them know it.

  Whatever you do, never hold any days open for any new guy you’ve just met. It doesn’t matter what he’s promised. Some guys will promise anything quickly, but never deliver. These drive-by guys will create a lot of emotional carnage if you let them.

  If you’re on a date with someone who has boyfriend potential, you need to decide beforehand if you expect unplugging, turning off the technology so you can spend time together. You don’t need to ask him. Just unplug yourself, if that’s what you expect; then tell him offhandedly that you’re doing it. If you have a job that demands you stay connected, this is the moment he needs to know. Then see what happens and whether he reacts to your demanding life.

  You may find out he’s on call all the time, too, just like you. If his job is as demanding as yours, that needs to be discussed at some point, though it’s not necessary until you’re clearly dating. That conversation will center on how you’ll eventually carve out quiet time to be together. His job demands will directly impact whether you can have what you want.

  What do you want, and is your career important to you? If it is, then part of setting up your perfect relationship is to attract a man who respects that your career is equal to his. You may make more money than he does, too. Can his ego handle it? You aren’t going to apologize for it. You may be building to something seriously stratospheric in your career, and whoever you choose to share your life with needs to be on board. This might be creating and managing your local town farmers’ market or running your own business, but if it’s the center of who you are and what makes you happy, it’s something your partner needs to support enthusiastically. If your career is demanding, this means any future partner will have to share in household chores.

  You’ll get a clue if this is possible when you finally are invited in to see how the guy you’re dating lives. “How often does the maid come?” you might ask him, if everything is spotless. If it’s a disaster and he doesn’t mention it, you’ve got a problem.

  The relationship must be set up on your terms, and you must know your deal-breakers. Do you want your door held open? If it’s a deal-breaker, don’t budge. It doesn’t matter how much you like him, how cute he is, how much money he makes. If this doesn’t matter, then open your own door and tell him it doesn’t matter.

  If you’ve gotten yourself out of debt, and financial responsibility and being debt-free is important, the man you’re dating cannot be neck-deep in debt. You don’t talk about this on a first date, but before you’re a month in, you need to find out where he stands financially. If being debt-free is important, at the very least he’s got to be digging himself out of his challenges by not overextending himself. If, like a lot of people, he never pays for anything with cash, you’d be smart to wonder how much debt he’s accumulated, especially if he pays with a different credit card every time.

  Other than sex, finances are a predictor of relationship success or failure, especially if financial fights become a weekly occurrence. This has been reported in multiple studies to be the number one beef with men, while women cite finances and sex as strong predictors of divorce.

  The truth is, in the first month, depending on what you’re sensing from the guy, you’ll have to play date detective most of the time, while making sure nothing gets too heavy at the beginning. Nothing is a potential relationship killer more than a person who actually wants a therapist as a dating partner, or even worse, can’t stop complaining and just enjoy meeting someone.

  Notice his body language, but most of all listen to what he’s saying. Get him talking and pay attention, because sometimes what he doesn’t talk about is where trouble lies. When he talks about his life, watch for that happiness quotient. If he’s a plumber, does he enjoy his work? Is his job drudgery? If he hates it, what is he doing to change his situation? If he’s not doing anything and has no plans to make a move, the guy is a loser.

  The first eight weeks of dating someone, you know nothing, including when lightning strikes, which can happen to anyone.

  It hit me out of the blue. It was 2002 and I’d just moved to Las Vegas to coproduce a radio show after my options dried up in Los Angeles, my co-producer buying time on a local station when few liberals were on the air. I’d been in my new apart-ment for twelve hours, when I heard a knock on the door. It was the gas man. The guy came in to turn on my gas and ended up lighting up my whole world.

  By the time he left my apartment I thought, now there’s a guy who should call. But I really couldn’t be bothered thinking about it. I had business to take care of and my ass was on the line, because all the odds were stacked against me. The show was short-lived, even if well received, and it helped fuel my political writing, keeping me inching forward.

  Two weeks later, he called and asked me out to dinner. We were both in our forties, experienced, and neither of us wanted any drama or at least any more drama than a relationship can be with a headstrong writer determined to change her corner of the world, who’d just met a blue-collar man who didn’t have a clue what he was getting himself into.

