Amusingly enough, my only dating guidelines were "no bisexuals, no wiccans, no ex-strippers, no vegetarians" and I dated two bisexual wiccan ex-strippers at once. So guidelines only get you so far. The last time I was dating there were no text messages, so take what I say with a grain of salt: 1) The mating dance of Homo Sapiens is confusing and largely literary. You can choose to opt out but know that it's exactly what you're doing. My experience has been that those who refuse to so much as pay lip service to the power struggle at the heart of the dance tend to end up with fellow socially-maladroit individuals. Which, okay, fine. But the people who can do the dance? they're the ones who resolve problems more efficiently, communicate more easily and conduct their relationships more openly. The whole point of the dance is to establish the social skillz of your counterpart. Opting out is the same as saying "I have no skillz." 2) FUCK THAT. Sell yourself like you're a stolen El Camino. Get that shit off the lot! Don't lie but if you don't punch yourself up now, you'll end up on a downward spiral of less-and-less optimal partnerships. ALWAYS ensure that your reach exceeds your grasp. ALWAYS. 3) If a guy asks you back to his house after an evening, he's going to try to sleep with you. DOESN'T MEAN HE WILL. It comes down to this: do you think the person opposite you is a rapist? Then you probably shouldn't date him. You're an adult. So's he. If you opt out of those truly awesome talk-til-dawn adventures where you're just hanging out shooting the shit and listening to music while talking about stuff you'd never get to over dinner, you are missing out on something I truly consider to be the highlight of humanity. The first "date" (my wife contests this: she doesn't consider it a date) I had with my wife was four days after she kicked out her first husband. I brought over ready-to-cook pasta, a movie and a bottle of wine. We never even got to the movie, we never even kissed, and I left at 7am. 4) Sure. 5) Monogamy makes everything easier. Dating two people at once means doubling down on your efforts 'cuz you can't go halfway. 6) I don't know what you're talking about. 7) Listen to words, but don't take them as gospel writ. 8) Sometimes. Not always. My wife was busy planning a wedding when we got together. She didn't so much as return my emails for several days. That was 12 years ago. We're having dinner with the couple she married tonight. 9) That would have precluded my awesome bisexual wiccan ex stripper stories. 10) Not always true, but at an early age, more true than not. 11) Accept them for who they want to be. Two people united in a goal can accomplish so much more than one and a person's idea of who they want to be is just as important as a person's reality of who they are now. I dated a girl for four and a half years who didn't know what she wanted to be. She ended up in a career she hated. And I dated a girl who wanted to walk away from a management-track position at a Fortune 500 company and deliver babies. She's got the best smile I've ever seen and I've been seeing it for 20 years now.
For some reason 4:30am and slight intoxication is the perfect setting to have amazing conversations with people. I love those kind of connecting moments.3) If you opt out of those truly awesome talk-til-dawn adventures where you're just hanging out shooting the shit and listening to music while talking about stuff you'd never get to over dinner, you are missing out on something I truly consider to be the highlight of humanity. We never even got to the movie, we never even kissed, and I left at 7am.
Lookit kb, schoolin' me on the mating dance (humanodon agrees; apparently it's the girl's responsibility to carry on conversations! that makes me feel annoying and needy). If I am confident in the attraction I won't be shy. I cut back on texts when I'm sending multiples with no reply or when it seems I'm being ignored on multiple occasions...or, yeah, when I feel like I'm hitting them up first all the time. Can't I expect some effort from a guy? 3) OK, so sometimes I hang out with really shady dudes who try to convince me to crash in their bed overnight after repeatedly trying to keep making out with me after I've said I'm not interested. I guess I could have gone for the couch? But by then I just wanted to get the hell out. 5) Monogamy makes everything easier if everyone's on board for a monogamous relationship. Is it also the girl's job to bring up monogamy? Did I fuck up that too? None of the guys I spent time with last summer wanted a relationship. I won't be monogamous to someone unless there's an agreement we're both monogamous; it often would take a conversation or two with various people for me actually become monogamous (or I guess I could have just ignored them completely) and I figured I didn't want to have those conversations until I knew I needed to. Never needed to. I guess my advice is don't jump the gun on monogamy. Eggs, one basket, missed opportunities. 