well, neither. It was a neutral statement.

Have I been passionate about someone? Yes. Have to say yes. Love? That word is too amorphous for me. I don’t know what people mean when they say love. Passion, I can grok. And I have been/am passionate about people with whom I cannot have the relationship I desire. While I bask in the joy of what we can have, I am sometimes deeply pained by what we can’t. Sometimes I fantasize. But I am not obsessed. I accept what is and wonder whether I will ever experience what the potential I envision.

How to distinguish between a passion and an obsession? Not sure. Obsession implies something emotionally unhealthy. An obsession creates anxiety, drives people to destructive behaviors, and prevents the person from engaging in truly intimate relations. Usually, underneath an obsession, is a deep-seated lack of self-worth and fears that the person can’t yet face. While an obsessed person may feel ‘alive” at times, it is a double edged sword with a lot of feelings of frustration and self-loathing. And those who witness the one obsessed can usually see the darkness.

Passion nurtures a person. It is generative. While it may seem very one-track to others, they can see the light of it.

Many relationships fall somewhere in between. There is some combination of generative nurturing and some amount of frustration and self-loathing. It can be hard to determine where on the continuum your feelings for someone fall.

As for ego, I’m not sure if I agree with the Freudian compartmentalization of the personality. But, if you go with it, there is such a thing as healthy ego. It is the thing that supports self-confidence. Too little ego and you withhold what you have to offer the world. You don’t serve. Too much ego and you serve but with too much self-serving and valuing yourself far more than others.

When describing the ego you wrote about the “nearly unimaginable self-obsessiveness of professional athletes.â€? Where you see an “unimaginable self-obsesivenessâ€? I see an optimal confidence. I’m serious; don’t get persuaded by the sensationalism of the media – Terrell Owens, Kobe Bryant, and the rest. Focus more on the beautiful confidence of a guy like Troy Brown from the New England Patriots. 6 feet 180, 6th round pick, destined for obscurity – or not. This man would not say a kind word about himself if you held a gun to his head but if it’s third and long in the forth quarter and the game is on the line, there is no man that will prevent him from catching the pass …. Confidence – what a beautiful beautiful trait.. Some confuse their own confidence with an egotism – those are the people I never buy a second Guinness for. I’m intrigued by you idea of ego as demon possessor but I feel a little different. I feel that ego can be a good thing on some level. There is a blurry space where ego and confidence coexist. I know too many talented people who do not share their talents with the world because of a lack of confidence. These people suffer from a lack of ego. I find myself berating them with compliments hoping to build their ego to a level of confidence. Sometimes I need to do this in the mirror.

Our own Christopher Lydon has many critics, and they all say the same thing, he has too big of an ego. Yes he has an ego, but he brings the goods – it’s an ego built on a lifetime of questioning, learning. An ego that gives him the confidence to question world leaders and laymen alike. An ego that enables him to spark and provoke conversations on the big issues of our life. You may say the Christopher lydon has a big ego, but you must also say that Norman Mailer has a big ego, Tom Brady, Oprah, Picasso, Madonna, General Patton, Miles Davis, JFK, – the movers and shakers of our culture require a healthy ego.

Sorry for the late reply. I had to work three 15 hour days, WED, THU and FRI! Uhg… After my day was over I had a bite to eat and went straight to bed! No time for podcast or blogs. Ugh…

Anyways, from your post above I agree. All I was doing was taking the word “ego” and extrapolating it to the silliness of human nature (more in-tune with Latin literal meaning of ego: “I” or “self,” not arrogant ego, per se). But since “self” is part of ego. There is a sense of selfishness (or need) that can never be removed regardless if you take your guard down or not. It’s when the ego gets to be a burden that it can be bad. That’s all I was trying to say.

In regards to your post. I think that hierarchy is part of human nature only because no one lives in a perfect bubble. Even the word hierarchy doesn’t mean that we don’t have some sameness or similarities, either. I try to avoid absolutes. But hierarchy is something that is based on knowledge, class, race (like it or not), and just a general level of accomplishments one has achieved (monetarily and spiritually). Yes, pop culture does exagerate. But hierarchy would still exist even in a small clan in 10,000 B.C. Although less so.

In regards to the child-ego example…
You and I know that Tyrell Owens is a child in a mans body. But I’m sure there are some mature teenagers that are mature enough to see the same thing in T. Owens as we do. They have matured faster than others. So, all depends on what path one has reached. Wisdom does wonders. But that takes time and experience. A good example is Allen Iverson. He’s changed a lot! Just watch his interviews today vs yesterday.

