This Is Why I Don't Date

Dear Gauchegirl,

I have a question for you. As we all know, playing the dating game induces a lot of stupid behaviour. Normally rational and logical people can become complete and utter idiots as they start analysing and over analysing everything. Whatever actual mental capacity they initially possessed seems to take a leave of absence and the results never cease to amaze me. I mean take the example of this girl meeting a guy she’d been communicating with for the first time. You’d think this kind of thing should be easy.

This is the kind of situation where you write and you talk, you agree on meeting arrangements and there you go. If you like each other, you’ll go out again. Uncomplicated. Except for when someone can’t even commit to being in town in the first place and say they’ll let someone know mid-weekend. I don’t know about you but the words flaky, disinterested and to be honest, rude, come to my mind. That might be excused however by them later advising that they will definitely be around and would like to meet up, but coming in an email (somewhat immediately on the back of a phone call and another email)…other words come to mind. Words such as ‘back’ and ‘off’. It should never be necessary to come across as a stalker.

As far as first impressions go though, would that be any less favourable than ‘high maintenance’, which is possibly how this girl appeared when she again couldn’t seem to make up her mind. After agreeing on a meeting place, she asked to change it half an hour later and didn’t really give the actual reason. And this was before she’d even met the guy. Afterwards, probably in the space of about an hour she managed to bring death into the conversation, generally try and talk the man’s ear off and introduce him to her best friend. Not exactly typical. Shortly after that she practically pulled out the family pictures and began telling some of the stories that are probably best kept reserved for a later occasion.

Now none of this is actually the end of the world or anything. Although one might question the sanity of asserting you can be both neurotic and a good bullshit artist – keeping your mouth shut occasionally does have its merits. Surprisingly enough though, her evening actually lasted more than a couple of hours (which is longer than some of her friends can put up with really). At the end she tried not to put him off too much with her driving skills as she returned him to his car but then they parted ways with a perhaps somewhat vague assertion that they should do this again. Since then she has spent time going over what was said and done in an attempt to work out what his impression of her actually was. She’s not getting anywhere funnily enough.

Now my question to you is what breed of moron gets nervous about going out for a drink, makes a production out of meeting up with someone, leaves things kind of in the air and then spends her time worrying about where it all might go from here - by herself? Oh yeah, that’s right, YOU.

Sincerely,
Yourself.

P.S. I’m not talking to you till you get your brain back.

(I would just like to say that I am now over my slight aberration and back to my 'normal' slightly odd self)

Everybody Is Looking For Something

Well if you happened to be browsing through Sam And The City on the SMH website today, you might have come across What Modern Women Are Looking For. Yet another piece that purports to inform those disillusioned daters out there what it is that today’s gals happen to desire in a guy. Does it actually accomplish this? Well no, not really. It talks about the confusion felt by many out there at the moment. It talks about us wanting metrosexuals and retrosexuals. It also talks about women who don’t need men but nevertheless want them to be the type of guys who would be quite useful if in fact they were ‘needed’. No absolute conclusions are reached in the post, however it is expressed that at the end of the day, we still pretty much want what it was that we wanted a couple of decades ago. Whatever that was.

To be honest, I’m not actually knocking this lack of a definitive answer. As one of the commenters so rightly states, in order to answer what it is that women actually want - it really just depends. It depends because everyone is an individual, so no single standard will be applicable to everyone (duh!). And lets face it, it depends because women change their minds faster than the time it takes to order a Big Mac (if they happen to have made a decision in the first place), so whatever they want now, might only be good for the next five minutes or so. I’m not sure if I was being facetious then or not. In any case, theres no easy way of knowing the answer despite all the posturing that’s going on and you just have to look over at the other sam to see how some guys are getting caught in the crossfire.

And I do have sympathy for the guys. Really. Despite the fact that some facets of society have undoubtedly progressed, I think they still have the harder job. Women sometimes make it difficult for themselves, sure, but we’re not exactly blameless in the battle of the sexes. For example, the dark and brooding thing is definitely out. We are not doing the enigmatic persona right now. Strong and silent is a description that should fit your white goods and not your man. We want someone who will sit down to openly communicate and share with us instead. Someone who is in touch with their feelings and who seeks to function effectively within a co-dependant relationship (this is beginning to sound like a bullshit bingo wordlist). However if James Bond were to turn up tomorrow asking for a date…well we could definitely overlook any minor flaws.

We tell guys that all we want is someone with honesty, integrity and a great sense of humour and in the next breath allow that they have to be able to fix whatever is broken around the house, eradicate (and possibly exterminate) any insects or rodents, be willing to take out the trash and to look sexy doing it. Its not like women are fickle or anything though. We just think ahead. Or we don’t always think. You would have to say that we certainly think nothing of indiscriminately combining values, characteristics, traits and abilities on our running list of the perfect guy. But this is the way it always is. Its not as if people haven’t discussed this topic ad nauseam already but it inevitably gets brought up and off we go again. Its not that I mind though really, obviously, but I do kinda wish some people weren’t so self-righteous about it.

