Okay, onto the episode that got delayed, because it kept growing in length and seriousness.
Part of it is educational.
Part of it is personal. And embarrassing, for illustrative purposes.
And I’m calling it post-emo for a number of reasons.
For years I’ve been anti-emo in musical judgement and existence, but you know, it’s making a comeback.
Also this was originally the follow up to the episode “Killing Your Chemical Romance.” I wrote these in tandem and was being cheeky.
Thirdly, it’s about the challenge of having types, usually built on emotions from the past. Teenage ghosts that still control us from below. We’re post-emo about a person, we think, and yet the bad decisions in their honor keep coming.
And lastly… For some of us, some of those types… were formed by seemingly complicated boys in bands in basements. Our Achilles heel is still emo boys.
I am that some of us.
So in this not personal, personal, bonus, I want to 1) talk about some typical types of types and root causes of types. And 2) I’m going to come clean about my own experiences with types to illustrate the complexity of them.
Noting that a good deal of the description that was in the first DnD episode was due to my own doping experiences. I had a lot of words to describe emotional masturbation because I know it well, over a lifestime. And then the universe gifted me with the perfect inspiration, just as the show was half-written.
The beginning will be informational. Then we’re going to be a bit loose here in the personal corner.
Part of that will be aimed at the millennial-alts out there. If you have no experience or general knowledge of the effects of Pete Wentz on girls 20 years ago or the indie music scene of today, I don’t know if you’ll get the same juice from this squeeze.
That’s why I arranged it this way – get what you need and get outta here if you want - but the points are for all.
Recap
Recently we’ve been talking about falling in love with dopamine and calling it human relating.
Is it weird attachment? No, only because we’re not that far into things.
But it is the same pattern of thinking. And it will end up there.
We also spoke about attraction. What matters to us. What sets us up for obsessing on a human object.
And we did some research on the crossover in brain regions between imagining romantic love and family love that mayyybe speaks to said individual attraction.
Today I want to talk more about this fatal attraction. The phenomenon that predisposes us to these drug-fueled illusions taking over in an instant.
“Typing.”
As in, we all have “types.” But what does that really mean? And how can we be on the lookout for people who, it turns out, are “just our type” moreso than they’re optimal relational partners or even creators of the feelings we’re having.
Let’s talk about types.
Types
Essentially, typing is just a form of transference. The neural structures we’ve created in the past – the frameworks for our thoughts, based on the memories we’ve formed – are immediately activated upon observing someone “similar enough” to ideas and emotions we’ve had before.
Upon seeing, hearing, smelling this person who is in some way ringing a bell, the inner landscape is rapidly polluted by past events and populated by anticipations based ON those past events (including the prior doping experiences). These are applied to the new individual without any real evidence that it is relevant information.
And in this way, we have emotional responses to them that are inappropriate. But feel extra, extra, addicting, because they’re itching an old scratch. They (and by that I mean the idea of them) is promising to fill a long-held void or stitching up an old cut. The idea of them makes us feel like we can be more whole on the other side of knowing them.
This makes us immediately drawn in, emotionally active, and highly obsessive. Inaccurately “bound” to this new party. Of whom we have very little real information.
Think of it this way.
When we emotionally masturbate, we create these neural webs composed of the aspects of a person that we imagine we would enjoy and benefit from. All these personal characteristics, conscious and subconscious, are macramé-ed together into a net, of sorts. It’s invisible, but imagine it is cast out into the world and dragged behind you everywhere you go. Some part of you, always on the lookout.
Then someone stumbles into the net. They have some characteristic or several that set off the attached alarm system.
And the attraction snaps into place, the feelings start flowing, the stories start flooding the mind… maybe the love architecture is activated in the brain…
Not because of this person in the net.
But because you built the net. And dragged it around for decades. And it was bound to eventually capture someone who happenstantially had enough similarities with the net to be ensnared.
You didn’t piece these neurons together based on interactions you’ve actually had with the person. You pieced these neurons together and then hoped someone would come along with the interactions to make them real.
So that their weight – their presence inside the emotionally-masturbatory thought web – is enough to set off the victory bell and all the flashing lights as the dope machine whirs into motion. “We’ve done it! We’ve found them!” the brain tells you.
And creates an obsessive, sucky, mindscape.
…
That is the danger of types.
And it begins.
