“I’d like to invite you over for dinner tomorrow night. Does that work for you?”
Sure. I’d love to! What time?
Oh, unless I decide I’d rather go hang out with my friends at a sports bar. If I do then I’ll give you a call tomorrow afternoon.”
Question: Proper response would be…? “Come to think of it, tomorrow I have a date to wash my cat? Watch a rerun of Law and Order? Go out with someone else?”
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This guy seems terrific – interesting, smart, successful, fun, athletic… We’ve emailed, we’ve talked on the phone, and we’ve made tentative plans to get together. Problem is, he lives about an hour away and he doesn’t seem to want to drive out to see me or even meet halfway (though realistically there isn’t much to do in the no-man’s land between us). I have this old-fashioned feeling that on a first date it’s a nice gesture if the guy is willing to go the distance. Question: am I completely off base with this?
Categories: 100 Dates |
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This time I made sure we really did talk on the phone. He was graceful and interesting and articulate – no uncomfortable silences. He told me how beautiful his wife had been and how beautiful his last girlfriend had been and how handsome he was and how he was a very visual person. That’s usually a bit of red flag in my case, since I’m more of a jeans-and-flannel kind of woman than high-heels-and-fishnet-stocking, but my profile photo was recent and it was taken outdoors without makeup, so I assumed he knew what I looked like. He called himself “Dr.” in his profile and referred to himself that way half a dozen times during our first phone call. When I asked him about it (I was curious if he was an MD or PhD) he said he had studied some sort of homeopathic medicine, though he wouldn’t elaborate on his training other than to say he had “taken courses”.
We met at a coffee shop. He was already sitting down with his drink when I got there so I got myself something and joined him. We talked for quite a while. Okay, he talked for quite a while, but what he said was interesting and I enjoyed myself until we both had to leave. I was still bothered by the frequent references to himself as a doctor – mentioning all the people he had saved when other doctors (the MD kind) had given up on them and so on. When he gave me his business card his name also had the prominent “Dr.” tacked on the front of it.
We parted amicably, he promised to call, and I never heard from him again. I suspect I wasn’t Marilyn Monroe enough for him.
So this Question may be a moot point, but I’m still curious. If you catch someone in a lie, should you end things right there? If they lie about their age, their job, their income – does this mean they are not trustworthy and have probably lied about a lot of other things or do you forgive the first transgression? Does it make a difference if they tell you first (”I’m not really 37 – I’m 45″) or if you have to ask them about it (or worse yet, catch them in the lie (”if you really have a four-year-old granchild then you got someone pregnant at 13, yes?”). If you do decide that his lie is a deal-breaker, do you tell him so or do you just end the call/date/email and move on?
Categories: 100 Dates |
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He wasn’t smiling in any of his photos and all of his pictures had that grainy look of film that had been digitized, which meant they were probably at least five years old. His first email was enthusiastic and peppy, talking about the bike rides he’d been on and his interest in archeology. I had a funny feeling, but answered anyway. His profile was great and he was certainly articulate in his written messages. But within a few days he was sending me four or five a day filled with obscure facts – a bit overwhelming. He was oddly unwilling to talk by phone but asked me out to dinner. I usually prefer coffee- it’s easier to get away if things are not going well – but he kept insisting on a little restaurant that only he seemed to know about and finally I agreed.
He was indeed older than his photos, though I recognized the unsmiling face as soon as I walked in the door. He jumped up to pull out my chair and then sat down again before he actually carried out the gesture and I realized he was not used to dating. He must have been at least 15 years older than me, which meant he had lied by at least a decade on his profile. He smelled musty.
The menu saved us for the first few minutes, but after that we had to interact. I don’t think he looked me in the eyes once the whole evening – the closest he got was covert glances at my chin or a spot over my left shoulder. I went into rescue mode – asking questions, filling the silences before they became uncomfortable, encouraging him to tell me about himself, since the alternative was to watch him play with his fork. I must have done a pretty good job because soon he was mumbling a mile a minute about bits and pieces of his life. I didn’t follow too much of it since he seemed to assume that I knew everyone he did – a woman called Diane who may have been a female relative and a visit to some people who lived somewhere warmer but within driving distance.
