I’ve tried, trust me. Twice I went out with a girl who wore a 30G bra. And was 5’3. But we didn’t really sync. I must have spent 6 hours with her (and maybe 5 minutes with the 30Gs)…. couldn’t ask her out again.

Or similarly, you can’t build a relationship on tall.

Or blue eyes.

R has a friend with a husband with blue eyes. She fell for him on date one because she wanted a kid with blue eyes. They bicker every day. For the last eight years. And have in front of us. We spent a few days at their house. He didn’t laugh or smile once. But he has blue eyes. And is tall. And now she has a kid with blue eyes. Luckily, he travels a lot.

My Achilles Heel was a great bust. I had to force myself to pretend that if they didn’t have such a great rack, would I keep going out with them? The answer was usually ‘No.’

Everyone’s got some physical fetish, but at some point you have to let it go.

(I also had a thing for redheads too… that’s now a thing of the past.)

I emphasize on my profile I have time to date someone (maybe this is a turn-off) – I say this because it seems a lot of people don’t.

As you’ve read…

- The Event Planner had events almost every weekend (and had to prep on the weeknights),

- I just dumped The Mayflower Girl who was a Dog Sitter (i.e. stays overnight at people’s home’s most of the week)

- The Snarky Redhead who was a nurse with 4 thirteen hour days on, 4 days off (2 off which were spent recouperating),

- just talked to a a producer on a TV show who told me “the next two weeks are ugly” (this is why I don’t date people in production).

I work for myself.

I tend to knock off at 5 or 6. I do this on purpose because when I worked in advertising in NYC, there was sort of this martyr level of work the staff aspired to — who worked the latest, pulled all-nighters, came in on the weekend, etc. I would get the stink eye when I left at 6 on the nose. Of course, most of the relationships and marriages were on the skids.

So I am finding myself drawn to teachers, librarians, non-profit workers and the self-employed…

It didn’t start that way of course, it started with great hope and great expectations and had much potential. This went on-and-off for about two years (that should have been a clue).

Then, in the last few months of the pairing, I was neglected, hookwinked, ignored, bullied, harassed and taken for a few thousand dollars.

But this was a professional relationship, although I think there are some parallels to those in personally abusive relationships.

The short version: A buddy of mine, who had known for 9 years, had introduced me to his mentor, Frank, who liked what I was doing in my business. He claimed to have all kinds of connections and could make it bigger — he knew the right people and could get money. Finally, after two years and a ill-fated trip to New York with them and about 4 months of barely any word from them when we got back, I realized they were all talk (and lies) and whatever big plans they had were all illusions. I wrote them a short note, saying they have seemed to lost interest in the project and we should all move on.

And then THEY. FLIPPED. THE. ‘F’. OUT.

I got e-mails with subjects like “What the hell were you thinking?” and “You better call us and act like an adult.”

Here’s where it gets interesting — I erased all messages when I heard my buddy’s voice (“Hey Dave, you better — beep. Deleted.). I didn’t read any of their e-mails, I simply put them in a folder in case I needed them for a lawsuit.

A strange sense of calm came over me — these guys aren’t my dad or my boss — they are just two big babies who aren’t getting their way. I had no contract with them. Not even an e-mail with any promises of equity or money or anything. In my mind, this was ancient history. I was done — my mind already left the station they were screaming from.

(I did have to send some letters to their lawyer buddy who sent me a $17K bill for his “work” on the project — my lawyer sent a note saying he can’t bill a third party and if he keeps mucking about, we will report his $700/hour ass to the State Bar for various violations. Then like magic, he went away.

I also did respond to a letter my assistant had read from Frank she thought I should address — and I did in a 3 page letter that basically said whatever his plans are with the project (which was my idea in the first place) — JUST DO IT WITHOUT ME — and that if he wants to spend time and money on a lawsuit, we will fight it. If he wrote back, I don’t remember/know/care — I wrote my peace in that 3 page letter and wasn’t really interested in hearing “his side”. If he did, it went into the ‘folder’.

For a few weeks, I kept expecting to get served. It never happened. It’s a year plus later.)

The thing is — they were all talk, I called them on their bullshit, it had (at one time) great potential but no results (after 2 years), no commitment (after two years) and I moved on with barely a look back. Sure, it was hard, I felt like they were friends (esp. the 9 year buddy) but in the end, they weren’t and it took breaking it off to realize that. It was costly too (my lawyer spent about $2000 of hours dealing with it, but only charged me $800).

