Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the dating pool…
Guest Blogger Mara returns with another terrifying tale, reminding us that while there’s plenty of fish in the sea - be careful what you catch.
You can trust me. I'm wearing a sweater.
Last night, I went out to celebrate one of my friend’s birthdays. Since we chose a low-key bar rather than the typical nightclub where the tools in deep V-necks dwell, I was excited to see we’d stumbled into some kind of non-douche safe zone…where the beer and normal guys roam.
After ordering our drinks, we felt even more hopeful about our prospects when we noticed three cute gentlemen sitting in a booth across from ours. And one kept glancing my way. He was tall, dark and wearing a sweater. Maybe this could this be Prince Charming!
My friend also noticed him giving me the eye and offered to wave the guys over to join our table. I told her to wait to see if they came to meet us first and then I went to the washroom to freshen up. Now, this particular bar, for some strange reason, has a mirror in the men’s room but not the women’s room! Rude!
I was primping in the men’s room mirror when Mr. Sweater popped his head in and asked, “Are you okay in there?” I said, “Oh! Sorry! We don’t have a mirror in the girl’s washroom!” He said, “You don’t need a mirror, you look beautiful.” Okay, I’ll admit it, I was hooked. We introduced ourselves (let’s call him “John” since that is where we met), exchanged some witty banter and chatted about where we were from. Despite that it was a strange location for a first meeting, he came across as classy, sweet – like he had a good head on his shoulders. At the end of our mini-convo, he cutely quipped, “Throw me a little wink if you want to meet in the back room again.”
A couple hours and several glances from him later, my girlfriend, with her newfound liquid courage, waved the guys over to our table. But they politely declined. It seemed like they were in a pretty intense conversation over there so I left it at that. A little bit later, at around 1:00am, John winked at me. I attempted to wink back, but ended up blinking both eyes simultaneously in an oh-not-so-sexy way. Not sure what signal that sent but I’m sure it was the wrong one. But to my surprise, he got up and walked towards the back…I was thrilled! He wants to continue our adorable witty banter!
Once I got back there, the men’s room door was closed. I wasn’t sure if our wink repartee had gotten lost in translation but I actually did have to go to the washroom so I went into the ladies. As I was closing the door, John’s arm came in and pulled me out. The exit to the back parking lot was located right across from the ladies room. John started fiddling with the locks and I asked, “What are you doing?” and he said, “Follow me.” So, I went outside and he pulled me around into a dark little corner by the garbage bin and said, “Just don’t say anything. Be cool.” I said “What?? What??” From the look in his eyes, I thought I’d just stumbled into some kind of crack deal. He repeated, “Just be cool and don’t tell anyone.” I responded with, “I’m not really sure what’s going on.” Then he said, “Well, do you want to go to my place? It’s down the street.” I said, “Oh! No. No, no, no. I think there’s been some miscommunication here.” He said, “It’s cool. Just be cool and don’t say anything” and tried to pull me a bit closer. I’m not sure why this popped out of my mouth but I then said, “Wait…do you have a girlfriend?” He got a deer-in-headlights look in his eye, pushed me away and said, “What? What does that matter?” (No wonder they declined my friend’s offer to merge tables! He has a girlfriend!!) I said, “Oh no. I don’t think…I’m sorry…but…[stutter stutter stutter]”. To which he replied, “Why are you making this complicated? I live right down the street?” I said, “Oh no. I’m sorry.” He replied in a disgusted tone, “You just made this really complicated. Just be cool. Don’t say anything.” I said, “No, sorry. I am going to go back inside.” He said “Fine. I’m going to walk around the front. Just be cool and don’t say anything.” So, I turned around to go back inside…and I got locked out! I had to call my girlfriend to come to the back and let me in.
I was mortified. I genuinely thought we would go back and talk some more…I didn’t get a creeper vibe from this guy at all! How could my Douchedar fail me so badly? I was really bummed. I thought about his girlfriend…she’s probably at home thinking, “Oh my sweet, handsome argyle-wearing boyfriend is just grabbing drinks at a dive bar with a couple friends.” I say I want a boyfriend but not if this is what happens when you get one.
When I told my girlfriend what happened, she responded with, “I am really sorry that happened to you, Mara. But, you did wink at him. You kind of gave him mixed signals.” I felt betrayed by my instincts but all signs on the “Douche-O-Meter” pointed to zero. Maybe it was the sweater talking, but he seemed so nice, so normal. I couldn’t help but wonder…I call guys “douches” because all they want to do is hookup. But, on the flipside, what do they think of us? Do they think we’re “douches” (or the female equivalent) because we want a relationship?