6) I often observe that after an given interaction is over, at some point, parties will attempt to reignite it for various reasons. "I was an idiot", "I want you," "I miss you," "I shouldn't have slept with your best friend," whatever. Then you get back together, realize/remember all those things you hated and still hate about the other person, and tear everything down again. So I'm saying: Don't. Skip the getting back together. When you break up, fucking break up and move on and if you don't move on at least leave the other person alone. This could partially be a personal tweak: when I am done with something, I am done. Also, this dude seems to think I'm going to sleep with him again after he slept with my friend, and that's like "You kidding me, man? After what you did the first time, I'm not giving you another chance." I'd probably walk in on him with my sister mother or something, and it would be partially my fault, because I'd be an idiot to get back with someone like that. If you had good reasons to break up, they won't go away just because you realized you miss the other person. 8) But KB, whine that was like, the 9000sssss. Email was hardly a thing. (I joke.) And clearly, your wife is a goddess among women. 9) Ah, but maybe they were the exception and you were still the rule? I could also be talking out my ass here. You didn't marry either of them; they weren't the exception. (Maybe?) I meant, "don't hope to be the magic exception to someone else's pattern, i.e., the girl who waits patiently while the guy goes through woman after woman until he looks up, sees her, and realizes he's been in love with her all along." I guess perhaps your crazy wiccan bisexual strippers were exceptions to a pattern, but there being two of them and at the same time...Well, I guess you took your rules and said fuck 'em. 10) Yes. Someday I'll realize I've dated all the way out of the good pool and am stuck. That's okay. For now I'm young enough that I shouldn't get too hung up on anyone; they're not the love of my life or end of my world. The end of one relationship is not the end of my hope for all love in life. And yes, for now, it's still relatively easy to meet guys (though I need to start aiming for higher grades, methinks, which will push me out of my comfort zone of bars). 11) That's fair. But also, observe whether they're actually trying to be what they want, or whether they're just talking about it. Someone in my life has been talking about getting a new job for a month now and not done a whit to achieve it. You can want something but you can't just want it into existence. I have attempted to help this person achieve his goal, offering multiple extremely viable options on multiple occasions. Has this person taken me up on a single one? No. Am I going to hound this person until he actually does something? Fuck no. I am not his mom. You believed that your wife could do it. You saw that she was serious about her goal and you probably had a couple of conversations (maybe?) and you backed her. That's what you need. I believe in support. I don't believe in force-feeding.
Not the question. The question is whether you acknowledge the effort they're making. Goes both ways. It's a power struggle. It's not enough to be the one not calling; you have to be the one to make them cool with it. You should seriously cut that out. We call that "emotionally erosive behavior." Fuck-buddies seriously aren't worth this much overhead. That shit gets swept under the rug. Fuck everything about that. The second-to-last bisexual wiccan ex-stripper got kicked to the curb after she got all sloppy with some of her fishing boat friends at someone else's wedding. I jammed, and then remembered I had her purse in my trunk. So I swung my her place and grabbed all my shit, then dropped her purse off with a friend. ...and then spent two weeks in purgatory while we did the "is this really over" dance. And yeah, shoulda just cut it clean right there.Can't I expect some effort from a guy?
OK, so sometimes I hang out with really shady dudes who try to convince me to crash in their bed overnight after repeatedly trying to keep making out with me after I've said I'm not interested.
Monogamy makes everything easier if everyone's on board for a monogamous relationship.
I often observe that after an given interaction is over, at some point, parties will attempt to reignite it for various reasons.
Yeah, I don't continue hanging out with guys after incidents like that. Of course, it would be better if I could develop some kind of radar that would help me avoid them before stuff like that happens. Nice.So I swung my her place and grabbed all my shit, then dropped her purse off with a friend.
I avoided all that wondering by just having the policy not to phone guys - phone being the equivalent to texting back in the earlier technology. Sure phoning is different from texting, but who needs the wondering. I just said, early on, I don't phone men, meaning guys that I was seeing casually or had just met or something might have sparked at some point. It totally worked for me. I almost wish I was dating again. -- oh god no. I suspect people get married so they don't have to date any more. just kidding. really.I cut back on texts when I'm sending multiples with no reply or when it seems I'm being ignored on multiple occasions...or, yeah, when I feel like I'm hitting them up first all the time. Can't I expect some effort from a guy?
Yes, and you will get the effort from a guy when you say to them, "oh, by the way, I don't randomly text. I'll text to confirm a meetup, that's all. You want effort? Stop doing all the work in the relationship.