Dating, like anything, has its ups and downs. For me, if it were weather, it would be like highs of 70 and lows of about -30 plus a wind chill. Or to borrow my (happily coupled) friend Lessley’s expression, “Dating sucks until it doesn’t.” Constantly focusing on the subject by blogging about it is partially to blame, as is my friends’ questions about when my next post is on the way (you can’t force genius, people — kidding!). But I have to admit that by focusing on it so much and by putting my personal life out there for people to comment on, I have figured out a lot in this past year.

A lot of forces have recently joined to help me begin to confront my number one obstacle, namely sucking at reading guys’ signals. My problems are twofold:

• I think guys who don’t like me actually do like me. (Evidence 1. Evidence 2.)
• I don’t know when guys are actually interested in me.

Now, at some point since I’ve started blogging, just based on law of averages, there has to have been a couple of guys who have been interested in me. Odds are, one or maybe even more have been guys I was or would be interested in. So how did I miss them?

I recently started reading this blog on Marie-Claire’s site, a Year of Living Flirtatiously. The author, Maura Kelly, posted something about how a woman needs to make eye contact with a guy roughly 13 times before he’ll approach her.

13 times.

Really. 13 times.

That, in a nutshell, is why I suck at dating.

I went out for happy hour with the bros on Wednesday, and D. was staring past me at one point. “Are you watching the game or is there a hot girl back there?” I asked. “Watching the game. I have a sixth sense for spotting hot girls, though,” he said. I don’t. I don’t even notice other people in the bar. When I hang out with my friends, I only really pay attention to them.

I had all this in mind on Friday night when I went out with two girl friends, R. and A. A guy at the end of our table looked over toward me when they were up getting beers, and I met his gaze. The feeling was so foreign to me. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that once at a bar, let alone 13 times with the same guy.

So my next step is to do exactly what Maura did when she found out about the magic of the baker’s dozen: test-drive that shit. When I go out, I’m going to practice making eye contact with interesting-looking guys. I think this strategy might also help when I’m out with the bros, too. I mean, after 13 looks to another guy, I’m clearly not dating any of the guys I’m with, right?