Not Quite The Ring Of Truth

Well it was brought to my attention the other day that I have perhaps been shooting myself in the foot. Figuratively speaking of course. I’m sure it would be possible to literally shoot myself in the foot…which now brings to mind the story of a guy I went to school with who went spear fishing one afternoon and didn’t account for the refraction in the water…but that’s a different topic altogether. In any case, I have a love of jewellery you see, its one of my concessions to being girly, and it is such that I feel sort of naked if I leave the house without it. As a consequence, people rarely see me without a pair of earrings and a number of rings, one of which I wear on the fourth finger of my left hand.

Now I know that there are guys out there who use this as a method of ascertaining whether a girl is single or not. When checking someone out, they manage to scan the chest, face and ring finger in about 2.3 seconds (it probably only takes about .3 seconds to check for a ring but why miss out on the whole show – and I am not particularly bothered by this as some women assess men just as blatantly, we can only identify men who are definitely married however). Anyway, if she is ‘encumbered’ shall we say, it is easy to assume that she is attached and therefore not fair game. At which point most guys move on. Now I also know that men are not always the most observant of creatures so I’m not sure why I thought it might be significant that the item I wear on my ring finger contains no stone. But I think I did.

Like the majority of females out there I assume, I am traditional when it comes to things like engagement rings. Well, in the sense that I think they should contain a diamond set in gold at least. Woes betide the person who gives me a round cut stone in yellow gold. Actually, I would probably count myself damn lucky to accept any ring that was offered out of love but given the choice, I’d opt for the princess cut in white gold. So sue me. Until I get to wear a ring for a reason other than my own vanity however, I choose to stay away from wearing anything that I believe might be confused as representing something that it doesn’t. Except that I obviously do because I was asked about it the other night. Or rather, I was asked if I was ever asked about it.

I must admit that I am asked about this ring a fair bit but mostly by females and pretty much because they think that its funky and slightly unusual. I’m not usually asked by guys – but then I wouldn’t be would I if they thought I was attached? I don’t think anyone could assume that it was a wedding band though, or an engagement ring. And even if it was a commitment or promise ring (and don’t get me started on what I think about those), you’re supposed to wear them on the other hand aren’t you? But maybe I have it backwards, and a girl is just not supposed to wear anything on ‘that’ finger till she’s no longer single. Maybe I have been sabotaging my chances because I’m actually comfortable being single. And maybe I don’t much care one way or the other but came up with nothing else to crap on about today.

Census Night

So last night was Census Night. Theoretically the whole country* sat down to fill out forms asking us about our key characteristics. Namely things like where we live, how old we are, what we do for a living and how much we earn. All for a good cause naturally. The Australian Bureau of Statistics gathers this information every couple of years and it becomes part of the basis on which things like our social services and facilities are planned and applied. At least that’s my understanding. It also has a number of other ramifications and the potential to tell us some really useful things**. Like where all the single men are!

Ok, that was a little tongue in cheek but the census does provide the means to do this. There are a number of nice little boxes corresponding to different forms of marital status (and why is it ‘marital status’ can I just ask, why can’t it be ‘singular status’ since that’s the way you started out– that way being married might be seen more as something you haven’t yet moved on to and not a state which you haven’t actually achieved). I of course had to fill out the form by striking through the box relating to the ‘single’ status so now that my form is completed, I will officially be recognised as being such. And just another statistic really.

That aside, whilst I was completing my bit on the house form, I had the vague thought that if they just asked a few additional questions then we could get a whole lot more out of the project. I mean I can understand that government bodies may wish to know if we are providing unpaid care and assistance to the elderly. Your average Joe however, might be more concerned with say how on Earth one can understand women...well it sounds plausible. The short answer here is of course that you don’t but experts seem to believe that you can intuit a number of things from multiple choice questions so you might at least be able to get a little closer.

For example, you could ask women when they want a man to do something for them do they a) hint, complain and / or nag repeatedly till it gets done, b) consider that as a female they do not need to ask for what they want but reserve the right to be pissed when they don’t get it, c) go out and do it themselves ensuring that it gets done properly and in good time, d) ask politely or e) achieve the end in another way, the logic of which would only be understandable by another woman. To the men we could ask are you of the opinion that women should a) speak when they’re spoken to, b) speak only in the ad breaks, c) only discuss topics that they actually know something about, d) converse if they can actually articulate a point in less than ten minutes or e) always express themselves as you value all forms of communication and would like to place no restriction on what actually comes out of their mouths.

I’m not exactly sure what the answers (in general) would tell you from these questions. If nothing else however, they would at least make filling out the census more interesting. What do you think?

*I read somewhere that some travelling circus performers did not get census forms despite them having been stationed somewhere for several weeks.
**For instance did you know that in the last census, 70,509 people declared themselves members of the Jedi faith.