Eventually I couldn’t deal with the obvious discrepancy, and asked him if he had written his own profile. This time I allowed the uncomfortable silence to stretch out while he stared at his plate. He was too old to have a Mom savvy enough to write profiles and I doubted there were too many ex’s or female friends in his broom closet. “Your sister?” I guessed. He nodded. “Did she write that first email as well?” She did. “How old are you really?” This time he didn’t answer except to say his sister – Diane, it turned out – insisted that everyone did that and that he was young for his age.
By now I was ready for the evening to be over. When the waitress came by to ask if we wanted coffee, I said I had to get home. He ordered himself a cup. And when we finally got to the car he suggested we go for a walk in the dark. I said no and he started to walk down the road anyway, clearly assuming that I would give in and tag along. I was sick of getting steamrolled so I said good-bye from a distance and got into my car. He didn’t seem to mind at all, which was a relief since I had no interest in a second date either.
The next morning I found five emails from him in my in-box. They were all continuations of the stream-of consciousness stories he had been telling. I took a deep breath and wrote out a very careful message – I realized that he was catastrophically shy and didn’t want to hurt him if I could avoid it. Something about “I didn’t feel a spark but hope you find someone soon.”
By evening he had sent me another six emails. Not only did he ignore my message, but he started asking me to go for a walk with him someplace that was at least an hour’s drive away. I wrote back a brief, “no thanks.”
Question(s): What’s the best way to politely but firmly say that you’re not interested in seeing someone again? There must be some magic phrase out there that doesn’t leave you soaked in a guilty sweat. And second, what is the appropriate step if you’ve used that phrase and the other person ignores it? Should you try again, delete the emails, or block his address?
Categories: 100 Dates |
Tags: 100 Dates, combat dating, Dating, finding a date, funny, Guys, Modern love, Online dating, profiles, Relationship | Comments Off
This is another match.com pseudo-date. I got an email from a guy who was 16 years older than I am. This is way out of the age range that I had posted and a deal-breaker for me, but the note was so pleasant that I responded anyway. Since the forum was match.com, I felt that it would be misleading if I didn’t address the issue right away. So I wrote (in part):
I was brought up to be polite but also to be honest and I don’t know how to say this and fulfill both directives… I do an awful lot of sports and would like to share them, and for that you are sadly out of my age range. On the other hand, I can never have too many friends in my life.
His reply was clearly miffed but he directed me back to his profile and told me that it would change my mind. I read it carefully – twice – but found nothing in there except a photo that tried unsuccessfully to hide a double chin (no body shots) and an athletic history that looked to be at least twenty years old. And half a dozen references that either dated him or that I didn’t get at all. Unfortunately by now I had painted myself into a corner, since it was clear that the only acceptable response on my part was “wow, you’re perfect! When can we meet?” My saving grace, as it turned out, was hidden in his profile. He was looking for a woman five to twenty years younger than he was. I gently suggested that he probably also would not be interested in a woman who was his age+16 years and therefore surely understood my position. His response was unprintable, but did use the word “disgusting” for women that old and “jerk” for uppity women my age.
Question: If someone writes to you who doesn’t meet your posted criteria, should you just ignore them? ( My mother would be appalled…)
By the way, Match.com strongly encourages you NOT to respond to any profile you’re not interested simply because if you DO answer – even with a “hey, I appeciate it but I’d rather not” – then the Match software immediately starts posting your profile to that region/age group and you’re sure to get dozens more emails and winks from the same type of person. Since I don’t want 600 emails from Boise, I guess Match trumps my Mom. How sad.
Categories: 100 Dates |
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Okay, I really asked for this one. A friend of a friend was taking massage classes and invited me to join their practice group for an evening gathering. I got there pretty early and discovered, to my delight, that there was a hot tub. I even had a bathing suit in my car. Almost everyone else was naked, which did not bother me in the slightest since they didn’t pressure me to do the same. After we had soaked under the stars for a while we had a terrific potluck dinner. One of the guys sat next to me and was wonderfully attentive and clearly interested. He was handsome, interesting, educated, and fun. We exchanged email addresses.
