12.08.09
The dark secret of online dating for women
Horrible subject lines from many, many guys.
I stumbled across Matt from PlentyofFish’s great blog post on terrible subject lines, which describes my online dating experience to a “T.” (Then I commented on it, and then I realized it was from last year. Still, timeless.)
12.07.09
Coffee is for closers, aka closing the deal | Baby step #4
“I’d wish you good luck, but you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it.”
I was passing by my favorite bar tonight, so I decided to stop in for a happy hour beer. I figured if there was no one else to talk to, I could talk to my friend, who tends bar there most Mondays.
There had been a guy standing outside who looked like he could be my friend’s younger brother: same surfer look, blond hair, and plaid shirt. He came back inside and sat down next to me, then immediately got up and start affixing something to the door. Me, my friend the bartender, and a couple other guys started talking about fried chicken. You know, as you do with strangers at a bar.
Hot surfer dude sat back down, and we started chatting. It turns out he’s from my home state and not that far away. I think he’s right out of college. (My 15-year reunion is in May.) We talked about fake IDs, he told me his foolproof method of faking the ID from our home state (a key element is having a friend who works at Blockbuster, because they use the same lamination technique), what we did for a living, NASA and rocket scientists, the cellophane he taped over the broken window in the door, other random things. Did I mention he was hot? And nice? And hot?
I realized, however, two things:
- I have no inner cougar. Some girls do, some girls don’t. My friend J, who calls this kind of hot young thang a “puppy,” does. I admire that. A lot. I mean, it would be kind of fun, right? It seems like it would be fun.
- I am not a closer. Even if, at some point, I thought, “I want to smooch this guy” or, perhaps, “I want to see this guy again,” I have no idea how to get the conversation headed in the “exchanging phone numbers” direction.
I suppose “closing the deal” should be baby step #10 or something, but I’m really so hopeless after the eye contact thing that I don’t know the proper order after that. So I apologize for the non-sequential baby steps. Expect more of the same. #22 will probably be “Introducing yourself” or something.
So how does one close the deal? Should a girl let a guy do that? If so, how does she pave the way? Thoughts?
As a sidenote: Ooh, young Alec Baldwin. So hot. So angry.
Present your best self | Baby Step #3
One piece of dating advice that I think is really, really true is to be yourself, but be a better version of yourself. This isn’t to say that you should mask who you really are or pretend to be something you’re not in order to make a good impression (thus setting yourself and your date up for disappointment when the real you inevitably reveals itself down the line. It’s to be the best you, the good you, but still the real you.
Still not buying it? Let’s use an analogy. Sometimes, on weekend mornings, I leave my house with bedhead. I don’t put on makeup. I wear the jeans and t-shirt I wore to the bar last night and they may still smell faintly of beer or smoke. I can’t tell, because I smell faintly of beer or smoke. That’s three-months-in me.
When I go on a date, especially a first date, I make sure my hair looks like how I want it, not how it ended up that day. I reapply makeup. I wear something flattering. I don’t make myself look like something I’m not, but I put my best foot forward, physically. Although that’s not the real me everyday, that’s the real me on my best days.
It only makes sense to put your best foot forward, personality-wise, too, right? So why is that so hard to do?
A friend fixed me up on a blind date a few weeks ago. “Before you meet him, I need to brief you on O.,” she said. “He’s very dry. For the first few weeks I knew him, I thought he hated me, because he just didn’t talk. But now he’s one of my dearest friends and he talks my ear off.”
Armed with this information, I met him for a beer. She was right. He was very dry. Very. I was working very hard to get him to talk and to open up. He didn’t ask me many follow-up questions when I would talk about myself and seemed uninterested in what I had to say. (He didn’t even seem that impressed that I was in a band, and let’s be honest, if I don’t wow a guy with that, the “life history” bag of tricks” is pretty damn empty.)
So I kept asking him questions. I filled the silent spaces. I made him feel comfortable, or tried to. And at the end of the night, he asked if I wanted to hang out again. I said sure.
As I thought about it after, I felt frustrated that I was working so hard. I mean, come on! It’s a first date! Ask the girl some questions! Is this a sign of what’s to come if we date? Am I going to have to do all the work? And I kept coming back to my friend’s warning. That’s what made me agree to see him again, because to be honest, it was a fine evening, but it wasn’t fun. But he was opening up toward the end, and he was a nice guy. So why not?
