Archive for April, 2014

Everyone has five minutes of their day they can put aside to get in contact with a person they are interested in. No one is too busy or too important to say, “I didn’t have the time” to call and make plans, or confirm plans, or even to reschedule plans. Here are two important rules to remember when making plans for a date:

• Calling the day before you want to make plans is two days too late.
• Calling a few hours before said date to confirm or reschedule is a day too late.

Not finding the time is disrespectful and sends the message that you’re not entirely interested in that person. Do your date a favor and either call sooner if you are interested, or simply don’t waste anyone’s time and cancel. But find the time to do so.

I’ve talked about canceling at the last minute before, but how do you tell the difference between a legitimate excuse and a bogus one? Click here to find out!

The step after answering a couple of messages online, and the step before actually meeting a person – in person – is texting. If you’re lucky, it’s a phone call. But that rarely happens, these days. But sometimes, I find, those first text message interactions can make or break your final decision regarding whether or not to go on a date with that person. Should it? Should you judge someone by the frequency of their text messages? Or what they are saying? Or should you remember that people act differently in person than they do when they are behind a screen?

• Do: Communicate with the person, whether via text or phone before meeting them. This will help you get to know them a bit more, and ensure your safety! Make sure this does not drag on for weeks – you still want to have things to learn about each other in person!

• Don’t: Go out with the person if they make you feel uncomfortable over text. If there are red flags popping up, then listen to them! Don’t ignore your gut. Ever.

Say hi to Jen Glantz: @tthingsilearned

How can you tell when someone is playing the dating game versus being just marginally interested? How can you tell when someone is trying to act like they’re too cool versus actually thinking they are too cool?

Not calling until the second day is part of the game, but calling on the third day means the person is probably just marginally interested.

Making plans for the weekend on a Wednesday (for Friday) or Thursday (for Saturday) is acting cool, but waiting until the weekend to make plans is someone who thinks they’re too cool.

Waiting until the day before a date to confirm is part of the game, but waiting until the day of a date means the person is probably just marginally interested.

Playing the dating game is an unfortunate necessity in the beginning. It will help you take your time and not jump into anything too fast or come off as desperate. Call within two days of meeting someone, make plans by the middle of the week for the weekend, and confirm your plans the day before… otherwise you run the risk of losing your potential date by playing too cool.

We all have a vision of how we want love to look, unfortunately fantasy and reality rarely measure up. If you think everything will click together beautifully when you meet “The One,” and that you will never fight, and you will have sex every other day, and you will like each other’s families and friends, and you will love the other person every second of every minute of every hour of every day for the rest of your lives… then you will be in for major disappointment.

True love does exist, but that does not mean that it will be easy. In fact, life will probably become more confusing, difficult and crazier because now you are thinking of another person in addition to yourself… and you will possibly (or eventually) be adding even more people into that equation when children enter the picture.

Don’t get stuck on an idea of what love should look like; chances are it will look nothing like that when it happens, but you need to be open to love in any form. If you’re waiting for love to fit into a box that you’ve created based on your vision of ideal love, then be prepared to be alone for a long time.

As I sit down to quickly write this blog, I find it incredibly fitting that I just came home from a very stupid run. It was stupid in the sense of when I did it: coming off of a sickness and eating limited food this last week (for Passover), I should not have been straining myself today. And yet, an overwhelming desire to feel the wind against my back and feel the beautiful spring day (not to mention to make myself look amazing for the wonderful women of New York) overwhelmed me… and I made a stupid decision.

So here I sit coughing again and writing this entry. Yet, like many things that have happened in my life in these last three years in Dallas, this was yet another piece of training. In one sense, the run was training to get myself back into shape — I got an annoyingly long cough after Israel that I let prevent me from exercising. Yet, it was also another way I am slowly — but surely — hoping to make myself a fine specimen in a new dating scene.

My hope is that New York will lead to some great dates and adventures for myself, and through that, some great advice that I wouldn’t have been able to spread forward without the change of pace I’m headed for. Yet even in Dallas, I’ve probably held back on some of my better advice for fear of embarrassing myself. While I think one entry is too little space to spare the countless misadventures I’ve had for you to learn from, I’d simply like to remind you that every experience is a great way for you to learn… and laugh.

In a sense, I feel like I’ve messed up even in the course of blogging these last few months. I wish I had more to regularly offer you as readers — more consistently insightful moments, more secret tricks you didn’t know, something to really change your dating life. I know I used to look for that kind of advice all the time when I was serious about changing my luck. I’ve come to my own relatively simple answer, however… which is to focus on what I can control and fix it, and otherwise learn to work with the cards I’ve been dealt.

I may not always have your easy fix, and I apologize if you came here seeking a secret I couldn’t give you today. But in the next few weeks I’ll be sharing some of what I did when I realized Dallas and I weren’t as compatible as I wanted — and hopefully in the coming months I can mess up enough for all of us to learn from my not-so-smart decisions.