The dope gateways:
Historical – partners
Historical – parents
Historical – lies (media influences & personal fantasies)
Self-enhancing
Self-replacing
Unfinished business
“Not your type”
Complex types: Mix and match
Pots of gold
Phones – the same communication method used to talk to intimate partners
The dope gateways:
So why might the mind (then recruiting the brain) create false, snap-to feelings? Or, more accurately, apply post-emos to new-but-close-enough-targets?
Historical – partners
First up, the type of type we probably all think of. Past partners.
Once we pop, the torment don’t stop… with certain types.
And the question is, are we individually attracted to each one of them? If we were to spontaneously meet them out of order – would we still have wound up dating the same people? And all of them? Or would our taste have changed quickly? Would we have ever had that craving at all?
In other words, if we had never met or related with instance number one of our “type” would we have gone for numbers two through infinity?
Maybe! But it’s less likely.
We need some formative experience to set the stage for the rest. If we didn’t fall for a particular ass the first time around, we might not be trying to fit our seat to similar shapes forever after.
Once the brain establishes attraction, attachment, bonding, feelings of love with a certain type, with a certain experience (that we’ll touch on later), it primes everyone else who is similar-ish to be assessed the same.
If we had a romance with Charlie that made our brain extra active for a while and later meet Little Chuck, he accumulates some of those rampant, unsettled, memories and feelings of Charlie. Love networks might activate.
Predictions and assumptions are made – for anxious attachers the positive ones, because we have nothing to lose at that stage. For avoidant attachers, maybe all negative because we have everything.
And we fall back in. Because we’ve been there and had a certain outcome before.
Historical – parents
We learned last time what we already knew. Familial bonds influence our tastes and experiences with love and things get weird if we think about them.
But I think it’s more interesting than that.
As we spoke about last time, we like people who are kindof broadly similar and specifically different from us. When we detect someone who reminds us of us, though, who else are we observing? Our families.
Think about it, we can’t see ourselves. We can see the members of our family trees. We’re all quite similar. Even in the ways that we’re different, we’re often polar opposites (over corrections) so that, really, we’re just reflections of each other.
Our families are the mold that we come out of. And we more easily recognize the shape of the mold rather than our own negative form when we see it in the wild.
So that when we find someone who’s similar enough to us… at a certain threshold… they’re also usually different enough from us through virtue of not being the same exact individual… that an attraction is viable.
Especially if we have redundant non-verbal modalities of attraction, so the draw is felt in multiple ways.
We’re reminded of mom and dad, and what we were taught to consider attractive, in multiple ways.
Historical – lies (media influences & personal fantasies)
Some of our “types” might not be our “types” at all. But remnants of what media moguls thought were attractive. What culturally was hot when we were young.
And we might not have any real experience with our “type,” even if they were birthed from our own judgments of attraction. We may have dreamed of relationships that formed our desired shape and sort of person. Without ever experiencing them in reality.
A popular singer, actor, neighbor, peer at school… could be the template that the brain dopes most heavily and rapidly about, but never acquires, due to the past history of doping so heavily on parasocial or preferred reality relationships.
Causing a head over tails feeling and a deep longing every time a similar-enough human is observed. Like a real need that has always been there might possibly, finally, be met.
And the thinking machinery gets way too focused on trying to make this happen. So that success can finally be achieved. The dreams that it has carried for decades can finally be unlocked and experienced.
Unfinished business
A common trend within and between types? Perhaps a type all its own?
Anyone or any relationship that hasn’t received closure.
The mind has carried it as an unsolved mystery for years, turning the details over, trying to make sense of it. Never being satisfied.
And then a new version walks into the room. And this is the moment for sweet vindication, validation, and certainty. It can finally stop wondering. Suffering. Ruminating.
Even better. This is the chance to rewrite history. To tag a new ending on the unfinished story that changes the meaning of the entire event. Takes it from a failure to a success. A pointless period of suffering to a required experience to set the stage for bliss.
Rewriting history in the present with a new person to create a better story than the old one ever did also provides new evidence of worthiness, attractiveness, and lovability. Not only settling history but skyrocketing the self-esteem of the type-haver to outer space.
All has been forgiven. And the value – the entire life - of the individual, redeemed.
I also want to say, I think this is where age typing comes from.
As in, those of us who have a thing for younger people? (Not in a pedo way – I’m not here to speak to that at all.) Maybe are living in unsettled business from the past. Chapters of our lives aren’t closed, we’re still seeking the same age of people as those who scarred or rejected us as kids. Arrested romantic development.