And then I realized that as much as he wasn’t being the real him, I wasn’t being the real me. I was appalled at my somewhat forced laughter that night. I’m normally fine with pauses in conversation. I emphasized parts of my life that normally, I would not emphasize. I wasn’t my best self. I was an annoying first date self. That helped put it all in perspective for me. I wasn’t just giving him a second chance; he was giving me a second chance.
So I hope I make some progress on this step in “date” #2 (it feels like too much pressure to call the “getting to know you” evenings dates). We’ll see.
11.08.09
Eye contact | Baby step #2
When I read that a woman needs to make eye contact with a guy 13 times before he’ll approach her, I had a dating epiphany. Though, like most of my dating epiphanies, it takes a long time for me to go from realization to implementation.
A couple of months ago, after my band played a show, I noticed a guy checking me out. I initially had to congratulate myself on recognizing that he was doing that. (My general obliviousness is my biggest dating obstacle.) But then I thought, “Wait a second! I can, with my actions, actually encourage him to come talk to me!” So I made eye contact. Twice. The second time, it was like I had sent out a homing beacon. The guy came right over. Nice!
We chatted for a bit about various things (nothing particularly memorable two months later). I don’t know how old he was, but he had the awkwardness of a guy in his mid-20s, complete with goofy nervous laugh punctuating comments that weren’t really funny. It’s OK, though. He might have been nervous and I was nervous, and he was nice and I was nice, and it was a pleasant conversation. No sparks, though. He said he’d come see another show I was playing that Saturday, he asked if I wanted to hang out before then, I said I couldn’t before but I could after. He seemed disappointed and asked for my number, which I’m sure was his way of making a graceful exit, and I was fine with that. I think we each realized, after talking to each other for about 5 minutes, that nothing was going to happen.
But the end goal wasn’t the point. The point, for me, was that I made eye contact with a boy! Yes, this is stuff I should have figured out in high school, but for some reason I haven’t. Baby steps.
10.23.09
Date weight and “hot girl” jeans
Ladies, you know what I mean by "hot girl" jeans.
Viv, over at Bread and Boys (my new favorite single-girl blog), just wrote a really great post on date weight. She writes:
But the term “date weight” takes the form of many names. Among some girls it’s also known as the “Hey baby” weight. It’s different for every girl, but it’s the size & shape you achieve when random people on the street eye you once-over and yell “Hey baby!”
Last summer, I was on fire. Well, as “on fire” as I get. Dudes were all over me, as much as dudes are ever “all over me.” But I dated two guys that summer and smooched a third that year. I haven’t done that well since college. I’ve been wondering why this year, I’m so off my game. Or rather, why I have no game. When I read Viv’s post, I realized it’s because I’m no longer at my “Hey baby” weight.
Like her, no one in their right mind would call me big. But I was running a lot more last year. I was fit and strong, and, probably more important, I was confident–I knew I looked pretty good.
The barometer of my “Hey baby”-ness became my pair of skinny “hot girl” jeans. When I bought them, they were like a trophy–a recognition of my physical accomplishments. I wore them out a lot last summer, and I looked gooooooood. By November, I could fit into the hot girl jeans, and they looked…fine. I wore them to a holiday party in December and kept asking my friend, “Do you really think I can pull these off? Maybe I should run home and change.” (Yeah, I was that girl. Annoying.) By January, they were not to be worn in public.
And that’s about where I’ve been ever since. Time to start hitting the pavement! I need to get my game back. Time’s a-wastin’.
Photo by bluryee. CC 2.0.
Who is on these online dating sites?
I went to the Apple store yesterday to upgrade my iPhone. The place was jam-packed, and the super-nice Apple guy helping me was looking for an available computer. “Excuse me,” he said to a homeless-looking hippie dude who was typing an email on OKCupid, my second-favorite dating site. “Are you activating an iPhone?”
“Um, no,” the dude grumbled, avoiding eye contact.
“Could I ask you to use one of the computers over there?” he asked sweetly, pointing to the other side of the store. “We try to keep these for iPhone activation only.”
The dude mumbled something, then said, “Give me a second.” He finished typing his email, logged out, and grudgingly picked up his things and walked to the other side of the store.
Maybe that’s why I haven’t been getting good matches through OKCupid lately: I don’t rate well with the hippie homeless-looking types. Which, quite honestly, I’m fine with.