One of my favorite parts of your post is the part where you said, “make a choice between retaining the insulters as friends – at the cost of their social standing and self-esteem – or accepting ostracization.”

I was lucky enough to have a revelation at the age of fourteen and realize that I was going to do what I wanted, not what everyone else thought I should do. It helped me not get caught up in the “do they accept me or not” trap. I didn’t care. Why? Because sometimes what they considred “cool” or “good” or “right” I rejected. Some things were “cool.” Like being invited to a football party. But I didn’t want to give in to that at the expense of being “fake.” So, I would always ask myself, “Is it worth it?”

But many people still struggle with this even late in their lives in part because of who they are (mentally and physically) and who they had around them as mentors now and back then. They have a hard time looking in the the future; i.e. seeing the big picture as well as the small picture.

Check this out:

http://teenadvice.about.com/library/weekly/aa101600d.htm

I’m sure you’ve heard people say- prick my finger for blood “I want to feel somethingâ€? – well, the obsession of love can be “something.â€? I felt it once – it was tangible, I could bite it. When the flame fizzled, I fell hard – but is that important? Does the falling negate the rise? I’m serious, I don’t know. When we get very drunk with friends and have the time of our life, does the hangover dread the next day take away from the previous night’s experience? Are they two separate things or not? I say yes, as long as the hangover does not infringe on “importantâ€? responsibilities the next day. The obsession I’m thinking about this time was the rebound from my five year relationship. I met a bartender from New Orleans who convinced me to move down there and move in with her and bar tend there. She was artistic and she could party – now this is what I’m talking about! Well, I was still talking about it after she dumped me and I was stuck in New Orleans. Luckily, New Orleans was a good place to be stuck at the time. My point is, for those few months, I felt a love that lifted me, something greater than the sum of my partial parts. Something that made me appreciate Lional Richee love songs, something that made me want to learn how to make homemade pasta (I’m not even a good microwaver), something that made me exclaim “I love youâ€? in the midst of making love, something that made me want to simply – want!

“A lark cannot help singing in the spring.� Vincent van Gogh Nov 1881 from a letter to his brother about his obsession with his cousin Kee Vos.

In the effort to convince Kee to return his affection, Van Gogh alienated most of his family. Most of the following is from the same Nov. 1881 letter to his brother.

“Never, no, never,� were the words Kee said to Vincent, leaving no doubt about her feelings. This hurt Vincent but did not dissuade him from the effort to gain her love. All it did was become more of a challenge to him. Was it his ego? Was it a beautiful passion?

Vincent says his persistent efforts in the face of “never, no, never,� might have been wrong but (and I love this quote) “we pick up the scent as we wander about, not as we sit idly by.�

“You may, Theo – you may hear it said of me that I want to force things, and expressions like that. Yet everyone knows how senseless force is in love!�

“By now you will realize that I hope to leave no stone unturned that might bring me closer to her, and that it is my intention: To go on loving her Until in the end she loves me too.�

Vincent writes that to love and not be loved back is better than to not love at all. This is powerful because (in my mind) he is saying that an obsession of love can be healthy if you do not put fear in the other’s heart. It is simply beautiful to love. “if you and I are in love then we are in love. And we keep a clear head and do not becloud our mind, nor curb our feelings, nor douse the fire and the light, but simply say, ‘Thank God, I am in love.’�

“Imagine what a real woman would think if she found that someone was courting her with reservations; wouldn’t she say something worse to him than ‘never, no, never!�’

“And they call me ‘the melancholy one’, and I ask you to congratulate me on my ‘never, no, never,! And I get very cross when people tell me that it is dangerous to put out to sea, observing that one might drown in it. I don’t get cross because I think they are wrong to say that, but because they seem to forget ‘that there is safety in the very heart of danger’�

“Whoever feels so ‘sure of his ground’ that he rashly imagines ‘she is mine, even before he has waged the soul’s battle of love, even before, I say, he has become suspended between life and death on the high seas, in the midst of storm and tempest – there is one who knows little of what a real woman’s heart is, and that will be brought home to him by a real woman in a very special way. When I was younger, one half of me once fancied that I was in love, and with the other half I really was. The result was many years of humiliation. Let me not have been humiliated in vain.”

