She will annoy you, irritate you, and possibly stir violence in your heart. At some point, you are going to wish her ill of all kinds. This does not mean anybody has done anything wrong. In fact, this is par for the course when it comes to love.

In my college days, I dated Helen, a pre-med student with an angry streak. I had seen her angry while on the phone with her parents, but she’d never blown up at me. That changed one October afternoon. Helen had just mentioned her ex-boyfriend again. She was trying to convince me to skip some classes and drive to a club with her and some friends.

Bringing up her ex and his willingness to jump at her every wish wasn’t a good way of winning me over. I told her such and suddenly met the Helen I’d only wondered about before.

In one admirably smooth motion, she swung from the hip with her right fist. I caught it with one hand. She swung with her left and got the strike. I shouldn’t have tried to dodge her because it only served to put my nose in the way.

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One of my cardinal rules of effective dating is “Do not offer options when asking a prospective date about preferences. Get the information and make a plan.” I did not follow this rule when I asked Marianna out for the evening. Essentially, I let her plan the date and added my own twist as we went along.

Marianna had not visited the treasured sandwich shop of her childhood memories in years. She decided that making the 2.5hr drive would be worth the pleasure of eating a sandwich at a rickety wooden table. I hold this trip up as an example whenever I’m asked why I try to keep first dates limited to brief afternoon encounters. But how could I argue? Marianna was beautiful, determined, and insistent that she couldn’t think of a better person to make the trip with.

Spontaneous chap that I am, I gladly embraced the idea of also visiting Marianna’s grandfather “since we would be in the neighborhood anyway.”

It was a warm summer afternoon and we took the jeep. Top down, wind blowing in our faces, I drove the seacoast route to her grandfather’s neighborhood. We liked the same music. We both greeted the toll booth attendant (no quick-pay on the jeep) and simultaneously noticed the live Canada Goose sitting quietly in the passenger seat of a late-model Mercedes that passed us.

Have you ever ridden around a store in a grocery cart as an adult? It’s a rite of passage in finding a sense of humor as an adult that I highly recommend. Marianna had not yet had such an experience and I pushed her around as we gathered ice cream and her grandfather’s favorite kind of pie (see where this is heading?).

Bring on the 87 year-old grandfather with a fondness for petting his obese pet cat. Fat cats are fine by me. Petting them when they seem to have a late-stage oozing skin infection doesn’t help me swallow pie and ice cream. But I did. I sat on a bench covered with afghans, having spent nearly 5 hours on a date with a brand new person, watching a very old man rubbing his fingers in cat ooze.

When he asked me how I felt about the Cubs? I told him that I didn’t think they’d ever win the World Series. I don’t watch a lot of baseball and I’m typically not out to hurt the feelings of others, but I knew I hated the cubs right then.

I’m fairly certain he didn’t hear what I said because he continued the conversation as usual. I know Marianna didn’t hear me because her smile didn’t disappear. But I knew what I’d done and that’s why I classify that date as a failure.

• I’d entered into a situation with a person I knew very little about without setting any sort of time restrictions on our meeting. I’m not saying to set beginning and ending times for your dates, but have an idea about how long things are going to take and plan accordingly.
• I’d allowed myself to remain in a situation that I knew would turn negative in the long run. Now when I see a situation on par with non-lucid guy+infected cat, I remove myself from that environ.
• I had already spent so much time with Marianna on our ride down that I’d depleted much of my raw inquisitive energy and left myself open to social blindsiding. Allowing myself to use up so much of that energy also meant that I lost out on the opportunity to make a lonely person’s day by gladly participating in a conversation that interested them. He didn’t know I wasn’t involved. But I do and I still feel badly about it.

Do not allow yourself to get so caught up in how well you’re getting along with somebody that you lose sight of the goal: leave them wanting more. More time with you, more knowledge about you, more ways to smile. Marianna was a lovely person but I set us up for failure by committing to more than I had resources for that day. Had we met up for coffee and an afternoon chat, who knows where we’d be. I still have trouble eating blueberry pie without wincing.

Seth

Photo credit danperry.com, em

#5

5 Ways I’ve Ruined Dates

I found myself strolling down a lamp-lit street sipping hot greasy dishwater topped with whipped cream.