This morning, I called my best gay to divulge the story and he was mortified that my girlfriend would tell me that any of what happened was my fault. He exclaimed, “A flirty wink is not code for I want to f*#@ you in the alley!!!” I concur.
Moral of the story: Beware of wolves (douches) in sheep’s clothing (sweaters).
User Responses
8 Responses and Counting...
03.30.2012
You sat and waited for him for “a couple of hours” and then met him in the back at 1:00 AM and you were expecting a sweet conversation????? smh
There was something I was reading online (it’s now totally escaping me, but I feel like it was either Dear Prudence or Dear Margo…) about winking. And the person was saying (I think it was Dear Prudence) their boyfriend winks at everyone…he sees it as a sign of thanks, not flirting.
And I concur…winking =/= anything sexual in a back alley. To “A Man” who previously commented…they didn’t sit and wait for him for a couple of hours, they were hanging out at the same bar this guy happened to be at.
Good story, Martha. With regards to the question of winking, I’d say BOTH your girlfriend and ‘gay guy guide to social etiquette’ were possibly correct; winking can have a wide variety of potential meanings in a wide variety of circumstances. But do I therefore ‘blame you’ for ‘getting yourself into this situation’? No, it’s often hard to know exactly who people are given the limited amount of cues we having in dating situations, and your ‘creepy guy radar’ still did a good job in that this false heart here didn’t do anything violent or rights-violating or that you would need to go to the men in blue for-which is all that really matters at the end of the day. (The only thing I would perhaps question about your approach is whether, after you asked the first time ‘What are you doing,’ and he said, “Follow me,” you shouldn’t have made him answer before going out the door with him.)
” I call guys “douches” because all they want to do is hookup. But, on the flipside, what do they think of us? Do they think we’re “douches” (or the female equivalent) because we want a relationship?”
This is a subject that needs to be dealt with-and I may do that by commenting at length on an article that Thirty wrote earlier touching on this subject-but this is not true about guys, at least in any absolute sense, many of whom (in absolute though not relative numbers) care as much about love as women. You just have to find those guys (I know, I know, easier said than done.) My approach (as a guy) is to look for relationships and people in areas where people have the most common interests and values, like the organization “Meet Up’, at work if one does a job that one is passionate about, with hobby groups,etc-by maximizing the chance that you share common ethical, generally philosophical, and personal values you maximize your chances of finding the right guy. But bars by nature give a low-probability that one will find someone with common interests and values (although they may have strengths like your being able to judge handsomeness directly and that you can easily maximize the chance of getting an intuitive feel for a person).
Sorry-Mara (!), not Martha. Just wanted to say that, yes, you’re right, guys more than girls go for sex earlier, but the point which I could have more clearly expressed was that there are still in absolute numbers lots of good guys, thus one has to maximize the techniques that will find them. Also would note that girls, more than guys, go for rich guys or look for income/wordly success/wealth which guys do not do half as much. So: if guys admittedly are ‘douches’ for being more sex-directed, girls are also more douchy in being wealth-directed. So there!!)
Dearest Leonard,
I know it seems like all women are all searching for only wealthy guys, and some may be that shallow, but this could just be a miscommunication between the sexes. It is not the root of the motivation you need to question with every woman but the definition. A woman who says she wants a guy with a job may mean she wants a guy with goals. It could mean she wants someone that is good with managing money or wants to provide for his family. She mean she is looking for someone with the same work ethic or education level. She may want a sense of security from worrying about money or hurting his ego by BEING the bread winner. So a lady that looks for a guy with an income can mean different things for every individual woman. It’s like saying you want an educated woman. Well educated to one person is a Doctorate in engineering but to another it means being able to discuss Shakespeare prose in detail. Yet they both say they want an educated woman.
It’s no different.
So if you are saying both sexes are equally shallow because guys go for looks and girls for money, I’d say see above.
My question to you is does a guy “not half as much” look for a girl with income becuse you think guys are less shallow or is it because the man is still expect to be the provider by social standards and, therefore, doesn’t worry about it?
@ Erin:
Hi, Thirty hasn’t been updating so haven’t been dropping by to see whether she’s added anything recently and didn’t see your comment. So without further ado:
1) Excellent points and questions; you made me think through my argument much more. One general problem that we have is that we don’t have any hard percentage numbers for gender-specific vices/biases (like a survey showing that 20 percent of women have aspects of gold-digging to their personality or that 40 percent of men value beauty above all other traits), and so without these hard numbers we can only concentrate on clarifying motivational reasons/causes. (I know, Google is perhaps my friend here but I’m feeling lethargic.)
