Awkward

by Ty Tashiro

  The problem with the lust-only or liking-plus-benefits strategies is that the lust zone and friend zone are not perfectly distinctive. They are not like counties neatly divided by a wide river, but instead are like the crooked lines you seen drawn on a map that demarcate counties or voting districts in a state, unintuitive divisions drawn to optimize a political party’s voting base. When the safe friend who was to fill a romantic void by providing dinner companionship, make outs, and spooning may start to look more physically attractive, it’s tempting to rearrange the dividing line between friendship and sex. People who go with the lust-only strategy might think that it’s easy to separate emotional intimacy and sex, but many people find that physical intimacy can stir sentiments of fondness that were supposed to remain dormant.

  I’m sure that dating and sex have always been awkward to some extent because they require a unique social skill set, but one can easily see how dating could be more awkward than ever, given the dramatic cultural shifts in how we choose partners, when we hope to marry, and the technological advances that make new dates easier than ever.

  For most of the time that marriage has existed, you did not have to worry about who you were going to marry because it was chosen for you. Free choice of marital partners introduced new complications, but most people were on board with the endgame of “let’s fall in love and get married when we graduate from high school or college.” But now the expectations of dating are much more diverse, which means more freedom, but also more ambiguity regarding what the other person expects. For the single who is trying to navigate whether someone is just a friend, a friend with possible benefits, or someone looking to fall in love, he or she needs to learn a different dialect of social cues that are unique to romantic relationships—and the language of love is now spoken in more dialects than ever.

  Online Dating Can Be an Awkwardness Incubator

  WHEN I WAS in junior high the quintessential creepy behavior was to ride your bike by a girl’s house. While I rode by I tried to look nonchalant in case the girl or her parents happened to be looking out the window, but based on how often I heard my female classmates discuss these ride-by incidents from non-awkward guys, I’m sure that I was not as smooth as I thought. Sometimes I thought about circling around again for another ride-by, but in my eleven-year-old mind I thought that only a crazy person would be that obsessive about a love interest.

  The modern single uses the Internet like an invisibility cloak for doing the equivalent of the ride-by. The relative anonymity of the Internet allows people to do deep dives into potential dates’ eHarmony or OkCupid profiles or research someone’s social history on Instagram or their relationship history on Facebook. They top off this covert creepiness by Googling potential dates for incriminating information or clues to their character that might exist in the deep archives of their long-abandoned Myspace profile. This would be like you riding your bike by someone’s house, walking around the house, then sneaking inside to go through their photo albums and journal. Online stalking is about the closest you can get to feeling awkward in the absence of anyone there to witness your socially unacceptable behavior. It’s one of those shameful things that we all do, but don’t talk about, like peeing in the shower.

  Sometimes, after you conduct these undercover intelligence-gathering operations, you might decide to send a message. After you carefully craft a message and hit send, an anxiety instantly begins to build while you wait for a response to this message in a bottle. A minute passes, then two minutes, and there is not a response or even so much as texting bubbles to show an effort . . . Now you start to convince yourself that your message was fatally awkward. Maybe it was too long or there were not enough exclamation points or you should have sent it in the afternoon instead of the evening; then, when you least expect it, she responds.

  It’s the best thing that happens all day, but you need to pull it together. Play it cool. To guard against looking overeager, you suddenly devise an arbitrary algorithm that doubles the time until you respond back to her. The intentional waiting game is a bad decision because now you are ruminating about the “xoxo” she used to sign off. Maybe that’s just a friendly “xoxo,” kind of like a European kiss on each cheek exchanged among friends. But maybe it’s something else, and now you can’t stop yourself from looking at your phone, at that dating app, at that message, while you deliberate the philosophical meaning of four letters that are not even a word: “xoxo.”

  All of it is totally crazy and it’s the new normal. Although researchers are still in the early stages of understanding online dating behavior, it’s clear that socializing through technology can produce a significant amount of anxiety. In 2015, online magazines geared toward young adults such as Elite Daily and BuzzFeed began running popular stories about the benefits of taking a break from dating, being alone, or commiserative articles about the alarm that arises from unsolicited sexts. In 2016, an app appeared for people who had grown weary of texting their romantic disinterest to potential online dates by using bots to send vague and unsatisfying messages. For people who had given up on dating, another app appeared to help lonely people hire people to do nothing more than spoon for a fee. There are certainly success stories, however, with online dating accounting for about 25 to 30 percent of marriages. But many singles feel like online dating has become a game for some people, and it can be hard to tell the differences between the players and people looking for something more substantial.

  We have seen that online communication involves a high degree of uncertainty because it’s devoid of social cues such as gaze, facial expression, personal space boundaries, and touch, which is unfortunate because nonverbal cues are particularly important when it comes to flirtatious cues. Only face-to-face can you find out if you like their scent, the way their voice resonates, or their crooked smile. Only in person can your date cast a telling glance your way or let his hand linger for a second longer on your back.