I had a very early morning the next day so I excused myself shortly after dinner, though I really wouldn’t have preferred to stay as I watched everyone settle down onto comfortable sofas with margaritas.
A couple of days later I was pleased to find an email from the fellow who had sat next to me. It had a URL to a site with photos from the evening. Imagine my surprise when I saw a shot of him dressed in leather tights – complete with spiked dog collar – and a whip in one hand. Everyone else looked very drunk. He wanted to see me again, immediately.
I don’t have a single question about this one.
Categories: 100 Dates |
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#2. This was a real date. I had contacted a geological society to see if there were any field trips where I might learn some local geology from a naturalist. I got a response from a member of the board, suggesting a hike the following weekend. I had no idea if this was a group activity, what his age or fitness level was, or how long the hike would take but the offer was generous and I didn’t want to start asking pointy questions. I said yes.
We met in the parking lot at the trailhead. I drove by the nice-looking young guy with the gorgeous border collie but he didn’t acknowledge me. Several cars further on was a fellow with long grey hair and a beach-ball belly. He smiled at me. I smiled back, reluctantly.
We set off without much ado. I asked a few questions and quickly realized that he was an accountant at the society and couldn’t tell granite from sandstone or a cactus from a sunflower. That was a bit annoying, since that had been the point of my email. But perhaps there were other subjects we could talk about.
There were. His divorce, which had been particularly acrimonious and took up the first thirty minutes of the hike. And then there was his second divorce, which didn’t take as long but made him so angry that he spat whenever he had enough breath. At this point we had been underway for nearly an hour at a snail’s pace and I was enormously relieved to see a second trailhead and the way home. He insisted on doing the longer loop. I knew I could manage it in about an hour but then I wasn’t carrying a beach-ball belly and twenty-five extra years. I told him I didn’t have enough water. He told me I didn’t need it. I said I had to be back at the car in 90 minutes. He seemed quite sure that this would not be a problem if I could keep up with him. At this point I inexplicably morphed into a doormat and gave in. He promptly moved the topic of conversation to his accounting career and started a blow-by-blow account of his various jobs, coworkers – even the type of leather-bound notebooks he preferred to use. I walked faster but that just made his stories slower. I stopped saying, “uh-huh” every few minutes, which made not the slightest bit of difference. Darn it, I just couldn’t bring myself to leave him on the trail.
It took us three and a half hours to get back to the car. He told me what a great conversationalist I was. He didn’t remember my name. I forgot his as quickly as possible.
Question: Since he was the one who wanted to go the extra mile, so to speak – and made it clear that I would be the one struggling to keep up - would it have been okay for me to just hike off down the trail and leave him in the dust?
Categories: 100 Dates |
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I’m going to go on 100 dates over the next six months or so, in as wide a variety of venues as possible. I’m going to post questions if I get stuck - I’d appreciate your advice!
#1 Let’s start with Match.com, since so many people use it. You can figure out an awful lot about a person from their “About Me” section. I’m not talking specifics, as in “I love my cat.” I’m also not talking about the self-referential “I have a great sense of humor” (who doesn’t, or at least who doesn’t think they do?). I’m talking about all that between-the-lines stuff like style, tone, and emotional backdrop. Some of this has to do with your gut, which will be telling you to read on or move on. You really should listen to your intestinal tract – it usually knows what you want to eat and who you want to be with.
Here’s an easy example of a profile I ran into. It started like this:
Please take careful note of this first paragraph. If you have kids or want to have kids, do not respond to this profile. My childfree status is absolutely clear and permanent. I have had a vasectomy and will never, under any circumstances, consider reversing it. I also have no inerest in dating women with kids. You should also be a non-smoker and non-drug user. A social drinker is fine.