  I told him I’d be thrilled to have dinner. He knew I didn’t know the town, so having a near-native show me around held promise.

  When he arrived at my door the night of our first date he was color-coordinated from head to toe, wearing nice cologne, but when I got down to his feet I saw that not only were his shoes shined, but his socks were a patterned fabric that matched his shirt and accented his entire ensemble. It was damn impressive, and the detail meant something. When we got outside and turned toward the parking lot, he was taking me toward a big truck. I laughed out loud as he opened my door. “
What’s so funny?” I told him I just knew he’d own a truck.

  The men I’d dated for decades were corporate honchos, lawyers, entrepreneurs, all of whom drove high-end cars, not a truck in sight. A single soul, even when I was hooked up with a man, I didn’t look for a certain income bracket, though I made it clear I liked to go out to dinner, to movies, shows, have fun, and party on my day off, though nothing extravagant was demanded. I loved fancy cars and have driven my share of them, but I haven’t owned anything close. However, none of these men had turned my head enough for me to stay around, especially since I was so focused professionally.

  There was just something different about this guy.

  On our first date, he couldn’t get through his entree. We both knew something was happening between us. It was seismic. By the time we got back out to his truck after dinner, he took me in his arms and said, “I’m going to marry you.” I told him he was out of his mind, as his lips enveloped mine and my stomach did a flip from which I’ve never recovered and hope I never do.

  The next week, he started bringing me gifts. The first was a copier and fax machine, because I didn’t have one in my office and he knew I needed one, but also that my work was my center of gravity. The guy learned quickly what drove me and was determined to help however he could.

  I rejected his marriage proposal three times before finally saying yes. Then, after we were engaged, we had a massive fight one night and I told him he had to take care of something or it was over. It doesn’t matter what it was; the point is that up until you make the commitment, the work to get what you want and make sure it’s delivered never stops. Marriage is a serious thing for any woman, which starts with the guy being able to handle who you are, deliver what you want, and understand the life path you are on as well. For someone whose career had always been the center of my universe, a man’s understanding of this priority is rare.

  The reason I told him no is that I didn’t think he could handle the life I had been living and intended to keep on living. The details are my story, just like your details are yours. The specifics that matter are that I warned him that my kind of life was hard, uncompromising and the riskiest thing he’d ever do in his life, especially since he had six children, most grown, two not yet in their teens. I was on the path to do something through writing and political analysis, which meant taking on the world, telling truth to power, and taking on people above my pay grade. I also told him I didn’t think he was up to it, because no man I’d ever met was, and they’d proved me right every time.

  That’s when my entire life changed. He sat me down and looked into my eyes and said he knew exactly who I was and what I was made of, and he was ready to go on that ride and make sure, as far as he could, that I’d have whatever I needed to make it happen. He believed in me and my work, and he was willing to place a bet with his whole life, because he knew I’d deliver or die trying. It was clear he not only was ready for a big adventure, but hungered for one.

  The day he said these words to me I knew I had to give marriage with this man a try. I still knew he didn’t know what he was in for, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t warned him and laid it all out. There are innumerable other details, but what threads through this story is setting up for him what it would mean to be with me, as I continued on a career path that was volatile, filled with unknowns, but also bursting with excitement, adventure and potential for a real partnership if we could commit to sharing this life and jumping into the adventure together. My husband is the bravest man I know, and he’s never delivered anything less than what he promised. Neither have I.

  As one of the pioneers of new media, which I can easily claim because I was part of the first wave of writers on the web when I began in 1996, the early dot-com era was a time when being a content provider and working in start-ups was a way to make a decent living. After the dot-com bomb in 2000, making money on the web pretty much dried up for freelance writers and got increasingly difficult for independent web content providers. Blogs were born later, with new media exploding on a platform that had no revenue model whatsoever, with all content free.

  Today, as newspapers are sold off, legendary newspapers like the Washington Post being bought by Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos, and magazines are folding, the web remains a titan-take-all medium, with the biggest companies gobbling up the advertising, while one by one, new-media sites begin to move to pay models, which the New York Times began and other sites are now following in order stay alive financially. Many other sites and organizations, including blogs, are dependent on fundraisers. So, after making money and supporting myself all of my life, the 2000s brought big financial challenges and blocks for me, which my husband had to also face, as we kept inching forward.