If this sounds all together too mushy-warm-fuzzy, that’s cuz it is. But only because egos have become a vital self-defense layer in world obsessed with hierarchy – a world run by adults (or ARE they?). Hierarchy is the villain when friends cut-down other friends. The insulted must then make a choice between retaining the insulters as friends – at the cost of their social standing and self-esteem – or accepting ostracization. In youngsters, this isn’t an easy choice. Ego construction then becomes an arms race. (Adolescent put-downs are simply one common method of this escalation.)

The question, then, is whether hierarchy is a normal feature of ‘human nature’, or only massively exaggerated in the world’s currently dominant cultures.
I believe the latter (probably obviously).

I doubt that obsessions with hierarchy and ego would persist if adults behaved their ages instead of tediously perpetuating their puberties. For instance, the professional athletes whose egos are so big they must speak of themselves in the third person. For example, “Tyrell Ovens [an imaginary pro] needs the respect that only comes through the biggest contract.� Who’s speaking? His agent? Nope. His own biological mouth. Guys like this haven’t matured a day since their talents began garnering adulation in middle school. Their egos serve to shield the embarrassing presence of the twelve-year-olds hiding out within their powerfully honed bodies.

Much, much more importantly, this sort of monster-ego isn’t limited to athletes – hell, they run the world’s governments (although they’ve enough politesse and savvy to know better than to thump their chests like footballers). It’s hard to see from afar because (perceived) humility is a virtue crucial to voters. But the hapless staffers see the egos. They know the sordid truth, but keep mum in support of the pols’ sundry righteous causes.

Anyway, this sort of child-in-an-adult’s-body norm is as overdue for a junking as Freudian theories of sex-obsessed children and the like.
Or so say I while Chris talks Orwell ‘live’ on KUOW.
(But what the hell do I know!)
Anyway, thanks for (re-)joining the conversation, and please feel free to respond. I’m not looking for a ‘fight’ so much as I am the necessity, through critique, of refining my thoughts enough to be convincing. Thanks.

Us humans are such silly creatures…good thing we don’t have tail feathers. Each of us would be wagging them vigorously at various speeds. Each trying to impress his or her mates in our musical dancing matting ritual. Just beware of the dreaded “molt…”

I remember reading somewhere that the perfect mate is one that sees the best in you. Or, rather, seeing the best in you, through their eyes. That’s says a lot about ego. Kinda selfish. But then I thought about it and reversed the roles.

I had a friend that just made me crack up in laugher. I don’t know what it was. But some of the things they did was just funny. It was genuine. So, in my eyes that person was fun to be around. It would also make sense that that person would also want to keep getting the reactions from me as well. It was a feedback loop. They enjoyed the attention from me. Because not everyone thought they were funny. There’s the “ego” for ya.

Picture this. A group of seven people — myself included. This one girl telling a story about her day. At the end of the story she makes some grand hand gesture/facial expression trying to reenact something that happened to her. Two people chuckle. Three people smirk. I crack up laughing. And it was spontaneous laughter on my part. Great way to make a new friend, no?

And still to this day, if she tells a story I’d still crack up. This is a perfect example of her seeing the best in herself though MY eyes.

Give and take.

As for my arguable notion that egos have regional flavors, I ought to have offered a reason and an example. Perhaps this will suffice:
Egos, being mostly societal constructs, inevitably reflect the society’s attitudes. Example: To, say, a lad from Michigan, California guys might seem to possess a suspicious amount much effortless ‘cool’. The same Californians might judge the guys from Michigan ‘nice but reserved.’ (Think Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon.)
The ‘reserve’ will likely be occasionally be punctuated by outbursts (since reserve means at least some emotional repression, and even the barely simmering pot must occasionally nudge its lid). Meantime, the Californians, while making their egos, have the advantage of plenty of ‘cool’ older role-models.
Okay. You’re right: that’s a really lousy example. But it’s all I can think of off the top of my head. (Sigh.)

Gizmo: you’re dead right about Lisa’s post. It’s a big-time winner.
But so many of these posts are just awesome. And since I don’t want to fawn, I’ll just reiterate my heartfelt Thank You to all.
Affectionately,
Europa Americanensis adultus-slackerino scriptori Nikos

I, too, think Freud should be junked. He creeps me out.

Your Mutual of Omaha satirical analogy was hilarious!