I pre-ordered this book before it came out — I’m a big fan of Anna Goldfarb’s blog “Shmitten Kitten“, a hilarious account of being single and dating and she’s probably the only 6’1″ woman into really short (5’6 – 5’8) guys.

(Full disclosure: I reached out to Philly-based Anna via her website a few times when she wrote her dream guy was a Jason Schwartzman look-a-like and she didn’t respond…guess she wants ANOTHER guy who looks like Jason Schwartzman. Who’s short. And from Philly).

I had / have mixed feelings about his book. It’s a collection of mainly bad date stories, but none that really jumps out for being that crazy or that funny. They were just run-of-the-mill bad date stories. I have them. You have them. I’ve bored people for years about mine. I realize now maybe I have 3 or 4 really standout tales and the rest were a waste of time and breath.

It’s interesting when you put them all together as she’s done, you can see a pattern that forms — she might have learned from her dating mistakes (some of these stories are over 12 years old)… or not. But there are lessons to be taken away for everyone.

I believe a bad date happens because of at least one of 5 elements:

1. BAD INTEL: You go out with someone and you find you missed important info or weren’t given it. For instance, my friend was set up with a guy with a missing arm – and no one thought to give that poor girl a heads up, “Hey, by the way, he’s missing a major appendage. FYI.” That’s a severe example, but it can also be when someone posts unusually flattering pictures of themselves or their pictures are blurry, far away, in dark bars, etc. and you hope for the best (I’m sure she’s hot and she’s just had terrible, terrible luck being photographed)…which brings me to….
2. LACK OF DUE DILIGENCE: You didn’t vet this person enough before you agreed to a date. Maybe you didn’t talk to them on the phone and relied on your “text chemistry” or “e-mail banter” or how much you seemed to have in common (on paper). I had one of the worst dates with a girl who seemed perfect for me – quirky, young, into pop culture, but she had blurry / far away / sunglasses on / no smiling photos (see Rule #1 above) and we never talked before meeting. I could have caught her weird, socially awkward personality on the phone and wouldn’t have suffered through a painful, painful dinner I, of course, was on the hook for.
3. DIDN’T TRUST YOUR GUT: An acquaintance of mine had a terrible date with a guy who was verbally abusive and mean the entire night. When I asked if she talked on the phone with him, she said she did and there were no red flags. None at all. When I pressed her, she finally admitted he was really sarcastic when they had talked. Perfect example of ignoring a red flag. I talked to dozens of girls who were boring (but nice) and hoped for some kind of personality miracle when we met for coffee and it never happened. People don’t make huge personality shifts between the phone and in-person.
4. IGNORED STANDARD DATING PROCEDURES: Evan Marc Katz had a recent blog about the 10 worst dates people had and more than half could have been avoided by sticking to common sense stuff when meeting a stranger (especially a male stranger) – like always meet in a public place. Many of these people were coming over strange guys’ homes on date 1 or worse, inviting them over to their home (“So, if you don’t want to assault me on Date One, here’s where I live so you can do it at your convenience.”). One even robbed some lady in the middle of the night when he asked to sleep on the couch. In his blog, there were a lot of bad situations that wouldn’t have happened in Starbucks on a Saturday.
5. BAD SURPRISE: These are cases of just bad luck – wrong place, wrong time — just couldn’t have seen it coming. Like when my validation ticket failed and I couldn’t get out of a mall parking garage and cars were backing up behind me honking and my date shut down (granted, she could have been nicer about it) or when a date took me to a party where the host attacked me with garlic baked squash or when I met a girl at a diner and her devastatingly handsome ex-boyfriend (or ex-or-current lover – I couldn’t tell) happened to be seated next to me at the counter when she walked up and then was rattled to the core for our entire date…while he ate his meal right around the corner from our booth. And then came over to say goodbye. And they kissed on the lips.

After that, we talk on the phone, often. Maybe even daily. But we aren’t having a 2nd date because her job is basically being occupied at other people’s houses. At night. Especially on the weekends.

My friend Sue says, “Dog sitting isn’t a job — it’s what you do while you are putting together your Etsy store or raising money for your cupcake truck.” Recently I heard a podcast with Dana Gould and Adam Carolla and Carolla said, “Dog walking (sitting) isn’t something you do ’cause you are good at it, but because you suck at everything else.”