She was a perfectly built and initially charming redhead named Clarissa. I was back in my hometown for a few days and met her while picking up some groceries at the only grocery store in town.

We had met years earlier at a friend’s party. She had been interesting and funny. She had been with a fiancé who stuck to her like glue.

But now, arms filled with groceries, green eyes bright with conversation, she was available and very willing to join me for dinner that evening.

As I was getting ready, my mother asked me why I wouldn’t be there for dinner that evening. When I told her what I was doing, she was so happy. Apparently the respective mothers had recently had a conversation about Clarissa’s need for a guy like myself. I normally shy away from meddlesome people and should have taken the new information as a bad omen, but I didn’t. I had nothing else to do and some part of me was fascinated with the idea of finally going out with the girl of my adolescent dreams.

Red Flags:

1. My fuel-efficient rental car wasn’t classy enough for Clarissa. She insisted that we borrow her father’s car for the evening. On pressuring her for a reason, she admitted that she didn’t want her friends to see her out in a small car. I should have run. Instead, I traded keys with her father and headed out in his entry-level Mercedes sedan.
2. My chosen dinner spot was vetoed because Clarissa wanted nachos. I am all about adventure and trying new things. I just have trouble passing up a nice dinner at a great spot for nachos that I’ve had before and know are terrible.
3. My lovely and fantastic creature of a date decided to spend most of our dinner talking about how easy it had been to get a high GPA in her extremely difficult Master’s program. I was interested, then depressed, then annoyed at her insistence that she, unlike many others, was a brilliant woman. I suppose I’ve always wanted the option to build faith in a person and their intellect without requiring an academic transcript.

Clarissa confirmed her status in the neighborhood by ordering hot cocoa. She told me the restaurant made delicious cocoa and promising mugs of steaming chocolate were brought to our table. The server rolled his eyes when she asked him to make the hot chocolate to go…I should have taken this as another warning.

I had driven past every red flag and hit the broken patch of road when I sipped from that large Styrofoam cup. It was whipped cream followed by extremely hot greasy dishwater with a distinct soap flavor with hints of beef and ketchup with a watery finish. I couldn’t have been happier that I had borrowed her father’s car. I watched her sip her dishwater, fervently believing that it was actually hot chocolate. She seemed a little bewildered when I pressed the keys to her father’s car into her hands and thanked her for an eventful night. My taxi ride to pick up my rental was expensive, but worth every moment of silence. When you have a gut instinct early on, do not waste the time it may take to prove your instincts correct!

My pain, your gain.

Seth.

photo: rvw

I know I’m supposed to write about taking a village girl to a castle dinner, but I need to interrupt that program with a story about a very recent date. Back on track for next week!

I met her through total chance. The chance that my car would break down, the repair would take 40 mins, and the sandwich shop near the repair center didn’t have power so I was forced to move down the street to wait. The chance that the nearest restaurant would only be serving hard-serve ice cream because their power was out, too. The chance that my server would be an attractive redhead I’d met years earlier but never had a chance to spend time with. As well as the chance that our ensuing date would scare the living hell out of me. It’s barely October, but Halloween has already come to my house.

I’m a pretty tolerant guy. Open-minded, in fact. I like to try new things and it’s difficult to scare me. This woman seemed like a really good time and when she suggested we drive out of the city to an ice cream stand she’d not visited all summer, I was game!

I’d put my car in the shop again for a full inspection and borrowed my friend’s mustang convertible. I’m one of those people who feels torn between the inspiring power of an enormous engine and the giggle-inducing efficiency of a car that runs for days on a tank of fuel. As we powered down the highway, it was just fun. Lots of fun. The ice cream stand still churned it’s own amazing ice cream and had milk crates strewn across the grass to sit on. We sat and she made a show of adjusting the brevity of denim she was wearing as a skirt. She mentioned that she liked talking to me, that I made her feel comfortable.

This can mean one of two things. The first is very good, the second leads to what transpired.

