Around the World in 80 Dates
This book, Around the World in 80 Dates, was a big inspiration for my Romance x Rail project. It was published in 2005, the year I read it. I have absolutely zero recollection of how I came to find it—I must have seen it displayed on a featured book table at Barnes & Noble or Borders. Remember 2005? YouTube wouldn’t exist until the end of the year but would not be popular for years. Smartphones didn’t exist. Google search was somewhat primitive. Heck, even websites in general kinda sucked. We were finding things physically out in the world or by word of mouth. Now that I’m thinking about it—small bookstores still existed then too! I hope I found it at one of those. All the most beloved bookstores of my childhood in my hometown of San Luis Obispo, CA have closed.
Somehow this book popped out at me and I devoured it. I have a specific memory of reading it at a car mechanic shop while waiting for my car to be repaired, although I can’t remember what was wrong with my car. I was getting ready to drive my white 1998 Honda Accord, bought used with dark tinted windows, blue light-up Honda emblems, and a fancy exhaust, from San Luis Obispo to Asheville, NC, the place that would be my new home for a little over 2 years.
The book was such a delightful read that I then got my mom and 2 girlfriends to read it with me.
“Sorry, Dorothy--sometimes your heart's desire isn't in your own backyard.
Head of PR and spokesperson for Lonely Planet travel guides, Jennifer Cox has explored the most remote regions, toured the most exotic terrains, and bonded with people the world over. So how come finding her soul mate in her own hometown of London is a virtual dead end? Certain that the man of her dreams is out there somewhere, Jennifer sets out on the trip of a lifetime, dating her way around the globe--across 18 countries, in 6 months--to find The One.
Around the World in 80 Dates is her fresh, funny, emotionally honest, and revealing memoir of her global dating adventures. From the Skate Date in Paris to the High Roller in Vegas, from the Love Professor in Sweden and the Dead Date in Italy to Australia's Penguin Ranger, here is the inside scoop on a bevy of potential partners--a sharply witty and warm-hearted true story that will have you breathlessly crisscrossing the international dateline along with Jennifer, to discover where in the world is her Mr. Right.
Take off with Jennifer Cox as she goes Around the World in 80 Dates”
What I remember loving about this book at that time was:
The fact that if you go on enough dates, eventually you’ll find a soul mate (someone with whom you have a deep connection with the potential for a romantic relationship). She goes on 80 dates and finds two (two!) men who she considers “soul mates”. Two out of 80 is great odds.
Traveling around the world! This seemed so exotic! I grew up in a small town and at age 20 I’d only been out of the country once.
Dating so boldly and sharing such honest stories.
Getting to learn about different cultures in different countries.
The possibility of finding love in the least expected place.
Me in a coworking space in Basel, Switzerland in April, starting to write this blog.
Fast forward to 2024
I recently picked up another copy, curious to re-read it and see if my initial impressions still held.
Here’s what struck me this time around.
Oh wow, she’s 38 in this book! I’m 39 now. She’s 5’11”, I’m 5’10”. A fellow tall girlie!
This makes me feel a special kinship with her, although she’s British while I’m American.
Blaming/Othering in 2005 vs Personal Responsibility in 2024
She starts by creating a “Relationship Résumé,” listing all her past significant relationships and why she left. The two last entries out of many (including a marriage) read:
DATE: 1997-98
TITLE: Company Trustee
COMPANY: Grant
MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES: Listening to Grant complain about his ex-wife and how glad he was they had split up.
REASON FOR LEAVING: They hadn’t split up.
DATE: 1999-2004
TITLE: Coco the Clown
COMPANY: Kelly
MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES: Feeling everything was my fault and that I was too demanding/needy/neurotic/successful; believing things would get better if I could only understand what the problem was.
REASON FOR LEAVING: I was unwilling to job-share.
This way of thinking about relationships seems outdated to me and I’m not entirely sure if that’s because I’ve learned new things since then or if there’s been a big cultural shift. It seems like in 2024, most of us understand attachment theory—am I right or wrong about that? We recently covered it on my podcast in this episode. Attachment theory was developed by a researcher named John Bowlby in the 1950s. He looked at how toddlers reacted when their parent left the room and categorized the types of reactions as secure, insecure anxious, insecure avoidant, and insecure disorganized. In adulthood, we play out these early patterns when we attach to a romantic partner. For the approximate half of us in the insecure camp, this is rather unfortunate.
I suspect now, a resume might say, “I was seeking the love and approval I never received from my emotionally unavailable parent by choosing this emotionally unavailable partner,” or “I ignored the red flags in the beginning because a symptom of my childhood wounds is to ideate in my head about what could be instead of what actually is.”