Those of us with an older person type? Might be trying to resolve things with parents, authority figures, or, of course, older romantic partners we had before.
Regardless of the similarity in question, the mind detects it and picks up where it left off, hoping that THIS IS the new big, definitive ending.
And doping that it will be the success that wasn’t earned the first time around, so that experience is validated. So the mind can tell its owner “See, that was a necessary stepping stone to get to THIS person. It all had to be that way for this to work out.”
But it doesn’t guarantee success. It might end up being a successive relational failure, added to the list, stitched into that neural network, contributing more baggage and assumptions and daydreams to this “type” of person.
When we try to pick up where we left off with a story of interpreted “failure,” we put double the pressure on the new situation. Because the mind estimates, if this new thing works out, then the old thing will be settled, too. And then, the beholder will be validated, like they weren’t the first time around. Because there’s really no mental or emotional separation between the two.
Does this create anxiety? Make it so that the story HAS to play out a particular way, without room for the real humans in the house to behave as themselves? I would say so.
So, watch out for people who make you think of other people or situations, in which it did not work out. It’s ripe for mind games, from you onto them onto yourself.
Self-enhancing
Also watch out for ANYONE who makes you start reappraising who you might be, according to the impression that they’re giving you. if you assess that they assess that you’re wonderful and the mind begins recalculating its impression of your existence, your worth, your position on earth…
That mind is getting attached to a self-enhancing story where the glow from this individual is lighting you up.
And this boost to your appearance, reputation, identity, social sway, power… is what the mind starts doping about. Bonding to. Loving.
Not the person who is supposedly causing the boost. But the positive change, the positive implications for personal identity, itself.
And that’s shitty. For everyone. Right?
Don’t fall in love with a potential future version of yourself through the means of partnering with this other person. Everything about that is both imagined (fake) and reflective of a relationship with self-advancement, not a human being.
Fall in love with another person if you’re going to wager your heart getting broken.
And learn to be the person you dream of instead of giving that achievement away to the mere presence of some “type” validating your life.
Self-replacing
Similarly but different… mind cases of adoration that might actually reflect a wish to BE the other person, rather than fall in love with them.
Sometimes we get high off the presence of others because they remind us of how we wish we were, ourselves.
We can get a little obsessed with them, especially if they feed our dope addictions with attention or affection.
Sometimes we can mistake that desire to be them and/or make other people feel the way that they can make us feel… for love.
By being around them we feel special and we absorb whatever it is that makes them special. We change or boost our social identity through association and observational learning. We change or improve our personal outlook on what we’re going to be able to accomplish in the world as we change who we appear to be, through their door-opening and their modelling.
And it gets confusing. Where does the line between “wish I was them” and “want to be with them” lie, when we can become more like them through being with them?
Can’t say. But it can make a brain become dependent on their approval, attention, association.
And the same goes for anyone else we encounter who is the same “type.”
“Not your type”
And, to throw a curveball… another type is NOT your type.
Someone who doesn’t seem like what you’ve encountered before.
And that’s what’s so attractive to the mind.
The novelty, unpredictability, and maybe even recklessness of knowing and being around a person like this… completely unexplored territory… on an earth that hasn’t been explored WITH a person like this…
It can be overwhelmingly hopeful. Blank. Exciting. Painting a rainbow and a series of singing question marks over the future.
And importantly, it will also be lacking in negative memories of past times and related explicit thoughts. Void of wisdom and naysaying double-thoughts or reflections. The “not your type type” is untainted by history. Exotic.
And that is also a type.
One that’s probably partially influenced by another type… the imagined history / fantasy type.
Complex types: Mix and match
Because our types build on each other.
You may have seen a piece of media at the age of 4 that told you what it would be like to fall in love with someone unlike anyone else in your family, community, or culture.
And THAT might be the type that comes to mind when you meet the “not your type” type.
They’re still NOT your type. But the mind has feelings and ideas about what THAT means. Which then establish the doping production line.
You could also, of course, date people who remind you of your family, of whom you end up having unfinished business with. That’s three types of types, three illusionary neural architectures, layering on top of each other to create a very addicting, attractive, attachment situation.
And any other combination.
Attraction is simple and also complicated, especially as we grow older, ever more relational events are wired into the brain and processed emotionally (aka leaving gaping wounds and firm walls behind) in the mind.
