Looking For Love In 2012
Real Advice From Real People Dating Today
By Bailey Brewer
Some book titles in the dating section of the library promise personal gain, others offer amusement, and still others have the potential to provide both: 101 Ways to Flirt, You Lost Him at Hello, The Panic Years, Getting Naked Again. And, of course: Dating Sucks.
Indeed it does.
The art — or challenge — of dating presents several caveats. For some, the concern is whether to stay in a relationship. Maybe it’s been rather casual up to this point; maybe it’s been serious and committed but questions arise: “Where is this going? Where do I even want it to go? Do I ever want to get married?”
For others, the problem lies not with the direction of a relationship, but with getting into a relationship. The sassy, intelligent, well-groomed and at least moderately attractive person living outside of Hollywood might be able to collect phone numbers and enjoy meals with others who meet the same criteria. But so often it never goes beyond that first date, or two, or three. This situation leaves women in heels on doorsteps and men driving home to partially furnished apartments, each wondering, “Why don’t I feel that spark? He seems like a nice guy, she seems like a fine girl … But I’m bored.”
Another group is just bored, period. These people have their sassy little selves parked in coffee shops, watching 20-something couples parked at nearby tables, maybe resting a hand intimately on a partner’s knee while reading the paper, looking up now and then to make eye contact — the kind of eye contact that only exists in a coupled world.
The singletons are reading, too. But no hand is upon their knees, nor do they have anyone’s knees to touch but their own. These individuals are resentfully sipping their cappuccinos wondering, “How did they do that? That couple looks even younger than me and they’ve already gone through courting, engagement, marriage.” Here is the case of those who want to date, but can’t get to step one: the first date. Perhaps most troubling is that heaps of these people are what could be classified as real catches. “Oh, he’s a real catch. The whole package — smart, funny, kind, handsome.”
So, with so much great sass, intelligence and attractiveness roaming in our midst, why are so many of these “catches” yet to be caught?
David Coleman, award winning speaker and private dating consultant, says that people haven’t been caught “because they don’t put the best product out there.” The Dating Doctor compares this to the way one scours the available tomatoes in the produce department. (An apt analogy, considering the possibility that one might actually eye an attractive passerby while simultaneously checking for ripe fruit.)
If there are several tomatoes to choose from, someone’s clearly going to go for the reddest, ripest one. The same thing happens in relationships, Coleman says.
He offers the phrase used by another dating professional: “peak state,” referring to the mindset to aim for before heading out on a date. You need the best emotional, physical and spiritual state you possess, Coleman says, and can get there by listening to upbeat music, taking a shower or phoning a friend for a pep talk. He warns that those who lack a positive self-image projects it to others, who will pick up on it the way a dog smells fear on a postal worker.
Michael Maw certainly got the memo about how to show up in the produce department. A University of Missouri graduate student studying plant science, Maw, 26, claims to have spent some of his younger days being timid, which is hard to believe since he emits great confidence today. A Georgia native who dons shorts year-round, he observes in his Southern accent: “I’m pretty opinionated about this kind of stuff.”
Maw is dogged in his efforts to seek a future wife. There’s a genuine look in his eye that says he really means it.
In his second year of graduate studies, Maw says that while he wants to concentrate on his education, “I’m still looking for a wife.” It’s a nice bonus to be in a town that is abundant with coeds, he explains.
He’s been on several dates. Interested not only in finding a quality woman to marry, Maw is equally concerned with becoming a quality man for whoever she may be. He tries to prepare for dates with some conversation topics, but pauses to say, “Gosh, it does get really awkward sometimes.”
He uses the term “friendlationship,” one he didn’t coin himself, but that he passes along in its usefulness for illustrating a relationship no-no.
A friendlationship is just the way it sounds: an ambiguous definition for interaction between two people that is more friendly than friendship, yet not a full-blown romantic relationship.
Maw’s advice to men and women in a friendlationship is to set the record straight. He says women need to be sure their time is not being stolen in such a situation, especially when they’ve invested considerable emotions and energy in a friendlationship. Men, too, need to make sure they’re not getting the short end of a deal. Clearly, defining a friendlationship might bring the risk of rejection, but to Maw, such is a man’s burden to bear. His advice is to just move on and try again.
For those frozen with fear at the prospect of moving on, thinking, “What if there are no other good people out there?,” there are at least two options. You can refer back to the bookshelf and be reminded that All the Good Ones Aren’t Taken. Or, if you prefer to take the extroverted route, you can go back to The Dating Doctor.
The Dating Doctor’s response to the idea that there aren’t any good fish in the dating sea: “That’s crap.”
Coleman, who doesn’t believe in soul mates, does firmly believe that one could fill a football stadium with people who could potentially be a lifelong partner. People just have to find someone who is willing to buy season tickets in the seat next to theirs, he says. Coleman’s reaction to picky people in search of a mate is that those people are not ready to date.
Jimi Izrael would likely agree. A moderator on NPR’s “Barbershop” blog and author of The Denzel Principle: Why Black Women Can’t Find Good Black Men, Izrael describes what he calls getting caught up in the “Dizzle,” when women have more interest in an ideal Denzel Washington-type than a “real man.”
Izrael is taken aback by the number of books about “reconstructing the black man.” While it seems white women swoon over celebs (black women aren’t the only ones who fantasize about Denzel), “you won’t find books lamenting the state of white men,” he writes.
While this gets into a much larger issue of race — and doesn’t even begin to nick the surface of interracial relationships — it should give one pause. Trying to turn ordinary people into a character on the silver screen is a cultural phenomenon. With billions of people on this earth, they consult books to try and change people, while instead one could hit the pavement and keep looking.