2) Yes, I agree with the tenor of your points and your list of many good reasons [(a) has goals, b) can handle money responsibly, c) cares about family, d) has work ethic, e) security, f) among others] why a woman (as well as a man) could be legitimately looking for someone in the (broadly understood) income/worldly success/wealth bracket range. But I didn’t use the term ‘employment’ in my argument, but rather these other indicators, for a specific reason, and that reason was that all your terms can apply to employment, which definitely is valuable-but needn’t apply to these other indicators. So for example, a brilliant college professor might care about teaching and writing, but have relatively low-income-which means he satisfies the your ‘responsibly employed’ criteria, but doesn’t meet the ‘worldly three’ criteria very well. (Unless one argues that being a successful college professor constitutes ‘worldly success’.) Or some brilliant psychologist might not have written any books, but be able to help people with their problems incredibly well-nevertheless, he still ranks fairly low by income/worldly success/wealth brackets. Or a poet of genius has a style which is not currently in fashion, and lives half-starved in a loft, so isn’t doing well by these three criteria.
Now I’m not saying that any of the above men will have problems (assuming they’re normal in other ways) finding romantic love. There will surely be women who can see their good qualities. But I am saying that there will be a definite percentage of women who won’t take them seriously because they don’t meet the ‘worldly three’ criteria. How large a percentage? I don’t know, but larger than on the male side. Guys aren’t looking as much at a woman’s income, or whether she’s a CEO, or at her style of dress as an indication for how well-off she is. (But then I agree a larger number of guys than women might very well ignore the poetess of genius because she’s just (let’s say) average-looking.)
3) One issue to be thrown into the mix is children, and my feeling (again no hard numbers) is that this is at lesast slightly more important for women. I think more women will feel unfulfilled than men if they don’t have children (let’s say 60 percent for women as opposed to 40 for men). Since women want children more, they look for income/worldly success/wealth more since this indicates that this guy will be able to really support their prospective family. (Again, a question of percentages since many men want children as well.)
4) And to your specific questions:
a) my feeling is that both sexes are equally profound/shallow although there is a part of me that wants to argue that, because women aren’t as well represented in the sciences and other ‘hard thinking’ realms, and are more religious than men, they don’t understand these areas as well, and thus are less knowledgeable. (Why this would be the case is the question.) For example, ony 32 percent of lawyers are women in the U.S. and “women comprised [only] 16 percent of the U.S. scientific and engineering (S&E) labor force in 1988″. On the other hand, we find that “Thirty years ago there were 13 boys for every girl who scored above 700 on the SAT math exam at age 13; today that ratio has shrunk to about 3:1. This increase in the number of girls identified as “mathematically gifted” suggests that education can and does make a difference at the highest levels of mathematical achievement.” So I don’t know what to think as to why these differences exist.
b) I think guys look for income less for BOTH reasons you stated: partly guys go for income less because they go for beauty more (which I think implies as mentioned that they are more shallow in this respect). But I also think that they’ve been brought up to be ‘providers’, as so don’t worry about female income for this reason as well.
One interesting exercise would be to match pictures of wedding couples knowing their income and judging their looks, and see what matchups we get. (Overall my feeling here is that you’d find more ‘trophy wives’ than ‘trophy husbands’-but then on the other hand it seems people match up pretty well asthetically on the whole. And actually, if we define ‘trophy wives’ as being significantly more handsome than the husband, and ‘trophy husbands’ as being significanlty richer than the wife, then we might find each sex going for ‘trophies’ with equal propensity.)
Anyway, would be interested in your further thoughts on my musings if you have time.
Just found some hard data on the subject which confirm my intuitions from page 131 of James Tooley’s The Miseducation of Women; the money quote:
For steady dating and marriage, both men and
women raised their stakes, although women consistently wanted better
financial prospects in their partners than did men. Women wanted a
steady date who was above 60 per cent of other men, while men were
content with 30 per cent. For marriage, women aspired to men who
were above 70 per cent of other men, while men aspired only to
women above 40 per cent. However, the most striking contrast was
for having sex. For women, having sex required raising the stakes
above what they required only for dating – they wanted a man at the
49th percentile. Men, however, did not care where their potential
sexual partner came in the earnings’ hierarchy, returning the zero
percentile as their requirement. They would have sex with anyone.
There are further studies cited here, all of which show that women statistically are much more interested than men in the ‘financial viability’ of dates and marriage partners.
More relevant info from Warren Farrell’s Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say:
“Feminism had a powerful effect on helping women become stronger, more
independent. But it had almost no impact on the type of man a woman would
find suitable if she did marry. In workshops, when I ask women, “On your wedding
day, did you believe the man you married would consistently earn less than
you?” almost no woman says “yes.” That is, almost every woman who marries still
believes her future husband will earn equal to or more than she. If she feels he
doesn’t “have potential,” she might have sex with him, might even live with him,
but rarely marries him.”