Dating The Walking Wounded

July 29, 2007

This didn’t happen to me. It happened to my friend Siobhan who got a big lesson in the “high maintenance” romance department.

She met this guy called Nicholas at a dance club and they went home immediately after and had sex at her place. This then turned into one of those glorious romantic weekends where you go out for eggs benedict, buy a bottle of wine and then spend a second night together. By the time Monday morning rolled around Siobhan was pretty thrilled when she called me to proudly pronounce, “It’s a relationship!”

The problem is that what initially appeared to be devotion to her is actually clinginess and insecurity. She ended up fielding his phone calls no matter where she went because he just seemed to have so many problems all of the time. Sometimes what seems like devotion is just narcissism.

The worst part was that he would call her at work. He would call her to describe his morning bowel movement and how he was scared he would get cancer. He would tell her about how he was scared about getting cancer too like his mother.

He would also call her at night. If they spent one night alone he would have a nightmare about something. Or he would hear a song or see something on television that would remind him of some kind of trauma from his past. Watching one bad movie past midnight could have this guy on the phone talking about his ex for hours. He would also call her whenever he had insomnia and then also call her from his work during the day to complain about how tired he was.

The weirdest calls she got were about his epiphanies. These would be his revelations that his entire life was about to change. He would be sitting somewhere and “see this bird” or “hear this woman in front of me say something” and then he would have a transcendental experience. He would call her and say, “I know after seeing (or hearing that) that it is an omen and things are going to be different from now on.” He would never say how they would be different which of course would be kind of scary if you were in a relationship with someone. He would just say they would be different and then hang up on her and then she would be focusing on him on all day.

Siobhan had to get rid of this guy because ultimately she was going to get fired if she spent much more time ducking into the washroom to return his personal calls in the workplace.

The moral of this story is “Don’t Date The Walking Wounded.” Just because they need you doesn’t mean they love you. There are some really narcissistic people out there. Really, any relationship that they could have would be more about them then about the two of you as a couple. Siobhan found this out the hard way.

 

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Mr. Whatever

July 26, 2007

Have you ever gone out with one of those “whatever” guys? No matter what you ask them to do they just go “whatever.” It is the height of romantic nihilism and I think in terms of relationships, the height of irresponsibility and emotionally cold and unavailable. Whatever happened to the guy that is strong, determined and able to make decisions. I’m not asking for Prince Charming but I do like to be swept off of my feet sometimes.

I have been seeing this one guy on and off for a few months and the reason he will never become a boyfriend of mine for real is because he is a “whatever” guy. For instance the other night I was feeling kind of lonely and figured I would call Whatever Guy up to see if he just wanted to go hang around somewhere at a beachside café and maybe get something to eat.

So I phone him and say, “So what are you up to?” I am always nice and casual with no pressure and he says “Watching Seinfeld reruns.” Of course he never asks me what I have been up to. That is how Mr. Whatever lets me know that he could care less.

I then tell him that I thinking of going and hanging around on the beachfront and maybe getting a cup of coffee or something to eat and he says “I just had a cup of coffee.”

Even more disconcerting about this whole conversation is that I think that he was very much enraptured by the Seinfeld episode he was watching. So I say, “well you don’t have to have coffee you can have beer or wine or something else.”

This is his cue to say “whatever.”

When I then ask him what time he wants to meet he also says “whatever.”

Just as I am starting to get the feeling that he just doesn’t want to see me at all he turns it around and goes – “Which restaurant.”

I am not sure what I think of Mr. Whatever’s manner. My female friends say he is depressed and apathetic. My male friends here however say that he is not shy, or undecided or passive aggressive or anything like that. They say that they use the words “whate3ver” when they don’t want to see someone and that he might just be agreeing to see me because he has nothing better to do with his time and is bored. The men say that it is code for “don’t get your hopes up.”

All I have to say about that is ‘Ouch!” I think my mother would say that I deserve something better then the ‘whatever” man but oddly I am attracted to him. There is nothing like someone not wanting you to make you want them more. This is especially true if you have already had sex with him. It is one of the crazy laws of the universe when it comes to love.