Now I’m not a career snob — I don’t care what you do as long as you make a living and you have time to date me. But that latter part….

And then she calls in a panic one day. Her client’s dog was hit by a car. There were tears. I took her off the ceiling. But then a few days later there was another teary call about all the drug dealers / noisy neighbors in her building. Okay, she’s a Crisis Girl. The 3 month expiration on her relationships is starting to make sense.

2nd date: We go to a storytelling event. But she stops at my house before. While she is on the couch and I am straightening up and chatting with her, I go over and kiss her very casually, very breezily and then continue cleaning up — and she is TOTALLY CONFUSED BY THIS GESTURE as if we had never, ever kissed before. (I hate when this happens — the last time you were with a woman on a date, you kissed her / made out, but when you attempt to keep this physicality up on a 2nd date — say, just kiss again — they ACT TOTALLY SURPRISED. This happened with the El Paso Girl and a girl I brought to a WGA event. Maybe a lady reader can explain this to me. I mean, we kissed / made out very recently, why is it soooooo weird that OMG, IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN)

After the show, we come back to my house and again is VERY SURPRISED I try to kiss her. And she is not on board. When I ask why, she tears up and says she doesn’t know if she is attracted to me. When I bring up the make out session on date 1 and the fact she she wrote me first on Match.com, she had no explanation.

“Look, I can’t date someone who’s attraction to me is going to waver like a short in a electrical cord,” I remember saying.

We talk about it. She cries a bit….and within 45 minutes of this makeshift therapy session, we end up making out and grinding / dry humping on my couch.

(TO BE CON’T)

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl: A stock character in films. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after seeing Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown (2005), describes the MPDG as “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”^[1] MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up, thus their men never grow up.^{[2] A prime example is Natalie Portman‘s character in the movie Garden State, written and directed by Zach Braff.[1][2][3] Kate Hudson’s character, Penny Lane, in Almost Famous has been called a MPDG.[2]}

****

A few months before I met R., I received an e-mail on Match whose headline read: “Your Profile Was So Funny, I Peed in My Pants. Seriously.”

That got my attention! And it was a technique I used too — a personalized, often long, subject headline.

Then I clicked on her profile.

She looked like a model. In ALL her pictures. I kept looking at the pics so see if they were old or photoshopped or what. Nope. They seemed legit. A 5’10, blond, blue-eyed, bone-structure-to-die-for, Brooklyn Decker / Heidi Klum-ish 33 year old. Never married. With no kids.

My DREAM GIRL.

And her profile was funny too. Quirky.

This is it. I hit the jackpot. A quirky girl who looked like a model.

After few hilarious e-mails back and forth, we talked on the phone. For 90 MINUTES. And it felt like 5 minutes.

Great, easy laugh. I think i even laughed really hard, which is rare.

We talked a few times before our date just because it was so much fun.

Some things came up in the convos: Never had a long term relationship. Even one that lasted THREE months (Hell, at least I’ve had that). Lived in a really bad, bad neighborhood in a studio apt. for the last 10 years. Had a job dog sitting.

Hmmmm.

Date 1: She meets me at a tiny sushi place in mid-Wilshire. Is GORGEOUS. Like wow-goregous. Sky blue eyes. Bee-stung pouty bottom lip. She was making MY DNA-TWITCH under my skin. Didn’t seem to know how to dress. Wore a bulky weird colored Cosby sweater, mom jeans and tennis sneakers. Her hair was long, but unkempt. Perhaps she dressed down so she didn’t get hit on and cause traffic accidents.

We had a lovely time. She was a bit nervous, but loosens up. I walk her to her car. I kiss her (I had to tippy toe it). She’s allowing me to kiss her but not really kissing me back. I suddenly stop and step back and say, ‘I bet if I drew you, it would look just like you.”

I don’t know why I say this, but it flips the script.

She gets all excited and opens her trunk and finds a pad of paper and a pen and wants me to draw her right now, in her car.

Okay, sure.

So we sit in the parked car and I draw her and talk just inches away from one another.

When I’m done, it sort of looks like her. It’s close — if I had a pencil, I could have made corrections.

I show the picture to her. She says, “It looks just like my mom!” (She was descended from the MAYFLOWER BTW)

Then suddenly we kiss again and everything clicks. We totally have a total make-out fest in her car.