When she says, “believing things would get better if I could only understand what the problem was,” it’s relatable in a sense. I had a relationship like this and when I finally had all the information as to what I was looking at (severe mental illness), I quickly exited the relationship. However, I don’t get the sense that she made inroads in understanding just what the problem was. Or maybe she did and didn’t share that with us—the book tends to stay on the surface of things much of the time. In 2024, there’s a lot of information available to us—often way, way too much information available to us—and this can be good, as in “I understand now that I was anxious and he was avoidant,” or it can lead us to even more rumination and the need to diagnose everyone and overanalyze (speaking from personal experience, naturally).
Back in 2005 I remember doing a lot of blaming in my relationships. Reading back on her writing, I’m able to offer myself more compassion for that limited way of thinking and existing—it seemed to be the water we were culturally swimming in. If I think of other cultural touchstones, like the 90s sitcom Seinfield, for example, every episode touched on a new annoyance that someone was perpetrating on the main characters—too clingy (George’s fiance), too aloof (Elaine’s bf), too similar (Janine Garafalo as Seinfeld’s gf), too big hands (another gf), and on and on. There was pretty much zero self-reflection and none of the characters ever grew as people. We watched this show religiously every Thursday night at 9 pm. I’m not saying it’s the fault of a 20 minute weekly sitcom, but by the time I started dating, I was in the reflexive habit of blaming and othering.
I had a big awakening about this in 2014 at age 29 about my propensity to blame my partner for relationship disfunctions. I was gifted the book The Karma of Love in a sort of magical random chance encounter in New York City (these encounters are typical to the city and part of its magnetic enchantment). I was sitting next to a charismatic woman my age at a coffee shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan after church one Sunday afternoon. I was reading and journaling and as I looked over, so was she. She was reading a book called Buddha’s Brain. I struck up a conversation with her about it and she invited me over to her place for a small dinner party that night. I met her partner and housemate and few other friends. It was a wonderful evening full of deep talks, including a discussion on why humans have romantic relationships at all—what do we get out of them? At the end, her partner gifted me the book.
This book sat gathering dust under my bed for several months. Following a fateful trip to Las Vegas in which I made every man I came into contact with cry (a story for another time), I returned home to NYC and dug this book out. I opened the first page and was hooked. I read the whole thing in about a week. After reading it I could NOT. Stop. Crying. It was all about how we show up gets us the relationships we experience. No more blaming. No more othering. I was creating every failed relationship with my thoughts and behaviors.
I went late at night to my coworking office and typed up 6 emails to ex-boyfriends and men I’d dated and cared about. I apologized for always blaming them for what went wrong and included what I admired about them, thanking them for sharing their gifts with me. I felt that a huge weight was lifted. It turns out that resentment and blame are heavy! I’m not sure if “the universe” (sorry to go all woo here) wanted me to believe in karma or what, but the next day, while walking around and interacting with people in New York City, I was complimented by men and women exactly 6 times. One man pulled over the truck he was driving and asked me to marry him. It’s freaky! I wish I was making it up. But…this really happened! I don’t know how to explain it other than sometimes life is magical and mysterious and wants lessons to hit home. (No, men do not normally randomly ask me to marry them). I can only think that I really must have appeared free of blame that day and full of love.
All but one replied to my emails immediately. The consensus was, “We never felt you were blaming us,” which was interesting. I definitely was! In true avoidant attachment nature, I was keeping it all in my head. I’m working on being about to bring up conflicts instead of keeping silent and ruminating until relationships end.
One ex-partner responded with, “Have you written this letter to yourself yet?” Oh my goddddddddddd [sob]. This led to much more crying, naturally, although it would be a few more years before I could heal this part of me—the part that’s so hard on myself.
Reading Around the World in 80 Dates, I see how easy it is to go, “Well he wasn’t this enough,” and “he did this too much!” Taking personal responsibility is harder but ultimately more empowering. We can’t change others but we can change ourselves.
Things we can control:
asking for what we need
selecting people who can meet our needs the best and letting those who can’t go
setting firmer boundaries
healing through reading, workshops, therapy and coaching so that we better know our needs and boundaries
improving our communication
improving our self-regulation skills so we’re not throwing tantrums with partners and needing them to soothe us
seeking to understand the ways we coped with early childhood stress that may be leading us to choose partners who can’t meet our needs in adulthood
Although, I do see how Ms Cox is taking control of her life by setting up the intentional project to find her soul mate. Maybe by the time we’re in our late 30s, we understand some of these things.
The man she ends up deciding is her soulmate does not end up being one of the planned dates.
She explains in the beginning that because she’s a travel writer, she had a network of friends all over the globe. When she began planning, she sent emails to all her friends telling them about her project and asking them to set her up on dates with people they know. 79 of the dates are like this. But her date with Garry, date #55, was random—not planned at all.
This hits because I was thinking about asking my friends to set me up on dates with their friends just like she did (I’ll still take referrals if you got em!). However, friends can be really bad at this. They may choose friends they really wish would have a partner, or someone they themselves would date. I remember once at a 9th grade sleepover, a friend of mine, the birthday girl herself, said she had a crush on two of boys at the party. She asked which one she should go for and I picked the one she did not, in fact, go for, telling her the other guy was not cool or cute or whatever. She and that guy I didn’t like have been together ever since, 24 years since the writing of this blog. They dated the entirety of high school, college, law school, then got married. So. Maybe don’t ask your friends who you should love.