I’ve bits of reaction to many of you, but I must start with a question to nother.
Please let me know if you agree with the following.

My real-world, non-psychological understanding of ‘ego’ is this: A protective sense of persona, primarily self-generated but inescapably dependent on validation from peers. A shield of emotional cloth, whose purpose is to allow the young – especially adolescents – to feel capable of interacting in the daunting world of worldly adults.
Its formation takes place in peer-groups and in families, but its existence is highly personal – and so much so that its operators almost immediately begin to confuse the constructed, or shall we say carefully-stitched-together, shield with the true, inner self. This confusion accounts for the nearly unimaginable self-obsessiveness of professional athletes, and for the more mundane need for most of the rest of us to consider if not actively seek personal counselors at one point or more in our lives.
It’s more akin to having a demon possessing you than it is the paradigmatic ‘healthy ego’ of Freud (whose theories, apart from identification and naming of this thing the ego, are long overdue for a wholesale junking).

Now for an example of this definition in a real-life context.
My own ego never really developed, though I certainly tried to make it happen. I hadn’t had the emotionally healthy sort of family life that could intuitively ‘guide’ my ego creation, because I didn’t have enough self-perspective to understand how my peers would judge the various stages of its development. In short, my efforts could be only characterized as ‘pretentious’ – which is a great way to earn ostracization.
But it was also an unintended boon, because it meant that I felt uncomfortable ‘in my skin’ (which really, I think, means, ‘in my ego’), and so I presently abandoned the misbegotten wretch instead of trying to perfect it. This left me a shy and uncertain young man, but amiable enough, and unpretentious enough to earn many good and equally quiet-type friends. I wasn’t threatening, nor terribly charismatic.

Then a funny thing happened in my mid-twenties. Enough women my age and slightly younger had grown aware and jaded of the post-adolescent male-ego to notice that the ‘charisma’ so venerated by teenage girls actually tends to make for unconscientiously lousy adult males (does this in any way jibe with your own experiences?). This, coupled with the fact that I’d won the genetic ‘appearance lottery’ (and the fact that I worked in a bar) meant that, seemingly overnight, I went from ‘cute but too shy’ to ‘cute, sweet, and highly desirable’. I went from an adolescence of ‘no girlfriends’ to a couple of adulthood decades of…too many?

So will you be surprised to learn that I too had more than one (many) occasions like yours? – Like you, I couldn’t voice my unreadiness for deeper commitment and instead fell into that damnable male relationship-silence.
It wasn’t my ego – I didn’t have one worthy of mention – it was my relative lack of experience (especially while young and yearning), compounded a cultural acceptance of male uncommunicativeness. (This is, nother, all in the end gonna let you off the hook, btw.)
Does the ego’s presence and robotic control occlude the needs of the man within?
You betcha.
The ego, I my humble opinion, is the least valuable human attribute. Egos, being artificial/societal constructs, by their nature can’t sense the feeling people beneath their layers. Egos, not the sensitive and caring people beneath their protective layers, fence, feud, and battle to no good end. And delude us, their putative operators, into thinking that they fairly represent our personages.
It really is more like a demonic possession.

(And have you ever noticed that the general pattern of egos varies from culture to culture and society to society? That the ‘California’ and ‘Michigan’ egos vary nearly as much as the ‘Chinese’ and ‘American’ egos? When bigots give coded statements of their prejudices like the classic “I just can’t understand those people�, they’re actually referring to other-cultural ego-types, not the fully human and fully feeling people beneath the egos. We should perhaps name them pseudo-scientifically, like (based on other posts herein): ‘Europa Americanesis programmeri nerdi Lisa-Wilsoni’, or something like that!)

So how else, you might wonder, does my story parallel yours?
Perhaps a lot. Like you, I lost many good lovers from benign neglect (and why worry when another would make herself available almost immediately?). I didn’t do it from egotism – it was instead a weird reversal: my empathy (of which I’ve plenty) sensed that my emotion evolutions didn’t match those of my lover. I wasn’t self-confident enough, not even after dozens of lovers, to imagine myself in an adult marriage. I was permanently ‘unready’. This doesn’t mean I never fell hard for a lover. I came to regret the loss of three who I imagined to be my soulmates. Unlike the countless others, I knew these were once-in-lifetime women (and, in hindsight, what luck to have found three!). Yet the same unreadiness that caused my ‘benign neglect’ of other lovers sabotaged my each of my Big Three, although each instance was unique, and as dependant on the failings, foibles, and circumstances of the women as it was anything to do with me. (When big relationships fail, it’s not ALWAYS due to the doings of both partners, but most of the time it’s probably the case.)

