What ARE You Looking For… An Upgrade?

If you’re wondering if you can find better, you can. You can find someone prettier than who you’re with. You can find someone younger. You can find someone thinner. You can find someone with bigger boobs, a higher sex drive, AND a better personality. If that’s not your thing, you can find someone who likes comic books, who loves drunks, or who doesn’t mind paying the bills while you write songs. That person is out there. And someone better than her is out there. And, someone better than HER is out there. Keep looking. You’ll keep finding better & better during each search.

But, what is it that you ARE looking for? What do you want? I want someone who makes me stop looking. I want someone who listens to me describe how much I like each of those qualities & convinces me how much better I have it. Or, agrees with me & sets goals to achieve those things. I want someone who is content not looking for bigger & better. Someone who enjoys the fact that I say “yes” to every invite to go for a walk. Someone who knows when to put a hand on my back or when to step away so I can calm down on my own. I want someone who didn’t have a list of requirements that were a dime a dozen. And, I want someone who gets more satisfaction from our accomplishments together than my six-pack abs.

It’s not hard to continually upgrade. It’s not hard to be committed to no one. It’s not hard to bail when things get tough. It’s not hard to protect yourself, protect your heart, & protect yourself from failure. If it was, less people would do all of those things. If it was, you’d have done those things less often.

I want to find someone who knows when to turn certain songs up. I want to find someone who looks at me before laughing at awkward situations. I want to find someone who falls asleep next to me with complete satisfaction. I want to find someone who knows they can find better & chooses to make me better instead.

The Gentleman’s Guide To Wedding Season

It’s that time of year again: Wedding Season! When a portion of your buds strap on the ol’ ball & chain and commit for eternity and making babies with their newly acquired companions.

It’s also the time of year that’s easy for you, the single 20-something or older, to drown yourself in fruit punch and wedding cake. You’re reminded constantly that you’re single and although you’re happy for your buddies, sometimes you’d rather just skip the reminder and forget about the reception all together. I want you to stop and realize one thing: Bridesmaids!

You know what I’m talking about. Bridesmaids get all dolled up for the occasion only to watch one of their best friends fulfill one of their lifelong dreams. So before you show up in your standard white shirt and tie, before you decide to show up 30 minutes late and leave immediately following your completion of the dreaded line, and before you pig out on meatballs and mini-sandwiches, consider this:

• Approaching a single bridesmaid is as easy as it can get. Nothing softens up a girl and makes her more vulnerable than watching one of her best friends get married. She may be the bridesmaid, but in her mind she’s picturing herself wearing that white dress and is motivated beyond belief to find “the one”.

This is where you come in, you knight in shining armor you! Follow these simple tips and get ready to boom boom with the bridesmaids (figuratively of course)!

Stacy: DTR Misfires

Occasionally we receive emails from readers asking for specific topics to be covered. Curious about what spawned this particular request, and with her permission to post, Stacy wrote the following:

Lately I’ve had some weird experiences with “determining the relationship” or “DTR” as it’s often called. DTR-ing is a normal part of dating. After a few dates, you wanna know where things are going so you talk about it and figure out if you both want the same thing. This is normal and to be expected. But my recent DTR’s have been anything but normal.

Case #1:
There’s a guy in my ward who’s kinda cute. I’ll call him Mike. He travels for work a lot, so I only see him once every two months or so. He’s a Flirt (yes, with a capital F). He’s cute and he knows it (kinda like the song but different). He’s also a pretty nice guy. So I invited him to hang out with my friends one night to watch a movie. To say he was “handsy” during the movie would be an understatement. It caught me off guard considering our only interaction up to that point had been occasional chit chat at church.

After that night, because of his work travel, I didn’t see him for a couple months. In that time, we texted from time to time, but not consistently. Our texts were a little flirty in nature, but the innocent and awkward flirting of two people who don’t know each other very well. Then suddenly, in the midst of a seemingly normal textversation, I got a strange text that caught me off guard. It read:

“What are your intentions with me?”

My stomach did a flip flop. He was DTR-ing with me! And not only was he doing it through text (lame), he was doing it without us ever having even been on a date! I didn’t know how to respond, so I just said something like, “I barely see you so I don’t know what my intentions are at this point.” To which he responded, “ok. Goodnight.”

Now I’m scared that every text I send is sending “a message.” And it’s too early to even know what that message is! I guess I could have just said, “You’re cute. Let’s go from there” or something like that, but I panicked.