Dating apps, which didn’t exist when Ms Cox wrote her book, are pretty amazing for giving us access to every possible single person in our area. That’s the downside too—the paradox of choice—but wow, how dating has changed in 20 years!
We should put ourselves in the right environment for maximum change of meeting our person.
I saw a post on social media the other day that said something to the effect of, “Everyone wants a meet cute but it’s most likely not going to happen like that.” The meaning was that we all want that scene in a movie where we bump into someone by chance in a fun and interesting way and then fall madly in love. But the reality is many of us have to work deliberately at dating—asking our friends to set us up, using dating apps, and engineering the right environments.
She met her person, Garry, at Burning Man. This makes complete sense for her! She’s the type of person who would love Burning Man, the festival in the Nevadan desert that happens every August in which people ride around in neon underwear and giant cowboy hats on bicycles and look at larger-than-life art that groups of artists spent the year constructing before hauling them to the desert. Psychotropic drugs are heavily involved. If you’re an extroverted travel writer who loves spontaneous journeys and pushing social boundaries, chances are, you might have the chance to meet more of your people at a whole event with people just like you.
And so, it' may be important to think—where am I most likely to meet more of my people?
As I write this I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Istanbul, Turkey where 99% of the humans chain smoke cigarettes. While I have now dated 2 very interesting and attractive Turkish men, there is no possible way that I can date a smoker. It’s fairly safe to say, this is not the best environment for me to maximize my chances of meeting my person.
On the meet-cute note, I’ve had some pretty good ones myself, as I detailed in this earlier blog. I met my first-ever boyfriend at a friend’s party. I met another significant boyfriend at a bonfire party I was hosting. I met another significant boyfriend at a coffee shop. The best meet-cute, though, was meeting my ex-boyfriend Kevin (the first one, there are two) at CRSSD music festival, an amazing house music festival right on the waterfront in San Diego, October of 2016.
I was at the festival with a girlfriend. We were at a set by the artist Bonobo. My friend was on my right and on my left was a tall guy who seemed cute. I traded places with her so I could get a better look at him. “Yes, he’s cute.” I struck up a conversation with him and we just kept saying, “me too!” over and over again. Pretty soon we were inseparable, which ended up being okay with my friend because she had a family emergency to attend to on day 2 of the festival.
After the Bonobo set and a couple of other sets, after hours of talking and being enamored with all the things we had in common, Kevin and I wandered over to the fountain area, tiers of concrete with giant arcs of water cascading into shallow pools that people can stand in to cool off, of Waterfront Park, a setting that makes this festival particularly magical. We sat down on one of the concrete tiers of the fountain as the sun started to set and went in for a kiss. As we continued talking, a stranger came and tapped us on the shoulder. “Hi, umm, sorry if this is creepy, but I was trying to get a photo of the sunset, and I accidentally got a photo of you two kissing, and it’s actually pretty romantic so I thought you’d want the photo.” She texted it to me and it was very romantic. He and I went on to be in a relationship for several years. Sometimes you get the meet-cute!
She hops into her relationship mighty fast!
She meets Garry at a Burning Man camp dedicated to helping people find love (so fitting!). The spark is there immediately and they become inseparable within 24 hours. I’m so curious to know if she’s still with Garry 20+ years later. Did it last? Or were the festival vibes playing tricks? Festivals, where we don’t have to check emails and feel a sense of freedom, can make us fall for people fast. There’s a term “festival boyfriend/girlfriend” for someone we may spend a hot and heavy week or weekend with, but then not again once the festival is over. I’ve had a few myself (although Kevin turned into an actual boyfriend after he was a festival boyfriend).
The concept of “limerence” has been buzzy lately. I first heard it through a friend who is in the polyamory community. Limerence is the feeling we get when we first fall in love with someone—where we’re high and giddy and flooded with feel-good brain chemicals that often override rational decision-making. Those who have chosen to try polyamory know that limerence ends when we’re in a committed relationship with just one person. They want to be able to experience limerance so they date outside their committed partnership (in mutually consensual and ethical agreements).
But also, limerence can be dangerous. It can be a part of what makes “love” addictive, harming people who lose themselves and all sense of control in the process of falling for another. The limerance high wears off after about 2 years of being with someone. I have often asked myself, “Will this person be a good partner when I’m not high anymore?” People can confuse limerence for partnership, not realizing that relationships take a lot of work and do not just automatically feel good forever.
Did Ms Cox fall hard into limerence? Or did she choose a great long-term partner who continued to do the work of committed love with her? I have questions!
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Those are all the thoughts I have for now! If I come up with more, I’ll write a part II.
