Last fall I had a date with a guy that I met on OKC. T.’s profile made it clear that he was looking for a casual relationship, as was I. Our 
conversations made it clear that we had much in common. He took great interest in my blog, something that always sends up a red flag for me. He said many times how eager he was to meet me because he felt like we’d have so much to talk about.
So we meet up. I’m not in my chair more than five minutes before he’s telling me how he never has expectations when it comes to his online dates, but that I was different. He then expanded on this by drawing a diagram with his finger on a napkin indicating how I “filled all the boxes” in terms of what he was looking for.
But then, out of no where, he dropped a bomb.
“The trouble with this is that there’s no hiding from you. There’s no mystique.”
I swallowed my cider and tried to ignore what he had said.Given that he had confessed to reading my blog extensively, my level of insight and perception should not have come as a surprise to him. Since he works in the sociology and psychology field, he and I share certain traits that tend to put a crimp in relationships. Namely that we both read people exceptionally well. My Ex, J, was a psychologist. I’d be lying if I said that our similar insight and ability to analyze situations didn’t cause some strife. But we got through it. I have said many times that I am no walk in the park when it comes to dating.Namely because I often times can predict what a guy will say or do long before he’s even formulated a plan of action in his head.
T. was right in the sense that there would be little mystique. But then…so what? I could see how this might be a problem if we were both looking for something more involved. But we weren’t. At least I wasn’t. According to his profile, neither was he.
Then he dropped another bomb on me:
“I’d love to write for your blog.” He didn’t say it seriously. More like half-jokingly. I just smiled and said nothing, my anger boiling up inside me. Son of a bitch. T. wasn’t interested in the woman behind the profile. He was interested in the woman behind the blog.
When T. said he couldn’t help that he “wasn’t feeling it” I stopped caring. He assured me that he thought I was attractive. It was the personality similarities between us that he wasn’t sure he could get past. We were both very direct, with equal levels of intuition and perception. Tricky. Acceptable. But there was no need to let me in on that little secret, thereby derailing a perfectly fun date.Which makes me wonder if that was what he wanted. Maybe he wanted to throw me off kilter so he could be in control of the dynamic. Or maybe he’s just profoundly stupid like his predecessor, Don Draper. He, too, would say the stupidest of things that would make things worse, not better. They both felt that being “honest” was the “right” thing. But if they were truly as intelligent as they perceived themselves to be, they’d know that total honesty was not going to advance their agenda, whatever that might be.
I got up to leave and put my money on the bar. T. asked me to stay, saying he felt we could still “salvage this.” I explained that I didn’t show up to the date looking for a new girlfriend, and that if all he offered was friendship then there was no point in me sticking around. He tried to talk me down, but my claws were out by that point. I lobbed back every serving of ‘honesty’ he offered and then some. Fuck that noise. Salvage what? Your ego? He eventually paid for our drinks and left. I sat there pondering what had just happened. I guess I felt the same way a guy feels when a woman goes home with him, lets him feel her up, gets undressed and then says she can’t take things further. It’s maddening and hurtful at the same time. T. was a psychological cock tease, no different then the women who let you slide your hand down their pants and then say, ‘Oh, we have to stop. I can’t do this.” His hand is DOWN YOUR PANTS. You’re already doing it!
I felt like I had been bait and switched on my date with T. Casual anything was not on the table. It never was. It made me feel really, really stupid for believing his praise. He was right in that I was not someone with whom he would always have the upper hand. I suppose that is unattractive in some way to some men. Someone who sells himself online the way he did in his profile on the Interwebs, so openly, really shouldn’t be concerned with maintaining a sense of mystery. Things didn’t add up for me, which lead me to believe that even though he said he was being honest, and was to some degree, he really wasn’t. Not with me and possibly not with himself. Bullet dodged.
Another guy I dated last winter pulled something similar. After a few dates he said that he felt like what he truly wanted was something more permanent. He asked me if I saw us headed in that direction. I will fully admit here that I lied to him and said yes. Am I open to something long term or more involved? Absolutely. But I knew he wasn’t it. We continued to date for awhile longer until it was clear I couldn’t give him what he wanted. We never were exclusive. I wouldn’t do that to someone that I knew I didn’t see myself with long term. He had originally said he wanted one thing. Then when he had it, he decided that’s not what he really wanted. In this case, he wasn’t honest with himself about what he was seeking. He didn’t know himself well enough to understand what he could and couldn’t handle. Like I said last week, the real challenge of online dating is finding someone who knows what they want and who they are. Unfortunately, these people often lose out. Knowing what you want and what you can feasibly offer is scary to a lot of people.