Okay, to be kind – this guy gets credit for honesty. He doesn’t want children and he doesn’t want to waste his time or anyone else’s on the subject. It also sounds like he’s had a few dates with women who either didn’t read this particular paragraph when it was buried in the body of his profile or didn’t take it seriously enough and then perhaps even made the foolish mistake of patting him on the hand and telling him that it was possible to reverse his vasectomy (I bet that went over like a sack of bricks). There are plenty of people out there who just don’t listen, or think that they can change your mind once you meet them/fall in love/see the error of your ways – whether the subject is children or quitting smoking or moving to Boise.
But even more telling than what he says is how he says it. The first sentence is a thinly-masked order. The second sentence is an order, this time not even couched in a “please”. And in case we all have an IQ of 50 and didn’t get the point, he rams it home in sentences three and four (never, ever). This guy doesn’t pull punches. As a matter of fact, he punches first, and I bet children aren’t the only topic that makes the muscles in his jaw go tight. And then he goes on to dismiss anyone who even has kids (thank goodness – would you want this guy as a father-figure to your children?). Another fake “please” and he’s tossing even more people on the trash heap, before finally opening the door a crack.
Does this feel like a job interview to anyone but me? Would you want this guy as your boss, let alone sharing your bed? At least if it were a job you’d be looking at a salary and benefits. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that dating is about selling yourself as well finding the person you’re looking for. It’s about compromise and adaptability. This guy isn’t selling himself – he’s issuing commandments and you’d bloody well better measure up.
If your gut is telling you “rigid”, “demanding”, “intolerant”, and even “tyrannical” – listen to it.
I won’t put you through his next three paragraphs, but suffice it to say that he uses the first person pronoun over seventy times, mostly in reference to his sporting achievements. Turns out he spends over 120 days a year on his favorite sport. Let’s be kind again – he’s probably very athletic and has a great body. On the other hand, if he has a full-time job and he’s a super-jock, where do you fit into the picture?
The woman I want to meet: The traits I find most imporant in a significant other are integrity, acceptance, faithfulness and good communication. I am not trying to find my athletic twin or a carbon copy of myself. However, I do want to meet a woman who values health and fitness as an important part of her life, exercises regularly, and shares at least some of my athletic interests. I don’t expect you to ski every double diamond run I ski or ride up and down every mountain pass I ride. I do expect you to understand the effort and time my athletic lifestyle requires.
Superficially this sounds like it’s about the woman he wants to meet, but check the pronouns. He only uses the second person three times and the first person twelve times. He’s really talking about himself and how a woman would fit into his life. She has to share his athletic interests (no word on whether he would want to share hers). He generously doesn’t expect her to follow him down every mountain pass but she better step aside with alacrity whenever he puts on his riding shorts. And she should probably head for the gym while he’s gone so that she can be fit enough for his tastes when he returns. Boy, doesn’t that sound like a fun relationship? Laughter? Romance? A picnic with friends? I don’t think so.
And finally, he makes an offer:
Here is the e-mail conversation starter. Send me an e-mail and I’ll tell you where each of my 23 photos was taken. My photo gallery has images from Ecuador, Colorado, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and Lebanon.
What a surprise – he’s offering you a conversation all about…him. Gosh, where do I sign up?
I now have to admit that he emailed me and I ignored my gut and responded. He made it clear in his first emails that he was not interested in acquiring any new sports (i.e., mine), told me without prompting where all of the photos were taken (with him standing in the foreground of each one), and then told me when and where we could meet. Since he only gave me 12 hour’s notice and I already had plans, I politely responded that I couldn’t make it but perhaps we could arrange something the following weekend. I haven’t heard from him since.
So this is my date #1 – my gut and I went for a very nice solo hike and decided it was a much more pleasant afternoon than it would have been with Mr. super-athlete T-Rex.
Here’s my question: There used to be clearly-understood rules to dating (the man asks the woman out, etc.). Modern dating has gotten a bit more muddled. I know this sounds suspiciously like The Rules book (“never accept a date for Saturday after Wednesday”) but do you think it’s appropriate to ask a woman on a first date on just a few hours’ notice? How many days would be considered acceptable nowadays?