Askhole: a person who constantly asks you for advice, but always does the opposite of what you tell them.

These people aren’t a**holes, per se, but it does make you wonder why they bothered asking for advice if they weren’t going to follow it.

Most singles tend to ask for advice because they’re hoping you are going to say what they were thinking, therefore confirming their intentions. So when your advice does not align with what they want to do (call him, text her, accept a weekend date late in the week, etc.), they will do it anyway. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

So take it in stride. Your advice is only your opinion, and it may or may not be the right advice. Or, your friend need to learn lessons the hard way. Each situation is different. Be there for your friends and don’t get upset if they don’t take your advice. And don’t say “I told you so” either. It’s always easier to give advice than it is to take it.

After you begin connecting with someone on 100hookup there’s a balance of power that shifts continuously. Who wrote the last email? Who sent the last text? Who made the last phone call? It’s all part of the game… and it sucks, but you’ve got to play ball. If you were the last one at bat (emailing, texting or calling), then give the other person a chance to hit (contact you).

Enough with the symbolism… if you take a step a back and realize that you’re doing most of the contacting, planning, talking, following up, and so on, then perhaps the other person is not so into you. It’s tough to admit, but they may just be bored and have nothing else to do, and you’re such not bad company to pass the time. Sorry.

To borrow a well-known line… if he or she is not contacting you, then they’re just not into you.

I’m guilty of this a lot. I make plans – just to end up breaking plans. But am I really to blame? After a long day at work, I feel much more comfortable plopping down in front of my TV screen and stuffing my face with pasta than I do on a first date with a stranger. Often, I cancel. Often, I cancel the day of – which is never a nice thing to do.

• Do: If you set a date and you know it’s not going to work out with your schedule, try to give them a heads up in advance. When you’re canceling, always have a backup time so that you can instantly reschedule. If you are canceling because you’re not interested, tell them that in a nice, and direct, way.

• Don’t: Wait till the morning of the date. I did this recently and the person was very upset. Can you even blame them? People are busy and make plans in advance. Also, if someone has already gone through the process of planning a date, canceling it is not fair to them.

When you don’t like your date, you don’t just not like your date… but you see every little flaw and every little tick and every little everything that bothers you.

It’s called the Ick Factor. Once someone bugs you, then you see all the things about them that wouldn’t have normally bothered you. When you don’t like someone, then you will either look for things wrong with them or things will just pop out and annoy you to no end. When you know someone is wrong for you, then you will notice and get icked out by the way they talk, laugh, chew, walk, sit, stand, and basically, exist. Those things wouldn’t bother you if you liked the person.

Realize that this is normal, this is not a match, maintain your dignity, and — after the date — thank the other person for a nice time and move on. Don’t try to see if the ick factor will go away — it won’t.

Failure, inherently, is a gigantic part of life. As your life goes on and opens up new opportunities, you are bound to fail at some point. But more rewarding than anything are those moments when you seem so on the brink of failure, and success somehow comes crashing toward you anyway.

In particular, I can remember two times in the last year where failure that I couldn’t begin to fathom came crashing on me. The first was a long-distance date with a hookup girl from New York I’d been chatting with on 100hookup. As I planned to fly out to New York from Dallas, the greatest ice storm we’d seen in years began to take over the city. I had the foresight to move my flight to a day earlier, but even then, the ice piled on and basically froze all of Dallas in fear. I witnessed a truck crash on my way to the airport and was almost late for the flight. When I got to the airport, panic struck as I was told I’d miss my connector no matter what. At the last second, things changed, and they let me race through security for a long weekend in New York that, while a one time event, was still a good time.

As I sat in the baggage check-in line that day, I felt a dread I never knew before — here we are, having Skyped for two months, our big meeting finally at hand. We were so excited and the prospect of waiting any number of weeks more seemed awful. There is a certain power of getting to know someone, even over video, and it was devastating to not be able to be happy with that person in person… even for a weekend.

But as things often do, it worked itself out.

I had a similar experience again this last week. I had been trying and trying to get to New York for the summer, becoming so good at long distance networking that I started my own company to help people do it (TheSocialCustodian.com, though the site is not totally complete yet). As the one company I’d made it far with in New York was reaching a final decision, it was down to crunch time. They told me they’d let me know by a certain time, and I heard nothing.

And yet, I didn’t stop. I took my phone and called, and sure enough they were getting ready to offer me the job as I called. It was a moment that changed my life essentially, and will change the rest of my year by its very nature.

Yeah, that’s great, my life is awesome. How does it affect you? Life will bring on big challenges, and again on the theme of the beginning of the new year, don’t let that fear freeze you. The world offers great things to those who are ready for failure in pursuit of success, as I was when I made the call and tried to make the flight, and it rewards those ready to fall on their faces. Let this be the year you try to make a sketchy flight, make a new call, or just say hello to someone unexpected. Sure, you’ll probably fail at some point, but success is the greatest feeling in the world. See you in New York, 100hookuprs.