Are Real Boyfriends Extinct?
I am an old-school romantic, and in the modern hookup culture of dating, does that make me sort of extinct? Well... Have you ever dated before?! Dating today is actually a full-time JOB: to find a date, to get ready for a date, to go on an actual date, and then to sift through the various debris before and after the date! Hurricane Katrina was probably easier to maintain than to deal with dating debris! Should I just call it Dating Derby? Why? The more we like a guy, the more he wants to run away from us, and does it really fast! But we girls are always determined! Once we like him, we treat him as a pray, don’t we?! We don’t want to let him go! Why? Well,... Good ones aren’t that easy to find!
What happens when we meet a new guy and think that he might be our very own next Brad Pitt? Once he, the Guy has triggered the radar of our attention then all our senses, sensors, and mindset are gearing up and tuning into a high tactical alert. All bets are off! We are getting ourselves ready to prowl and pounce. We want to know everything about him, even the stories and assumptions he doesn't know exist! We need to feed the hunger for excitement!
“He better be really cute, I hope he is not fake, is he really in the military, does he still live with his Mama, will he be ghosting me too?…” These and a gazillion of other equally overloaded and crazy questions are just popping in our minds like popcorn in the bowl inside the microwave!
Then we try to find him on Facebook and compare his Bio on various dating apps he possibly was surfing through for the last ten years, despite the fact that those dating sites are all the same because our Ex is dominating them anyway! If after hours of searching, there is still nothing damaging to find on this new guy, then we definitely gonna say: “Hmmm, he is a pervert!” That would be suspicious even more! Thank God, there are ways to keep snooping even deeper through his dirty laundry! Just sign up for a membership on the SocialCatfish-dot-com website and save yourself from being bored or having unprovoked panic attacks over the emptiness of random weekends when there is absolutely nothing else to do! That website is actually real and keeps the information on all eligible guys, and when you need to dig up some dirt that’s where you go! Hey, don’t forget to sign up for their Prime membership! You might keep reusing their searches! Don't you think?!
I’m not yet even talking about preparing ourselves for the actual first coffee date which we attempt to pass as a casual hanging out at Starbucks. By the way, when we actually go on such a first assessment meetup masked as just “grab-a-coffee-and-chit-chat-hangout”, we get prepared! We get ready! I don’t mean just buying new makeup, perfume, and sexy lingerie just in case, that is given! We plan, strategize and role-play! First, casual coffee hanging out quickly evolves into the strategic planning of the next possible “nukillar” attack to fetch those rare unsuspicious species, blindfold him before he will be able to escape, and then bring him home to Mama! That is if we will like him! Now, once we like him, we proceed to the next step. We will be checking references through mutual friends on Facebook and secretly bombarding them with questions. “Michael, I see you are friends with this guy. Do you have any dirt on him? You don't know him?! Oops!” To top it all off we create reference lists to simplify and compare our research, observations, and notes, and make it easier for our chosen confidants not to get lost in descriptions or even crisscross our possible hookups! These lists are like a Master File of all keynotes the music conductor refers to during the orchestra play. The list is usually comprised of commonly known disaster types and then some potentially rare and usually unattainable gems.
Last weekend after our fourth or fifth rounds of margaritas Cindy urged me to finally create for all three of us this joined list of guys we all dated or are interested in, and Mindy was eagerly contributing her fair share of incredulous dates too. Easy-squeezy! Instead of saying the name, description, and all important details about the guy we are gossiping about, now we say Number 3 or Number 7 to each other, and then just refer to the description saved on our iPhones to see all the important details. Quite handy, right? This list-building started shaping up into a Dummies Roster of Disastrous Dating 101! The Mint Edition! Rare and highly collectible! Hmmm, I"m curious, how much other ladies would bid on such a list if we would auction it on eBay? Now we keep this mutual roster of players in the dating pool, and when we would discuss our dates, or what happened to them, we would just look at the list and check the damn number, edit it, or add notes. If the date will be a sourpuss we still won’t delete him off the list, no-no! We will archive him!
I’m telling you, it is a full-time job, and you probably didn't believe me!
Dating is very serious business! Try to date in LA, and the number of calories you will burn, and the energy you will spend will easily beat the results of the Weight Watchers and Keto diet combined together! And then you will need to destress, decompress, debrief and drive nuts your own psychiatrist, frantically texting him past midnight:” Was I too much?!!!” oh, honey!... Leave your psychiatrist ALONE. After listening to your crap he will go to his own physiatrist to get help too!
Buggin your psychiatrist what were you hoping to accomplish in the first place? To get a special pill to solve your problems? Good luck with that, because if I would be your psychiatrist, I would give you that pill, I would inject you myself with a mixture of Xanax, cough syrup, heartburn, and gas relief meds combined all in one! Try not to sneeze too hard and maybe, just maybe you will get by!
Ladies, let’s get serious! Let’s combine our knowledge and efforts to preserve those rare and good ones from extinction, or we won’t have anything else to do in the rare times when we aren’t surfing on Instagram.
Really, are you so sure there was a life before Social Media?