Categories: 100 Dates |
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There are thousands of self-help books out there about relationships – getting into them, understanding them, saving them, living happily ever after because of them. Funny thing is, only women are reading the books.
Why?
Because this is what men think about relationships…
Want proof? Ask the average women to remember the month and year of some random event in her past. You’ll almost certainly get something like this:
“Let’s see, that was back when I just started going out with Tom – the summer of ’94. Then in December we broke up and I moved out to Indianapolis and met…”
A guy, on the other hand, uses a slightly different set of landmarks:
“Yeah, that was the year I had that ’65 Camaro. Hell of a car! Couldn’t corner worth a damn but give her a straightaway…”
So the first problem is that only half the population is even trying to figure out how to make relationships work (and let’s face it – they’re generally not the half with the problem). And to make matters worse, most of those self-help books that women are so earnestly poring over night after night miss the mark entirely.
For example (let’s start with an oldie):
Time Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right.
By Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider
I HATE this book.
You only have to take one look at the table of contents to find out what a Rules Girl is like.
Rule 4: Don’t Meet Him Halfway.
Rule 5: Rarely Return His Calls.
Rule 12: Stop Dating Him if He Doesn’t Buy You a Romantic Gift.
Ms. Manners would be appalled. My mother would be appalled. But then the authors have taken care both of them with Rule 27:
Rule 27: Do The Rules, Even when Your Friends and Parents Think It’s Nuts.
And finally, if you do follow their formula with absolute precision, if you “don’t talk to your therapist, parents, or friends about the Rules.” If you “don’t read any books that go counter to the Rules” then you will win the ecstatic, Cinderella finale….
Rule 33: Do The Rules and You’ll Live Happily Ever After!
Does this sound like a cult to anyone but me?
But what I detest most about this book is its premise: that if you sit demurely with your ankles crossed, looking down at the table; if you don’t talk too much (or at all); if you act mysterious and pretend to be interested in his stamp collection and his obsession with watching water polo on TV, then you will get the ultimate prize – a ring on your finger and the right to laugh at all those other non-Rules girls who are facing the ugly maw of spinsterhood.
Here are a few more helpful hints from Madam Fein and Madam Schneider.
(Sure. All men like to go out with a door knob.)
(He’ll wonder IF you’re thinking, if you ever think, or if you just have the IQ of a carrot.)
(He’ll wonder if you’re wanted by the law, have a foot fetish, or perhaps have lost a contact lens.)
(Ah, the Last Man Standing approach. This may work in Hollywood pitch sessions, on American Idol, and in war zones, but probably not on a first date.)
(Where were they brought up? My mother needs to have a chat with their mothers.)
(… “all of them more important than you are.” Exactly the kind of words to make a man swoon.)
(I’m genuinely baffled by this one. You’re nice… but feel cruel. You think you’re hurting someone… but you’re doing them a favor. Yup, that’s true Rules Reasoning.)
(Nothing, nothing like you. Really.)
(I feel like bait in a raccoon trap.)
10. “Even Playboy types will mend their ways as long as you follow the Rules.”
(Ahem. Rule 18: Don’t Expect a Man to Change or Try to Change Him.)
11. “Women can sip Perrier on dates with men who drink and smoke, and are now married to them.”
(Lovely – a life sentence with an alcoholic ashtray.)
12. “If you have a bad nose, get a nose job. Grow your hair long. Men prefer long hair.”
(Excuse me?… MY body. Not his. Or yours, ladies.)
13. And, happily, “it is not necessary to have a high IQ to do the Rules.”
(Neither, apparently, is it necessary to have a high IQ to write the Rules.)
Now, neither Ms. Fein nor Ms. Schneider pretends to have a PhD, but they do aspire to their very own, unique brand of logic to prove that their system works. It runs something like this:
Pam, “our dentist friend”, met Robert in dental school. “She spoke to him first,” thereby breaking Rule #2. They became lovers. They even lived together. But, alas, three years later he broke up with her over something trivial. Why? Because she broke Rule #2.