10.06.09
Ladies, if you’re going to go crazy, don’t do it at work
One of the most unbelievable parts of “He’s Just Not That Into You” was how all the female characters just sit around at work talking about boys. They didn’t work at the Gap, they were supposed to be professionals. Women don’t do that. Maybe a quick conversation here and there, but seriously? Agonizing over every detail, crying in the workplace? Doesn’t happen.
Or so I thought. One Tuesday, my coworker–let’s call her Kara–spent about a half hour solid telling her two cube mates how she had had this fabulous dinner with her ex. They had such a great time, it was just like old times, etc. etc. So she had it all planned out: she was going to meet him for drinks–not dinner, and not to talk because they’ve done all that, you know?–and she was going to look fabulous. And then I didn’t hear what she had decided was going to happen next, but judging by her tone, he was going to fall back in love with her.
Ed. note: This post consists of a long story and a short analysis. If you get tired of the story (as I and my coworkers did), feel free to skip down to the analysis. I wish I had had the same option.
The next day, she was irate. IRATE! So, she recapped the entire story from the day before, and then talked about how she sent the ex an email saying, “Let’s just meet up for drinks. I don’t want to do dinner. I don’t want to talk about everything, because we’ve done that, you know? I don’t want to talk about how the west coast never has thunderstorms. (Note: We had just had the first thunderstorm in my 10 years of living out here.) Let’s just meet up and have fun.”
And what did he do?
He said no.
Can you believe it? (Her cube mates couldn’t, and that went on for about 3 minutes straight.) BUT WAIT! “You won’t believe what he did. He said, ‘I have some errands to run on Saturday afternoon. Come with me, it’ll be fun.’” Errands?!?!?! (No one could believe that, either.) “So I wrote back to him, and I said, ‘Errands? That doesn’t sound too fun for me.’ And he wrote back saying, ‘I’ll buy you an ice cream.’” An ice cream?!?! Who does he think he is? I mean, really, an ice cream? What’s he thinking? He invites you to run errands with him?
Oh, but wait. Recounting the events wasn’t enough. “Let me read the email to you,” Kara said, and then proceeded to live up to her word–and every word, in fact, in the entire email exchange. And then ask for feedback and support that every one of her sentences said the right thing in the right way and then that every one of his sentences said the wrong thing in a completely unbelievable way. And on and on for about 45 minutes.
They delved into the fact that he specified “afternoon,” meaning they wouldn’t be going out to dinner, right? They all concurred. That, apparently, was what was really offensive about it. “I mean, I have to run errands with him and he’s not even going to buy me dinner? He’s only going to buy me an ice cream?”
Later that day, Kara says to her cube mates, “So, I’ve been emailing my sisters and my mom about this all day.” (Her manager, who is her cube mate, found this a perfectly fine way to spend a work day.) “My sister said…” and then I put on my headphones because I was already sick of hearing the story. (Note: Just a few hours earlier, Kara told me she couldn’t do something–something that is part of her job–because she was too busy.) This story continued for another half hour, during which she gave the reaction of each of her family members.
Wasted work time (cumulative, to date): 1 hour 30 minutes + unknown time emailing her entire family.
Number of people consulted: 5
On Wednesday, she still couldn’t believe it. Her cube mates (enablers) asked her what she was going to do. Had she responded? “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Kara said. “I met this girl at the gym last night–she seemed the outdoorsy type–and she was like, ‘You’re going to hang out in his car with him all afternoon?’ I mean, I don’t even know this girl, and she was all shocked.”
But really, Kara didn’t want to spend her whole day waiting around for him, because he was probably going to make her wait. They discussed other possibilities. Say no! Make other plans! Everyone else in the office likely would have voted for: Shut up and move on! After 15 minutes deliberation, she decided that she was going to schedule a date for that night, so that even if the ex asked her out for dinner, she wouldn’t be able to go. “Sorry, I have a date,” she’d say, and he would forever rue the day he asked her to run errands with him and offered an ice cream.
As she came back in from lunch with another coworker, we could all hear her saying, “And then he offered to buy me ice cream? Ice cream. Can you believe that?”
Toward the end of the day, her cube mates, the department that was largely responsible for us being about 4 days behind on an unmovable deadline, thoughtfully asked her if she’d thought more about what she was going to do.