When I hear people complain about the lack of honesty in dating and how badly they want the truth, I realize very quickly that they’ve never actually been told the truth. If they did, they’d know why total honesty is bullshit. Additionally, the people who tell you how honest and straightforward they are are also liabilities. They’re not honest as much as they are socially clueless, manipulative or rude. They wield their honesty like a bat with the intention of either hurting someone or maintaining control. It’s not as healthy and wonderful as you think.
Whether you’d like to believe it or not, the person you want and who is most safe to date is the the one who is willing to keep their mouth shut and tell a white lie.
This is one of the best blogs in a long time, because it bears on all of us.
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If you’re open to something long term or more involved, why not go for it?
Why sell yourself as something not permanent?
Pick one or the other and go after it wholeheartedly.
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I mean no offense, and granted its been a long time since I’ve read your blog.
But I just wonder…. if from very early on in the conversation you got that he wasn’t in sync with your intentions, why didn’t you leave after the first bomb?
This post just feels like a rant about something that could have been avoided.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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The world has definitely changed and we’re not going back to totally male dominated relationships. However, when men feel like they are in a relationship that is too dominated by a woman, they eventually become uncomfortable. It’s a really good thing to defer to one’s significant other at times. And that works for both genders.
There are lots of times that I observe my girlfriend doing something quite different from the way I would, and say absolutely nothing. If there is no harm in her way, it’s all good. There are lots of times she takes over a situation, and I just smile. There are times when I call the shots and she just snuggles up to me. That is what a healthy relationship in the modern world has become. I absolutely love it.
Now reading the events of the date described by Moxie, I get the distinct feeling, that kind of peaceful coexistence could never happen. Good relationships are easy, irregardless of all the work people like to tell you is required to make relationships work. Of course work is necessary, but it should be easy enough going in, so the work later does not become overwhelming. Things have gotten too complicated. People in their haste to be all-knowing have forgotten the simple things that make relationships work.
Yes the mystery issue and the honesty issue may have played a part. But it’s the one-upmanship, the need to over-inflate oneself, the need to be right and the failure to comprehend congeniality that dooms that situation described by the author.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I don’t understand the need for stringent criteria to be met when all he was looking for was something casual. That’s the opposite of casual.
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The only trait shared by the half dozen psych students I’ve known : they were emotionally messed up. Several knew they were interested in psychology mostly because of their issues.
People who obsess over honesty, who insist on total honesty, are generally socially tone-deaf.
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While I generally agree with this post, I found this article about Radical Honesty interesting: http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707
It seems to me that doing this would necessitate a wholesale re-negotiation of all your relationships, and probably termination of some. OTOH he claims it results in less stress and more happiness, so I guess the question is, do you need such a change?
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Good article, D-man. Thanks.
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Sounds like T. had no idea what he really wanted. As with the guy from last winter, he suggests in his profile that he wants one thing, then goes in a different direction in person. I think we’ve probably all faced this at least a few times in dating. Mostly, I tend to chalk this up to pure lack of insight. Most people walking this earth do not know themselves particularly well. To the extent they think they do, they actually haven’t spent a lot of time in self-reflection learning when they’re bullshitting themselves (and thus, others) and how to spot it. End result: they present themselves as wanting/being one thing, and turn out to want/be something else entirely.
I tend to think this is (or at least can be) particularly an issue in online dating, where expectations are set up front (without even an initial conversation) based on the profile. In offline dating, I’d think the expectations are, perhaps, a bit more fluid.
For example, if you’d met T. offline, say out at some event, would you have stuck out the date longer once he made it clear that he was (or seemed to be) interested in more than just casual dating? Or would you have said “Ohhh, I get it. You have no idea what you want,” and left?
In my experience, I’ve come to realize that I’ve invested WAY too much in the other person’s profile. When it’s a profile I’ve really liked, that has led me to sticking it out a lot longer with them, because I’m hoping they’ll turn into the person I read about, and I end up surprised and irritated when they turn out to be someone else (or, I suppose, simply don’t show me the side of them that the profile portrays).
