PICKING A MATE: THE JAVA PROJECTIVE

Still not Spring busking, I am Winter woolgathering.

There are over seven billion people living on this planet.  Seven billion.  In America alone, there are 250 million adults age 18 and over!  How is it that you met your soul mate, your one true love, just by being in the neighborhood?  What are the odds?  What are the odds that out of millions of potential sex mates on the planet, your one and only was the whole time, practically right here beside you!  Talk about luck!

Ha! Fat chance!

• Fact:  50% of Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace; therefore, 50% of Americans die within 50 miles of their birthplace.

• Fact:  50% of all marriages end in divorce.

• Fact:  After the divorce, you will find your next soul mate at your workplace.

• Fact:  67% of second marriages end in divorce.

And my point to all this is simple.  The concept of finding a true love may be more of convenience than truth.

Picking a mate who is in close proximity is easy.  This is true, but whether this becomes one’s destined true love may or may not be (probably not be) so true.  How people find their real soul mates is really not that remarkable.

Some people marry their high school sweethearts.  Seriously, such a finding does not require unnecessary globe-trotting.  Some people first meet their potential spouses over pints in a local bar.  This was and still is the old-fashioned way.  Guzzle a bit of alcohol, become Buddy or Bunny Love, and courageously grind the night away on the dance floor.  After all, dancing is, indeed, the vertical expression of horizontal desire.  The new wave has people meeting on the internet, through date companies and chat lines.  This saves physically going out there, but it does invite deception.  Not until you actually dance with someone do you know that someone’s height and weight, and whether that special someone has halitosis or not.

Picking a mate can be simple or it can be complicated.  Either way, picking a mate is an adventure.  And I want to add to that adventure search from the perspective of PROJECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY.

PROJECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY suggests several techniques for revealing the underlying personality structure of individuals through unstructured test materials.  In PROJECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY, the administration of such unstructured materials are called PROJECTIVE TESTS, and simply, these are personality tests designed to let a person respond to ambiguous stimuli, presumably revealing hidden emotions, which are characterized by a biological reaction or mental state.

Common projective techniques include: INKBLOTS (Rorschach), DRAW-A-PERSON (Goodenough), and spinoffs, DRAW-A-TREE and DRAW-A-HOUSE.  Some contemporary techniques include: THE LOOKING GLASS, MIND WALK, SCENT-SATIONS, and SYNETHESIA.

All of these projective tests produce results symbolic of our unconscious (and sometimes frustrated) needs for sex, power, or domination.  All of these projectives suggest things you may not talk about, but at the same time reveal your real needs and drives.

For example, most of us do not have significant insights into our real needs (Adrian Furnham, Ph.D., 2014).  Some of us think we are people centered, even though we may not.  Some of us think we have a great sense of humor, even though we may not.  And some of us think we have a certain sex appeal, even though we may not. I say we let the market decide.  Let us toss ourselves out into the marketplace, onto the consumer, as we sip or gulp our coffee.

In so doing, I shall call this public and projective technique, the JAVA PROJECTIVE.

Go to the nearest coffee shop.  Enter that shop, order a cappuccino, espresso, or Americana (my personal favorite), seat yourself, and look around.  Who among these java jawboners do you deem desirable enough with whom to copulate and share happiness with the rest of your days.

Who in this particular coffee shop turns you on? 

Is it the biker dude with the long beard and leather chaps?  Or is it that biker broad with the big boobs exploding from beneath her unbuttoned Canadian tuxedo?  Is it that scruffy canaille with the pungent body odor sitting in corner?  Could it be that corporate executive type in the shiny suit?  Could it be the cute tart in the tight dress?  Might it be that Adonic waitron standing behind the counter?  Or the pert hottie who is squirting leaf and bird designs into your brew? 

Do you prefer endomorphs (fat), ectomorphs (skin), or mesomorphs (sinew)?   Take mental notes as these coffee consumers smoke, burp, and text their way into your heart.

Why the need to search for a soul mate?  Is it in our evolutionary psychology to continue the species?  Is it biological then, simply for the sex?  Or for the simple hedonistic pleasure of sex? 

Does it even matter? 

We humans love our coupled sensual pleasures.  We love our distant flirting glances, our intimate kisses lip to lip, our sweaty chests pressed onto sweaty chests, our pumping thighs and grunting sighs, our grinding groins, our hands-everywhere for any sticky sexual experience possible, up to and including taboo lubed penis to squishy anus.   Mmmmm … okay then … moving right along … whether we be Democrat or Republican or Libertarian ... this is how we behave sexually.

In my learned and vivid imagination in this a-go-go western world, searching in coffee shops for soul mates is as good as it gets.  So why ever become addlepated while seeking soul mate?  Based upon our physical presence, in itself being a projective, my java test must certainly be amongst the best of the projective techniques.   

One need not be a boulevardier to feel comfortable entering a coffee shop, the first step in the administration of the JAVA PROJECTIVE.  After all, amongst human interactions, first impressions of one another are everything, beginning with the face, down the belly to the gam inspection, and … ending with booty.  In a line, people do not lust after a body they deem disgusting; people do lust after bodies they deem desirable. 

And here is the skinny on the JAVA PROJECTIVE:  When you are in that coffee shop getting aroused (meaning getting erect or moist) as you drool over a another java someone, just remember that one of those beanie babes or jamocha joes could be your potential soul mate, or at the very least, your next mattress mate.  

Our physical bodily attributes are our projective tests, just as what we do, say, or write are included toward our projective.   

YES … 

WHAT I WRITE ENHANCES MY PROJECTIVE … 

YIKES!

*Happy 30th birthday to my son, Travers, who is today diving in the Red Sea in Egypt!