 

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Using A Dog To Meet Men

July 6, 2007

Well I have decided to give and buy a dog. I love dogs but the main reason I am getting one is so I can meet more men.

Meeting more men is easy if you have a cute pooch. At least that is what my friends have told me. So far I am not sure it is working. It seems like I am meeting more women. They are more inclined to stop you and go “Oh, what a cute dog – where did you get it etc.”

The idea of course is to take the dog out to a park and then walk with it and wait for men who like pets to come up and start a conversation with you. However that got me thinking about what type of man needs to be focusing on a dog before he can muster up the powers of speech. If you meet a man because of a dog does that mean you will be spending the entire relationship focusing and talking about the dog? Will you be one of those married couples that avoids having sex and instead lies in bed and talks about the dog all night? Will the dog be the best man or best bitch at my wedding? Will the dog lie between us at night and become our Furkid like child substitute.

Yet another thing about trying to attract a man while walking a dog in a park is that one of the least sexy things you could be caught doing in the world is cleaning up dog poop. First of all there is all of the unattractive squatting you have to do and the faces you make as you pick the stuff up. Second of all there is that smell. There is nothing like being seduced to the sweet smells of digested Alpo or Performatrim. Also how sexy is carrying a pooper scooper or bits of plastic bag around.

So far all I have met is a lot of really old men. They are the type that seem more likely to stop and pet the dog on the head. Then they leer at me and ask me lots of questions about the dog in order to prevent me from meeting the men I really want to meet. The cute guys just walk on by because they can see my dance card has already been filled by all of these Bob Barker types who love dogs.

What I am hoping is that while playing fetch with the dog a man will bring the Frisbee back in his teeth instead of the dog. And he better look like Matthew Macounaghy too.

Still now that I have a dog I am thinking that he might be better for me then any old boyfriend. Not only does he have gorgeous eyes but he gives me lots of unconditional love. It is almost worth the $500 I had to spend in microchipping and vaccination shots just to make him legally mine – all mine!

 

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Can You Meet A Good Man Online?

May 19, 2007

Is the super-information highway still the road to nowhere when it comes to finding a life partner? Like most people, I used to think that the love-lorn who spent their long lonely hours hanging around in chat rooms, looking at message boards and peeling through thousands of so-called love matches on web personals were … well… losers.

Only really desperate, ugly people who were perhaps also emotionally sick would have to resort to using a computer to find the love of their life. And if you did find someone, he or she couldn’t possibly be serious … they must married, lonely or perhaps even a stalker.

In the past year, however, I have had to revise my opinion somewhat, lest I offend one of my best friends, who both have found husbands as a result of surfing the Internet. Also it seems lately, that everybody knows somebody who has found a marriage partner by resorting to, what still seems to me, to be a drastic and also somewhat risky measure. I couldn’t find any statistics anywhere about these relatively new phenomena, about how many people are finding true love

this way or how long the marriages last, but at this point, I have to believe my own eyes.

Maybe the Internet is not such a bad matchmaker.

I was shocked when my friend Darlene, a 26 year old psychiatric nurse who works nights shifts in a local mental hospital, called me up this year to tell me that she had gotten married to a French Canadian guy she met on the web.

How did that happen? Darlene told me after fifteen years of working night shifts and meeting only really crazy people on her job she realized she was never going out. It was really hard to meet guys during the day. Plus she felt the old biological clock ticking and felt like she had to do something efficient to meet a male.

She swears they are in love and that when they did meet it was love at first sight. However I had to wonder what her strict and religious father thought about it all.

Darlene had to admit to me that she had quaint a bit of trouble getting her parents and some of her friends to accept that this online relationship is real.

I too was a bit suspicious of the guy, although why it seems unreasonable in retrospect to have been any more suspicious of him than anyone else. Still I kept thinking he was some kind of cad until I met him and realized that he did truly care for Darlene and that this was a relationship that was going to work. Not only was she pregnant and beaming but she had an expensive wedding ring on her left finger, her own new car and a brand new home on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. She can now also go to cottage north of Hull, Quebec.

Maybe I will stop trying to meet men in bars and get online more often.

 

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