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What gets me is T had all this information about Moxie before he went out with her. He’s read her blog, knows she’s insightful, intuitive etc, so then why cite these very qualities as reasons not to go out with her? Seems to me he just wanted to waste her time by fulfilling some desire to meet her in person with no real intention of casual dating..
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A man can want one thing, and decide after meeting you that he does not want that with YOU.
Too often we get upset with someone and scream “he doesn’t know what he wants!” while in truth, the person just didn’t want that with us.
The guy in this post met up with Moxie and decided that he didn’t proceed further with her. No fault on either part.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Agree. I don’t see anything particularly honest here.
Its like that canned interview response when someone asks you “what’s your biggest weakness” and the answer is “I work way too hard and sometimes neglect other aspects of my life because I’m such a loyal and dedicated worker.”
This guy T rejected Moxie because, he says, she is too intuitive and amazing and too much like him, so there would be no mystery. Puh lease. That’s not honesty. That is sucking up to someone to avoid conflict. We don’t know the real reason he wasn’t interested and never will.
The lesson here is never believe what people tell you when they are rejecting you. Especially on a first date where you have no basis to know anything about the person, other than assumptions and guesswork based solely on your prejudices (e.g. the behavior of exes)
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You’re right. It wasn’t honesty. More than likely, he met up with me knowing his interest was not in me but in the blog persona. Had he not been so effusive about how excited he was to meet me and how we had so much in common and that I was attractive, the rejection certainly would have stung less. During one of our conversations before we met, I asked him if he had had anything weird happen on any of his dates. He told me about one woman in particular who, once he got back to her place, clearly had some kind of personality disorder because she was some kind of hoarder. He had sex with her anyway, much like Ted in today’s post. I filed that story away, knowing it revealed something distasteful about him. But since I’ve heard similar stories from my male friends and they’re not creeps I didn’t hold it against him. He also did the, ‘I don’t want that story popping up on your blog” thing, which we all know is code for, “I double dog dare you to write about it.”
He could have sex with a crazy hoarder, but not me? He could get past that but not my incredibly super-duper insight? Does not compute. Either he found me really unattractive or he never had intention of getting to know me in the first place. Or both.
There are two take aways here:
1. The truth is usually in the sub-text of what people say, and not in what they actually say.
2. Keep your damn mouth shut – If he truly were intimidated by my scary intellect (sarcasm) then he never should have met with me. Or he should have calmed down with all the compliments. He said too much and he shared too much.
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He’s making it too hard. Things should be a lot easier. If any of us get a sense of things being too complicated or hard going in, we just stop in our tracks. Maybe you could have diffused things, but maybe it’s just as well you didn’t, saving yourself lots of problems. The question out there is what happens in other encounters?
If a pattern is developing where things are not easy and pleasurable, as in just laughing your ass off at what each other says, you may want to examine your dating experience further. It’s no longer just the one-off strange guy or the guy over-obsessed with your blog. You may be just picking them wrong or something in your demeanor is attracting the wrong type or just unfortunately putting them into that stiff mode.
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I’ve never had this happen before. If I’ve met someone on OKC with the intention of seeking someone for a casual relationship, we’ve ended up dating for a few to several months.
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While I agree that there’s a difference between “I don’t know what I want” and “I know what I want, but I don’t know if I want it with you,” I don’t think that’s what we have here, at least based on Moxie’s story.
Moxie and T. decided to meet up for casual dating. Both their profiles suggested that they didn’t want anything more than a casual relationship. (Which, I assume, means at least no exclusivity, and perhaps no prospect of romantic love, or at least not devotional romantic love.)
On the date, though, T. does two things:
(1) He proceeds to state that he and Moxie have so much in common and she “fills all his boxes.”
(2) He then rejects her because of that.
Now, unpack that for a second. If he just wants casual dating, why is he paying attention to how she “fills all the boxes”? Unless those boxes are related specifically to casual dating, that language sounds more like someone who’s looking for something more serious. That’s not to say compatibility isn’t important in casual dating, too, but his statements sound — to me, at least — like he’s ACTUALLY looking for more than just casual dating. He just SAYS he’s looking for casual dating (and I have no idea why).
Then, he rejects her because of the overlap. It’s like, he got excited about the overlap, and then immediately backed off specifically because of it. “We have so much in common! It’s amazing! That’s why you have to leave now.”
If he truly wants ONLY casual dating, then why is he getting excited about the similarities? If he wants more than casual dating, then why is he dismissing her for something he clearly finds exciting?