Fortunately, there was this guy who she wasn’t very excited about, but she thought she could schedule a date with him for Saturday night. They had gone out before, and she had decided that she wasn’t interested in him, but by leading him on and setting up a Saturday night date, that would help her get her mind off things. Because clearly, the looming deadlines and huge budget overruns she was facing weren’t doing the trick.
Wasted work time: 2 hours 45 minutes.
Number of people consulted: 7
Now, I’ll be honest. At this point, I thought that Kara wanted to be more important to her ex than she actually was. I’ll spare the Thursday and Friday recaps (she did share the story with more complete strangers), and jump straight to Monday–the denouement!
“So, what happened?” everyone (meaning her two cube mates) asked. (Note: an hour later they would say in a staff meeting, “Well, since everything is running so far behind, we might have to work this weekend.” They expected pity, they received none.)
“Well,” Kara said. “So I got up for my morning run, you know, because I knew I would just go crazy [Ed.: too late] if I didn’t run. And I’m coming back from my run, and it’s like 11, and I have to get upstairs and get showered because he’s going to call me at noon, right? So I’m walking past the coffee shop near my apartment, and there’s this guy sitting there who is SMOKING!” Cue oohs and ahs from the cube mates. “And I’m totally sweaty, and my hair looks like shit,” she says. Cue “Your hair is great” type comments from the cube mates. “But so I grab a copy of Vogue, and I sit down at one of the tables. And then they guy comes over and sits by me, and we start talking.” They exchange numbers, etc.
“And it was so perfect, because it totally kept my mind off things. I was all excited about this guy, and I just floated upstairs to my apartment. And then [the ex] called and said, ‘Could we meet at 2 instead?’ and I was like, ‘That’s fine!’ I was in such a great mood. I didn’t care!” But what’s she going to do with two hours? So she wandered around the streets, killing time, because she actually had nothing better to do than to just wander around the streets. I can not conceive of such a state of being.
Then they finally met up, and as they’re walking to do the first errand, he says, “Hey, are you dating anyone?” And she says no, are you. He says, “Yes, but I’m not that crazy about her. Hey, do you remember what you said to me when we broke up?”
Kara filled in the backstory. When they dated, he always wanted a Porsche and was constantly talking about it. And she was so sick of hearing it, that when they broke up, she said, “If you ever get a Porsche, I’ll help you christen it.”
To answer your questions: Yes, that does mean what you think it means. Yes, she did say that loudly while at work in an open office, so all her coworkers heard.
And, yes, the “errand” was buying himself a used Porsche.
She didn’t help him christen it, he drove her around a little bit before they went out with his friends. Then she went into a long talk about how he was one of the good guys, and how he was really worth fighting for. That’s why she keeps hanging out with him. She knows they’re going to end up together someday. Her cube mates concurred.
Wasted work time: 5 hours.
Number of people consulted: 7+
Lessons learned from this experience:
- There are women who are as embarrassingly unprofessional as the women in “He’s Just Not That Into You.”
- If you can’t stay sane at work, call in sick. Seriously, we don’t need to be exposed to your self-obsessed rantings. We have work to do.
- If a guy wants to run errands with you, he’s probably not that into you. You’re in the “pal” section of the friend zone, and you’re not getting out.
- If your coworker starts telling a story in which it’s clear that she’s obsessed with a guy who is not that into her, it is not kind to let her continue in her delusional state.
- If you wait around an entire day for a guy to pick you up to do errands with him after you have pretended to protest, he knows that your life is empty without him. He’s never going to be into you because it’s too much pressure to be someone’s life.
- If a guy wants you to christen his new car, he’s definitely not that into you. You’re an eff buddy. That’s it.
- If, after all this, after he’s sent you numerous and fairly clear signals that he’s not that into you, you still think that the guy is worth fighting for and that you’ll end up with him, you are insane.
- If your coworkers agree with you, they, too, are insane.
- If your company is burning through money faster than expected and your coworkers’ benefits are “on the table” and the company is talking about how they’re trying to avoid cutting staff and one person spends the equivalent of almost an entire work day talking about their meaningless personal drama including an hour or more about “christening” her ex’s car with him, then please, fire her ass first. Please.
09.14.09
Talking to Strangers | Baby Step #1
At brunch the other week, my friend KP and I started talking about dating, as we always do. She told me about a friend of hers who had just moved to Chicago from San Francisco. “You know what’s different about Chicago?” he said on a recent visit back. “When you go to bars there, you don’t just talk to the people you came with.”