And just to mention it, two more things that set us up for typing and doping…
Pot of gold fallacy
You know it, we talk about it here a lot. The pot of gold thoughts that set us up for destruction. The manic ideas a mind can have when something new enters the picture or something changes that report “this is it, this is the thing, this is when everything gets better!”
And in doing so, become immediately expectant of events that are 10000% imagined, which can only transpire through the means of relationship with another individual, which is thrusting responsibilities and anticipations on them that they have no concept of.
We can be predisposed to doing this to other humans – instantly attaching to them as our lifeboats – when we’re otherwise not able to change our lives ourselves (or so we think) or have been stuck in a rut.
When life has been empty, we start looking for a savior or a sign of better things already in action, and our minds cling to those hopes with desperation.
So, as always, be on the lookout for all-white thinking.
And… this one.
Phones
Aren’t a type.
But they are a type of addiction.
And when we start combining human attachment with screen doping, we are in big neural and cognitive trouble.
Take the two most addictive substances and roll them together. What could go wrong? How could that possibly spiral out of control?
Could that maybe feed modalities (real and assumed) of attraction and result in exaggerated feelings of bondedness, like the one we have FOR our phone, itself? Yes.
Also consider the phone is the same communication method used to talk to intimate partners.
As if we needed help lighting up our own family, friend, and romantic partner neural structures… speaking to strangers and objects of projection in the same ways, with incredible false intimacy from social media, and 24/7 access to them, isn’t doing us a long term service. It’s conditioning the brain to create illusions and addictions.
And those are the types and dope traps!
The dope gateways:
Historical – partners
Historical – parents
Historical – lies (media influences & personal fantasies)
Self-enhancing
Self-replacing
Unfinished business
“Not your type”
Complex types: Mix and match
Pots of gold – “and now everything changes” thinking
Phones –addiction machines and the same communication method used to talk to intimate partners
Take this information and run. Or continue onto the complex examples / millennial indulgent part. Buckle up, we gotta story, let it build.
Post-emo
For a few years I’ve been adrift between music. Folk/thrash/crust punk gets hard to listen to when the world is, in fact, exactly as they describe, but you are too old to live drunk in a van with your friends to numb the pain.
So butter my butthole when, just a few weeks ago, I managed to get myself to stop laughing at another genre and started to find things I liked about THAT flavor of screaming.
That genre? Midwest Post-emo.
Why did it take so long to get into? And why the laughter?
Well, to be earnest, because I couldn’t have emotions like that for years. And I had defensive judgments about people who could.
And to be a bit of a dick…
Also, because a good portion of the time the lead guitar part (if not multiple guitar parts) in the post-emo genre relies on what I call “Michigan doodling.”
Yeah, I realize, the style of playing is actually called “noodling.” But for a long time these bands all came from Michigan and the sound they make is decidedly “doodle.”
Doodle-y-doo-dee-dop-deeeble-y-boo.
Sometimes modern indie music outfits have a vibe of what I also call “Emo Jazz.” Because there are times that ALL of the instruments are doing whatever the fuck they feel like. And it IS about the notes that they don’t play, with all the seemingly random stops and starts, pauses and breaks.
Anyways. It took a song called “And a Big Load” (named so that music headlines had to say so-and-so releases a new single “And a Big Load”) to break through my defenses. And then I got very, very, into the 10 year catalogue of this band I had been ignoring for roughly that same amount of time.
Hot Mulligan, obviously, is that band.
And, I KNOW THEY’RE NOT NEW OR UNKNOWN. I’m not trying to flex here, talking about emo at my age.
… I am sortof trying to talk about Michigan Noodling and Jazz Emo, to see if anyone else feels similarly…
But, to get into the part of this that’s relevant.
…
So there’s probably a misconception that appearance doesn’t matter in punk and its offshoots.
This is incorrect.
The bands that make it are the ones who are goodlooking. The ones that never make it out of the local scene tend to be highly talented but ironically immobile… they tend to look like they don’t leave the basement too often.
Even in the dirty, drunken, punk scene that’s supposedly anti-societal values… the bands that we all know have some ineffable charisma about them and some variety of handsome.
OR.
To be more specific.
At least one of them does. And they tend to put him near the front.
As anyone who grew up in the alt-rock heyday of the early 2000s knows… the Pete Wentz effect is very real. (I was 15 in 2005 and lived outside of Chicago. So. You can imagine.) But take any band, throw in one modernly cute guy with a sense of melancholic confidence and boom – you got yourself a hook.