  If someone has managed to get through the dating apps and decipher flirtatious games, then things can get physically intimate. Eventually, things can reach a point when both people are ready for sex, which is about as face-to-face as you can get, and that makes sex a situation ripe for awkwardness.

  FOUR FACTORS TO MAKE DATING LESS AWKWARD

  Relationship scientists have repeatedly found that there are four factors that consistently predict interpersonal attraction: proximity, similarity, liking and recriprocity, and physical attractiveness. These factors might sound like common sense, but researchers also find that people only sporadically enact these behaviors in real life. Awkward people tend to be more reclusive, have unique interests, and may be hesitant to express their interest in someone, so I put together a few ideas about ways to enact the four factors of attraction.

  PROXIMITY

  •Sign up for online dating to establish virtual proximity.

  •Hang out where the type of partner you want would spend time. Foodies hang out at specialty stores, comic book lovers are at Comic Con, writers hang out at coffee shops . . .

  •There is some validity to “don’t be a wallflower.” Figure out a non-creepy way to position yourself by high-traffic areas. Maybe volunteer to sign people in at an event or offer to help serve drinks at a friend’s party.

  SIMILARITY

  •Try being specific instead of broad about your interests. Instead of saying, “I enjoy sci-fi,” you might say, “I enjoy Marvel Comics.” People like it when someone happens to have the same exact interests.

  •Once you start talking with people, be sure to ask them about their interests to see if there are any points of commonality.

  LIKING AND RECIPROCITY

  •At the right time, someone needs to find a way to say, “I’m interested in you,” or “I really like you,” or else a burgeoning love can die on the vine.

  •Be subtle. Awkward people tend to be eager when they are interested in someone. If you are thinking about buying jewelry or plane tickets within the first month, the
re’s a 99 percent chance it’s going to get awkward.

  PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS

  •It’s harder to control this, but there are obvious things that go a long way, such as getting cleaned up and wearing something flattering.

  •Research from Tinder suggests that one can boost online attractiveness by smiling, wearing a non-muted color, and not posting shots with groups of people.

  Sex Is Super-Awkward

  MICHAEL WAS HAPPILY married and undersexed. This lack of sexual activity was no one’s fault, but rather a symptom of Michael and his wife, Tracy, being people who were busy with their demanding careers while they also dealt with sleep deprivation as parents of an eight-month-old infant. For Michael and Tracy, sex had become one of those things they used to enjoy, like staying awake for the ten o’clock news or a good night of sleep.

  They met during their senior year at MIT, where Michael majored in mechanical engineering and Tracy majored in psychology. They were an odd couple, but somehow perfect for each other. Michael stood six feet eight inches tall with broad shoulders and a husky build. Despite his powerful physical stature and experience as a former defensive lineman in college, you could take one look at Michael and sense that he was clumsy. He was renowned for having a poor sense of where his body parts were in relation to the things around him, which led to various accidents that Tracy somehow found endearing. Tracy was petite and coordinated in every way. She was a gymnastics prodigy who was nationally competitive until she decided at age thirteen to follow her intellectual pursuits instead of making a run at the Olympic team. She was far from clumsy, physically or socially, but she loved Michael for his affable nature and sharp analytical mind.

  Recently, their infant put together a string of three good nights of sleep and this had left both of them feeling well rested and more than a little frisky. After they completed their side-by-side night routines by the bathroom sinks, Michael walked into the bedroom and pulled the sheets close to his chin. After three months of a sexual drought, Michael was surprised when Tracy emerged from the bathroom without her traditional flannel pajamas on or anything else. This excited Michael.

  I will not bore you with the details of what followed. There is not much to report because after their long dry spell, Michael and Tracy were not interested in compulsory pleasantries. They were two former athletes who had locked into their game-time zone of intense focus. They rushed through their rehearsed sequence: make out side by side, heavy petting, Tracy on top first, then Michael on top. It was the passionate, raw kind of sex that had swung both of them into some Kama Sutra–like zone, and in the heat of the moment Tracy yelled, “Oh Michael, get awesome!”

  Oh yeah! Get awesome indeed! But wait. What does that mean?

  Michael had never been told by anyone to get awesome during sex, but then again his experiences were based on a very small sample size. Maybe this was a common phrase among the sexual elite or an idea from one of those Cosmo listicles about “Seven Ways to Please Your Man.” His awkward mind furiously tried to think about a behavior to meet Tracy’s “awesome” expectation. In his analytical mind, Michael reasoned that the sex was already awesome by any objective standard, which led him to deduce that Tracy’s competitive spirit was urging him to be the best that he could be, to push him to the limits of his sexual potential.

  Michael pushed himself up into a yoga-like upward dog. He raised his right arm perpendicular to his body and with all of his might flexed his right bicep. He knew that Tracy liked his muscular arms and he reasoned that flexing them would take them all the way to awesome. Once he was done gazing at the crown of his bicep, he looked at Tracy to gauge her delight with the sexual spectacle before her.

