I have had quite a few people ask me how my Modern Romance dating strategy is going so far. The answer is that it is going well. First and foremost, second and third dates are way more fun than first dates. People are more relaxed and fun. Secondly, my heart feels free. I am not overly focused on someone that is going to disappoint me, and I am not over thinking whether or not I should give someone a chance. The rule stands that a guy gets three dates unless there is some kind of red flag type issue…See the Modern Romance Post 1 – Introduction post if you are looking for details of the rules.
So here is how it is going so far, let’s start with one of the negatives. One thing that I have learned about being single is that bad dates and bad experiences are a reality. The key is to be super safe (of course), and beyond the basic element of safety, the key is to not let someone else’s insecurities become your own.
There have been exactly two men not worth my time so far. I am pretty certain that i would not have given either one of them a second date if it were not for my new rules to dating, but I am also pretty certain that is true about a couple of other guys as well that are worthwhile.
Not worthwhile guy number 1 is Weekend Dad. Weekend Dad is a few years younger than me, but I don’t think that his age is a good excuse for the man that he is. He is really content with his “inner loop life”, while his young children live all the way in Lake Livingston that is a distance of more than 40 miles. He told me on our first date that he doesn’t care how young a girl is, and that his wife of many years (he is recently divorced) isn’t very bright. He thinks that this is why his son doesn’t do very well in school. I wonder if his son’s less than stellar academic performance is related to the absence of Weekend Dad in his life. Weekend Dad feels that meeting someone and having another child is potentially in the cards for him. This makes me deeply sad, and I can only imagine what this would do for the two kids that he already has. It is pretty obvious where his priorities would be and that is literally far away from his children.
It occurs to me that Weekend Dad has never had an intellectual attraction to someone. Once a person has felt that inner-intellectual chemistry it is difficult to date people who are way younger or less than intelligent. I resent the hell out of the first guy that I ever had such a connection with as my superficial days of dating the hottest guys in school were over. Back in my high school days, I imploded my social status when I dumped the quarterback of the football team to pursue the deep mental connection that I felt with the class nerd. (Darren wherever you are, I hope that you appreciate how much you altered this country girl’s life.)
Perhaps, Weekend Dad has never found such a connection because he never stops talking about his uninteresting life. He talked about his uninteresting self to an impressive degree. I am out of the norm in that I really like it when men talk about themselves. The pitfall for Weekend Dad is that there isn’t anything that makes him interesting, or if there is, he didn’t talk about it. Most of the men that I date have been around the world and seen lots of things in life. They have ideas and adventures to share. Weekend Dad isn’t like that. He did talk a whole bunch about his ex-wife and dating life. I guess he hasn’t gotten the clue yet that women do not want to hear about the other women. Moreover, none of the woman that he talked about seemed very interesting. I hear girls call guys shallow sometimes, and I guess I have never spent enough time with this sort of individual to really understand what this means until I met Weekend Dad.
I was acutely aware that Weekend Dad was trying to juggle a few women at a time. I think that he needs to feel like he has multiple women chasing him. I don’t think that he has anyone chasing him; I think he just isn’t aware that most people are dating more than one person in this day and age. For me, there are rules on dating more than one man. I would call these basic respect principles. Rule/respect principle #1 – If I am out with a man on a given day whether it be a formal date or a meet for a drink type of activity, I am his date for the evening. It is never okay to leave me to go meet someone else that afternoon or evening, and I would never leave a guy to go meet someone else in a day. Rule/respect principle # 2 – Once I make plans, I stick to my plans. Often times, someone that I am more interested in asks me out when I already have plans with another man, I never reschedule or cancel on the first man. It is the wrong thing to do. I expect to be treated with the same respect.
I am pretty certain that Weekend Dad violated both of these rules in the short amount of time that we were talking to each other. The irony of it all is that he then calls me in the middle of the work day on a Friday, and he tells me that he needs to cancel our plans for Sunday. This was a good time saver for me as it was our third date, and he had little chance of getting a fourth date. He tells me that he is this really great guy that can’t juggle more than one woman as it just isn’t right. I found this odd as it was exactly what he had been doing to me since we met. He tries to tell me all about the other woman as if I am so interested in him that I will want to know all about her. I hung up. It is one of my life rules to never hang up on someone, but I was in the middle of reading a great oil futures market article, and I simply felt like I had heard enough of Weekend Dad talking about himself.
I am oddly curious what lies in store for Weekend Dad. I predict problems with his children, which he will blame on his ex-wife and their step dad, and I predict that he will get fatter, and more superficial as he ages. I think that his children will take a back seat to a new wife, and that they will likely wind up in the third row seat behind a half sibling or step siblings.
On the positive, for me, dating Weekend Dad reinforced the importance of my rules/respect principles for dating more than one person, as I never want to treat another person in a disrespectful way. It also makes me appreciate all of the great people that I know that treat me with respect and can carry on an interesting conversation. Continue reading to hear about the positive side of the new dating approach…