And these days, 20 years later, in the times of indie alt floral shirts, in our modern culture of widespread male anorexia… there’s always a dude in the band who looks less like Petey, more like Timothee Chalamet.
The scrawny, precious, delicate featured, somewhat emaciated but it works for him, sadboy of the band today. He’s a staple. He’s the dope suck.
Does he have big cotton candy hair? Broccoli head? Likely.
Does he smile? Oh no. Unnatural. It’s uncomfortable for everyone when he does.
Does he look like he will silently shame you for eating too much? Oh yes. Booze, coke, and coffee only.
Anyways. Looking at Hot Mulligan on Spotify, I chortled. I scoffed.
YEP, there he is!
The bait.
The… Type. For so many.
Not to say the band isn’t fantastic – if you grew up dying your hair black in the early 2000’s and can get over the doodlydoops, it has something for you… But of course there’s this modelesque wet dream for teenage girls in the lineup, he’s got a mic, he skates, and there’s at least a 75% chance than anyone in concert attendance has called him hot before.
Oh… I said, I see what you’re doing, Timmy and the Gang. Setting up a trap for the young girls and otherwise to emotionally masturbate with. So that they like the band at a fanatical level, having a fake relationship with one of the members who fits into their PREVIOUS emotional masturbation sessions.
I get it.
They (the target audience) have dope nets.
The band is delivering material for ensnarement.
Encouraging parasocials and emotional masturbees – the most direct route to unshakable fandom.
I laughed and shook my head, “nice try, too old, seen it all, not gonna get me again,” I said, as I went back to cleaning and Mich Doodlin with my mouth.
…
…
Guys.
Cut to at-most two days later.
And it was only two because I took a break from their music to go back to the Replacements. Then I came back to Hot Mull… And somehow, even with that intermission, within 48 hours…
I have found this band on reddit, found posts made by band boy Timothee (his name is actually Chris), found his side project, downloaded the music, found his private reddit, checked out his cats, and created a whole hopeful story that would make 14 year old me very happy.
…
It was making 30-some me very happy.
It was a dope factory.
Helping me to suspend myself above mundane reality of grading, writing, slogging through existence, with tales of falsified adventures.
“But think about how it COULD be!” I thought. Self-enhancement motives flying through my mind. “Think of who I could be!”
Like a switch flipped, I found myself returning to these ideas, habitually, constantly, in my mind workings. All day. Seriously, an entire, pretend relationship, and how that would make me feel more valid than my current situation, unfolding in my mind.
Unconsciously… images flitting in the third eye while trying to concentrate on things.
And consciously. Looking at the venue they’ll be playing in a few months, with purposeful thoughts of “I wonder if it’s too big to meet him so we can start this thing.”
…
GUYS.
…
They fuckin got me.
They Pete Wentz’ed me.
….
At the age of “way too old.”
…
But I’m not mad about it.
It was enlightening, enlivening, and actually a bit… cute.
For a few days I had this hop in my step. I was excited waking up. Laughing, freely. Notta care in the world. Just excitement. Just a sense of being alive. Just so many nostalgic images wafting behind the eyeballs.
Because this didn’t come out of nowhere. I didn’t instantly create all these fake, forward pointing memories that were engulfing my consciousness. Sending my stomach on loop de loops.
Michigan doodle-y-doops.
My brain did what?
Even as I laughed and skeptically broke down the making of the band?
It recognized my type.
Historical, familial, fantastical, self-enhancing, self-replacing, pot of gold, and phone dangers – engaged.
All dopeminded mechanisms activated.
But let’s start with the easy ones.
Historical and fantastical types
At face value, if I have a type… it is sad band boy. And this brings us to typing example number one. The historical – personal romance - type.
All the information I had previously put in my brain about this sort of human – and let’s be clear, I have a problem this sort of human - came back into frame.
Including, one particular experience with the frontman of another Midwest emo band that ruined me in my early twenties. Destroyed me, through and through. Caused a crisis. Changed the course of my romantic life and the rest of my life, forever. I felt for him like I had felt for no one before. I doped on thoughts of him harder than anyone else.
And those feelings from a time long-past (post-emo) were being slapped on this new target. Creating a confusing crossover and the instant desire to stroke my brain.
…
But the thing is…
I lied, this is actually a more complex typing. A historical romance built on fantastical, media-based, type. A mashup.