  Huffington Post was put on the map through people like Alec Baldwin writing for the site, but also by people like myself, with my articles regularly featured on the Politics page as well as on the front page. It was great branding for me as a political writer, especially in the run-up to the 2008 election cycle. The writing I did covering Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign put me on the political map and led to my being featured in a Washington Post interview, as well as one in the New Republic, with my website deemed a central hub where Hillary supporters hung out.

  The Huffington Post model, prior to the AOL purchase, was called working for exposure, which I have also done by writing for sites like U.S. News & World Report and The Hill, a very popular political news hub out of Washington, D.C., while also being paid for articles, including non-political stories like the one I wrote for Zócalo Public Square. There’s also advertising on my new-media site. It’s writers who are often eking out a living that are making the biggest changes in our media landscape, especially politically and on women’s issues, as Internet new media continues to struggle to find an economic model that works. This includes partnerships with digital, independent and small publishers who provide platforms for determined writers, as the traditional book world buckles under economic forces and new-media reality.

  I’m telling you this story, because it’s part of the creative pulse of our marriage on my side, even if our passion, love and the fun we have is the foundation. Following my bliss is how I met this remarkable man, who not only loves me, but whose sole intent is to help fuel the work I’m doing by being an integral part of it. We do this together, sometimes against great odds, though we’ve got plenty of company. People who are working new media, like myself, because you can’t beat it, and others who feel burned by the technical revolution.

  In November 2013, The Wrap reported that outgoing editor of The Daily Beast, Tina Brown, former editor of the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Newsweek, was basically done with journalism. Her new company is named Tina Brown Live Media, which will focus exclusively on “live conversations” and “going back to oral culture where the written word will be less relevant.” Brown is quoted telling the THiNK conference in Goa, India, “The digital explosion has been so explosive. There isn’t a single place where the digital thing is a profit thing. The disruption hasn’t brought a business model.”

  An example came in March 2013 from Nate Thayer, a professional freelance journalist who was contacted by the Atlantic, a vibrant publication. They wanted him to adapt a story for them, but there was a catch, which Thayer recounted in a blog post on his site (natethayer.wordpess.com), beginning with this communication from the Atlantic: “Thanks for responding. Maybe by the end of the week? 1,200 words? We unfortunately can’t pay you for it, but we do reach 13 million readers a month. I understand if that’s not a workable arrangement for you, I just wanted to see if you were interested.” Thayer responded that he was a professional journalist who had to pay his bills, but also that he knew people at the Atlantic who got paid, and that writing for free after twenty-five years of making a living writing was not something he was going to do. The Atlantic responded that some writers “use our platform as a way to gain more exposure for whatever professional goals they might have.”

&n
bsp; Medium.com pays freelance rates for writers, with Gawker doing one of the first stories covering it in the spring of 2013. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams launched it and also co-founded Blogger, which he sold to Google, so he’s no novice.

  The startup Tinypass is one of the new pay-wall enterprises working with new-media publishers to make the web pay, the best known being Andrew Sullivan, who partnered with them in 2013. Readers get some free access and are encouraged to become paying subscribers, with Tinypass providing the software, the publisher deciding what works best for his or her readership. I began partnering with Tinypass in January 2014.

  So, as you see, the industry in which I work made my husband’s investment even more of a gamble. This is why when I talk about a woman who values her career as part of who she is and how important it is to find a partner who understands this, I know what I’m talking about.

  On our anniversary just after the 2008 presidential election, after we had taken trips across the Southwest and Pacific Northwest to decide where to live next, because Las Vegas was always only a springboard for me, not a final destination, Mark walked into the living room to announce, out of nowhere, that we needed to be in Washington, D.C., because that’s where the action was for the writing I was doing. I was floored — thunderstruck, actually — and elated, because I’d been traveling to Washington, D.C. regularly for conferences and events but had only dreamed about moving there. Like the first time he asked me to marry him and I said no, I knew he didn’t understand what was in store for him, but what hit at the same time is that he didn’t care. It became instantly clear this was an adventure he desperately wanted for himself, too. As Mark likes to say, “Mountain climbers don’t climb hills.”

  If that doesn’t signal to you the beginning of a great love story, nothing will.