And yet, people are hitting the pavement. And they’re finding, over and over again, that it’s a concrete jungle out there.
You’re either in a bar (read: jungle) each weekend, with your martini, yet again wondering why you bothered with your uncomfortable heels, because all you’re viewing around you is drama. You’re asked to dance, and after an awkward bump and grind he’s gone. The guy who flirted with you last week isn’t here this week: Was he really that interested?
Or you’re watching a chick flick on Oxygen, surfing through your match.com profile wondering why there are no bites.
And then your cell phone rings, and it’s your college roommate asking you to be a bridesmaid.
“Sure! That sounds great! Congratulations, I’m so excited!”
Click.
Ugh. Pass the popcorn.
It is here in your dating life that Coleman suggests, don’t give up. However, he does make clear that you shouldn’t start dating if you’re not ready to do so. He’s not recommending that anyone stop putting herself out there, or present himself at the tomato stand looking green and soft. No. Instead, he says, “Use what’s been given to you.” If you’re not particularly funny, don’t pretend Jerry Seinfeld is your alter ego. If you have a warm personality or are a great listener, use that, Coleman says. He says that if you veer too far out of your comfort zone, you’ll be caught in the act (see above: dog and postal worker).
Unfortunately, he warns that our society can be a shallow one. Yet Coleman believes that all kinds of people can find someone. His audience members guffaw, turning to their neighbors with looks of agreement in response to the truths he speaks, and he has advice for everyone, from the super shy to the fly guy. To the shy, he suggests doing an activity they love, such as working out at the gym or playing on a coed sports team.
To anyone — timid or otherwise — with extra time on her hands, he explains the value of volunteering: people you meet who have time to volunteer probably have time to date as well. The more socially one can live his life, the more he enhances his “sphere of influence” — picture the ripples in a pond created by a single stone — and his chances of meeting someone are bettered.
Great as this advice is to those with time to twiddle their thumbs, others devote countless hours to little bundles of joy with whom they are already in love: their kids.
Coleman explains that the differences in dating someone with kids, of another race, or across large age differences, to name a few, is that the obstacles are more clear. Dating is dating, and catching someone’s attention and keeping it are things even the most fetching beings will encounter in their adventures in dating. But these more specific issues can certainly make things extra difficult for several, and some of these groups can be forgotten.
One of these groups that is perhaps most overlooked when one thinks of available singles are those who have lost a spouse.
A single mother who never expected to be one, Jennifer Allen has a Facebook profile that reads, “I am a recent widow (yes you just read that).”
Once married to her best friend for almost nine years, Allen, now 37, lost her husband, Scott, to a heart attack in 2008. At the time she was 32 weeks into her pregnancy with their second child, a daughter, Berkley, who is now 3. Their son Riley, 9, tells his mom, “It’s OK if you date.” Allen gently reminds him that anyone she may marry in the future won’t replace his dad. Riley hopes that whoever he is, he plays baseball and likes music.
“I miss the conversation,” she says, checking in with someone and asking how each other’s days were. “Just that daily stuff,” she says.
Just past the 3½-year anniversary of her husband’s death, Allen explains that she recently came to the realization that she’s ready, “like really ready,” to date. After joining some online dating websites, some of the first scheduled dates were, due to sick kiddos, postponed.
“I really don’t like online dating at all,” she says. She doesn’t truly believe the Internet is where she’s going to meet someone.
When out with friends, extra-outgoing girlfriends march up to potentially available men and ask for their stories, “which drives me crazy,” she says. (Recently one of her girlfriends met a single dad on a plane and had him text Jennifer.) In addition to these power-charged gals, Allen has other friends who have been known to scheme and connive to set her up with someone.
Allen might be right about the Internet not being her personal ticket to a relationship.
She was recently introduced to someone through a peer, unassisted by the Web. They’ve gone out twice now, and while Allen says it’s kind of scary, she qualifies it as a “a good scary.” She says things are going great.
Allen is concerned about several things in her new circumstances: feeling guilty about taking time away from her kids to give to the development of a new relationship and what might happen if her children get attached to a man and then a relationship doesn’t work out. Allen notes that she would only introduce her children to a new partner if the relationship was indeed serious.
Despite all this, she’s able to say, “I’m excited about my future.”
Allen thinks there is a misconception that widows grow old and alone. While it takes more time to grieve and a death is different from a divorce, she says that she and others in her situation just want to be happy.
She wants others to know that widows want the same things as everyone else.
So while one might feel extremely humbled meeting Allen or another who has lost someone too soon, it eventually becomes apparent that all the singletons are in this dating life together. As Coleman puts it, “being alone sucks.”
“I’m not asking anyone to settle,” Coleman says. His concern is apparent in the passion he evokes, whether commiserating with an audience about bad kissers or telling them seriously to be on guard when dating someone who has the most control in a relationship, because that is the person who loves, cares, or tries the least in that relationship.
Growing up, Coleman spent his summers on a family-owned resort in South Haven, Mich., which he describes to be similar to the resort in “Dirty Dancing.” It was there that he acted as a social and activities director (and dated young women who were visiting) and learned about relationships in the process. He also observed his friends in college struggling to meet people while he easily schmoozed, and as a result decided to put his apparent gifts to work. Thousands of people who have been in his audience or as clients had their numbers in his cell phone are grateful for his efforts.
One piece of advice Coleman leaves with his audiences, to those looking for someone to make the days easier, when they notice someone and don’t want to let him or her get away, is this: Be a fat penguin.
Because, he says, “fat penguins break the ice.”