Because the guitarist-singer who destroyed me in my 20s? Who laid the groundwork for this new obsession? Was my type, already, at THAT point, over a decade ago. I had only fallen for THAT GUY because he reminded me enough of other people I had dope strings with.
And those people? Were idols and band crushes I had as a kid and teen. The way that I escaped mundane, violent, reality was pretending I was dating Billie Joe Armstrong, for starters. It blossomed as my taste did.
So with this real guy in my 20s? Most of what I felt for HIM was false. Imagined. Not connected to our real interactions.
With ANYONE.
Daydreams from childhood were enough to convince me that this guy was IT. In spite of my own observations.
Like we talked about in the exercise episode, set emotional anchors so you remember how your really feel about someone. Or else this can happen:
I distinctly remember sitting in his kitchen one morning thinking about how my ideas, my feelings, and this reality I was sitting in… seemed misaligned. I thought about him all the time, giving myself the stomach loopies. But in general, he was an uncommunicative pain in the ass from our hundred miles distance. And in person, as he cooked me breakfast, I was not impressed by our connection or morning banter. Something felt missing.
“I don’t think I even like him that much, in reality. In my head this is better.” I thought. And I was struck in that moment that my dream guy, maybe… was just a figment of imagination that had completely overtaken my mind like a cancer.
…. And then…
I’ve gone on to think about that dude for 13 years, anyways.
You think I’m kidding? I am not.
Because… of another type.
Because the story went unfinished.
It was never played out entirely. And because of the idea I had of him. How perfect he was, per the fantasy escapes I started creating as a pre-teen to get through a lonely and disruptive home.
So, no wonder, the mind returned right back to this point in time. This relationship that ruined my esteem. Which was built on escapism, to begin with. And tried to kickstart a new round of hopefully corrective experiences that would vindicate me from the mistakes and heartaches of the past.
A type created as a kid.
Half-played out as a young adult.
Leaving my mind with a chip on its shoulder and a capacity for snapping an obsession into place without any real or valid anecdotal evidence.
I watched myself go, without pause, back to those same thoughts and stomach jumpy feelings, again, all these years later.
Unfinished business
I realized all of this on a hike as I contemplated my obviously delusional thought process that had taken over my brain for Angsty Slender Wonka. Who I had NOT TWO DAYS EARLIER admonished the existence of, as some mind control tactic for younger and more naive girls.
And that’s when I realized…also… that this has happened before.
Really quite recently.
With the last guy that made me feel anything at all; an app match who I had infinite hours of conversation with that felt like a deep connection at the end of 2025.
This is what broke my several year not-emoting streak.
Going from 0 relationship interest to 100, I had fallen into an obsessive thinking, feeling, and communicating pattern with him, way too quickly. I was very sure that I would be disappointed when we actually met, but my mind was having a grand time pretending otherwise.
And I honestly encouraged it.
I laid down to sleep every night and… didn’t. At all. Because I addictively imagined him being there instead. With such vividness that I was convinced I could reach out and touch him.
It felt powerful. Engulfing. As important as breathing.
Because of the dope that I was supplying myself, after… checks watch… YEARS OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BRINGING ME JOY.
And now I see that very big part of that supposed connection of deep feeling was?
…
One, the pot of gold fallacy.
Because everything had been miserable and I had been vacant for so long, my mind wanted me to stumble upon the life changing object that could change it all.
And, of course, wanted the success story of fucking around on the apps for 2 weeks and miraculously finding the person I had been waiting for.
…
And secondly, the historical type came back, but a different template.
He uncannily resembled another ex of mine. Don’t worry, I learned after emo guitarist, it was a drummer that time. A long-haired, tall, skinny, darkly featured southern guy that this new specimen matched in phenotype and interest in the esoteric.
But that was all. And that was still enough for my mind to instantly start making shit up.
This guy was writing rap lyrics and making beats. Not double bassing like the long-maned boy before.
Thirdly, the unfinished type applies again.
The original relationship was with a boy I have fond feelings for, still, because things ended without a big blowup or much explanation on both of our parts at the start of the pandemic.
That’s the timeline the dating app match was tucked into, as a continuation.
The first story wasn’t buttoned up, sewn shut, nice and neatly with a big, definitive ending… I saw a chance for redemption – not with the same person, but close enough - and I wanted it.
And that’s an insane sentence to admit to. And it’s even more wild to say I was somewhat conscious of it as it happened.
And fourthly…. All of this took place on? The phone.
