Archive for May, 2012

I believe there’s one cardinal rule when it comes to dating: Whatever you think she’s thinking, she’s thinking something else.

It’s why you wonder why they’re mad. It’s why you wonder why they sent you a Dear John email after you thought they had a great time. I had an inkling it was coming when My AOL mailman cheerily announced: “You got dumped!” Yeah, I’m still on AOL. At this rate, I’ll be getting my first smart phone when a phone is actually smart enough to tell me why Anderson Cooper has nine jobs.

Relationships may be about sharing, but wavelengths are about not sharing. I tried to share her wavelength. Turns out I had the wrong wavelength. It was my wavelength. If she’d tried to share my wavelength, maybe she would’ve understood what I’m talking about here.

She doesn’t even need to share my wavelength. What good’s it doing me? She can have it all to herself.

On the first few dates we are on our best behavior, but that doesn’t stop us from passing judgment on others when they share something we disagree with. So when a date mentions that he or she took 6+ years to graduate from college, or informs you that they are in their 30’s and have 3 roommates in a 2 bedroom apartment, or when he or she orders pork-wrapped shellfish, what do you do? Well, most people would grimace. Their eyelids would widen, their eyes would flit left and right, and their jaw would probably drop. Most people wouldn’t know how to respond. And if they did, their voice would most likely be dripping with contempt.

Brace yourself for the chance that you will more than likely hear or see something that stuns you. Try to keep your facial expressions to a minimum, control the tone of your voice and be non-judgmental in your response even if you are bursting at the seams on the inside. You don’t need to have another date with this person, but you also don’t need to make them feel bad about themselves.

While you’re prepping yourself mentally for dates, take it to the next level and try to actually stop passing judgment and not just pretend. The fact of the matter is that no one is perfect. While you may be disgusted by someone’s lifestyle choices, they may be just as turned off by yours. You’re both single and while you may not be right for each other, that doesn’t mean you’re any better than the other person.

A sure sign of a budding relationship is when you can once again relate to love song lyrics. You’ve got the keys to the kingdom back – Those 3-D glasses that let you marvel at the artificially enhanced dimensions of Dating, Doting and Doing it.

“So true, so true – All you do need is love.”  I’ll leave songs from this century for another post.

And a sure sign of a relationship that’s sputtering to an end is when you can once again relate to the blues.

“So true, so true – Everyday I have the blues!”  (Again, a song from last century).

If you love getting out of the relationship, and staying in the relationship gives you the blues… forget everything I just said.

I have never felt more out of place than in the company of religious Jews. I went to a southern Baptist funeral once, and compared to the former, it felt like a close familial occasion. It was really pleasant, aside from the decaying corpse in the open casket at the front of the stage with that strong, detectable stench emanating throughout the tiny room.  I was trepidatious about going in as we parked because being a sheltered white kid from a sheltered home in a sheltered suburb protected by a sheltered sheltie, I had previously not been confined to a room containing more than one black person. Now, I was about to walk into one containing not 2, but 84.

Though I felt out of place the entire time, it was okay because it was a new experience and I was supposed to feel out of place since I was (am) not a southern Baptist. However, I am hookup, and this is why I feel so bad when in the company of religious Jews. They are very nice. That is the extent of our similarities. The house is always cramped and hot, and the religious mores always outweigh the pleasures of the company of others. Also, this should not be understated: the food never comes. I always go in after being promised food. Though the food does eventually come, it is usually about three days and 87 small-talk topics later. When the food comes, it’s extremely weird. I swear to God one of the dishes tonight was a mixture of bell peppers, raisins, melted cheese, and pineapples. You have to eat it because you’re so hungry that by this point you would eat much, much worse. On second thought, there is nothing worse than the combination of the four foods I just described.

Also, at these events, people try to set me up a lot, which is usually fine. Though I can never argue with the idea of a woman liking me, I want to say something like, “Yeah, but I also want to be able to do things in life like eat things that aren’t bell peppers, raisins, melted cheese, and pineapples. I also want to be able to not have to produce 16 children within a period of six months.” In a couple of years, though, I will be out of time, and will have to settle with one of these women and start making good use of my fertilization skills.

New relationships start off hot ‘n’ heavy… and then real life sets in. Stress, school, work, family, friends, sleep and so on get in the way of heavy petting. People who spend a lot of time together and are emotionally involved tend to argue and as much as people like to say that the best part of “breaking up” is the making up, most couples try to avoid breaking up as a means to getting busy in the sack. Still, your love life is going to stabilize whether you like it or not. Life is not the movies where people have sex and then roll over and go to sleep each night. Nor do people wake up and have sex every morning before even brushing their teeth! You will go to bed at different times, wake up at different times, and be in the mood at different times. You will go from getting down n dirty on a regular basis to finding yourselves going a week… or two… or more before you even realize you haven’t done the deed. Not to fret. This is normal. This does not necessarily mean it’s time to break up. You just need to give your relationship some much needed attention. You may have lost that lovin’ feeling, but you can find it. It’s not gone, it’s just waiting to be rediscovered.