The point? Each of the big three caused me massive and long-lived pain on their dissolutions.
Why? Because, unlike egos, people have feelings – feelings that the loss of a love can savage.

So: twasn’t your ego that writhed in agony on the loss of your black-Irish. It was you, the person under the ego’s thumb. The person the ego fooled into thinking he didn’t need the love of his life.
My theory for why this happens is simple: couples forge distinct, conjoined identities.
And any ‘self-respecting ego’ (aren’t they all?) will view this eventuality as a threat to its existence.
They really are like demons. They need to possess you. Their existence is artificial – and any new possible self-identity threatens them at their core.
When you finally notice that the man named ‘(your name here)’ isn’t actually the person he shows off to the world, the demon freaks out and points the finger inward, shouting “NO! That’s the ego! The one with feelings! Not me!�
It doesn’t want to die.
So kill the king, and long live the new king, because when we stop letting robots run our personal lives, we might just find that it’s not so hard to meet the people that will meet our needs.

Nother? Is this kinda like what you meant?

Is this worth a further thread-wide conversation?

What do women think of this account, especially in light of the very brave soul-baring done by nother?

I’d meant to give more specific kudos and respect to the other posters, but this word-balloon has stolen all my free time for the rest of the day.
Later, all.

Thank you for the kind thoughts.

I agree that life is too short to love with fear. In each of my situations, I ultimately let go of fear and realized how much power I had. If the man didn’t let go of the obsession, I destroyed him. While I’m not proud of being a destructive force, sometimes you have to be. Sometimes you have a tear a building down to make way for a new one. What usually came between fear and empowerment was anger. Everyone around me would be worried, but wouldn’t help. I had better things to do with my time than occupy with some stranger’s psycho-emotional garbage that I did not generate. I would feel a rage and then I would plot. Unlike the victims of stalking and obsession that you read about in novels and see in films, it was a calm, simple course of action that didn’t require any life-threatening moments. But it was the undoing of the man. And in the end, I could empathize. And forgive.

I hadn’t thought about any of this in years. The things that are evoked by ROS…..

Thanks to everyone who shared their personal stories, too. Allison and Nother – great, thoughtful stuff there. I’m only sorry we weren’t able to use it in the show.

It all reminds me of the Chris Rock bit, where he says that none of the white people in the room would trade places with me – “and I’m rich.” I believe that none of the men on this site would trade places with Allison, or Lisa Williams, or Oprah, or any other woman, no matter how smart, beautiful, or rich, they may be. White men (me included) have no idea of the privilege we have inherited – that we feel entitled to. You want to talk about a cornered animal, Allison – try taking away our power. Try telling us that we can’t have something we want – like you! You may reject us, but that’s not where it will end.

With all that said, I do believe that a very small nugget of the irrational obsession for you was a rational attraction to “an intensely exquisite reflection” of you. You have a unique empathy and an insatiable wonder, and that’s a VERY beautiful thing.

Because personals ads assume that you actually know what will make you happy.

Had I had to depend on personals, my list of criteria would have excluded the man who is now my husband, with whom I am delighted and have two children with.

At the time I met my husband, I had had a lot of “He’s From Earth, I’m a Weirdo from Outer Space” dates. I was working on getting myself okay with the idea of being an 85 year old, by myself…then I’d start worrying, my god, what if I end up like one of those women with 19 cats? No, no, I would take up gardening! As a defense against cats!

It was a weird time. I was still in my post-college roommate apartment, but two roomates departed for graduate school, and my remaining two roommates…married each other. They bickered, I felt like I was in their personal space. So I started treating the coffee shop down the street as my remote living room. I’d bring my books and settle in. The only problem with this place, from my perspective, was that it was a pick-up joint. At some point every evening, all the tables would be taken — but not all the chairs, thus making it easy for some guy to come up and say, leeringly, “Is this chair taken?”

My solution? If there was an extra chair at my table, I moved it to the other side of the room. Men! Had enough! Go away! I’m collecting cats!