We never met. Everything between us was contained in Signal messages and long phone calls. I was feverishly texting this guy like I haven’t with anyone in 20 years. It was consuming. It became like breathing, very quickly.
Suddenly I was never alone, I always had a friend in my pocket to get my rocks off to.
I went from a life of asceticism, 0 pleasure, to pleasure on demand.
And that may have been the greatest dope draw of the non-relationship.
…
Luckily, that dope string broke early on, too. After a few weeks of communication, he fucked up when we were supposed to meet. The whole time I had been saying “these are only words, we’ll see if actions ever match.” They didn’t. I made myself see cold-hard reality, and it was over.
(I said… he’s, since yesterday, been trying again)
But that phone – that constant communication on a device which can be removed from real life while supporting you through real life – was a big part of the problem. It’s an escape hatch in your pocket. Offering your wildest fantasies whenever you’re unfulfilled.
That’s what was happening to me. And it was convincing enough that my feelings overpowered my logic and I was ready to throw away real life to imbibe in the false fuzzies.
It was frightening, pointed out my addiction issues, and has made me rethink my ability to socialize.
But luckily I only ever doped up once more, when I, similarly, saw Emo Chalamet in that music video, so we could write that DnD episode and live soberly ever after!
…
Or.
Not.
Not my type
I may have noticed it trying to take place again, just… four days ago at the time of writing this originally, early February.
Because I went on a date.
The date went fine.
And the date actually wasn’t with a guy of my usual types of types.
This guy is not a band guy, an ex professional cyclist, is from Mexico, has lived in the US for a couple of years, is pretty good at English but still working on it.
Really, from our inability to run our mouths at each other to nearly every experience of our lives… things have been quite different with him; he’s immediately outside my wheelhouse. He is not a disciple of Matt Skiba.
And somehow…
THAT pinged and set ablaze a set of neurons encoded with information about a particular type.
The mental and emotional framework for “not my type.”
Like I said, the date went fine. He was stuper cute – honestly, above my league – which is also not my type. And we had fun.
But I walked away from the date feeling “meh.” Like, yeah, we can do it again and I would be happy with that. If we didn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised or particularly wounded. And, as I texted to my fake Australian mom, “this ain’t it.”
…
Cut to a few hours later, and what’s my brain doing?
Making up stories about how novel and exciting it might be, though, to embark on an unexplored path like this. Suddenly, images of sweet kisses and gentle caresses, overtaking my thoughts. Tentative affections, unknown territories, the illogical romance of trying to communicate nonverbally. The idea of being so different that each of us is a teacher to the other.
All filling my stomach with flitty things.
And me, suddenly checking my phone – that other dope danger - wondering why he’s taking longer to answer this time.
And me, wondering if everything is about to change now – indulging in gold pot thoughts about a relationship I have.
After truly being annoyed that we were texting at all a little while earlier.
…
My brain tried to spiderman itself onto HIM as the next dope tether to the sky, even though we (brain and I) had the blatant, conscious, unambiguous conversation that “this didn’t need to happen again.”
Keep in mind the context – I had just written, recorded, edited, and released a whole show about emotional masturbation and making up preferred details instead of living in reality. And this was still trying to click into place.
Uh, don’t worry, I caught and amended that before it spiraled.
If I hadn’t just written that episode, would I have?
Probably not. I probably would have entertained it. And right now I would have a starkly diminished cognitive ability, from all the not sleeping, not caring for myself, and not thinking about anything else.
From all the dope.
And rapidly forming attachments.
From all my types and dope nets.
The self-replacing and historical-familiar types.
Which… I have two to speak upon, still, to cover all our points. All our types of types. My goal is to get through all of them with layered personal examples.
So. Here come the hard ones no one wants to think about as I admit too many things and humiliate myself.
Ready?
Like we said, the first guy we spoke of. Emo Timmy, real name, Chris Freeman, a public figure. Was enticing because he reminded me of an ex emo guitarist I loved. (Public figure, not telling yo his name). Who I fell for because he reminded me my childhood fantasies.
And also. It goes deeper than that.
I had those childhood fantasies based on who I thought was “cool” back then from real life – skater and band boys – which were then projected onto popular musicians of the pop punk and emo genres. Who was this template for coolness? My big brother’s friends.
Who really are a reflection of him, aren’t they?
…
And he’s really a reflection of me, isn’t he?
….
And we’re both reflections of our family. Huh?