You say you want to be in a committed relationship that will lead to a long-lasting, forever marriage til death do you part, but yet you’re not even fully committed to dating effectively! Dating is something that needs to be taken seriously – all the while having fun, of course – and it’s not for the weak. Dating is a good test run for relationships because if you think dating is hard, marriage is infinitely more difficult. Marriage is more fulfilling too, but life only gets more complicated in other ways. Learn about your interpersonal skills during dates because they are techniques you will need to use as a husband or wife. Communicating effectively, listening well, compromising, and other good habits you can foster during dating and use during marriage. If you want to get married then don’t give up on dating!

We are too dependent on the internet. I just spent an hour on the phone with my horrible internet provider, which I will not mention by name by saying that they are Comcast. My internet goes out every night, and I am often on the phone with them. As I am in customer service myself, I understand that they have to deal constantly with angry customers. However, it is not quite the same. While I work for a good, reputable company, they work for the most disgusting, freedom-hating, Osama-loving corporation America has seen since T-Mobile (I have my reasons).

They make it even worse by employing friendly customer-service representatives. It would be so much easier to yell at someone over the phone if they weren’t so friendly. On top of that, the customer service representative in me prevents me from telling them to punch themselves in the face with a nail. I personally get told to punch myself in the face with a nail about ten times a day, and that is outside of answering phones at work. It usually happens when talking to people in stores, at the gym, people yelling at me while driving next to me after cutting them off, etc. It’s kind of weird that they all shout the same insult.

Without the internet, how am I supposed to look at all of the girls on here who will never love me? I need the possibility, though the probability is zero. I need to be able to feel something positive before I take my horrible shower and then lay in bed alone.

However, once my internet does come back, I’m immediately relieved and no longer angry even though I know it will momentarily go out again. This phenomenon is so weird. We crave the internet so much, that once we see that Google homepage, all of our life’s problems are briefly eliminated. What happened before Google? Were people just constantly murdering people all the time? I don’t remember because I was in junior high constantly getting punched in the face with a nail.

Summer unofficially begins tomorrow. Giving us plenty of time for back to school ads to pop up again by late July. God forbid, we observe life when it actually occurs.

What’s your memory of the perfect summer date? Mine goes back to the summer after my senior year in high school, when I picked up my girlfriend in my parents’ Pontiac, on which I’d added an aftermarket wolf whistle. My folks couldn’t have been thrilled. After I’d hinted on the phone that I thought eye makeup made her look sexy, she went overboard and opened her front door looking like a cheap painting. It was the thought that counted.

We tore off for the drive-in. For you kids out there, that was the place you’d park your car to watch coming attractions, like your date’s cleavage. Oh, and occasionally, the movie.

Hope your summer flings gets off to a rousing start. If it doesn’t happen this weekend, you can always wait until it’s actually… summer. Woo-hoo!

Take a pad of post-it notes. Write down all of the things you want in a mate on the notes; one item per note. Stick the notes on a mirror, stare at them, think about them. As soon as you realize there is a trait you can live without, take the post-it note off the mirror and throw it away. Keep crumbling up post-it notes and tossing them in the trash like a basketball drill. Take satisfaction from making a basket. OK, now focus back on the mirror. Now that you’ve gotten the post-it notes down to single digits, try to put them in order as to what is most important to you. It may not be 1 thru 9, it could be three-tiered, but prioritize. What traits are you willing to negotiate and compromise on? Pare the notes down as far as possible and then go back and edit your 100hookup profile to reflect the exercise you just did.

I talk about figuring out what is important to you in a mate often and that’s because it’s not only important, but it’s also an incredibly difficult task. My list had 75 items on it, but once I put it on a spreadsheet and gave the items a numerical value, the few that ended up being worth the maximum of 10 points were the only ones that mattered. You probably aren’t willing to give up chemistry right? Of course not. But at the end of the day, does it really matter if someone is 37 when you didn’t want someone over 35? Nope!

I wake up on time every morning thanks only to my modern cell phone and my unbearable hunger caused by my near-starvation diet. I go use the toilet and then put on wonderful Old Spice® deodorant and then spray my shrinking body with Axe® Deodorant Body Spray. I know Axe is the most literal manifestation of the modern douchebag, but I wear it now because I’m thin and skinny guys do stuff like that. I then put on the rest of my clothes and then get into my Toyota Camry. I love my Toyota Camry. It has preset buttons for my radio. The air vents are positioned in just the right places so that not only will my face get cool air, but my hands won’t get sweaty as they drive the car in the summertime.

I love things. I love things so much. I love things so much, that I spend a good amount of my day thinking about how I will enjoy using my things during the rest of my day. Whenever I’m not around my things, I get uncomfortable and nervous. Where is my phone? Why isn’t my cable working? Why am I walking down the wrong side of the street naked?

The thing about marriage that scares me the most is how it will restrict my ability to use my things. I need at least an hour in bed at the end of the day to watch television by myself. I know you like The Daily Show too, but I really need to watch it alone. I feel that once I am married, the only alone time I will have will be in the bathroom and in my car. And though both my Camry and my toilet are fantastic, I will need more than transportation and bladder evacuation to complement my alone time.

I know this is cliché, but when I get married, I think that we should share a giant bed separated by a sound-proof divider, so that we can watch television and read and not be woken up by the other person’s snoring. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.