We finished our ice cream and headed back to the city. It was one of those first cold nights we got this month and the stars were brilliant. Our conversation went back and forth with bits of personal information sprinkled among conversations on music, food, and places we’d traveled. Then she hit me:

“Seth?” She asked.
“Yup?”
“Do you think it’s weird for people to have sex with somebody they like, even if that person is dead?” She uttered, completely serious and wondering at my response.
“I think the person being dead makes it more about the live person than the dead one. Probably not so much about liking them at that point.”
She pressed. “Do you like me?”
“Yeah, from what I know of you. You’re smart and fun and really pretty.” I coughed out. Then she released the bit that causes this interruption:

“If you’re still alive at the time, would you promise to have sex with me after I die?” She asked, still straight-faced.

I said I didn’t know. I still don’t know. I don’t know what she needed me to tell her to set her mind at ease about the question of sex after death. I was sure, however, that I was not up to the task of figuring it out. I’m pretty open-minded, but I keep the line at live people. Live consenting people.

And giving consent before you die doesn’t count.

I guess the best part of this date was the experience I got out of it. It was still early enough after I dropped my date off to meet up with a buddy for a drink. I highly recommend that you find a friend to share your experiences with. They don’t need to have a lot of experience dating. All they need is a sense of humor and a belief that you are a person of value. Mine does. She went home after our drink to ask her husband if he’d promise the same. Perhaps it was the wine!

~Seth

If you’ve ever been on an internet dating site (I’m nearly certain you have!) then you’re at least aware of the profiles that seem too good to be true. This one seemed just that. She was tall, perfectly-built, seemed to have intellectual capacity and a sense of humor…and she lived nearby. The night we finally went on a date, I’d been working for the past four days straight and could barely function.

Don’t go on dates when you’re too exhausted to be yourself.

We went to a local restaraunt neither of us had been to before and were soon engrossed in conversation. I’d like to stress the grossness, because it was horrific.

My online goddess had morphed into a mean little sister ranting about how much she hated her older sister and went into detailed description of exactly what her sister looked like naked.

It’s a bad sign if you’re on a date and the conversation trails toward the nudity of siblings. If it starts to, change the topic.

I didn’t have the energy to turn the conversation so I tried to watch her mouth move instead of listening to her words. Yes, I know that sounds terribly cold of me, but I was knee-deep in a family rant and all I wanted was to go to sleep in a dark, cool room without this person near me.

As the evening wore on, we discovered a list of commonalities that would have put fire into any other date. But not this. Not this date with a woman I had somehow inspired to delve the parts of her family that made her most angry.

Even if you, for some reason, take a phone call from a distressed relative, do not share it with your date. Get out of the conversation and move back to more pleasant things. Continued impressions last longest and a date filled with pleasant interactions will do the most to fuel a line-up of later meetings.

The coffee was wearing off. It was getting late and she had to get up early to go horse-riding so it wasn’t too hard, thankfully, to get the check and pay. She didn’t offer to pay. She’d ranted about not being allowed to pay for things and wanting to be independent, but she didn’t offer to pay.

I typically go by a whoever invites, pays rule. This was not the case with another date, but that’s another thing!

As we drove down one of the roads near her house, I failed to notice an upcoming turn. There were no streetlights to illuminate the line of trees that jumped into the headlights of my car as my tired brain worked to process everything at once. There was squealing of brakes and a mental gnashing of teeth as I stopped the car in a cloud of gravel dust and turned to make sure my date was okay. For once, her eyes were wide and her mouth was a narrow line.

Perhaps my excellent exhausted-driver skills had taught her a lesson in priorities and she felt a new freedom in her personal and family life. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed anything the entire night. Maybe she was simply one of those profiles you see on online dating sites that you know are just too good to be true.

I deleted my profile the next day.

I couldn’t help but feeling a void that might have been filled with healing sleep. Next time I’ll take a taxi and know when it’s time to call it quits.

Have you run into any online terrors? I’d love to read about them!

~Seth

#2
5 Ways I’ve Ruined Dates

I’ve had some truly disastrous dates. I’m starting with the five most memorable and, with my luck, I’ll have many more stories by the time we get through the following. I’ve learned a lot from each experience but I continue to find that there is no better way to throw plans to the wind than to spend time with somebody entirely new.

1. Recycled a location for a date.
2. Nearly killed me and my date in a violent car accident.
3. Took a village girl to a castle dinner.
4. Got angry at a Jewish girl for buying bacon (I’m not Jewish).
5. Debated a date’s dying grandfather on the merits of his long-cherished baseball team.

My pain, your gain!

Seth