Then one evening I was sitting, reading, and I saw this guy and he was reading Towards a Perfect Language, a big tome on semiotics by Umberto Eco, and some little voice said, “Hey, I have a book by that same author in my car.” And even though I was firmly Off Dating, my feet, mysteriously, were piloting me towards my car, where I fished around next to the jumper cables for a copy of How To Travel With a Salmon, a book of travel essays by Eco.

Then I went back into the cafe and chose a new chair that was directly in his line of sight. (In the background you could hear the Mutual of Omaha “Wild World of Animals” announcer whisper, “Here we see the mating dance of the reclusive nerd — each one displays a book…”)

I sat there and opened the book in front of me. I couldn’t read, I just sat there and thought, “I am such an idiot! This is so cheesy, there’s no way this will work!”

Then the weirdest thing happened. It worked. It worked!

He came over and talked to me and ultimately asked me for a date, and I never had to date anybody else ever again, hallelujah!

On almost every installation, someone would become obsessed. This was not unique to me. My female peers within the company all experienced this. Sometimes it was harmlessly annoying. But other times it was frightening. (Oh, yes, I was also stalked by a man in NYC for a few months. Also frightening.)

As the one on the receiving end of obsession, I have a different perspective than the obsessed. I experienced that Obsessors feelings really had nothing at all to do with me. Though, inevitably, others would question whether I had done anything to cause the clearly destructive behaviors. Luckily I was never hurt. And I don’t have the victim mentality, so I never let them get the best of me. (I can be formidable when threatened.) But, sadly, i never felt supported by those around me. Especially those in a position to do something – the bosses. I always had to fend for myself and defend myself. It was the same ‘blame the victim’ mentality that you see when women are raped.

I used different tactics with the different characters, but it was always traumatic for him and for me. I didn’t appreciate having to defend myself in the ways required. (I told one man that I was gay. That sent him into a drinking binge and weeks later he quit his job at the paper. He went right over the edge. I resented that I ended up feeling so badly for him and that I had someone damaged him. When, in fact, I was the recipient of inappropriate and frightening behaviors that I was forced to handle.) (I set another up to nearly get fired by Robert Maxwell – that’s a fun story in a twisted way.)

In the end, I experienced a combination of people who were sad and lonely and also felt powerless. I (the version of me in their heads, that is) became the magic crystal, the grail. The magical item that would make all their pain go away if I would love them. Meanwhile, they were doing everything they could to ensure that I was repulsed and frightened. Still, I always knew that I was internally more powerful. More connected to reality. Less shattered. (Startling, given my childhood.)

I am a person of great empathy. Coming into contact with these men was very painful. I could feel their dark spiral. They lived in the darkness without the hand of a guide. The despair was palpable. And I could not help. Perhaps, now that I’m older, I could handle it differently and be of some limited help. I am beyond the need for simple self-preservation. But then, all I could do was survive it. And when the survival button is pushed, the cornered animal comes out. Not so helpful to the other suffering one.

And suffering they are. I know loneliness. I have a corner of deep, unrelenting loneliness in my heart. A feeling that no one will ever see the whole me. Let alone, actually accept me lovingly if they did. I know powerlessness. I spent a childhood lying in wait. I can see how the combination of the two becomes so unbearable that you need to believe there is someone who can see you and love you for who you are and make all the pain go away. In retrospect, I think that the obsession of these men was an intensely exsquisite reflection of a piece of me. And I think that we need to find a way to embrace this part of ourselves. Soothe it with loving kindness. Something we could offer those we know who are locked in the prison of obsession themselves. Bring them out of their isolation cell and let them know real love by acknowledging the deep pains and pangs of being human.

Christopher: in the mode of craigslist’s “Missed Connection” I introduced myself to you this past fall at the McCoy Tyner jazz concert at Northeastern. Medium height, medium brown hair, glasses, age appropriate, from Wickford RI, big fan of Open Source. Not much to go on to prick your memory, but your interest was momentarily piqued, evidenced by the second look you gave as you walked away. Hardly enough contact to employ the smell factor. Perchance when next we meet………

The advice I give to anyone interested in online dating is to make it fast– no more than one or two email exchanges, one phone call, and then a meeting. That leaves minimal time to start filling in the blanks by fantasizing.

The marketing that online dating sites use is brilliant in that it plays right into those fantasies. It’s outcome visioning to the extreme. Match.com’s is a good example; eHarmony.com’s marketing goes right for the jugular. Users of these sites should temper their enthusiasm with patience.

— Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm, “The Car Pool Lane”