Yup, I’m totally convinced.
Take this short quiz to find out if you qualify to be a Rules Girl.
Before you go on a first date with a guy, you:
A. Spend the day at the mall, the gym, or with your friends.
B. Tell a girlfriend where and when you’re going, pick a safe venue, then get dressed and head out the door, ready to have a great time.
C. Spend hours doodling combinations of your first name with his last name and choosing the kind of flowers you want for your wedding.
As you walk through the front entrance to your apartment complex, and the doorman smiles and greets you. You:
A. Smile and wish him a nice evening.
B. At least give him a quick nod as you run for the elevator.
C. Do not look at him, smile at him, or greet him. You are a RULES girl!
It’s your birthday, and your boyfriend surprises you with a week-long vacation to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun. You:
A. Grab your suitcase and start packing! Don’t forget the sunscreen.
B. Give him a huge kiss and then grab your suitcase and start packing. Don’t forget the sunscreen.
C. If you don’t get jewelry from him on your birthday, you might as well end it because he’s not in love with you.
Of course, Ellen Fein (one of the authors) filed for divorce in 2000, shortly before the first Rules book came out. But then, The Rules are about getting married, not staying married. (Even more interestingly, she didn’t bother to tell her publishers, so the jacket of the first printing reads “Fein and Schneider, two longtime married women themselves…”). Obviously honestly is also not a Rules trait.
The Rules is apparently also about making its authors rich. They’re now selling several new books (one on how to stay married!), a newsletter, a Rules School, support groups, phone consultations ($250 each or $75 to email a single question), speaking engagements (call for price), an inspirational rap song (“Just Do The Rules”), CDs, DVDs, and a 12-week email course ($1,000). If that’s not enough, there’s a dating journal to help you keep track of your dating behavior – good and bad, Note cards (2 for $10), and even Rules lipstick (for “Rules Lips”: $15). And, if it’s still not working for you, you can always sign up to become a Rules Facilitator in Japan.
But hey, let’s give these poor ladies a break. It’s not like they had a choice.
“Even we didn’t want The Rules to be true.”
Categories: On Relationships |
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But wait! What about those compatibility tests you keep reading about in dog-eared copies of Cosmo while waiting at the doctor’s office? The ones entitled “What Breed of Dog Are You?” and “Wine Tasting: Is Your Perfect Mate a Merlot?” Maybe there’s something to that….
Actually, compatibility tests have a long and rather vaunted history. Apparently, during the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia (modern-day Valentine’s day), women placed their names in an urn from which local bachelors would then pull their next year’s consort. Then along came computers, and urns were replaced by “scientific” compatibility testing virtually guaranteed to find you a soul mate, provided you are willing to either 1) shell out upwards of $1000 to have the most intimate details of your life picked over by a bunch of rumpled geeks with the social skills of termites or 2) shell out $9.95 a month and leave the decision to a computer with no social skills at all.
The problem with most of these programs is that they depend on self-evaluation (ever met a man who doesn’t think he has a sense of humor?) which is notoriously inaccurate. How inaccurate even I didn’t realize until I read a truly disturbing study about ten years ago.
In brief: they took a bunch of college students and asked them what kind of woman they were looking for. The choices were rather limited – they could either opt for 1) confident, intelligent, ambitious, challenging, athletic – someone you could have an interesting discussion with, take skiing (and get your butt kicked) and would probably make a significant contribution to the communal bank account. Or they could choose option 2) shy, obedient, non-challenging, always available, quiet, modest, never argues – someone who would meet you at the door with your slippers, have dinner ready, massage your feet, do your laundry, change diapers, never ask you to take out the trash – but not a great candidate for a discussion on nuclear energy, nor a great contribution to the bottom line. Let’s be incredibly politically incorrect and call this a choice between your H-bomb American woman and your lovely, shy, Asian butterfly.