  Tracy looked befuddled. In a terse tone she asked, “What are you doing?” Immediately after her accusatory question, Tracy felt guilty. She wished that she could take back what she had said, but in the heat of the moment she had lost her mental filter. With a gentler tone, she repeated her earlier request, “Sorry, Michael. I was trying to say could you please get off me?”

  Michael had put on a few pounds, actually it was about twenty pounds, since their last sexual encounter, which had become too much weight for Tracy to comfortably bear. In his enthusiasm, Michael had heard Tracy’s request to “Get off me” as “Get awesome.” After a tense moment, while Michael and Tracy lay side by side flushed with embarrassment, they burst into laughter. Even for elite athletes, sex can get pretty awkward.

  Although most people can recall awkward sexual moments, there’s reason to believe that sex has become more awkward compared to previous sexual eras. In the United States and many other countries there have been changes in sexual attitudes and societal changes in how sex is portrayed by mass media, which might be associated with individuals’ changing their sexual expectations. Brooke Wells and Jean Twenge examined generational differences in sexual attitudes and behaviors with data from the General Social Survey, which is a nationally representative sample of more than 33,000 U.S. adults. They were interested in whether they would find generational differences in attitudes toward premarital sex and casual sex, but they also looked for generational differences in sexual behaviors such as the total number of casual hookups and of sexual partners.

  They compared boomers’, Gen Xers’, and millennials’ responses from when they were ages eighteen to twenty-nine regarding attitudes toward premarital sex. They found a steady rise in acceptance of premarital sex during the eleven-year period for each group: 47 percent of young-adult boomers, 50 percent of young-adult Gen Xers, and 62 percent of young-adult millennials said there was nothing wrong at all with premarital sex. Attitudes toward adolescent sexual activity became slightly more accepting across generations, whereas acceptance of extramarital relationships actually declined. When examining reports of sexual behavior, the researchers found that young-adult Gen Xers reported having more sexual partners than boomers, but millennials actually showed a decline in their number of sexual partners compared to Gen Xers. Collectively this data suggests that attitudes toward sex have become significantly more open over time, but this has not corresponded to the stereotypical belief that millennials have more sexual partners than did previous generations.

  Although the total number of sexual partners has not changed much across these three groups, there are reasons to believe that people have become more open and willing to engage in a wider variety of sexual activities in the bedroom. One of the highest-profile cases of widespread sexual curiosity occurred when the erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey was published in 2011. Integral to the plot was a sadomasochistic sexual relationship, which had unexpectedly widespread appeal. By 2015, over 125 million copies of the book had been sold in over 52 languages, and in 2012 the author, E. L. James, was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. Couples in suburban areas who had grown tired of the same old sexual routines were exposed to a whole new world of possibilities, and their expectations for a little more excitement in the bedroom shifted to the adventurous side.

  Although Fifty Shades of Grey focused on a sexual relationship with sadomasochistic rituals, it was more fantasy than instructional manual for novices. Sex toy sales rose dramatically and couples excitedly put their new purchases to use. Neophyte couples of all ages began cuffing, tying, and whipping with little idea about the nuances of how to properly meet their wild sexual expectations, and that’s how things got awkward. In many countries where the novel was popular, fire departments and ambulance services reported an explosion of emergency calls to uncomfortable bedroom situations. The London fire department issued public service announcements before the Fifty Shades of Grey movie was released in 2015, in which they pleaded with moviegoers to be careful about their reenactment plans. London firefighters had spent the previous year racing to 393 Fifty Shades book-related emergencies, including freeing twenty-eight couples who had lost the keys to their handcuffs and a variety of injuries from improper use of sex toys.

  Beyond the Fifty Shades o
f Grey craze, more people have been exposed to a broader range of sexual practices through pornography being more readily available. In the era of big data, there are also readily available analyses about what people search for the most on pornography sites. I won’t go through all of the awkward findings here, but one of the most popular sites, Pornhub, reports that there was an 845 percent increase in demand for bunny pornography around Easter and an 8,000 percent increase for leprechaun pornography around St. Patrick’s Day.

  Whether pornography causes deeply problematic attitudes or behaviors is still unclear from existing studies; there are some studies that suggest higher-than-average pornography consumption is associated with concerning sexual attitudes and behaviors, but others find it to be relatively harmless in moderation. But another matter is whether this wider exposure to different sexual behaviors makes sex more awkward for the average couple. One possibility is that increased pornography consumption by both men and women has made couples more flexible regarding their sexual expectations, which would mean that new behaviors would be seen as intriguing rather than awkward. But the other equally plausible possibility is that one partner’s expectations of sex could significantly differ from the other partner’s expectations, which could create some uncomfortable situations. There’s just something about being naked that makes awkward moments feel extra-awkward.