Dating Outlook

I’ve been reading a lot lately. If you haven’t picked it up, I would highly suggest reading The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the first agreement, “Be impeccable with your word.� In short, say what you mean, mean what you say and if you say you are going to do something, do it. Anything that comes out of your mouth is a direct reflection upon yourself. If you use your mouth to spew verbal inferno, such is you. If you use your words with love, you will be engulfed with love.

I really think this should be a sub category to the golden rule. Anyone (everyone) who has ever been in, will be in, or is currently involved in a relationship, should take this concise but profound statement to heart. It really boils down to a respect issue more than anything else I think. I guess I characterize myself as a “what you see is what you get� type of girl. I am who I am and expect others to just be real with me. Respect me enough to just be upfront and honest with me. When empty promises are made and sweet nothings are spoken, it’s easy to get caught up in the romanticism until reality hits. Spare me the empties and nothings.

I guess I am ultra-critical of this especially with the men I date. If you tell me you’re going to call, I expect you to call. If you don’t and wait several days, I’m going to write you off and consider the source for next time. I won’t be so quick to expect much out of you. I’m a woman—duh. I want to believe you when you’re being sweet. I want to think you’re being genuine. Of course, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but after so many times getting burned, experience tells me when to back away from the fire.

Check out The Four Agreements at Don Miguel Ruiz’s website -

xx
Sandy

I have friends (a couple) who have been together for eight years. They basically grew up together. They began dating freshman year of high school and have been with only each other since. As far as their dating histories span, they’ve only got each other. They’re getting married in a year. I always had very romantic ideas about this type of relationship. I grew up wanting to have a very innocent courtship leading up to spending my entire life with that special someone. I wonder, how often does this happen? And more important, how often does it work? Do high school sweethearts stay together?

Of course, it depends upon the commitment from each side, the likelihood of either party suddenly deciding they’re unsatisfied or getting caught in the downward spiral of a mid-life crisis. There is a lot to be said about the level of commitment these couples have for one another. It’s pretty impressive. However, there is a lot to be said about people with dating history as well. With each person I date, I find that I learn more about myself. And just when I think I’ve learned it all, BAM I’m met with yet another startling revelation…

Dating is good for most people. I see it as a way to really find out the things you ultimately want (and absolutely do not!) in a mate. You learn what can and cannot be compromised and what things happen to be your deal breakers. Personally, I think dating the people with whom we’re most incompatible or we have the most conflict is a blessing. It may not feel like it during a blowout, but these people are our best teachers. Whether they (or even we) know it or not, these seemingly ridiculous mates’ idiosyncrasies and quirks are the things that keep us on our toes and make us learn to be patient. Hopefully, we’ll acknowledge and hone our own values and if we’re lucky, they might even make us think a little.

Last week was a first for me. I went on a –what by the end of night would have been called –date. Things were going alright—we got along well and the conversation was without many lulls. We had a few laughs. He seemed kind.

I wasn’t sure if this was a platonic meeting or quite what it was really. All I knew was that he insisted on paying despite my protest.

We were saying our goodbyes when he told me he was going to ask me a “methodologically incorrect� question. He asked if we had just been on a date. I told him I wasn’t sure, that all I knew was he paid, but according to his definition of “two people getting to know each other better by means of conversation,� we had indeed been on a date.

Up to that point, things were going great—we talked about studying together and maybe catching up again over coffee.

He then made it very clear he wanted to see me again… non-platonically. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling it.

I get frustrated with situations like this because here is a great guy—a doctor, a good conversationalist, a nice person with whom I seem to have a lot in common…but I’m just not interested. At all. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m broken.

I’m not a smoker. Of any kind. I tend to date other non-smokers. In the past, I’ve dated one smoker. It was never really an issue because he was always very respectful. He would smoke outside, away from me. When he was done, he would pop a mint or chew on a piece of gum and call it a day.

At the end of a first date recently, the guy I was with was walking me back to my car when he lit up. He finished the cigarette as we were about to say goodbye. Then it happened. He leaned against my car, pulled me in and kissed me. He tasted like an ashtray. Not that I make licking ashtrays a habit, but if I had to imagine what one tasted like, his lips pretty much nailed it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was a bad kisser.