When the young men were first asked which woman they would prefer as a partner, the response was more or less even – 50% wanted their shirts starched and dinner on the table and 50% insisted they were looking for a hiking partner who had enough breath left to debate the most viable solution for world hunger.
The sneaky social scientists then sat them all down to take a test. The men were asked to respond to some three hundred “situational” questions – “what would you do if your partner were offered a high-paying job in another city and…” or “your partner wins a vacation trip to Peru but you, for work reasons, can’t go…” This is where it gets interesting. Apparently 80% of the men made it clear from their responses on the situational test that they would prefer the Asian butterfly.
Now, I have no problem with the 50% percent of men who say they want a shy, obedient woman up front and mean it. They aren’t going to give me (or probably you) a second look and thank goodness for that. I’m thrilled with the 20% who say they want a confident, challenging American woman and mean it – hey fellows, call me anytime – let’s go mountain biking.
My problem is with the 30% who THINK they want a challenging partner but secretly crave someone to wait on them hand and foot. I suspect that a lot of these guys don’t even realize it – they’ve been raised in a politically correct society that tells them they’re not supposed to want a maid/nurse/nanny/cook/sex toy. It’s old fashioned. It’s chauvinistic. How dare they? So they convince themselves (and their dates) that they’re perfectly happy to walk in the door at 7PM after a hard day’s work and immediately start changing nappies and cooking up a nutritious three-course meal (while doing a load of laundry) because their wife is at an important conference in Nashville and won’t be home until the weekend.
I seem to have run into more than my share of that third category, so let me tell you what happens when Challenging Female meets Clueless Male.
All goes well for about three months. Lots of horseback riding, hang gliding, great conversations, shared cooking (and bill paying), etc. I even start to wonder if this could be The One.
Then things gradually fall apart. It usually starts with “honey, where’s my red shirt?” or “How come there’s no milk in the fridge?” My potential soul mate mysteriously forgets where the vacuum cleaner lives and I come home from a business trip to find three days’ worth of dishes piled up in the sink and a deep depression on the sofa in front of the TV. The dog hasn’t been walked for two days and the only reason there isn’t a huge puddle on the kitchen floor is that the poor thing’s water dish has been empty for most of that time as well. Sparks start to fly. I – in a spasm of idiotic and misplaced love and loyalty – start cleaning toilets, separating whites and colors, apologizing to the dog, removing the old fast-food wrappers from the passenger seat of his car so that I have a place to sit during out increasingly infrequent evenings out, and generally pretzeling myself into this new concept of the Perfect Woman. Then one day I find myself standing at the door with his slippers, watching his face anxiously to see if this would be a good time to tell him that I got a promotion. I’d love to be able to say that at this point I immediately pack up my hang glider, golden retriever, mountain bike, and books and leave, but the sad truth is that I usually spend at least another year – okay, two – doing his laundry and cleaning the mud off his shoes in the futile hope that if I get everything just right then he will appreciate my other – confident, challenging, wonderful – character traits. Then one day we go skiing and I blow past him on a black diamond slope and he breaks up with me at the bottom of the hill.
For the next six months I mentally count the number of loads of laundry I did for that no-good son of a slug (157), the hours spent shopping for his favorite foods (and cooking them), the evenings wasted watching football or his favorite sitcom, the days and days listening to him gripe about the boss he hated, his lazy coworkers, and all the other boring details of his incredibly mundane job, and I kick myself mercilessly that I wasn’t the one to break up with him.
Then one day about a year later I run into him at a coffee shop. We sit down for a few minutes. He tells me proudly that he is getting married – to a 25-year-old woman from Vietnam who barely speaks a word of English, doesn’t work, cooks these wonderful meals and is in every way perfect. “What do you two do together?” I ask with honest curiosity (by now I really am over him.) “Oh, most afternoons we just go to the park and sit together on a bench and hold hands,” he replies.
And I get a sudden, indescribable rush of relief that she isn’t me.
Categories: The On Ramp |
Tags: Attraction, combat dating, dating tips, finding a date, Guys, marriage, Modern love, Trading down, Trading up, women | Comments Off
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