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My Single Peeps: Jaclyn L.

Jaclyn spent her childhood moving from place to place: “We were a gypsy family.” So she has a lot to compare it to when she says, “I love L.A. I love living here. It’s got everything. And I like the people. I dispute most of the clichéd descriptions of the people in L.A. I found very intellectual, deep-thinking and smart people out here.”
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November 9, 2011

Jaclyn spent her childhood moving from place to place: “We were a gypsy family.”  So she has a lot to compare it to when she says, “I love L.A. I love living here. It’s got everything. And I like the people. I dispute most of the clichéd descriptions of the people in L.A. I found very intellectual, deep-thinking and smart people out here.”

She moved here in 1999 to act but soon discovered she liked writing and producing more. She had thoughts of becoming a therapist, but ignored them because she loved what she was doing. And then in one breath she tells me, “My father passed away in 2007, and shortly after that I was driving with my dog on the 110 and my axle broke and then I fishtailed and flipped over and it was all very scary and it was one of those existential moments where I’m going to re-evaluate everything.” She went back to school, got her master’s degree in clinical psychology and is now working on her Ph.D.

“I do this really cool thing, where I work with kids and therapy horses. It’s called equine-assisted psychotherapy, and it’s amazing and fun and become a really big part of my world. We work with a lot of special-needs kids — kids with autism, ADHD, developmental physical issues, and also with your very typical functioning kids, and just build their self-esteem.”

She tells me she’s dated great guys in the past, but, “Grad school is hard … I’m in an all-female cohort because that’s who’s getting a psychology degree right now.  It’s not the marriage capital that it once was.”

I ask her what she likes to do for fun, and she says, “It’s easier for me to say things I don’t like because I like most things.” She doesn’t like roller coaster rides, which was recently solidified after taking her nephew to an amusement park and accompanying him on a kid-friendly ride.  She also has a deep-seated fear of worms from childhood. “My brother took my Barbie dolls, removed the jewelry and said the worms ate it. From then on, I had this fear of worms with teeth eating things.”

She likes big men — “solid guys.”

“There was this study that I didn’t take seriously when I first read it, but it said relationships are happier when the man is bigger than a woman, and I think that’s probably true for me.”

I ask if she wants a family. “I want kids. I don’t necessarily need marriage — marriage would be nice, but I’d be happy co-parenting. I want someone to hang out with, and who wants to hang out with me. I want someone who loves their life, too, so that when I’m in the middle of finals, the person doesn’t feel like they need me to take care of them. They’re responsible for their good times, but [they] also want to hang out with me. Someone who’s OK with being spontaneous and also OK with lying around doing nothing. I guess I just want someone I want to be with, someone I want to spend time with, someone who’s excited about whatever we’re going to do… and who will walk my dog every once in awhile when I’m late to clinic. My dog had back surgery recently, and I spent so many therapy sessions going, “I have nobody to take care of my dog.” She feigns crying. I say, “So you need a dog walker.”  She smiles and says, “A husband. That’s what you’re going to get me for 5772.”

If you’re interested in anyone you see on My Single Peeps, send an e-mail and a picture, including the person’s name in the subject line, to mysinglepeeps@jewishjournal.com, and we’ll forward it to your favorite peep.


Seth Menachem is an actor and writer living in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. You can see more of his work on his Web site, sethmenachem.com, and meet even more single peeps at mysinglepeeps.com.

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