Now, this issue opens a whole other can of worms. Could someone please explain to me how someone can be in their mid-twenties and not know how to kiss properly? How have they managed to dodge the inevitable teachers who would have been happy to put in the hours of making out to get them to learn how to –at the very least!—not be all over the place. In any case, to put it lightly, it left something to be desired. What’s worse is despite my subtle attempts to pull away, he had a grasp like The Rock and was holding onto me for what felt like dear life.

Maybe he doesn’t know how to take cues or insists on doing things his way. Maybe he’s a kissing rebel. Maybe he’s trying to start a bad-kissing revolution. Spare me.

My point is, my life would be a lot different right now if I would have gone ahead and married him. I can say that I would be miserable.

What I once thought would have been a fairy-tale of a love story of “star-crossed lovers,� was in reality the first real wake-up call of reality in my life. The end made me swear off men let alone marriage for a good couple of years. Ultimately, I got over it and it helped me wise up.

I realize now the differences in what I like and do not like in men and can pinpoint compatibility almost immediately. Call it intuition, call it a gut feeling, I can honestly say I know in the first three minutes I meet someone one-on-one if I would have enough interest to see them again in a non-platonic setting.

For those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to find the love of our lives in high school (or college for that matter), hopefully, we can go through a few who at the very least teach us something about ourselves.

I was naïve. I didn’t even know that the things I was dealing with in the relationship weren’t “normal.� I just thought these were issues everyone deals with at some point in time. Somehow, he’d even talked me into being “engaged.� I never really acknowledged it as that, but I had the ring…and technically said “yes.�

On the surface, it was everything I thought I wanted since I was little. It all felt very “Romeo and Juliet� to me. My parents didn’t really like him but they tolerated him for the sake of me… they had the same syndrome I did of just feeling bad for him. His mom didn’t want him to be with me. I got caught up in the idea of passion and having a soul mate.

It was my first relationship and it lasted for a little over a year and it ended with him cheating on me. Honestly, it was the best thing he ever did for me…

Ouch.

He would guilt trip me about the music I listened to, saying it was all in “vain.� He would make up rules that were convenient for him. For example, no cussing was allowed, but gradually choice words would make their way into his vocabulary, or “no touching below the waist� until he felt “deprived� and thought he was missing out. He would use God as a tool of manipulation and put on a “holier than thou� front. He even tried to tell me that according to his bible we were already “practically married� because we were committed to each other. To this day, I’m pretty sure this was just his futile attempt to get me into bed. Don’t think so buddy.

Have you ever been in a relationship with a control freak? Or someone who is manipulative? Everything is turned around so that you end up feeling guilty or foolish or naive for behaving in a certain way. It’s a strange phenomenon… I wonder if dating possessive people is indicative of being a masochist or just someone who likes to “change” people. Maybe it’s an ego thing, as Wayne Dyer suggests, since people can really only make a choice to change themselves…

My first boyfriend—quite literally the first boy who gave me any attention at all—was definitely not husband material. He was possessive. He came from an unfortunate home life and basically he was my lost puppy I wanted to save. He was unhappy. He was a jealous person. And he was very fanatical with his church. He (or his mother—he was only seventeen) made ultimatums about never being able to see me if I didn’t join his church.

At one point, his mom kicked him out of the house for seeing me. I was devastated. Being a very family-oriented person, I could not fathom the thought of ever being kicked out of the house. Here was innocent little me, who had been held up on some pedestal by most everyone she’d ever met and suddenly this woman who didn’t even know me wanted to kick her son out of the house for seeing me because I wouldn’t join his church. He stayed at his grandparents’ house for six weeks until they came to some sort of “agreement.� She decided in her head that I was going to be her daughter-in-law. At one point when he was talking to me on the phone, she even got on the other line to talk to me and apologize for the way she’d acted and said she “better get to know me better if I was to become her daughter�… I was seventeen.

