Not Interested In Dating Me? Do This.

Jillian Bandes | January 18, 2010 10:10 PM

I'm trying to be respectful. I really am. But when I came across this article in the New York Times, I just couldn't believe it was true. Certainly, there are clashes between religions — I get that. There are clashes in lifestyles, certainly, or where to live or how to spend money or whether or not your mother-in-law moves in or you move out.

But green living?

....to the point that professional therapy is required?

He bikes 12 1/2 miles to and from his job at a software company outside Santa Barbara, Calif. He recycles as much as possible and takes reusable bags to the grocery store.

Still, his girlfriend, Shelly Cobb, feels he has not gone far enough.

Ms. Cobb chides him for running the water too long while he shaves or showers. And she finds it “depressing,” she tells him, that he continues to buy a steady stream of items online when her aim is for them to lead a less materialistic life.

Mr. Fleming, who says he became committed to Ms. Cobb “before her high-priestess phase,” describes their conflicts as good-natured — mostly.

But he refuses to go out to eat sushi with her anymore, he said, because he cannot stand to hear her quiz the waiters.

“None of it is sustainable or local,” he said, “and I am not eating cod or rockfish.”

Here's what I'm looking for in a mate: someone to share a nice, romantic dinner with after lecturing the waiter on the lack of cod.

While no study has documented how frequent these clashes have become, therapists agree that the green issue can quickly become poisonous because it is so morally charged. Friends or family members who are not devoted to the environmental cause can become irritated by life choices they view as ostentatiously self-denying or politically correct.

"Therapists agree" ? How about "therapists in California" who are suffering from an extreme decline in business revenue, and have stooped to the lowest common denominator by obliging couples with neither a sense of reason nor a sense of humor into talking through issues that even the most sensitive observers see as painfully vapid.

Society, meet decline.