What is dating like in Starbase?
When dealing with a tough problem, the best thing one can do is describe it in as much detail as possible. This helps one organize their thoughts about nuanced aspects of the problem, and it also gives others the ability to step in and help in ways that are not easy to predict ahead of time. Garbage in, garbage out: if you poorly specify the nature of a situation, then you will arrive at a shitty course of action, and friends will give advice that is at best not pointed, and at worst counterproductive.
My goal with this essay is to lay out in as much detail as possible what the dating life is like here in Starbase. I’m doing this not so much to complain or vent, but rather to exercise my descriptive powers and lay it all out in writing. It’s a complicated story, and I’ve thought about it a lot, so maybe I can be helpful to myself and others by writing down everything that I’ve learned and experienced.
Dating in Starbase (assuming you work at SpaceX) is hard. There are two main avenues you can pursue:
Find someone to date at work
Find someone to date in town (Brownsville)
The differences in culture, income, perspective, and for me, religion, between people who work at SpaceX and those of the local community make the gap between the two groups a tough (but not insurmountable) one to bridge. Your struggles at SpaceX will be quite different from the struggles that those in town are facing, and the level of mutual understanding is quite low. If you are skilled enough in human interaction, and don’t feel a need for mutual understanding to be able to relate to someone as a peer, then you may be able to cultivate a semblance of a social life with the locals. I have been somewhat successful on this front, but my choice to prioritize my responsibilities at work has not given me the time to really cultivate these relationships.
There is a very strong gravitational pull to hang out with other SpaceXers, as they are colloquially known in these parts. These people share similar educational backgrounds, experiences, and desires, and you will see them more frequently because you work with them. You are likely to share similar values since you were all attracted to this place and the challenges it presented. This makes interaction with these people more fluid, and left unchecked it will quite easily become your whole social life.
Let’s talk through the details of #1 first. People have done it, and appear to be happy. I haven’t seen it go wrong yet, but I’m sure people wouldn’t be eager to talk about it if it did. I know of at least two couples that have met at SpaceX and gotten married. How does this come about? I’m not exactly sure, but my guess is that they started off as friends and became closer over time. Maybe they ended up alone on the way home from an event, feelings were expressed, and voilá, the relationship began. Finding someone at work likely means that they’ll have similar values, education, and socioeconomic status. Generally compatible and easy to negotiate, if that’s what you care about.
The hard part about dating someone at work is finding someone to date. The ratio of guys to girls is something like 70 to 30 if I had to guess, which leaves the guys generally desperate for a partner, and the girls generally never left alone (generally speaking. Guys like to talk to pretty girls, even if the topic is platonic.). Unless you want to risk getting HR called on you (as a guy), you need to keep it professional at work, and in interactions with your coworkers outside of work. Is asking someone out professional? If done respectfully, I think it’s in a grey area. News travels fast here, and you can really make someone feel uncomfortable by asking someone out—coming into work is not a choice, unless they want to quit, and by asking them out you are essentially forcing them into a position where they either say yes, or they sign themselves up to be uncomfortable whenever you are in the room. I think it depends on the situation, and how much you expect to see the other person in your day-to-day interactions. For some people, this path may work, but one must approach it with skill, discernment, and a lot of empathy.
This brings me to my second option: dating in town. This one requires a little bit more effort to expand your circle beyond those who you would normally encounter during your SpaceX working life. This typically takes one of two forms—one is hanging out with more people outside of work, the other is, yes, downloading the dating apps. While I’ve met a few good people in Brownsville, through them I haven’t met any women that I would interested in. I therefore downloaded the apps to explore that side of things before completely discounting them as a solution. My experience of the apps has been one of promise, but none of that promise actually materializing into a date. A lot of matches turn out to be scams of one sort or another, which is a bit disheartening when it happens. I’m also haven’t been convinced that you’re going to find high quality partners on dating apps—someone who has a lot of prospects has no reason to use them.
I think the method that would yield the most success with dating in town is to go somewhere in public, be fully vulnerable, and ask people out until someone says yes. You can’t get catfished IRL. Rejection can hurt if you’re not used to it, but it beats wasting your time, and it will make you more confident in all aspects of life. Besides, the prospect of meeting someone in person is a great reason to get out there and explore the world.
