Jinx.

There are some things that will jinx a budding relationship. It’s not superstitious to believe that these things will destroy your relationship. It’s a fact. A scientific fact.

These are the things that will do it:

1. Program him into the speed dial on your phone. As soon as his number is assigned a speed dial key, your relationship is guaranteed to crumble.

*I have a dear friend who believes so strongly in the curse of the speed dial that she often refuses to even program a person’s phone number into her address book, opting instead to dial the phone number every time.

2. Make plans too far in advance. (Like more than a week.) Invite him to be your date to your friend’s wedding. Or take a trip. Do it. I dare you. See what happens.

3. Buy the big box of condoms. The universe will punish you for your assumption that you will continue having regular sex.

4. Buy him a present. Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Birthday. Put a lot of thought into it. Spend a chunk of money on it. As you’re paying for it, carrying the bag out of the store, listen for the death knell.

Ex Friends.

Any time you date a guy for a relatively lengthy period of time, you meet his friends. (You know, unless you are not his girlfriend). And you hang out with his friends. Some of those friends you put up with – like Gets Too Drunk at Every Social Event Guy or Good Buddy’s Pretentious (Kind of Bitchy) Wife. Those are the friends you put up with because (a) they’re his friends, and (b) you don’t have to see them that often. Then there are his friends who you really like. The ones you genuinely enjoy hanging out with. The ones you suggest getting together with, going out with, inviting over. The ones you wouldn’t mind hanging out with whether or not your boyfriend is there.

So when there’s a break-up, it’s generally understood that he keeps his friends, and you keep yours. It’s part of the break-up rules. And for most of his friends, it’s no great loss to you. Because you were just putting up with them anyway.

But what about when you were together for a long time, and you knew all his friends pretty well? Even the ones you were just putting up with are people you’ve gotten to know, spent a decent amount of time with, and have even grown on you a little bit. They’ve become part of your extended social circle. Sure, they’re the ones that you don’t mind not seeing anymore, but you’re still friendly with them when you run into them now and then. The real problem is the ones you actually like.

Can you still be friends with them?

I was with my ex for nearly nine years. We didn’t have a bad break-up, and we’re still friends. When we broke up, he moved out of town, and most of his friends still live in my town. And there’s one of them that I genuinely like – Avid Sports Fan Guy. I want to be his friend. I enjoy hanging out with him. (To be clear, I don’t want to date him – that’s an entirely different scenario). But I feel unsure about the whole thing. I’m never sure if we’re actually friends, or if I’m the weird ex-girlfriend of his friend who he hangs out with to be polite but secretly wonders why I keep calling him.

So we hang out – and it’s comfortable – but occasionally things get a little awkward. For example: friends normally ask about each others’ love lives. Is it weird for him to ask about who I’m dating because he’s friends with my ex? Is it weird for me to talk about who I’m dating because he’s friends with my ex? Are we supposed to talk about my ex (“have you talked to him lately/what’s going on with him”)? When someone asks how we know each other, do I say, “he was friends with my ex?”

I guess the bottom line is, I never really know if we’re friends or not. If I can claim him as my friend.

It’s Time, Peter Pan.

For men in their late 20’s early 30’s, it’s all about timing. When they decide they want to settle down, when they decide to get married, it’s a lot about timing.

Do they put thought into it or do they just decide it’s time? Is it just because their friends are all getting married and having babies? Or is that what they really want? Or is it that that’s what they really want, and their friends doing it just indicates to them that it’s time?

Avid Sports Fan Guy and I were discussing why 26 is too young, and his perspective was this: He is 28. Sure, he’d like to have a girlfriend. But he’d really like to just keep hanging out with his friends, drinking, watching sports, and playing video games. For as long as possible. He doesn’t want to put a lot of time and effort into finding and dating a woman. He’d rather play with his friends. But the older he gets, he finds fewer and fewer friends to do this with. Because they’re pairing off, getting married, and having babies. So he’s starting to realize that it’s getting to be time for him to focus on finding a partner. But if his friends were still available for him to play with, he would just keep playing.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to settle down, get married, and have babies. He does. But I think that the timing of it will be determined by his friends. When he runs out of enough friends to play with, he’ll refocus his attention to finding a woman to settle down with.
It’s clichéd (remember the Sex and the City episode?) and it doesn’t fit well with the romantic ideal that many women would like to believe – he meets you, falls madly in love with you, and can’t stand the thought of not spending the rest of his life with you. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Because that is what happens – he does fall madly in love with you and he does decide he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. But only if the timing is right. It’s not that he decides that it’s time to get married and he marries the next woman he meets. It’s more of a mindset shift. He starts looking at the women he meets using a different set of criteria. A more serious set. He starts making the decision to seek out more serious relationships and find women with more than a great body and high tolerance for Jaegermeister.

