English: (ship) half-submerged and sinking. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Anyway this is meant as self-deprecating humor. I am after all a comedian. I am a lousy dater because for my entire adult life I have been a serial monogamist so I really don’t know how to do the date thing. I talk to much, I reveal too much, and I am too hyper…but I am hardly nasty and I have heard so many stories from both genders of people being extremely mean or shallow on these dates…so please anyone reading this…the piece was meant as satire, self-parody…don’t take it so seriously! YIKES!
Dating is not marriage, dating is one big job interview after another. Marriage is trying to keep the job you have had for years already have interesting and exciting. Going from a long-term marriage to the dating pool is rough, I have no idea what I am doing, but I do know when a date is clearly not going to work out. And to avoid having “the talk” with some guy I barely know, I tend to instead self-sabotage the whole endeavor. The “talk” is the short brief chat about why I don’t think we are compatible as a romantic couple. I don’t like getting “the talk” from a man who isn’t interested in me, and I hate giving it. Since I date mostly men I meet online, it is a total crap-shoot. I can’t really tell much from a profile, and I have no idea if I will end up having any type of connection with the person. Most of the time I don’t, and that is not their fault, but merely the nature of the beast. I don’t get offended or upset when I can tell a man is not viewing me as a potential match. It is the meeting of two total strangers, it is rare when sparks fly.
I don’t really understand what makes attraction work, but I do know that on a few dates I wanted to crawl over the table and start making out with a guy I had just met. I didn’t publicly make-out with a total stranger, but in the two times that I have felt that right away, I ended up briefly dating those men. The two suitors looked nothing alike and had totally different personalities, I can’t explain why both of them were appealing to me, but there it is. When the initial attraction is not there and the conversation is forced or awkward, then it is time to have “the talk” or resort to self-sabotage.
There are generally two methods of self-sabotaging a date. The first I call the super clingy needy crazy girl, sometimes the super clingy needy girl act can backfire, and it also makes you look crazier.
- Talk about marriage immediately
- Talk about babies immediately, wanting to have babies, your friends babies etc. anything about babies
- Discuss with your date things that you will do in the far future, things like “I can’t wait to hang with you at Christmas!”
- Ask way too many super personal questions right off the bat, such as “How many women have you slept with?”, or “How many girlfriends have you had?”
- Talk about how much you love the man’s neighborhood and would love to live there
The dark torpedo – my preferred method and honestly I do this a bit subconsciously when I don’t even mean to go there.
- Go on and on about my divorce
- Talk about being on medication for my clinical depression due to my divorce
- Ramble on about every ex-boyfriend I have had, or my ex-husband
- Don’t ask the man any personal questions about himself
- Discuss politics, history, world wars or something incredibly dark or horrible
- Lament on all of my family drama and dysfunction
- Say things like “I really shouldn’t be dating anyone right now”
The torpedo of darkness usually works, and the sad thing is that it sort of comes on me automatically. It isn’t that I have a master plan and want to be mean, I just don’t watch my bad habits if I am not really into a guy. And if he isn’t getting the hint I tend to lay it on even thicker. I would rather have him think that I am broken and not available than to think it is something about him that I don’t like. Because usually I don’t know why I am not attracted to the guy, I couldn’t tell you if you put a gun to my head. It is just a quality that can’t be explained, but if it is not there, then it is not there. I know I have gone through the opposite myself.
Some of my worst dating stories involve the following
- A date who got noticeably offended and disgusted when I revealed I was from Missouri
- Another man who bitched about an ex-girlfriend from….20 years ago.
- A date who said his ex-wife was a bitch in the first five minutes
- A date who proclaimed “I don’t get emotionally attached” and then kept trying to steer the conversation to sex
- A date who told me how much he missed his ex and hoped they would get back together
- A man who openly told me he wanted to date a friend of mine – and yes this did happen.
If you are stuck in a situation where you think a guy is a decent fellow but you don’t really feel the urge to take the relationship further, use this as a simple guide to drive him away. So far it has worked every time. I accidentally learned these techniques from having one horrible date after another and trying to date too soon after I got divorced. And if you meet a guy you actually want to see again, I strongly suggest you avoid doing any of the above, because you really want to look your best and not like a crazy clingy woman or a dark cloud of doom.