That is so true. I remember one night when KP and I were out with a group of other single girl friends. We were going to meet boys. Our friend T., who has a longtime boyfriend, found a spot where we all could sit–on the kegs in a side room–and we all rebelled. No guy is ever going to talk to us back here! But we were looking at it at too micro a level. No guy was going to talk to us, yes, but not because we were hidden away. It’s because we were in San Francisco.
It’s not that people here are unfriendly, it’s just that it’s not a “talking to strangers” culture. It’s a “I go out to have a good time with my friends, and, maybe, their friends” culture.
I realized what I needed to do: I needed to learn how to talk to strangers.
Here’s the other insight about dating in San Francisco that I recently gleaned from a friend: no one’s got game. “You go to New York, you go to L.A., and guys know how to ask for your number,” she said. “Here, all the girls are all third-wave feminist about it. They try to be interesting.” At first, I wanted to disagree. But after about five seconds, I knew she was right. I try to be interesting. I talk about New Yorker articles and how effed up Iceland’s economy is. That’s interesting and challenging and life-partnery. But it sure isn’t sexy.
So I’m starting a whole new tactic with this blog. I realized that–like sports, like learning an instrument, like anything, really–if I want to improve, I need to work on my fundamentals. I used to have OK game. Now, I have no game. I need to get game. Talking to strangers is step 1.
Tonight, after a slog of a day at work, I decided to take a detour on my way home at my friend’s bar. I went in, said hi, and immediately A., a fellow musician who I’ve met before, said, “Sit down, have a beer.” So I did. We talked about music, remote islands, pirates, the East Coast (he’s from Pennsylvania). It was fun. Then he got up to start playing the house piano. Mission accomplished.
I was about three-quarters done with my beer and thinking of heading out when J. sat down. Out of the corner of my eye, he seemed kind of cute. I saw he had a hardbound book. OK, I can do this, I thought. “What are you reading?” I finally asked. We started talking about language, linguistics, where he’s lived, where he lived with his ex-wife, and where I’ve lived. And, also, his girlfriend and her two kids. After a while, I had to head out and he had to head out, so we introduced ourselves in that oddly comfortable yet still odd way that comes at the end of a long conversation.
As I hugged my friend goodbye, he said, “Did you get that guy’s number?” I told him about the girlfriend and kids. But it wasn’t about that. I was pretty excited about the basic, though boring, achievement of just talking to someone I’ve never talked to before.
Baby steps. Next up: remembering how to flirt.
08.10.09
Dealing with disappointment
One tipsy evening, one of my bros kept saying, “N., you’re so awesome,” and giving me hugs. Repeatedly. My friend R., knowing that I had a friend crush on this particular bro, observed all this, and the next day, she IM’d me. “He totally likes you,” she said. “You have to make your move.” No way, I insisted. He was just drunk and lovey. Plus, he likes Asian girls. She held firm. “He definitely is interested. You just have to move out of the friend zone.”
I didn’t know how to do that, but it got me thinking: “Maybe he is interested.” He and I became super fast friends, and we had just had this great conversation where we basically told each other how glad we were that we had gotten to know each other. He has pretty much all the qualities I want in a guy: smart, funny, goofball sometimes, serious other times, really fun, moral compass, good to his friends and family. Why did I think that someone like him wouldn’t like me? Besides the fact that I’m not Asian, of course. And that, in every “deep” conversation, we both kept reiterating that we were glad to be friends. I got my hopes up.
He wasn’t interested in me. He was just drunk and lovey, a fact I realized when he told me later that he didn’t really remember much of that evening. And if that wasn’t clear enough, when a bunch of us went out a few days later, he hung out with a friend of ours (who is a great person who happens to be really cute and sweet and Asian), then he stopped responding to my IMs, emails, and texts entirely for the next, well, ever since, because now they’re dating (or nearly dating).
I was a little heartbroken. I had been perfectly fine with my friend crush. It made me really look forward to hanging out with him, yet there was zero pressure because I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Perfect, right?
So although I had actively tried to avoid it, I had gotten my hopes up. And then I had gotten them dashed. I was mad at myself for ignoring the evidence. I was also mad at myself for thinking that maybe he had liked me and I had missed my chance. I was mad at myself for taking someone else’s advice when I knew (I knew!) that I was right.