So if you meet a great guy, and you’re having visions of wedding gowns and babies, make sure he’s decided it’s time.

No Spark.

Too Old For Me Guy: He calls me and asks me out for a second date. We decide to go to dinner and a movie. Dinner is at 5. The movie is at 7. I’m anticipating that I’ll be home by 10.

It’s shaping up to be a wild night already.

Dinner is pleasant. Except for all his references to things that happened in the 80’s. When he was an adult, and I was in elementary school. He was in college while I was watching Sesame Street.

Then we go to the movie. Now, as I have discussed before, sitting in a dark theater can be extremely nerve-wracking and my hyper-awareness with the guy sitting next to me can fully distract from the movie. Is he leaning toward me? Where is his hand? It makes me a fidgety mess. I can't even watch the movie, really, let alone enjoy it.

This is not the case at this movie. In fact, I could tell you every detail of this movie. Probably recite some of the dialogue. I could write a comprehensive critique of this film. As soon as the lights go down, I forget he’s sitting next to me. Completely forget. I’m totally unaware of his presence next to me. At some point, he leans over to whisper something to me, and I’m so startled, I actually jump. Because I forgot that he was sitting there next to me. Not good.

By 9:45, the movie’s over and we get into his car. “Do you want to grab a drink?” he asks. He doesn’t sound too enthusiastic, and I suspect it’s because it’s probably close to his bedtime. I politely decline and he drives me home.

He gets out of the car and walks me 10 feet to my door. Unnecessary, but nice. Then he makes some small talk about what a nice time he had and how we should do it again. I mumble “sure.” Then he leans forward and gives me a quick peck on the lips. Dry, closed mouth kiss. It’s like kissing my uncle. Only less romantic.

There’s no way I’m going out with him again. If there’s no spark, there’s no point.

Please Forgive the Interruption.

Okay, so here’s what happened. I met a guy I liked, and we started dating. And I didn’t feel like it was right to write about him because we were dating.

But now we’re not. So I’m back.

Rejoice.

New Excuses.

So, after the debacle with Computer Geek Guy, Best Friend and I decided we needed a more solid game plan. Pre-planned excuses. So we spent an evening on the phone, (drunkenly) coming up with our Get-Out-Of-There excuse. Here’s what we came up with:

• Best Friend calls and pretends to be my roommate, who has just locked herself out of our apartment.
  

• The problems: (a) this is not a sufficiently urgent situation to justify immediately leaving the date; (b) I potentially wouldn’t have to leave at all – she could always just come and pick up my keys; (c) there’s no reason I couldn’t come back if I did have to leave; (d) he might offer to go with me.

• Best Friend calls and pretends that I have a work emergency that requires me to leave immediately.

• The problems: (a) if I have given the guy any amount of information about my job, this is not at all a reasonable excuse – I don’t have the type of job that really has the potential to have emergency situations at any time; (b) the believability of this one is low, because of the nature of my job and the timing – what kind of work emergencies (unless I was a medical professional – which I’m not) would come up during happy hour or on Friday nights?

• Best Friend calls and tells me that someone important to me is gravely ill/got in an accident.

• This is just bad karma. I firmly believe that if I pretend that someone got hurt, this will actually cause someone I care about to get hurt. Or cause me to get hurt. The universe does not like me to lie about things like this. (Every time I fib about being sick to get out of something, I get sick).

• Best Friend calls me and pretends to be my ex-girlfriend. Who wants to get back together.

• This one is funny. But I don’t want to pretend I’m a lesbian just to get out of a bad date. Also, this one makes me appear to be a pretty messed-up woman** – why would I have been searching for a man online if I was going to jump up at a moment’s notice and run off to get back together with my ex-girlfriend?

**I do realize that the fact that I’m actively spending quite a bit of time and energy coming up with excuses to get out of a bad date is probably objective evidence that I am, in fact, a messed-up woman. But he doesn’t know that.

