Thoughts On... Low Cost Dating

As you know, dear readers, I am a man on a budget. I'm not too good to sticking to that budget, so I tend towards not having very much money at any given point in time. Usually if I have more than $30 in my pocket, it's a good day. Since I also am trying to push into the dating world, I asked my friends to recommend ideas and activities for low cost dates (LCD).

My basic process is to get as much information as I can, and then mine that information to get the really good data that I can actually use. A good portion of my friends responded (including an ex-girlfriend of mine!) with a lot of good ideas.

Analyzing their input, there are four factors that determine the feasibility of a low cost date activity.

1) Budget
2) Type of Date
3) Prior relationship with person of interest
4) Confidence level

First, budget. This is obvious. After all, Donald Trump and I would have EXCEEDINGLY different points of view on what constitutes an LCD. For me, I would say a low cost date would have to be under $20 for total date cost.

Second, type of date. Is this a "first date"? A "Double Date"? Each date type brings about a different type of pressure on the guy attempting low cost dating. For example, with a double date, you have a second person that might be willing to pool resources to attain a higher cost activity while still being low cost to you. If it's a date later on in a relationship, the pressure lets up (slightly) cause your date can accept a less expensive option in favor of something more personalized to the existing relationship. The effort of personalization can bring up the cost of a date, however.

Third, prior relationship. The pressure is amped up with a person you don't know as opposed to someone you've interacted with on a regular basis, prior to asking them out. There is more pressure to impress on a first date with someone you don't really know, and an easy way to impress is to spend more money on a fancier activity. No matter what women say, this approach works. There's a reason 70 year old rich men get 25 year old women that are gorgeous. There's also another thought to consider with dating a person you hardly know.

In a time of assholes like the Craigslist killer (who met women through the personals section of Craigslist and then murdered them), a guy does have to present himself in a non serial killer, mostly safe way. I say "mostly safe" because every woman on the planet wants an element of danger in her guy. Just a little bit, even if they won't admit it to themselves. This limits LCD activity types because inviting a girl you hardly know to a dinner & a movie at your place can seem a bit creepy to her. Not to mention the fact that the woman herself might be psycho (Lorraina Bobbitt, anyone?) and you may not want her to know exactly where you live. This leans more towards a public venue for your LCD activity which, if you don't know where to look, can make dating much more expensive.

When it's someone that you know, the pressure is still high, but different. She knows you, and you know her so the psycho serial killer pressure is off, but now you want to shake up her view of you so that she sees you a romantically (and sexually) viable candidate. This would lead to doing something unique that she's not used to doing or seeing you do. But in this country, unique can also be a lot pricier.

Fourth, Confidence level. This one determines a great deal in a very subtle way. Because, while the other three factors limit the range of activities, your confidence level is what determines the actual activity for the date. No matter what kind of date it is, you're inevitably going to go with the activity (or activities) that you feel are the most impressive to your date while still holding some type of comfort level for you as well.

For example, if you're not comfortable being one-on-one with your date, you might want to suggest a group activity, like a movie night with a bunch of friends, to make things more comfortable. But the risk here is that without the proper level of intimacy, what in your mind is a date, could come across as just a gathering of friends, since a good portion of women in this country relate a man's interest level (in them) with the man's attempts to get them alone.

I thank my friends for helping me in working this out, and I hope to put it to good use in the future. Now I have to work on getting women to say "yes" to going out with me, But that's another challenge in & of itself.

Another mini milestone

I just checked my blog post counter. I've cleared 100 posts this year! That is so cool. This post will be 101, just like those damned Dalmations that Disney keeps forcing on the world... Give it up! Just let Cruella have them already!! Stop damning them to a lifetime of being tormented by a woman who can't pick what hair color she wants!!!

Anyhoo, this post is going to be something of a life check. You've already read about my new bed frame. I went on the second date with Online Girl. That is her codename. In order to protect her identity from the evil Murphyonic forces out to ruin my life, I have given her this codename. Since people have been hounding me with questions about it, the second date went well. And no, I won't be writing up any other dates. It gives OG too much of an unfair advantage. Why should she be able to read my thoughts on here? She should have to learn to traverse the unruly labyrinth of my mind on her own!! And then there's the privacy issue. While I tend to live my life very publicly, there are some things I'll keep to myself, unless there are major milestones, which have to be made public.

I have other posts to write, so I have to end this one. Adieu, dear readers, parting is such sweet sorrow...

Some Good Company

In previous essays, I've written down my thoughts on love, marriage, and being single. Even now, I stand by each and every one of those essays. (But the writer in me wishes I had done a better job writing them!) However, there was always an underlying assumption in those works: I was on the outside looking in at the subject matter. While it is my contention that you can only get an objective assessment from OUTSIDE a situation, being INSIDE does afford one more detailed, and nuanced view of any given topic. And I've always believed that MORE information is better than less. That being said, I've been given a chance to re-examine my stance on the various facets of the romantic relationship from INSIDE one. Yes, my dear readers, I recently met a lovely young lady, and took her out on our first date.

