The part about dating that I find tough...
...is the part where you try to figure out when to be exclusive. Things were so much easier when I was in junior high school. The boy asked you to go steady, if you said yes, you put on his ring or ID bracelet and off you went, telling all the other boys that you were taken. It didn’t mean that you were in love or that you would be spending your life together...it just meant that you didn’t see other people.
How do you decide when you are supposed to stop dating other people? If you feel as though you want to be see only one special person, how do you know if it’s mutual? Can you expect them to stop seeing other people just because you feel as though you would like to see only them? At the beginning of a new relationship, how do you know when you can start just being open without running the risk of appearing too anxious? And then, if you have met through an online dating service and you see that they are still openly advertising for more women, how do you act like you don’t know that? What a sticky wicket this can be.
Men seem to expect exclusivity before they feel open enough to tell you how they feel. I don’t know how to handle that any better than they do, but I do know enough not to expect something that I didn’t ASK for.
Oh well, I guess I will just wait for one with a healthy self esteem to come along and then I probably won’t have to wonder. There was one guy who said that the blog would have to be “shut down” when he read that I was advertising for a man. He didn’t say it in a way that bothered me, his affect was more complimentary. But then, he didn’t call for so long that by the time he did call, he was no longer the nice guy with whom I spent a lovely evening. He had become the guy who didn’t call me back. And naturally, I assumed it was because I didn’t go to bed with him but it didn’t really matter by that time...there was no way to change the way I felt. So, when you tell a woman that you are going to call her, do it in a timely manner or don’t do it at all. There was one guy who said, “I’ll call you tomorrow” but didn’t. I never ASKED him to call me the next day, but once he said it, I expected it. Two weeks later when he did call...I couldn’t help him anymore. If he had just walked out the door without saying a word and THEN called me two weeks later, I would have been delighted to hear from him.
But back to my question, what is the current thinking on exclusivity? I have no problem being exclusive with someone who’s company I enjoy, but I am not going to set myself up to get screwed again. Like I said before, I will give a guy a few chances to say something about it and then I’m off, I don’t have the time to play guessing games. Now, it’s not my fault that I’m a woman and they’re the men...I didn’t make the rules. But usually, isn’t it up to the man to say something first? And if it isn’t, what other rules have changed on me? I stand at doors and they get opened so I guess that’s still the same...and the guys are still paying for dinner...they are still calling me...is there anything new I should know? It appears as though most men are still ready to hop into bed with a woman. If they can do that...why can’t they mention their feelings somewhere along the line?
I’m not talking about the L word...I am simply trying to figure out what is expected of me. I’m not a stupid woman so I shouldn’t be having such a hard time with this one but I am. I suppose I shouldn’t worry too much about it and I probably won’t. The one part about dating that I do know is that, as I said earlier, any man can be nice for a few dates so for now, I will just be happy to have a nice time for a little while. But I am human and I do have feelings. It would be nice to be enough for one man but that hasn’t happened yet and I don’t have any reason to see it happening anytime soon so I am just going to continue doing what makes ME happy. And apparently, that means that I have to keep a tighter reign on my feelings.
Meg
...is the part where you try to figure out when to be exclusive. Things were so much easier when I was in junior high school. The boy asked you to go steady, if you said yes, you put on his ring or ID bracelet and off you went, telling all the other boys that you were taken. It didn’t mean that you were in love or that you would be spending your life together...it just meant that you didn’t see other people.
How do you decide when you are supposed to stop dating other people? If you feel as though you want to be see only one special person, how do you know if it’s mutual? Can you expect them to stop seeing other people just because you feel as though you would like to see only them? At the beginning of a new relationship, how do you know when you can start just being open without running the risk of appearing too anxious? And then, if you have met through an online dating service and you see that they are still openly advertising for more women, how do you act like you don’t know that? What a sticky wicket this can be.
Men seem to expect exclusivity before they feel open enough to tell you how they feel. I don’t know how to handle that any better than they do, but I do know enough not to expect something that I didn’t ASK for.
Oh well, I guess I will just wait for one with a healthy self esteem to come along and then I probably won’t have to wonder. There was one guy who said that the blog would have to be “shut down” when he read that I was advertising for a man. He didn’t say it in a way that bothered me, his affect was more complimentary. But then, he didn’t call for so long that by the time he did call, he was no longer the nice guy with whom I spent a lovely evening. He had become the guy who didn’t call me back. And naturally, I assumed it was because I didn’t go to bed with him but it didn’t really matter by that time...there was no way to change the way I felt. So, when you tell a woman that you are going to call her, do it in a timely manner or don’t do it at all. There was one guy who said, “I’ll call you tomorrow” but didn’t. I never ASKED him to call me the next day, but once he said it, I expected it. Two weeks later when he did call...I couldn’t help him anymore. If he had just walked out the door without saying a word and THEN called me two weeks later, I would have been delighted to hear from him.
But back to my question, what is the current thinking on exclusivity? I have no problem being exclusive with someone who’s company I enjoy, but I am not going to set myself up to get screwed again. Like I said before, I will give a guy a few chances to say something about it and then I’m off, I don’t have the time to play guessing games. Now, it’s not my fault that I’m a woman and they’re the men...I didn’t make the rules. But usually, isn’t it up to the man to say something first? And if it isn’t, what other rules have changed on me? I stand at doors and they get opened so I guess that’s still the same...and the guys are still paying for dinner...they are still calling me...is there anything new I should know? It appears as though most men are still ready to hop into bed with a woman. If they can do that...why can’t they mention their feelings somewhere along the line?
I’m not talking about the L word...I am simply trying to figure out what is expected of me. I’m not a stupid woman so I shouldn’t be having such a hard time with this one but I am. I suppose I shouldn’t worry too much about it and I probably won’t. The one part about dating that I do know is that, as I said earlier, any man can be nice for a few dates so for now, I will just be happy to have a nice time for a little while. But I am human and I do have feelings. It would be nice to be enough for one man but that hasn’t happened yet and I don’t have any reason to see it happening anytime soon so I am just going to continue doing what makes ME happy. And apparently, that means that I have to keep a tighter reign on my feelings.
Meg
posted by Meg Kelso | 12:03 PM
2 Comments:
Well, if your sole reference point to relationships is the norms from junior high school, I guess it's a sign that it's time to grow up, isn't it?
Gosh, anonymous... you and I certainly come from different backgrounds. When I was in junior high, I certainly wasn't worrying about when it was appropriate to date exclusively/have sex with someone. Then again, there were always one or two floozies who worried about the latter if not the former. It was sad, really. They so desperately wanted to be popular.
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