Most of the time, when I’ve come across similar behavior, it’s not “I want it, just not with you.” That happens, certainly, and I’ve been on both ends of the equation with that. But the interaction between T. and Moxie looks different to me. It reminds me more of a scenario where it’s a matter of two conflicting desires and someone not knowing how to reconcile the two, so they just walk away. That’s subtly different from “You don’t know what you want,” too, although I think that phrase is frequently used to describe what I’m talking about.
Here’s a theory: T. wants more than just casual dating. This would explain his apparent excitement at Moxie “filling all the boxes.” But T. also is unwilling to expose himself to whatever risks he perceives come from serious dating (and those could be any number of things). So, in essence, he wants love (in a romantic sense), but without the risk.
What he hasn’t reconciled is that this is not possible, because there is no love without risk. And the end result of this is that he sends wildly mixed signals.
Now, I suppose you could argue that he did reconcile his issues, and doesn’t want love/serious dating, because he rejected Moxie and there’s his choice. But I would argue that choice doesn’t eliminate desire.
If I want chocolate cake, but I also want apple pie, and I can only have one, choosing the cake doesn’t mean I don’t still want the pie. It just means I wanted the cake MORE than the pie. And ultimately, that’s what I think is going on here. His risk aversion (again, whatever he perceives the risk to be) overrode his apparent desire for stronger connection…but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still want the stronger connection.
This, to me, is the classic case of competing desires that haven’t been reconciled. In a sense you could argue it’s not knowing what you want, but I’d say it’s more not knowing WHICH you want. T. still feels the pull of both sets of desires. He hasn’t figured out how to accept that he can’t have both at the same time. And unfortunately, Moxie got caught in the crossfire there.
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The problem with your analysis is that you assume T tels the truth and then try to reconcile all of his conflicting thoughts. How about this? T is totally full of shit. He tells Moxie she fills all the boxes but it is a total lie. Is that a possibility? Yes.
Words are used to achieve a desired goal but often the expressed desire is not the actual desire. More often than not, I think.
Once you look at it that way the likely explanations are much less complicated. The same shit that happens to all of us: maybe he didn’t think she looked like her pictures or was expecting something different. Maybe he had a better option that night and took it.
In the course of that, he just spat a lot of bullshit and gave Moxie something to blog about.
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That’s possible, but it presumes a level of deceptiveness and callousness that I find to be relatively rare. I tend to think that people are more complicated, but don’t understand their own complications (and thus end up being wishy-washy or indecisive), rather than deliberately lying to folks. They’re more likely, therefore, to bullshit themselves into believing something than they are to say “Ah ha! I’m gonna fuck with this person!” while twirling a handlebar mustache and laughing maniacally.
I mean, sure, those folks are out there. But I think they’re a relatively small portion of the population. Most folks, I tend to think, are more likely to simply lack insight into themselves, and therefore are more likely to just…say stupid crap that they believe in the moment but which is contradicted ten minutes later, rather than intentionally manipulating people. It’s not because they want to screw with you. It’s because they’re just sort of blundering along without a clue about themselves (and usually without a clue about other folks, too).
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My initial feeling about T after I read this was that he sounds like he feeds on his own vanity. His ego is so big that he needed to meet Moxie to prove something to himself. Who knows who this guy is. I mean people on here actually rationalize things as if you know these people. There could be a whole slew of problems with this dude we don’t even know about. It doesn’t even sound normal, forget analyzing it to death. I mean why go all out to meet someone to sit down and within 5 minutes get into some deep analytical conversation about your personalities then leave. What happen to just grin and baring an uncomfortable date until it’s over. Be polite, then go about your merry ways. You owe nothing to them and they owe nothing to you.
This guy seems like he wants some blog recognition and he got it.
Some people and things are just not worth the time.
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The irony is that this behavior is indicative a very small ego that needs to be soothed and defended at all costs.
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I’m not in my chair more than five minutes before he’s telling me how he never has expectations when it comes to his online dates, but that I was different. He then expanded on this by drawing a diagram with his finger on a napkin indicating how I “filled all the boxes” in terms of what he was looking for.
That’s two enormous red flags in two sentences. Any guy who tells you, on the first (or second or third) date, that “you’re different” or “everything he’s looking for” is blowing smoke up your ass. He doesn’t know you yet. That’s the entire purpose of going on dates, after all: to get to know someone. It takes months of seeing someone regularly to get to know them. So, either he has no idea what real emotional intimacy is and all his relationships (including friendships) are superficial, or he’s lying through his teeth in order to advance some agenda, eg. getting laid.
