This is Steve Dean.
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Steve Dean: Horizontal listeners, please don’t let me be remembered as the person who killed romance. I’m the person who spent a lot of time trying to understand what romance is so that we can empower it to be its best self.
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Steve Dean: We can’t behave serendipitously, in this context in which we’ve made a commitment to one another. And for me, to not be able to live serendipitously, completely attacked my identity, of living completely nomadically, serendipitously, using social capital, never knowing what’s coming next. That was my lifeblood; that’s what energized me. That’s what motivated me. It also was what, you know, burned me the fuck out.
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Steve Dean: I forwent self-care in favor of living an experimental existence that allowed me to max out personal agency as it pertained to where my attention got to flow. I never had to ask someone else before I could do something.
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Steve Dean: Solo poly maxes out my personal agency, and I love it.
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Steve Dean: I used to date people almost every single week, sometimes multiple days a week; different people, new people, recurring people, all across the board, dating was part and parcel of the flow of my life. If I’m getting a meal, why not make it a date? If I’m— like I just didn’t know what personal time was; I didn’t have that for 8 years, so dating was just my way of recharging, which was meeting new people, gathering new perspectives, sending them to go meet other people I care about, because I want them to know each other… that was normal for me. But lately, in this new relationship paradigm, where I have a primary partner, I’ve dated so many fewer— it takes me like two months to set up a single date now. It used to take me two minutes. Because now I have to check in, you know, “Hey. Hey partner that I’ve been with for 2 and ½ years now, like, what’s your next week looking like? I might wanna do a date on Thursday. Do you have any pre-existing plans that I should be aware of?” And then I have to check in with anyone I might want to go on a date with on Thursday and be like, “Hey… so I don’t know when the next date I’ll be free is, but Thursday is available! And I also don’t know after Thursday what will happen.” So it’s like this horrible thing— this is why people don’t like nonmonogamy, ‘cause when you have someone who’s— the closer you get to like a super-committed monogamous partnership, or even, super-committed nonmonogamous partnership, the more equity you give your partner, the harder it is to commit to someone else, because, that commitment requires compromise.
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Steve Dean: So now I’m no longer the Steve who’s like, totally nomadic, totally like, free agent. I’m just a different person. And that’s what relationships do to you; that’s what can happen when you’re in committed relationships, is that they change the nature of who you are, and, it’s not necessarily for the worse. Like my partner, is an empath. I, am not the greatest empath. I try, but I am so, like, technocratic in my thinking, in the way I approach my own emotions, and my own relationships, that like, her influence on me has made me such a— warmer person, and literally when I start to go back to my like, previous self, my current friends take note. They’re like, “Steve. You sound more like Old Steve. Could we get the New Steve back? We like the more empathetic version of you.” And I’m like, Well shit! Now I’m in this relationship that’s in theory making me a better person but a worse Me. I keep having these moments of like, yearning to just like, go back on the sex app, meet someone randomly — even in the middle of the day — just like, get to know, who I used to be. Remember the version of me that could just meet anyone and if I met someone I really cared about, I could just peace out to a different country with them and live that life, because I was beholden to no one else. And yes, there is a ludicrous amount of privilege in being beholden to no one else. A lot of people never get that experience throughout most of their life.
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Steve Dean: That taught me that I needed to be far more — not just stoic, but almost like, cruel sometimes, to get other people to realize: You can’t just show up in people’s lives and dump all your shit on them. That is unacceptable, unethical, unfair. It’s not a thing that I consent to. So back the fuck down, get out of my life. You don’t get that. Maybe there would be a time that we could build up to that, but you don’t get to just jump in, ask for 70 percent equity in this relationship — No! Get outta here!
O Patrons my Patrons, welcome back to part two of my conversation with Steve Dean, dating industry consultant, MMMMegaconnector, host, adventurer, and curator of The Love Immersive, where I met my current partner, Patrick.
Steve Dean in one of the many NYC apartments that he has nomad access to.
In the first part of our conversation, we talked about VR World (where Steve met Patrick), my tendency to codependency, Steve’s dating habits, whether connection or commitment requires compatibility, optimizing the skill of connection, dating across 200 different dating apps, the Sex on Demand app, whether comets are partners— or if they might be growth charts, polyamory as part orientation and part skill-set, how relationships are like start-ups, and the cycle that Patrick and I found ourselves in at the outset of our relationship.
In this latter half of our conversation, Steve and I discuss:
- relinquishing percentage points of control over your priorities
- commitment as the death of his serendipity
- the surprise party that almost caused a breakup
- solo poly and personal agency
- Independent Steve & Relationship Steve
- how being partnered with an Empath has made him a more empathetic version of himself
- what cohabitation does to relationship dynamics
- the #1 complaint Steve hears from women who date in New York City
- emotional ambushes
- that guy in college who told me that I couldn’t just show up in his apartment and expect to be his girlfriend (yikes!)
- the desire to date people who have their own functional start-up, aka, have their life together
- why Steve hates romance
- romance-bombing, and…
romance-bombing aka love-bombing (verb) = the practice (most commonly engaged in by narcissists and pick-up artists) of inundating a nascent romantic/sexual relationship with effusive affection, extravagant praise, and lavish gestures. It is a form of manipulation that can make someone believe they have found The One, and that they can only be romantically fulfilled if they are in relationship this person— thus, it can be a form of gaslighting.
- I ask Steve, both as a dating coach, and as a friend who knows me and my partner, for advice about my own relationship.
Daniel Saynt of NSFW telling the story of his former thrupple at the last horizontal storytelling pajama party. February 2018. Image by Valerie Zimmer Photography
I am throwing another horizontal storytelling pajama party on Sunday night, June 30th. (About time! The last one was over a year ago!)
This one is the summer pride edition, and I realllly hope that many of you can attend. If I owe you a free ticket to an event this year, you can cash it in!
All tickets will be sliding scale for those in the LGBTQPIAD community — just message me and I’ll set up a discount code for you. There are also a few volunteer slots available — reach out to me!
I already have stories lined up from a demisexual woman who thought she was asexual, a bisexual woman who knew herself to be a lesbian, a young gay man, and a trans man of color who has experienced gender-affirming surgery. I’m still seeking stories from trans women of color, nonbinary folx, Intersex folx, lesbian women of color, bisexual men of color, and others, so: if you know any of those vivacious queer storytellers, Plleease send them my way!
We have pajama party funnn. The luminous queer storyteller performer Diana Oh painting another luminous performer, Missa Thompson at the last horizontal storytelling pajama party. February 2017. Image by Valerie Zimmer Photography
Some of the other titles I considered for this episode were:
solo poly
solo poly & personal agency
the relationship explorer
the highest horse ever
how much do you value romance?
overcommunication is the best destruction of romance
I hate romance so much (Hehe, I love this one. Maybe I’ll change the title of the first Steve episode to this!)
the dating coach who hates romance
the dating coach for those who hate romance
romance-bombing…
And now, come lie down with us again, in Chelsea, on the island of Manhattan, New York.
I’m not quite sure I got the angle right. horizontal with Steve Dean in New York, New York. March 2019
To listen to this episode, click the saucy redhead on the peach background, and become a patron of the horizontal arts…