After a while, I realized that A) I was being bratty and B) the problem wasn’t that I had let myself hope. The problem was that I wasn’t dealing well with disappointment. Actually, the problem was that I was taking it as disappointment. It felt like rejection when I realized he wasn’t interested in me. But it wasn’t rejection. It was nothing. A non-response that I was expecting, after all. Why be disappointed? NEXT!
So my next assignment is to open myself to possibilities, not take a lack of positive response as rejection, and move on when it doesn’t work out. This whole dating thing felt much easier when it was just marks on a scoreboard.
07.28.09
Email 19, Date 6: For real this time, I shouldn’t date an engineer
Even though I had completely given up on dating in a fit of extreme frustration, I kept my OKCupid profile up. I didn’t check it, I didn’t even get on the site, but I figured, if someone saw it and felt inspired to email me….
N. apparently did, and he responded to my “The most private thing I’m willing to admit here” section of my profile: I have a deep, abiding affection for classic country and honky-tonk (Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, George Strait) — but I don’t expect you to share my love of music that relies so heavily on tortured metaphors, melodramatic vocals, and awesomely twangy guitars.
Date: 7/14/09
Subject: HiyaWell, it’s the usual story, I guess: your “profile photo” caught my eye, your other photos held my attention pretty strongly, and what you wrote about yourself sounds great, too (yeah, I do eventually get beyond the pictures). I’m definitely a collection of opposites, too, esp., now that I think about it, the ones you mention. I like your style and attitude, too, *and* you’re pretty damn cute!
For what it’s worth, amongst my music choices I’ve got a decent little collection of country music. I’ve got, in alphabetical order: The Carter Family, J.Cash, P.Cline, S.Earle, Lyman Enloe, Wanda Jackson [sort of counts?], Little Feat [ditto], L.Skynyrd [ditto again], T.Wynett, as well as stuff like Lucinda Williams, John Prine, Pete Droge,…. I say “hurray” for tortured metaphors! (Just not all-day/everyday, like anything else…)
So here I am. I’m intrigued — write back if you are, too.
I was intrigued. I had seen his profile before. I may have even emailed him before. In one of his photos he was really hot: slightly chiseled features, eyes that sparkled with life, and attractively nerdy glasses. In his two other photos he was… Well, he looked 47. His age was the only reason I could think of that I hadn’t emailed him. But at 47, he’s young for the guys who are drawn to me online. So I, with absolutely nothing to lose, wrote a ridiculous email back, riffing on the following items:
- He wrote me on Bastille Day.
- He included a link to a Belgian website in his profile.
- Belgians and French have a rivalry.
- He admitted in his profile that he doesn’t want to date people who live outside of SF.
- I genuinely admired his honesty about that, while admitting that admitting to that made me feel shallow.
- He described himself as quirky and brainy in his profile.
In his next email, he suggested we meet for a drink. In mine, I admitted that my only night free was about five days later (tonight). We made plans, exchanged a few more emails, and met up.
One could describe my attitude toward this date as pessimistic but open. One could also describe it as petulantly reluctant. In reality, it started off as the latter, then when I realized it would be cowardly to cancel, it became the former.
We didn’t click. At all. But when he said that he was an engineer, that clicked.
I have nothing against engineers–two of my bros (who I love dearly) work as software engineers–but I can’t date people who are engineers. My dad was an engineer. Two of my ex-boyfriends were engineers–no, actually, three. It’s a way of thinking, of viewing the world as problems with single, definite solutions, that does not work well with my world-view that things are complex, that there are usually multiple good solutions, that not everything needs to be fixed. And perhaps most importantly, that I am not a problem that needs to be “fixed.”
As I observed how N. took in information and processed it through an engineering mindset, I kept thinking, “This is excruciating.”
To be fair, the conversation was not anywhere near excruciating. He was a really nice guy who had done a lot of really interesting things in his life. What is excruciating is that I know that I can’t be with an engineer. I’ve learned that lesson. And yet I keep attracting them. And in times like this, when I am in desperate need of an ego boost, I entertain the thought of dating them.
So the next phase in 100 Emails, 20 Dates will be identifying things like this: patterns that have gotten me to where I am today–36 and single with zero prospects. The next phase will be fixing those problems. Expect many bumps in the road.