At this point in our conversation, Best Friend’s boyfriend chimes in and says, “Why don’t you just be an adult and tell him that it’s not working for you and you’re not interested?” Hmmmm. Interesting idea…

Why We Don’t Like His Girlfriend.

On The Frisky, Wendy Atterberry recently wrote an article answering guys’ questions “Why Do Women….?” One of the things guys wanted to know was, “Why are women generally so bad at meeting their male friends’ new girlfriends?” Wendy’s answer was: “Insecurity. They may not want you for themselves, but they also don’t want any other woman stealing their place in your life.” I wholly disagree.

Here are some of the reasons why we don’t like our guy friends’ new girlfriends (which is what I assume the guys mean by women being “so bad at meeting” them):

We Just Don't Like Her.

When we don’t like our guy friends’ girlfriend it’s generally because we just don’t like her. We don’t like her for the same reasons we don’t like our gal friends’ boyfriends. All of our friends date people we don’t like. Just like our friends all have other friends that we don’t like. It doesn’t have anything to do with insecurity about our own place in their lives, it is just simply that we didn’t choose these new people. They’re not our friends, not the people we want to date. She might be too young, too dumb, kind of bitchy, too whiney, too boring, too giggly, too quiet, too talkative, or just generally kind of annoying. And just because my guy friend wants to have wild monkey sex with her doesn’t mean I’m going to want to be her friend. I’m not using the same criteria that he is to determine whether I like her or not.

It's Not About Her at All.

But, it might not be about her at all. It might be that we know these guys. I mean, we know them really well. We hang out with them a lot. We know what they’re really like. When they’re not trying to impress her. We know how they act when they’re not trying to get laid. We’ve seen the girls that came before her. We’ve heard these guys talk about women – the women they’re dating, the women they’d like to date, the women they’d like to have sex with, the women they’d never have sex with. And just like any of our friends, we want to see our friends with someone who’s a good fit for them. She might be perfectly nice, but one in a long line of flings we’ve seen that guy have. I’m not going to invest a lot of time and energy into getting to know her if I’m not sure she’s going to be sticking around. This doesn’t mean that I’m jealous of her potential to replace me in his life.

It's Not About Jealousy.

When I was in college, it was a popular theory with my friends that a guy wasn’t friends with a gal unless he wanted to sleep with her. Not necessarily in an actively Trying-To-Sleep-With-You kind of way, but in an If-It-Happened-It-Would-Be-Okay kind of way. And a gal isn’t friends with a guy unless she wants to keep him around as a back-up.

Maybe this was the case when we were 19 or 20 and everyone was a walking ball of hormones, horniness, and adolescent idiocy. Ten years later, when I’ve known these guys for years, and nothing has ever happened – it never will. That window has shut. And it shut a long time ago. I’m not going to look over at Avid Sports Fan Guy one day while we’re drinking PBR out of cans, sprawled out on the couch, shouting at the refs while we’re watching Monday Night Football and suddenly realize that he’s The One. It’s not going to happen.

Sure, you can make the case for the “Friends Who Fell In Love.” But I call bullshit. There’s a very clear line between friends and men I want to date: I don’t want to sleep with my friends. Period. If I don’t want to sleep with you, it doesn’t matter how much I like you, we will only ever be friends. Thank you and good night. End of story.

If there’s some dude that I’m lusting over, we’re not friends. Oh, we might be friendly – but he’s not my friend. And my guy friends – we’re friends. We’re never going to have sex. Those “Friends Who Fell In Love”? They were not really friends. They may have gotten to know each other, but there was some chemistry. And chances are pretty good that they don't know each other that well and/or haven't known each other for that long. Because even if there’s some chemistry initially, if you maintain the “friendship” for long enough, it goes away. And then you’re really friends.

My guy friends are my friends. Just like my gal friends are. Except they are dudes. And just because I like to sleep with dudes doesn’t mean I want to sleep with all of them. Just because there’s a guy around me, that doesn’t mean I’m suddenly overcome with the ravenous desire to rip his clothes off and hump him just because he’s a guy.

We're Taking Our Cue From Him.

If my guy friend really likes her, chances are I’m going to be “good at” meeting her. And I’ll make an effort to get to know her and try to like her. Because he’s my friend. And I want him to be happy. I think most people take their cue from the guy – if he’s clearly crazy about her, his friends (guys and gals) are going to make a lot more of an effort to get to know her and like her. If he’s ambivalent about her, his friends are going to be too.