Our nation is built upon a history of immigration, dating back to our first pioneers, the Pilgrims. For more than three centuries, we have welcomed generations of immigrants to our melting pot of hyphenated America: British-Americans; Italian-Americans; Irish-Americans; Jewish-Americans; Mexican-Americans; Chinese-Americans; Indian-Americans.
I like the idea of dating, but I’m not dating anyone exclusively, particularly right now. It’s hard to be in a relationship unless you’re ready to go public with it. So it’s a lot easier for me to not be in a relationship. I really don’t want that part of my life to be tabloid fodder.
Everybody’s got baggage, and not just the classic, ‘Oh I have so much baggage,’ but everyone comes with so much context, and you’re not just dating a person: you’re dating all their context, too. Part of relationships is negotiating each other’s context.
The funniest thing is I never understood why actors were so shady about who they’re dating. Then I realized the things you say get printed and the people you’re involved with read them. That’s what’s tricky. Nothing goes unnoticed. I don’t want to get myself in trouble!
People’s sexuality is often defined by who we’re partnered with at any given moment, which can be a frustrating limitation for me. I’ve had countless tiny ‘coming out’ moments in my life, often simply to explain to someone else that they have misjudged my sexuality based on who they saw me dating.
I always hated high-school shows and high-school movies, because they were always about the cool kids. It was always about dating and sex, and all the popular kids, and the good-looking kids. And the nerds were super-nerdy cartoons, with tape on their glasses. I never saw ‘my people’ portrayed accurately.
All my life, men have told me I wasn’t pretty enough – even the men I was dating. And I’d be like, ‘Well, why are you with me, then?’ It’s always been men putting me down just like my dad. To this day when someone says I’m cute, I can’t see it. I don’t see it no matter what anybody says.
Evolution is unobservable. It’s based on blind faith in a few dry bones and on unreliable dating systems in which the gullible trust. Kids should be allowed to make up their own minds about this issue, and not be censored to ‘one side is all we will let you hear.’
Coming through the fire and through the storm of life with a strong man, my fiance Ashanti, whom I’ve been dating for eight months and two wonderful children beside me, I’m just so happy that I have been able to maintain my integrity and get to where I am today with the right energy around me.
I enjoy dating. I love first dates. I think they’re incredibly fascinating studies in human psychology. When you sit down across from someone on a first date and things are going alright, you talk objectives. We want to win each other over, so how do you win someone over? You have to put the best foot forward.
When I started ‘DailyGrace,’ I was dating a 26-year-old guy I thought was the funniest person in the world. My creation process every day was imagining him watching my videos and wondering, ‘Will he laugh at this?’ But somehow that’s turned into an audience that’s mostly 15-year-old girls.
I started painting my nails and started wearing some women’s clothing, but that whole side of me always caused problems in my intimate relationships. There was a lot of shame attached to it. I’d talk to people I was dating about it but still feel ashamed.
When I was a boy, I took over the shed at the bottom of the garden and displayed fossils and potsherds and coins in it and proudly called it my ‘museum’. I charged people to come in, and my most prized possession was a Saracen shield dating from the Crusades.
The very phrase ‘Oscar night’ used to accelerate my pulse. For one thing – dating myself – it meant Bob Hope. He always had good, strong jokes, that faultless delivery, and always a new joke about his own films’ failure – once again – to be honored.
When I first started dating my husband, I had this weird fascination with the circus and clowns and old carnival things and sideshow freaks and all that. About a month after we started dating, he bought me this amazing black-and-white photo book on the circus in the 1930s, and I started sobbing.
It’s usually drawing on personal experience. I don’t think I could dig deep enough trying to get into somebody else’s life. Like ‘Far From Me’ – I wrote it about this waitress that I was dating when I was fifteen or so, and she broke up with me.
We all prospect, and don’t even know we’re doing it. When you start the dating process, you are actually prospecting for the person you want to marry. When you’re interviewing employees, you are prospecting for someone who will best fit your needs.
I don’t think I’m misunderstood, but there is definitely a certain side of me that the press focuses on – my body, my hair, or who I’m dating – which has never really served me as an actor. It’s served me in the commercial world, making money as a model, but the media perception has really hindered my acting career.
It’s a really deep and layered psychological situation – making music with someone – if they’re trying to make something real and personal. It’s almost like dating: you allow yourself to be consumed by the other – not in a bad way, but in a way that happens in nature.
I’m opening up my heart to the idea of dating. It’s funny – my friends would always come to me for romantic advice. I know nothing, and things have changed since I was dating in high school! I’m really trying hard to spend this time working on myself.
Are you kidding? I’m a terrible cook, but John is a really great one. Literally, I never cook. The whole time we were dating, I prepared two officially romantic meals. Both of them were such disasters that he begs me never to go into the kitchen again.
For a long time, I have been wanting to write a book for singles that would help them in the dating process and in getting ready for marriage. Most of my writing, I’ve written to couples who are already married, because I’ve been doing marriage counseling for 35 years.
I always wanted so much glamour in my life, so I have always been obsessed with class, and from dating a few people who were from old money and a few from new money in my 20s, I just sort of became obsessed with this idea of clueless rich people.
I had to find a diet that would kick me back into dating shape, because I know that I can’t date at size 8. I have to date at size 2. And it’s just a fact of nature. Go get your injections and your chemical peels. You gotta look good to attract a man.
The term ‘alpha female’ originated in my field of animal behavior, but has acquired new meaning. It refers to women who are in charge, for example, by flirting and dating on their own terms. It is also used maliciously for a loud-mouthed, controlling woman who has no patience with deviating opinions.
