Why Perfect Dates Make Lousy Partners

Great news for those of us who may not make the most scintillating first dates! On the Dating Amy web site (http://www.DatingAmy.com), I found a link to this article by LiveScience entitled “Why Perfect Dates Make Lousy Partners” (http://www.livescience.com/health/080212-dating-success.html). Popular people tend to be well-liked because they are social chameleons who are very good at self-monitoring – “they screen their words and behavior to suit the people around them,” so they make quite satisfying dates. But high self-monitors have trouble turning this self-monitoring off, “avoiding face-threatening interactions and honest self-disclosure….They appear to have an outlook and way of achieving their goals that makes them attractive to us socially but that prevents them from being particularly happy or loyal in their romantic relationships."

According to the article, “low self-monitors — people who are the least concerned with social appropriateness and are unlikely to mask their feelings or opinions to avoid confrontation or preserve their self-image — are more committed to and more satisfied with their relationships.” The article did note, however, that this awkwardness comes with a price, “because they may be more likely to say blunt and hurtful things” to their partners.

Makes sense, I guess. I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who just told me what I wanted to hear all the time and who was so afraid of upsetting me, he could never be completely honest with me. On the other hand, hearing “blunt and hurtful things” all the time wouldn’t be much fun, either! That’s why moderation, according to the article, is key.

In any event, only 97 single adults were surveyed in this study, and their boyfriends/girlfriends were *not* surveyed, which would have made for a more informative study, in my opinion.

Worst Date Ever: #2 in a series

Scene: Restaurant at dinner time
Characters: 1) Me
2) A guy we’ll call Too Much Skull-Manipulation, who I’d met at a “museum mingle” the week before

Me: So how long have you been getting this – what was it called again?
TMSM: Craniosacral therapy. A few years now. They manipulate the bones in your cranium.
Me: Is it safe?
TMSM: Oh, totally. It gets your central nervous system into complete harmony.
Me: Interesting.

Pause.

TMSM: Are you an albino?
Me: (dropping my fork) Um – NO.
TMSM: Oh.
Me: NOT AT ALL.
TMSM: Okay.
Me: (staring at TMSM)
(my fork stays abandoned on the floor)
(awkward silence builds)
TMSM: Are you mad at me?
Me: Why would I be mad? You just asked if I was a genetic mutant, that’s all.
TMSM: No – that’s not it – I think you’re very pretty –
Me: Right. For a genetic mutant.
TMSM: That’s not what I meant – um –

(Awkward silence builds to a deafening crescendo)

Me: Maybe I could get the rest of this food to go....

The End.
(Note: There was no second date.)

Date from hell!

To ensure you’ll laugh at least once this weekend, I will now post about what was, without question, my Worst Date Ever. It was so, so BAD, I hope words can do it justice. The most appropriate nickname for this guy is Mr. Negative, who I met through one of the speed-dating web sites. We decided to get together for dinner at a diner in Manhattan. My initial first-few-seconds impression, when we met in front of the restaurant, was, "Great, he's cute, seems low-key in a good way."

Then we sat down, and he made the mistake of opening his mouth. He was the most thoroughly pessimistic guy I've ever been out with in my entire life! He’d mentioned in an e-mail to me that he had just been on vacation in Vegas, so I asked him about it. He proceeded to tell me about how he loves Jennifer Aniston -- I mean, he seriously LOVES her -- so while in Vegas he forced his friends to drive with him to Los Angeles for the weekend and go to this restaurant that he'd read on http://www.msn.com that Jennifer goes to all the time. He even asked a waiter when he got there, "Does Jennifer Aniston come here a lot?" to make sure he had the right place. When she never showed up, he was devastated. It ruined his entire weekend. His friends went on a city tour the next day, but he was "so depressed" that he hadn't seen Jennifer, he just stayed in his hotel room (sulking, I guess), then finally went shopping. He made his friends go back to the same restaurant the NEXT night -- he treated so that they all would go there again, even though it was a pretty expensive restaurant. Still no Jennifer. When he got home to New York, he read that she and Courtney Cox had been on vacation in Hawaii that weekend, and he was furious!

I was busy wondering why Mr. Negative had even wanted to go out with me, seeing as I look nothing like Jennifer Aniston, when he proceeded to tell me he is also intensely in love with Gwen Stefani -- so much so that he went to three of her concerts in three different states in the same week (!). He even held up a sign he'd made that read GWEN, I LOVE YOU, CALL ME, with his phone number on it.

"Um, isn't she seeing someone?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, she's married with a kid," he said matter-of-factly, as if that shouldn't make any difference at all. "But what really gets me is, not only did Gwen not call me, no other woman in the audience did either!"

I was dumbfounded. What woman in her right mind would call some random guy who held up a crazy sign at a concert?

Next Mr. Negative said, "Don't even ask me about my vacation in January!" Foolishly, I took the bait and asked, so he went on and on about the singles cruise he took to South America. They lost his luggage, only gave him $100 to buy new clothes, and worst of all, the people on the cruise turned out to consist of two guys in their 20s, Mr. Negative (who is 32), and all these fifty and sixty-year-olds! HA! The web site had apparently advertised it as a singles cruise for "younger" singles and showed all these photos of hot twenty- and thirty-somethings in bathing suits, so he was outraged. He told me about how he actually SUED them when he got home, but the lawsuit got thrown out because the company had never guaranteed what age anyone would be.

And so it went from there. I asked him about his job. His boss is terrible, he hates her, she hates him, he's been trying to find a new job but can't find anything in his salary range. I asked him about where he lives. Well, it's SO overpriced, it's dead there, he hates it, but it's close to work. I asked him if he has any siblings. He has a sister, he said, but she's so arrogant that they don't get along.

But the best part was when I asked Mr. Negative about how his speed-dating experience had been so far. "Horrible!" he said (surprise, surprise). He said that at the first speed-dating event he’d tried, there were only four women and 11 men, and none of the women chose him. The company gave him a coupon to go to another event for free. At that one, he said he chose nine women -- and NONE of them picked him! Gee, I wonder why??

"Women are just too picky," he said authoritatively. "They want someone who's six feet tall and who makes six figures a year, and they won't even look at anyone else."

It was so hard for me not to laugh! I wanted so badly to say, Um, no, we just want someone who has a positive word to say once in a while! And it was so awkward because he only asked me three questions about myself all night. When I wasn't asking him about his depressing life, we would literally just sit there. (At one point he said, "You look tired." Yeah, of you!)

After the check came and he paid (thank goodness for small favors), I stole a glance at my watch and could not believe only an hour had passed -- it felt like three! Then he walked me to the subway. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a train station in my life. As soon as I spotted it, I said, "Well, this is me, thank you for dinner."

And HE said, "I'd really like to see you again! You're fun!"

I thought, Of course you think I'm fun -- a lump of WAX is a barrel of laughs compared to you! I mumbled something vague and escaped.

He e-mailed me the following week asking if I’d like to get together again. I thought, should I tell him (gently) why I’d had such a bad time? I mean, the poor guy probably doesn’t even realize how he comes across. I finally e-mailed him back saying that I appreciated his interested but am looking for someone more upbeat.

He wrote back:

“Funny, you were laughing the entire time and seemed to be enjoying yourself. Good luck in finding Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome.”

So much for constructive criticism!