The truth is, it’s quite easy to feel lonely down here, and if you aren’t equipped to deal with that, then Starbase may not be the right place for you. The hours don’t make things easier, except as a short-term distraction. I chose to come down here to do important work, which has been extremely rewarding on a professional level, but part of the sacrifice that comes along with that is a much more difficult dating life. If I don’t get this sorted out, then I may need to make a tough decision to pivot away from the work that I am doing now so that I can live in an area where dating is practical. This decision would be an extremely painful and fundamental one, but nonetheless important.
Working in Starbase is almost as much like bootcamp as it is a job, and there’s a part of me that thinks that I shouldn’t be focused on dating while I’m down here at all. Maybe I should just do my time, focus 100% on work, and then move back home after a year or two with a ton of experience. I’ll be turning 26 then—it doesn’t feel wise to wait when I know that finding a partner is something I care about a lot. For now, I’m going to maintain faith, keep looking, and reevaluate in 3 months.
I think pretty much every single person in Starbase feels this dilemma to some extent. We are in the prime of our lives working on what could shape out to be the most impactful project in human history, but that also means we have less time to spend our prime exploring the relational depths of life. It’s a bit sad sometimes, but that’s how it is. One must balance one’s duty to oneself and one’s duty to one’s species.
My views do not represent those of SpaceX, although I think SpaceX is a fucking dope company and should keep doing exactly what it is doing (hence why I work there).
Gen X, here. I was astonished by your perception of the high stakes in possibly making a woman uncomfortable (into perpetuity) as the result of her being forced to decline the interest of a coworker (in the event that she's not interested). I myself worked in high pressure male dominated environments, and I absolutely benefitted from the male tendancy to treat females with a lot of affection and respect. When any of these relations approached the line of a gentle proposition for more, I was never offended, threatened, traumatized, or even made uncomfortable. I was flattered, every single time, and I said so, and I also said plenty of no. And none of these men were destroyed or humiliated by these refusals. Sometimes they were pushy (only in good humor), and they made me feel like I was worth wanting, and that was the end of it. If anyone knew they had a crush on me, it's because they were telling everyone. They were charming, and I was gracious. I appreciated their interest in me, loved them for their humor& strength in being fine no matter what I said, and then everything continued as before.
I understand that times change. We've all heard how young people today tiptoe amongst one another's minefields, where any tremor of uncertainty is called the "discomfort" which could trigger a bomb. So, it's true, then? Young men are destroyed by disinterest, and women are damaged by the formerly happy fact of their attractiveness?
I don't know whether this little note to you is an elegy for the recent past, or if it's a call to reexamine the story you are telling yourself about your situation. Probably both, with only you knowing where on the balance lies the truth.
And you ultimately know best, of course, because you are really in it, and I am not--that's for sure. I live high in the mountains of France. I didn't find my special someone throughout my years of college, nor through my years in the land of men, nor anywhere in the peripheries. But when I did settle on the right guy, he was much more of the Brownsville set than the SpaceX type. I searched the whole world for him. Until he turned up, I threw myself into my work, had lots of adventures, made tons of money, and showed up as best I could for all my relationships--which were mostly at work, yes.
Look, you are living a dream right now. Love this moment! Take it like it is. Commiserate with your friends, rack up some rejections. When you stumble upon the right one, she will be very attracted to the moral strength you've built.
And now I've got to send this out to you, like a message in a bottle across the ocean between us. I should polish it up, first, but it's now or never. My husband's out in the woods chopping up the trees he brought down last winter, and we have to plant the potatoes. They're late, but we've staged the whole garden for maturing in August since we'll be hiking the Alps in July. (Kids are getting stashed with Grandma. Their choice; she lives by the sea.) What I'm saying is, this is the life I've always wanted, but when I was 26 I had neither the money nor the husband to live it. Now at 52, I've long since arrived at where I want to be. Sometimes I miss the old comeraderie, the adventure, the flexing of my competencies; but I squeezed all the juice from that time, and it has passed.
Enjoy it, enjoy it! What you miss now, you will someday have. And someday, you'll miss the intensity of the grand project you build, now. Appreciate fully the work you are living, and you'll regret nothing when you eventually leave.
That's the best I've got, from here on the other side of your youth, your capacity, your good luck, and your loneliness. I hope there's something in it that's worth hearing and that you can hear. Ok, splash, out we go!
What a disclaimer at the end!!! I thought it was going to be some sort of BS disclaimer but nope I was wrong, laughed out loud after I read it hahaha
And as a philosopher once said: "SERVARE QUOTA"