Last night armed with a large lasagne brick I watched I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye the apology documentary to the Christian bestseller I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Shortly after noon today I had a My Summer Lair phone interview with the documentary subject and author of the vexing book: Joshua Harris.

(I had 3 or 4 pages of questions which got trimmed down before the interview…it was a headtrip to go back in time…I’d totally forgotten all this culture. And by culture…wow! Did you see all those Christian tv shows sets like living rooms?! This church culture is so tacky…nothing ages well. That was late 90s and the shows looked like late 70s; early 80s.)

Interlude but still all connected: There’s a new Dr. Ruth documentary from Hulu (so wanna see it!) and I wonder if she expresses similar regrets or feels like she messed up in some aspects. About what I dunno. S’out May 10.

Anyways in the interview I said to him you’re fortunate/blessed because you put the book out and you got a report card; you got feedback (and granted some of that was/is harsh. Long live social media?!).

One of the major problems currently with “modern dating” is ghosting…people don’t want to have ugly awful messy conversations. So you think the date went well but she doesn’t text or he doesn’t call you back…so you never know what you did “wrong.” (Ghosting as a term doesn’t even make sense…remember ghosts who came back to reveal how they were murdered? Ghosts had purpose!)

No feedback means you don’t know how to improve: there’s nothing loving about ghosting…it’s selfish, cowardly and extremely narcissist (the hallmarks of the social media era). And if you can’t have a simple conversation…I had a good time but next time don’t talk about yourself so much…than why do you think you’ll be good at relationships which are always messy?! It’s like being a red light actor…you can’t “turn it on” when you’re in a relationship; this is a habit and a practise. (If you constantly forgive the small things like the jerk who cuts you off…it makes it much easier to forgive the bigger bad things.)

Of course the flip side of that is that people say they want criticism but when they get it…don’t like it or enjoy the process. But sadly…fun doesn’t make us “grow.” Heartaches and despair and sadness and setbacks…that is how we’ve always grown.

Joshua Harris interview will be up soon…gotta go get some lunch then finish editing the interview I did with David Peisner who wrote a biography on In Living Color. That’s going up today. So cool!!

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Also published on Medium.