Growing up, I was the girl who always thought she would find the love of her life early on. I’d marry my high school sweetheart, the person with whom I’d share every first. He would be my knight and I wouldn’t have to deal with dating. Well, they say “people plan and God laughs.â€? Hilarious. Clearly, it doesn’t take a genius to see that in writing for a blog called “dating outlookâ€? that things didn’t quite go “according to plan’ for me. Now, I couldn’t imagine my life if I were still with my “high school sweetheart.â€? I’d be in sorry shape, that’s all I’ve got to say…

Um…Excuse me? You want to “hang out� in New York City together when you couldn’t even walk two blocks away from campus to see me? Sudden change of heart or what?

I on the other hand, freaked out and decided to move not to just another city, not another state—but across the freaking country, 3000 miles away. To avoid him. What am I, in junior high?

Claiming an entire city to be “mine� that I can’t stand to have him there among eight million other people because (Oh dear God!) the heartache would be (sob) too much?

It’s funny, because it’s almost come full circle. I’ve ignored my gut long enough. It’s about that time for me to see what I’m missing in the city with or without him…

It’s weird. At times I feel like I’m reliving a situation I lived four years ago with my best guy friend at the time. I was head over heels for him. He admittedly liked me but was constantly on the fence. And once he’d get close to hopping over, he’d get drug back to the other side. It was a tug of war—and the worst kind. He would say one thing and do another. Actions speak louder than words… maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe he just wasn’t that into me.

What’s weird is he kept making a comeback every year or so to stir up just enough drama in my life to drive me a little crazy for a week or five. “Apologizing� for the way he “acted� or asking me if I would’ve ever had given him a “real chance.�

Finally, last summer he chose *my* city –the one I’d dreamed of living in for years (and had at one point temporarily during school to do an internship) –why does he move there? To do an internship. (Copy cat.) He contacts me knowing full well I’m planning on spending the better half of my twenties living there and suggests “hanging out� if we’re both living there…

How disappointing would that be…and no wonder the divorce rate is so high. I found out recently that the divorce rate for Southern California is teetering at 75%……….excuse me?

Hmm… no wonder some of the men I’ve encountered think they can buy me. They’ll suck me in with decadent dates and wondrous weekend getaways and before I know it, will prenup me (not that those are bad; for the record, I think they’re a great way to protect oneself) as I’ll naïvely be singing along to Ben Harper’s “Forever� while they’re in the premeditative mindset that I can be traded in like last year’s hit Hummer. Not so sure I’ll be finding the guy of my dreams in this neck of the woods…

xx

Sandy

This past weekend was one of those infamous weekends it seems where everyone gets engaged. And if the couple is close to me (as one is, thankfully—the asking was a bit overdue if you ask me), it’s great because I can genuinely be happy for them.

However, I honestly have a difficult time being truly happy for couples who have known each other arguably longer than the lifespan of a fish-fly and suddenly become bridegroomzillas with one thing and one thing only on their mind: the wedding day. It’s as if time and planning becomes a nonexistent entity thereafter.

Can I say something here…It is one day. One. Day. Do I need to type it again? Don’t make me do it.

Okay, alright. I can feel the newly engaged and the newlyweds glaring down on me and casting judgment as the bitter old maid (hardly…I’m kidding.) I am.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I pray that if I am ever blessed enough to find the love of my life and marry him that our wedding day is indeed great. But so help me God if it’s going to be so spectacular that one date is the climax of our relationship and our marriage is all downhill from there…

To be continued…

First dates can be tricky. If you’re not very familiar with the person, you may not know what to expect as far as who pays for what, how they’ll treat the wait-staff, or even if they’re an interesting person.

It’s possible that they’ll be more interested in talking about themselves than learning anything about you… or alternately, they’ll ask question after question about you that you forget to ask them about themselves in return.

It seems as though the coffee-date is close to perfect in that it’s an ideal get-in and get-out-if-you-need-to situation. It’s perfectly acceptable to end at the half-hour mark if you can barely stand the person you’re meeting.

But, it’s also “normal� to extend the chat for up to several hours and have it lead to yet another date if time and participants permit.

Check out Coffee Dates to get the goods on the stomping grounds of the coffee date.