Related articles
- Date Me, Not My Uterus (bycommonconsent.com)
- Sex After Divorce: The Do’s And Don’ts Of Having Casual Sex After Divorce (huffingtonpost.com)
- Post-divorce rebound: A requisite heart pummeling (wealthysinglemommy.com)
- Tales From The NYC Dating Scene (huffingtonpost.com)
- Love snobs killing shot at happiness (dailytelegraph.com.au)
- Vulnerability Alert: Thoughts on Dating (managingfibro.net)
- Don’t sabotage your relationships (ramsonmumba.wordpress.com)
- Tips for Dating After Divorce (herstontennesseefamilylaw.com)
- Dating Online: The Coward (julietjeske.wordpress.com)
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i’m doing a master’s in clinical counseling. dark torpedo sounds ideal with the potential for practicing reflection and clarification microskills – i’ll take three, please!
I don’t understand what you men’t with “clarification microskills”. Unless it’s the dark torpedo that is a microskill. To me it would seem to be more respectful to a date to just state if one is interested or not and that would be a skill to have the ability to say no when it’s NO and yes when its YES.
I have found it is better to not openly confront people. Men don’t take the rejection well. And honestly it is more subconscious when I do this, not really a master plan I just sort of don’t hold back.
This would SEEM like the honorable thing to do, but Juliet is right. Men do NOT take rejection well. I have had far too many get nasty and mean when I tried to have “the talk”. I find that ludicrous since I’m sure the feeling is mutual, but it doesn’t matter they get mean more often than not.
here’s a nice one on counseling microskills.
http://www.thewaywithinn.com.au/docs/Counselling_Microskills.pdf
there are potentially tremendous benefits and perils in any interpersonal exchange. there are almost no benefits associated with living a loveless, isolated life. i say the risk of rejection or of having a partner explode into an episode of verbal violence is quite worth it. i still enjoy meeting women online despite the adventures described here: http://www.facebook.com/tomasz.dolak/posts/247094212014121
Well you are a man and not a woman and the experience of both genders is quite different. I have had guys stalk me, and harass me. I don’t like to “go there” but I also like to not feel threatened. So I do what I do, this whole thing is rather tongue in cheek by the way and if anything self-deprecating. But men and women aren’t wired the same way and we never will be, so the rules of behavior are different for us. I just had one blow up at me online, before I even met him. He got mad because we were chatting back and forth and my phone battery died. I had to charge it up during a rehearsal and I got back to him three hours later. He was completely psycho and sort of blew up at me. This was a total stranger who I had no history with whatsoever, so if he is going to react like that before I even meet him, imagine that lunatic on a date.
Hi, the fact that this reply comes 10 days after you made this comment kind of segways from the guy that blew up at you for your 3 hour communication gap. Anyway you are saying that men and women are differently wired. I will not challenge that position in itself. However I can offer this. Not all men deal with rejection in the same way. Rejection is difficult for everyone so the reality is that all men will be upset in some way because of it. The reaction to rejection depends in part of what psychological/physological need/desire the guy hopes to fullfill. By getting to know you, and or have a relationship with you regardless of the anticipated duration of the relationsip. So that is the fuel to his emotional reaction the higher the anticipation and desire the more fuel on the fire. So if the guys anticipation goes up there is more energy to contain. I think that this is one reason why finding the right time place and context to learn to know a person Is key. On the other hand I’m sure you have run into people(men) with completely outrageous reactions that there is no way you could anticipate. There is no patented method which is 100% reliable to judge where a situation may go and you basically said that. So I will just end here with making this somewhat confusing statement. If I guy can’t take your rejection well he is probably not good relationship material because of poor disapointment handling skills.When he takes it to well he either is not that into you or has low selfesteem and that is not good either OOR he is just right but NOW you have rejected him. TEHEE.
So I obviously know you, because I didn’t mention the man and the three hour delay in this blog. In fact it hadn’t happened at the time of this writing. If you could just stick to the blog and not wrap in other things I have said outside of the blog that would be great. It is just confusing as hell for anyone reading these comments. They have no idea what I may have told you in a private conversation.
I just realized that I did mention the three hour psycho! Sorry about that. I confuse myself sometimes because people I know have done exactly what I thought you just did! HA! Sorry!
Well, I have to agree with you that anyone who doesn’t like cats is a loser!
Many men will subconsciously just not like cats because it is deemed “feminine” and they are insecure about their manhood.
Just something I thought I would add that may be of use in your torpedo arsenal.
I had a feeling that leaving replies to comments that are since 10 days ago would cause some confusion. I enjoy reading your blog and I much appreciated the video suggestion you forwarded to subscribers today. F.Y.I. don’t live in N.Y. and never have and I don’t even reside in the U.S. I’m a blog reader that’s all.
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