TO BE CON’T.

A few minutes in, R. was talking to a friend and about 10-20 feet away is a woman I think I went out with who is glancing my way, in conversation with someone. It is!!!! It’s a Polish woman who I had gone out with Jan of this year.

This Polish woman and I had some great talks on the phone — she was fun to talk to, an easy laugher, a real gas. We had drinks at a high end bistro which turned into a very expensive dinner / first date (maybe $50-70?) and we kissed her in car afterwards. Immediately after the kiss, she looked me and said, ‘So when are we going out again?”

It turned out…never.

After that first great date, we talked at least two more times, she might have canceled 2nd date plans / 2nd date shuffled me to go to a comedy show (she had never been to one) and then THE LEAD WENT COLD. She didn’t return a phone call (which was unusual) and then I tried again…and then I got the hint and moved on.

So here she is 15 or so feet away. And she waves at me and then COMES OVER.

Luckily I remember her name, I introduce R. as “my girlfriend” — she leans in and says to me “she beautiful!” and they all talk (she was in the furnishing business and worked nearby) and then she slipped away shortly after.

Now for weeks after our first date / when she disappeared, I wondered what the hell happened with this woman. It had been going so well. And I almost wanted to find her at this party and ask her in a very casual way…

But then it hit me.

SHE. WASN’T. THAT. INTO. ME.

As simple as that.

Because I when I tried to flip the situation in my mind — if I ran into a girl I blew off (which has happened) and she cornered me and asked (nicely) why I disappeared, I prob. would have said “Oh, I started dating someone else”, which really, at the heart of it, true or not, would have been: I WASN’T THAT INTO HER.

Because for me not to go on a 2nd date with someone, I have to really not be into / I hate the person, or be soooooooooooooo apathetically on the fence, I let them go back into the dating pool and move on with my life and don’t really think about them anymore.

Which is what happened with the Polish Woman and me. I didn’t need to hear it. It got it.

And I was with a woman (5 months now) who didn’t want me to slip away and I didn’t want her to slip away either.

Hell, there was a woman who responded to my e-mails I think once a year for 3 years (I always forgot I had written prior) — alway got an enthusiastic, lengthy response, maybe a 2nd e-mail, never a date or her phone number.

- You date the person, not their PART. Sure, they had great legs or a great mouth or the most fantastic rack, but you can’t build a relationship — or even more than two dates on that. The woman with the 30K breasts I had two dates with but who was weird and annoying? Was it worth the 10 minutes I got to spend with them vs. the 6 hours I had to spend with HER?

- The conversation won’t get better in person. They were quiet on the phone? Guess what? They will be quiet in person. They were boring in your 30 minute conversation? Humorless? Guess what? THAT’S THEM.

- People with weird schedules maybe subconsciously don’t want to date (or like) other people. The nurse who blew up our relationship after 21 days? Works 4 days off, 4 on, saw her once-twice a week. My current GF and I spend approx. FIVE NIGHTS (and a few whole days) a week together either at my house or her house.

Been dating someone for 7 weeks. It’s going really well.

Met on Match (I wrote to her — she wrote back pretty quickly). Had a 90 minute first phone conversation (where she wasn’t doing dishes, riding her bike* or pumping gas and shit).

First date: She dressed up (wore an off the shoulder white wrappy top, did her hair and wore make-up — OMG!!!!) and let me kiss her on the mouth at the end of that first great date (she later said she saw “stars” and could have “floated to her car.”)

Didn’t / doesn’t play games. Is so warm. Is very complimentary. Is mucho affectionate. Is easy going. Is drama free. An easy laugher. Forgiving of my quirks / vocal tics (my frequent catch phases, imitating Denzel Washington). Has time to date someone (had 3 dates within two weeks, maybe less). Is not a Prickly. Isn’t obsessed with her cat/animal. Looked like her pictures.

Was on Match 3 weeks before I wrote to her. Was on Match in total 6 weeks before we went exclusive. With her looks and personality there’s no reason she had to be on Match for longer than 2 months to find someone (she went on a lot of dates too).

Had our first fight the other day after a trip to the mountains (see photo), but we worked it / toughed it out, talked it through, reflected on it, learned more about where my “red zone” was and are closer for it….

It’s new ground for me….something REAL.

***************************

*Turns out she actually knows that woman — and says she’s CRAZY. And is afraid of her.