Well, I meant to write this little ditty on Sunday, and somehow, in writing the introductory paragraph, I took a major detour off the beaten path and waded through the muck and the mire for about four pages. But hey, obviously that’s what needed to come out the day, so far be it for me to get in the way of my subconscious. It’s always fun to watch smoke rise from the keyboard because your fingers are trying to keep up with your brain.
Interesting how we often think something will go one way and end up another. Maybe that’s what this little list below is about. When expectations get defied. Now, often this can be quite a good thing. Say, you go to a party out of obligation, and not only is Mark Wahlberg there, but the entire Funky Bunch as well. I mean, that’s cooler than being cool. Or you go to a business dinner, expecting the doldrums of number crunching over escargot, and instead, you get drunk, table dance, and then flash the client. I mean, that’s the very definition of “the most awesomest ever” right there. Look it up in the OED.
That being said, the over/under on “happy” surprises is just about 50%. As many good as bad, in the general overall scheme of things. And while I’ve had many happy surprises in many parts of my life, I’ve had an almost operatic level of drama when it comes to my dating life in the past year. I’m out to dinner with a friend roughly a month ago, and I’m relating what had been going on in this particular sphere of my life since last we had met. She got increasingly bug-eyed and finally exclaimed, “Jesus, I only left you alone for two weeks!” Well, gotta keep up with me. Actually, don’t, it’s exhausting enough for myself, and while my mile splits are steadily decreasing on the treadmill, I’m moving about as fast as my body can currently handle.
I’m coming up on my one-year anniversary of singledom. As such, I thought it would be good to give a few tips to any and all potential suitors as to what has been…oh, I don’t know, how to put this, ah yes, “events, actions, and attitudes that have pushed me to the brink of not wanting to even deal with humanity on any basic level”. I’m sure many people have similarly weird things happen to them, but in relating the string of circumstances, it would probably become clear that I may have run over a nun last March and am still paying off the karmic debt.
I’m not going to give a timeline, although that would be a hilarious exercise in masochism. Rather, I’m gonna given five basic tips on how not to approach a relationship with me. If you, like, just wanna freak ‘til the sun comes up, so long as you don’t have open sores feel free to disregard any and all of the following tips. These tips, incidentally, come from at least one experience with at least one woman in the past year. Mostly, they have a few iterations apiece. That fact in and of itself bespeaks the fact that I myself have a long way to go as well, but it’s much more fun to blame other people. Hell, I blame myself nearly every day on this website, let’s take some of that inner anger and blowtorch these beeyotches to Kingdom Come.
So, here we go. Five things you should never do if you want to date me:
1) Meet me.
Hey, I didn’t say this list would make sense. I just used the phrase “blowtorch these beeyotches”, what do you expect?
So here’s an interesting trend. Over the past 2 months or so, I’ve received roughly one email or instant message from a female reader who “just had to tell [me] how amazing [my] site is!” Sometimes they leave phone numbers. Pictures of panties. It’s all cool and fun, but meanwhile, here in friendly Boston, women look upon me as the look upon that dorky cousin no one actually wants to talk to during the holidays. I mean, they know I’m there, they’d just rather not deal with me unless our paths cross near the ‘nogg.
An exaggeration? You betcha, but it serves to illuminate an interesting point. When it comes to variations of “Take me, you big manly man you,” chances are I’ll get it from someone I’ve never met versus someone I actually see on a decently regular basis. In addition, between my absolutely terrible foray into online dating last year and those I’ve actually met in real life amongst my readership, I’ve come to the conclusion that my cyber self is a way hotter piece of ass than the flesh and blood person typing this right now. I’m not too sexy for my pixels, my pixels are too sexy for me.
I guess it makes sense in a way. Many websites, not just mine, show a “better” version of the writer than really exists. Why? Well, this site is very much derived from yours truly, but there’s hardly a strict one-to-one correlation. The weirdest trend has been how many articles of me tearing myself a new one have endeared me to the female readership. If those are actually endearing, it would stand to reason that the very flawed, “real” me would likewise be appealing, but so far, that hasn’t proven to be true.
In another words, if you wanna date me, stay outside a 200-mile radius. It’ll be better for both of us, trust me. But if you brave distance and my propensity to spew quotes from “The Two Towers” in regular conversation, make sure you don’t pull the following trick out of your bag:
2) Decide (only after I finally like you) that you just can’t handle any relationship right now because, well, “I just need to find me right now, Ryan.”
Man, I’m glad I don’t own a gun. After typing that sentence out, I felt like shooting something. Maybe a puppy. Who knows. Yea, sensitive area here. But hey, let’s delve in anyway, shall we?
People often say that everyone has a basic “type” that they date. For instance, my brother dated the same girl seemingly for four years. I’m not saying he dated one girl, I’m saying he dated a series of girls that, if I wasn’t wearing my glasses, were virtually indistinguishable. I figure he had some cookie cutter stashed in his dorm and could churn them out if one became defective. Other people date archetypes: artists, lawyers, tall guys, tattooed hotties, etc. I’ve never been attractive to a specific visual demographic per say, but looking back over the past year, I’d say I’ve nailed down the pursuit of “completely bewitching but emotionally unavailable sirens”.
It’s one of these amazing paradoxes, and I know it works both ways, but here goes: once you tell someone you are attracted to them, you yourself become almost inevitably less attractive to them. And yes, part of it is explained by the doctrine that I’ve touted here many a time: “Desire is defined by lack.” But somewhere along the line, desire has to take a backseat to affection (never mind “love”, we’re not talking that far down the line here). And I’m generally a guy who calls it like a see it. If I like a girl, I can’t wait to tell her. And that has historically, in the past 12 months, always been the completely wrong decision.
It’s easy enough to see in hindsight that I was dating one version of another of Jenny, my ex, who decided law school was more important than our relationship. Nothing wrong with wanting a career over a relationship. Not for me, but hey, sadly, it was about two and a half years too late for that discovery. Sure, she wanted to go to Harvard Law, but not because she was guaranteed to still date me. Rather, it was the highest ranked school on her list. OK, I’m stopping now, because I feel a vein growing in my forehead.
After that, you’d think the absolute last thing I’d do is get involved with someone with similarly self-centric attitudes. But no, I kinda did a series of leapfrogs, from lily pad to lily pad, variations on a common theme. “Oh, it’s just…I just need some space to figure me out,” they’d say. And space is great. But if you email me for a few weeks, talk to me on the phone every other night, and instant message me nightly, don’t THEN tell me you need “you” time. That just leaves me with a lot of imposed “me” time during which I invent scenarios in which something heavy falls on your ankle.
Check out Part 2 here.