….
So, although it took on a life of it’s own, this emo-boy-typing is all rather familiar. The most disgusting of the types.
My original template for desired lovers… is strangely similar to my brother. It’s also strangely similar to ME, which makes it more difficult to see, in the fact that I grew up watching band practices in basements and going to local shows with dirty boys…
But all of that only happened because of his influence. Because I thought he was awesome.
If it wasn’t for my brother, who would I be? What would my corresponding type be? What would my dating history be? Would I have had this 13 year thorn in my side filled with complicated real and imagined relationships with guitarists and drummers?
I have no idea. The whole thing is gross.
The fact is I like emo boys because my family contained one.
And a half.
Because… actually… it goes even deeper.
You know who I always wanted to be, myself? A sad, artsy, skater boy in a pop punk band.
Why not a girl? Great question, others have asked in the last 20 years, I still don’t have an answer, except “cultural socialization” and “there are parts of me that feel like they’d be better expressed as a boy.”
So. It’s taken me a long time to realize that I date people who have the identity that I wish I could have. I want to self-replace with them. And because that’s impossible, I want to be in their orbit as much as I can. Like single-white-femaling myself onto them, but the opposite gender. I guess that means relationshipping.
Emo band boy number one who destroyed me 13 years ago?
…. I wanted to emulate him. I still do, as evidenced by accidentally accruing his old haircut in the last year. I couldn’t figure out who my new style was reminding me of… oh, that guy who ruined me when I was 23? Who I fell madly in love over the IDEA of?
Because he reminded me of my musician heroes and crushes.
Because they reminded me of my cool older brother and company.
Because something inside of me wants to be more like them than was ever possible. There’s a weird gender thing going on that I’ve never looked directly at. So that this all plays out on an external stage.
That most people, from the outside, would describe, simply, as “having a type.”
Wrap
So my point is this….
There are a lot of ways that we can trick ourselves into falling for our own ideas and calling it “falling in love with another.”
And if the neural framework is already there – we’ve already created these nets that someone just needs to wander into for the contents of that web to be draped across, appearing to belong to them – we’re extra likely to fall for it.
Especially because it feels so good. And provides so much validation. Which, in turn, produces more self-pleasure.
…
Knowing that it happens doesn’t stop it from happening.
But NOT knowing that it happens almost guarantees that it will.
Because the lies your mind told itself in the past appear to be validated and rectified in the present, which magnetically pulls you into pursuit of a new future.
But when you pinpoint the ways that you’re typing or slipping into dope traps… well… for me it’s either so gross or so silly that it makes it hard to go back to emotionally masturbating with fervor.
So beware:
Historical – people like partners you’ve had before
Historical – people like parents, authority figures, and family members
Historical – relationships that never really happened; the media influences & personal fantasies that helped you survive hard times
Self-enhancing – people who (you believe) will change how the world sees you
Self-replacing – people you wish you could be; getting close to them is a consolation prize
Unfinished business – folks who left unsatisfying stories in their wake, which your mind would like to redo for better effect
“Not your type” – people who elicit thoughts of the “exotic and unknown” rather than what you usually tango with
And watch out for:
Pots of gold – people and situations that the mind latches onto as saviors or life turning points
Phones – addiction machines and the same communication method used to talk to close partners, which creates false intimacy and the option for continual self-stimulation removed from material reality
And lastly
Complex types: Mix and match all of the above to create really complicated stories, when the building blocks are quite simple… and consistently, somehow, rooted in re-writing unsatisfying stories with people who remind you of someone else.
…
And remember, at the root of it all… if you behave the same, you’ll get at least half of the same relationship as always. Because your half of the relationship isn’t evolving.
First, you’ll create a fake one that exists only in your thoughts and emotional masturbation sessions.
Then, maybe, a real one that makes you want to die because it plays out the same way it always has.
With a lot of Michigan Doodles, screamings, over-emotional confessions, unexpected pauses and breaks… that you really thought you outgrew back in like… 2005.
But I guess some of us will always be…
Midwest Post-Emo.
Annnnd that’s it, Fuckers.
Hail yourself.
Notice your brain’s antics. And realize, to quit them, you don’t have to be mad about them. As often as they’re misguided and gross, oftentimes they’re also sortof cute.
….
Like all the sad vans boys with guitars.
Sigh.
And I’ll catch you next time, as we keep…
Dating in Dystopiaaaa.
Bye.