After EB, I decided to try online dating. I had never done it before. In fact, I don't even know if there was any significant online dating to speak of back in 1997, when EB and I started seeing each other. Probably, there was. In fact, definitely yes! Because I remember that before we started dating each other, we'd joked about helping each other write a Match.com profile. I think I went so far as to compose a profile, but never actually posted it. So there.
When I started doing the online dating, filling out the question and answer parts, there was that decision about what do I search for in terms of the topic of smoking? And the reality was, again, that I didn't want to date a smoker. I think that some of that might have related to the fact that the people who acknowledged being smokers on the dating sites were probably people from a different demographic than myself. That's not to say that there are not women from the same demographic as me that are smokers, or occasional smokers. What I'm asserting is that a lot of women from the same demographic as me would lie about smoking on those sites.
Nonetheless, I always did my search with the criteria that they should be either non-smokers, or social smokers. That was when I was thinking about someone with whom I would have a relationship. But if I were bored and horny and just trying to tease myself with fantasy possibilities, I would go on Match and just start searching only for women who said they were smokers, so I could see what they looked like, and see what sort of profiles and personalities they appeared to have. By and large, I always ended up feeling like I was not the kind of guy that any of these women would be interested in! They had tattoos, or they wore really funky clothes, or they were the other category of sort of townie types that I would get the shivers thinking about. And I don't mean the good shivers.
But the thing that is interesting to me, looking back, is that I always toyed with the question of whether I should be actively seeking out women who were smokers, or not. And regardless of the fetish, and its obvious presence in the foreground of my sexual fantasies, I still ultimately turn away from it when it comes to "mate" selection. That is absolutely not to say that I am not either secretly, or overtly pleased if my partner turns out to be a rare or occasional smoker. But for me, it would not be a rewarding experience, and would in no way constitute an "indulgence" for me to date a full-time smoker. The only one I ever dated, as you may recall, was DR, the travel agent. And it didn't do anything for me.
I notice a lot of people posting on the boards that they would only ever date a smoker, or marry a smoker. Or they talk about how they previously had dated non-smokers and it caused nothing but challenges, conflict, or longing for things they could not have, and that they'd never again go back to those days. And so on. But I have never felt that way. And I don't think it's that I am trying to repress my identity or my desires. I think it's truly that I don't want to be in a relationship with someone who is "a smoker". And I am not sure how many sessions with Freud himself I would need to have, in order to determine if this is some desire to put myself in a state of eternal inner conflict, or if it just reflects an acceptable duality in my nature. Namely, I have a fetish that involves sexual turn-on from watching a woman smoke. But I also have a fundamental belief system involving wanting to live a healthy, clean, addiction-free life with a partner who shares my values and takes good care of herself, exercises, stays young, and all that good stuff.
So, I guess when I started looking at the ads for the women who were smokers on Match.com, I was really just browsing my own version of "soft porn" as a window shopper.
While I like that my wife smokes, and would actually prefer that she continue to be a "smoker" I very much like the fact that she is a fairly light smoker (a pack lasts two days or so and she mostly smokes on the porch) and actually wouldn't mind if she became an even lighter smoker (perhaps no more than a pack or two a week). For much the same reasons you have already cited, and because both her mother and grandmother died of lung cancer in recent years.
ReplyDeleteYou use of Match.com as soft porn is interesting. I suppose that I've done the same thing at times, though not often, without even fully realizing that was what I was doing.
Here's the thing, though.
ReplyDeleteYou've got to tell them. Especially non-smokers. If you manage to find a woman who satisfies you in other ways, who you can get along with long-term, and who doesn't mind the fact that for the rest of your life together your eye will always be wandering away from her whenever there's a female smoker in the room...well, I guess then you might end up happy.
I doubt the odds are great, though.
I'd suggest you strongly consider the question, also, of why, if smoking is not only OK but desirable for _other_ women, it's somehow not OK for the ones you date.
I'm not the kind of person who'd tell you that you need to resolve this conflict in a particular way. But I do think you seriously need to resolve it. TO put yourself out on the dating market without doing so is just doing a great disservice both to the women in question and ultimately to yourself.
Matt... patience, my dear friend! My story is only partially told :) Actually, your points are well-taken, and definitely something that has factored into the ways that I have communicated about the fetish.
ReplyDeleteHuh. I actually like women with tattoos who also smoke. But I guess it's like the old chocolate and vanilla thing.
ReplyDelete