About a year and a half ago, I decided not to date anymore. I didn’t know what I wanted. Consequently, whenever I went out with someone and they got interested, I decided I wasn’t. I believe any wounds I inflicted during this period were minor. After all, how attached could someone get after one or two outings? Still, I felt bad.
I’ve now been separated from my wasband for six years. During that time, I’ve had one long-distance relationship that lasted about a year, mostly during the pandemic. My wasband too had had only one relatively short-lived relationship since our split. That is, until this summer, when he began seeing someone in Australia.
He certainly had permission—we’re separated, after all, with no plans to reignite our coupledom. The heart, however, is an irrational beast, and his new relationship unsettled me. So, like any other mature adult, I said, Fine. If he can do it, so can I, and I began browsing the dating apps.
As I perused profiles, I noticed a preponderance of certain words and phrases, both in people’s self-descriptions and in the descriptions of their desired matches. Easygoing, fun, loves to laugh, positive, upbeat, and, most notably, NO DRAMA. This last appears frequently, sometimes with a bonus adverb for emphasis: ABSOLUTELY NO DRAMA.
Well, who doesn’t like to laugh? But don’t we live in a world where we also have cause for a fair bit of crying? Are these people looking to engage with a fellow human or to watch a sitcom? And what about this NO DRAMA thing? Clearly these are not theatre folk.
Actually, I should amend that. Clearly these are not theatre men. I browsed women’s profiles too, since I’ve been known to slide that way on occasion. I saw a lot fewer NO DRAMAs on that side of the street.
According to etymonline.com, the ancient Greek word δρᾶμα (drâma) derived from the verb δράω (dráō), meaning to do or act. Within Greek culture, drâma referred to a communal event involving storytelling and performance. By the 1500s, the word had migrated into English with the same meaning. By the 1700s it had come to mean a sequence of events or actions leading up to a climax. (From this I can only conclude that any contemporary man who proclaims NO DRAMA in his profile can’t be bothered to carry out the necessary sequence of actions to bring his partner to a climax.)
In the 1970s, the term Drama Queen emerged, meaning, a person who habitually responds to situations in a melodramatic way. (Note the female nature of the archetype: It’s not called Drama King. The Drama Queen is an over-the-top emotional woman or feminine-presenting person.)
Contemporary definitions of drama also include a state, situation, or series of events involving interesting or intense conflict of forces (Merriam Webster).
So when someone writes NO DRAMA in their profile, I can only presume they would like a relationship free of conflict or intense displays of emotion.
In our contemporary American landscape, intense displays of emotion are much more often associated with females than males. So while these NO DRAMA men claim to want relationships with females, it seems they want relationships with females who behave like traditional males. Chicks who can hang, as Amy Schumer once put it. They don’t want relationships with females who display the inconvenient characteristic of reacting emotionally to life’s curveballs.
After analyzing an admittedly unscientific sampling of profiles, I’ve drawn an inner portrait of a certain type of male (Not all men, okay? Not all men), who’s in search of a perpetually smiling, laughing woman who likes to attend ball games, travel, drink a beer, eat a burger, and have the kind of sex which does not require a tiresome sequence of superfluous actions to get to a climax.
Honestly, wouldn’t a blow-up doll work better?
Okay, Tanya, why the snark? It’s not like these dudes have rejected you. You haven’t given them the chance! And besides, you do smile and laugh a lot.
Well, yes, but I also cry a lot.
And I care a lot. About the world. About the nightmare unfolding in this country. About what I’m trying to do while I’m here. I have opinions, and I hope anyone I date does too. If being “easygoing” means remaining blithely unconcerned about anything beyond your chips and beer, then, to paraphrase Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing: I am not for him…and he is not for me.
As a playwright and former actor, it’s hard not to take this NO DRAMA thing personally. I mean, the drama of humans interacting—with each other and with society—is the basis of my life’s work. And I love drama! The drama of engaging with another person, looking them in the eyes, and trying to figure out who they are. I don’t want it to be all laughter and chocolate, although I relish both those things. More than anything else, I want it to be real.
Does that mean I like to fight? Oh, hell no. I hate to fight. I seek peace in all my relationships. And if you fight dirty, meaning you say things that are mean and personal and can never be unsaid or forgotten, I will not remain in relationship with you. I never want to participate in the kind of unnecessary fireworks that leave scorched earth in their wake.
Still, humans sometimes come into conflict. We get worked up and say stupid things. It’s okay. As long as we find our way back to center as soon as we’re able. As long as we make the effort to listen and learn and incorporate what we’ve learned about each other so we can do better next time. Drama is okay, because drama leads to resolution and resolution leads to denouement. And denouement leads to makeup sex, and we all know that’s the best kind. (Kidding. Sort of.)
So what’s behind this NO DRAMA dictum, really? In his 1923 classic, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran wrote:
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.
If it is, in fact, our old friend fear that’s guiding these men’s hands as they type the words NO DRAMA, I get it. I too have spent years trying to avoid crying all my tears, afraid that if I open that tap, the flow will never stop. It’s taken decades of spiritual practice and a significant amount of therapy to understand that when I shut the door on sorrow—both the world’s and my own—it only burrows deeper into me. At this point in my life, I’m trying not to shut anything out. Instead, I seek to embrace whatever’s here with all the compassion I can muster.
In Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company, the character of Bobby spends his time hanging out with various married friends, who cook for him, confide in him, and worry over him. When he’s not with them, he’s moving between three semi-casual love interests, enjoying their company but fearful of getting in too deep.
Finally, on the eve of his 35th birthday, after one of his women friends calls him out on his detachment, he sings:
Somebody hold me too close
Somebody hurt me too deep
Somebody sit in my chair and ruin my sleep
And make me aware of being alive
Being alive
If I were looking for a relationship, that’s what I’d be looking for. The whole human catastrophe—the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows.
But … Am I really ready to go there, all over again? The outside world is so tumultuous right now. Do I need the extra drama? Maybe I should take down my profile and give it some more thought.
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