Okay, now that you've gotten yourselves off the floor, and cleaned up that drool from the corner of your mouth that always happens when you pass out, here is the story.

For a long while now, I've known that going out and meeting women in the standard way goes against every single one of my strengths. Bars, or supermarkets, or whatever venue to which a man goes to pick up women all operate on an initial assessment of physical attractiveness that determines who women will talk to, who men try to pick up, etc. Any honest survey of my looks reveals that I'm not anywhere near what this country considers physically attractive. So, going out to meet women will just lead to unnecessary rejection. To counteract this, I played to my strengths and put up a profile on a couple of different online dating sites. I actively sent messages to women on these sites, and after about six months or so, I finally got a hit!

We emailed each other for a couple of days, and then started chatting on Yahoo Messenger. After 3-4 days of chatting online, she consented to meet in person for a date. Given the ever present dangers of meeting people who you've contacted online, I chose a public venue and daytime hour for our date. Our first date was for lunch at a local steakhouse, afterwards we would walk around a mall and chat, getting to know each other on a personal level. She agreed. Then I spent the next few days, in morbid anticipation of how many possible ways this date could go wrong.

Date day, or "D Day" as one of my literally inclined friends called it, arrived, and it was a bright sunny day. A good omen, I thought. I get to the steakhouse a few minutes early, only to receive a text that my date was caught in traffic and running late. Not a problem. Then she took a wrong exit and got lost. She ended up appearing at the restaurant about an hour late. For 30 minutes of that hour, I was trapped in a prison of pure psychological panic. Thoughts like "This is a sign", "She's making this up so she won't have to come.", and other such nonsense populated my mind. Then I put all that crap out of my head, and started listening to music and singing along to whatever was playing on my iPod. She showed up and parked next to me while I was in the middle of a song..... Talk about a great first impression!

I got out of my car, and since this was our first time meeting, I held out my hand and introduced myself. She'd already heard me singing, so now displaying good manners couldn't hurt. We walked in, sat down, and had a nice meal. Now, dear readers, you know that she & I had been chatting online prior to this, and she had told me she was extremely shy. During the date, this fact kept escaping my mind. So, throughout the meal, I'm being myself (Oh No!!) and chit-chatting away, and getting very little response. I work to keep the conversation going, try to keep things funny, and interesting. Meanwhile, everything I'm reading from her body language is telling me that she's SO not interested. Then we go to the mall, where I find out that I've run into one of the few women on the planet that DOESN'T like shopping. Not even window shopping. We talked a bit as we walked around, I found a Perfumania, which I led her into, remembering that she likes her guys with good smelling cologne. I find an old favorite, and much to my surprise, she likes it. We keep walking around the mall, and end up going to the Disney store where she picks up a gift for a young family member who was really into Buzz Lightyear. At this point, she's tired of the mall. So, not having anything else planned, I drive her back to her car, and we stay in my car parked outside the steakhouse and talk for another hour, hour and a half. Topics ranging from sports to kayaking, from karaoke to Glee. After awhile, she said she had to go, and I walked her to car. I gave her a hug good-bye (during which she said "Wow, you smell good!" Thank you Azzaro cologne!!), and a kiss on the cheek. And then she drove away.

And that's it. That was my first date in over two years.

My assessments after the date. She was completely bored, and regretting the whole time she was with me. But she didn't bail out early, which was mystifying. I was expecting the bail out call at any point during the date. Sometime in the couple of hours after the date, I remembered that she had told me she was really shy in person. At which point, my brain (no longer in the grips of crash & burn date panic), popped up all the times during the date she told me that she was having a good time, and that she was still kind of shy since we were just meeting for the first time.

A couple of days later, she and I chatted on instant messenger again, and we kind of did our own post-date breakdown. Turns out she had a blast!! She thought I was a great singer, and now understands why I enjoy karaoke so much. She thought I was nice and kind, and very gracious, especially when I introduced myself, and handsome! (Talk about seeing things from a different viewpoint!) That's something I *RARELY* hear from women, even though I keep telling them how hot I am! And much to my surprise, she agreed to go out on a SECOND date later this week!!

Well, dear readers? Thoughts??

The Friend Zone

I'm in a select subset of the male population. I have no problem with female friends. In fact, I've got TONS of female friends. They actually OUTNUMBER my guy friends. And all of these women are very beautiful. It's really cool, but at the same time, it kind of sucks. Think about this for a minute, at any given moment, I'm surrounded by any number of gorgeous women who see me as a sexless entity, a good buddy, someone to talk to, etc. It's like crawling through the desert, just to be shown a PICTURE of a glass of water.

If the late, great Rod Serling were to write an intro to a show about this, it might go something like this:

You're about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a torturous land whose boundaries are that of temptation. It is the middle ground between amity and lust, between camaraderie and romance, and it lies between the pit of woman's empathy and the summit of her passion. This is the dimension of benevolence. The signpost up ahead states your destination, you're about to enter…
THE FRIEND ZONE

The problem is, like Roach Motels, once you check in to the Friend Zone, it seems you can't check out. The only egress is to NOT go in. But how do you avoid that?

If you all have any ideas, let me know.