Case #2
There’s this guy in my life who I will call Sterling. We have had a flirtatious relationship for years, but for reasons I don’t want to get into here, I have no interest in pursuing an actual relationship with him at this point and the feeling is mutual. We’ve started down that path before and decided it wouldn’t work for us. But because we have so much fun together and and enjoy each others company so much, we have become good friends. This close friendship has led to a few mini-DTRs along the way just to make sure we’re on the same page.

2012 has been completely drama free for us though, and we’ve settled into a comfortable drama-free friendship.Which is why it could me off guard when he recently decided to have a DTR with me out the blue. Apparently he’d been getting outside pressure from friends and family to make something happen with me. I wasn’t a part of these conversations and knew nothing about them. But instead of telling his friends and family why it wouldn’t work with us right now, he decided to tell me. Their plan backfired and instead of deciding to try to start something with me again, he instead decided to end something. Something that hadn’t even begun.

I can not emphasize enough how unnecessary this was. And when you’re not even dating a person or thinking of them that way at all, and they start trying to “let you down easy,” it’s kind of annoying. All I could do was agree with every statement he made. “You’re awesome, I just don’t have ‘those’ feelings.” “Yeah, me neither.” “There’s nothing wrong with you but should we try to force love?” “No. That’s not necessary at all. I couldn’t agree more.” The whole time staring straight ahead wondering why this was happening and if I really was getting dumped by a guy I wasn’t dating.

I have had many other DTRs in my lifetime but these two recent ones have both amused me and irked me. Have you ever had a mis-timed DTR?

A Lesson In Traffic

Have you ever noticed how traffic relates to dating? There are all these people on the road, every one of them headed for a destination somewhere in their future. Everyone drives different vehicles at different speeds and take different paths to get where they are going. Often times paths intersect and can even create jams if too many people are using the same road at the same time. Some drivers take detours to avoid traffic, others adjust their commute to miss traffic, and most just deal with it.

To put this all into perspective and paint an accurate picture of how traffic can possibly be like dating, let’s identify some of the common profiles of those on the road:

THE ROADRUNNER

• They drive insanely fast, we’re talking 20 mph over the speed limit and weaving in and out of lanes (even trying to use the carpool lane). They’re aggressive, focused, and determined. Think of the guys that always pounce on and smother the new girl in ward. Sometimes they get lucky and find an open lane to the promised land, but often times they get bogged down and start honking their horn. Beep, beep…

THE TORTOISE

• They drive insanely slow no matter what lane they are in (usually the far left). These people can’t seem to get out of their own way much less the way of anyone else. Sometimes you wonder why they’re even on the road. Is their car broken? Is their foot broken? Perhaps they don’t exactly know their destination and are in no hurry to get anywhere? Please don’t rain… or much worse, snow… or they will drive approximately 15 mph and slam on their brakes all the time.

THE CRUISER

• They typically drive slightly above the speed limit but don’t get too carried away. They know the destination and are on the right path, but at the same time they aren’t overly aggressive and smothering. Their life is on cruise control, but who knows how far the commute will be.

THE DISTRACTED

• These people weave back and forth in their own lane because they can’t seem to text or put makeup on while they drive. They may not even realize they are in a 2 ton can of metal traveling 70mph with lots of other 2 ton cans of metal around them. Their mind is obviously not on the road so how do they even know when to speed up or slow down, much less slam on the brakes.

THE COMPENSATOR

• They drive huge lifted trucks that never go off-road. They drive Caprices with 26″ rims. What are you trying to make up for? A lack of substance? They wear a lime green shirt, pink tie, and boat shoes to church… WHAT?!?

THE RICH KID

• Thank mommy and daddy for this kind of driver. They are spoiled to no end and now they seem to not know any better than to think they own the road and everyone else is merely using it. They often use their money to try and “play up” the field. They often times don’t know where they are going and don’t have the slightest clue how to get there. Is that what that GPS thing does in their car? Do they really have to get a job?

THE NEWB

• They drive slow because they don’t know the area and always seem to tap their brakes at even the very thought that they are off course. Everything is foreign, and even if they have GPS are always looking around like they are lost.

THE VIP

• Also known as the “HOV”, these types fly right by while everyone else hits the brakes (A reverse Top Gun reference, did you catch it?). Most of the time they reach their destination with relative ease, but on occasion they are thrust in with the commoners when no HOV lane is available or is blocked.

The land of Milk & Honey is littered with drivers just like those mentioned above, but sooner or later most make it, even The Compensator. Just in case you crash and burn, get lost, or breakdown along the way, get back on the path to your destination and don’t forget to pick up a passenger along the way.

Merry Christmas From TheSinglesWard

Ladies, time to get out there with that last bit of holiday cheer and get yourself a kiss under the mistletoe.