“The trouble with this is that there’s no hiding from you. There’s no mystique.”
WTF does that even mean? Who needs “mystique”? Who needs to “hide” from the person they’re dating?
As Elbert Hubbard said, “a friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” My friends are the people who I don’t need to hide from. I know they’ll forgive me for being human, just as I forgive them. I expect at least as much from a romantic partner. If I need to hide who I am, then there can be no intimacy and no real relationship.
T. was right in the sense that there would be little mystique. But then…so what? I could see how this might be a problem if we were both looking for something more involved. But we weren’t. At least I wasn’t. According to his profile, neither was he.
Exactly. If you’re looking for something casual, who cares about compatibility–at least outside the sack. This “date” should have been purely for the purpose of seeing if you had the chemistry in person that you had hoped for when looking at each others’ profiles. After that, the only concern should be finding somewhere to get naked together. If someone is looking for more than that, they shouldn’t be checking the “casual” box.
“I’d love to write for your blog.” He didn’t say it seriously. More like half-jokingly. I just smiled and said nothing, my anger boiling up inside me. Son of a bitch. T. wasn’t interested in the woman behind the profile. He was interested in the woman behind the blog.
… or even just the blog itself. And now we see the agenda behind blowing that smoke up your ass: he’s a wanna-be writer hoping to latch onto your success. Um, no. Get your own blog; it’s free.
He was right in that I was not someone with whom he would always have the upper hand. I suppose that is unattractive in some way to some men.
Nearly everybody likes to be in control, at least some of the time. All of the time, though? That’s the sign of a control freak.
He had originally said he wanted one thing. Then when he had it, he decided that’s not what he really wanted. In this case, he wasn’t honest with himself about what he was seeking. He didn’t know himself well enough to understand what he could and couldn’t handle. Like I said last week, the real challenge of online dating is finding someone who knows what they want and who they are.
I spent a lot of time (and money) believing that if I just had X or became Y, I’d be happy. More money, better job, bigger house, faster car, hotter women, etc. None of it worked–but our society’s answer is that if it doesn’t work, you just need more, more, MORE of whatever it is. It’s what drives our entire economy. However, it’s not the route to real happiness–and a relationship with someone who doesn’t know how to be happy is a soul-draining experience.
When I hear people complain about the lack of honesty in dating and how badly they want the truth, I realize very quickly that they’ve never actually been told the truth.
Insert quote from A Few Good Men here. There’s a model that says we build our own reality (“truth”) around us like a bubble, and our degree of conflict with others is a matter of how different their reality is from ours. To see the objective reality, rather than the one you’ve constructed in your head, is very difficult. Many people are so far out of touch that they wouldn’t recognize it if they saw it.
Additionally, the people who tell you how honest and straightforward they are are also liabilities. They’re not honest as much as they are socially clueless, manipulative or rude. They wield their honesty like a bat with the intention of either hurting someone or maintaining control. It’s not as healthy and wonderful as you think.
Here’s the thing about honesty: the people who are genuinely honest don’t need to tell you. It is the people who feel the need to tell you how “honest” they are who are just using it as an excuse being socially clueless, manipulative, rude or hurtful.
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I had a very similar date this week (including the “sitting at the bar alone afterwards contemplating it all” moment). This guy purported to be “open” and “vulnerable” and then gave me examples where he had totally manipulated and controlled situations, to the point that it was a bit scary. When I gently (!) told him that my definition of vulnerability differed from his, he got defensive, spit out a lot of pre-prepared stories that were supposed to be evidence of his vulnerability (but which really seemed rehearsed and then “performed”) and then said I wasn’t giving him the space to be vulnerable, and I obviously had my walls way up. He split the bill with me, shook my hand, and left. This despite me, earlier in the date sharing more than I would normally, as the topic was vulnerability.
So, all that to say, if someone can’t even be honest with themselves, they can’t be honest with you.
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Yep. And as CrotchRocket pointed out above, people who feel compelled to tell you how XYZ they are (Whatever quality that may be) are usually insecure about that or something else (and figure whatever XYZ is will compensate for their shortcomings). Most of the time, people who are confident in themselves don’t feel the need to brag about their positive attributes.
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