Don't Tell Me

A week ago, I came home on a Friday night to find my landlords sitting on the deck and finishing their dinner and was invited to hang out and have a glass of wine with them. I figure okay, sure, that would actually be really nice, so I head downstairs to drop off my stuff and change into flip-flops before I settle in on the deck to have a glass of wine before retiring early. There's only about one glass left in the bottle, so I think it's sweet that Mr. Landlord has offered it to me.

Mr. Landlord steps inside for a moment and reappears with a fresh bottle. A magnum, to be exact.

I should have known better than to have "a glass of wine" with a Greek man. It's true - I did only technically have two glasses, because only once did I manage to actually empty the glass before he refilled it. I'm still not sure how that magnum wound up empty when I only had two glasses....

So after a long evening of drinking wine and talking about all manner of entertaining things, Mr. Landlord made us some Greek coffee, took his leave, and I was left chatting with Mrs. Landlord. So the inevitable question came up, "Why doesn't a girl like you have a boyfriend? You should be out juggling dates on a Friday night, not at home hanging out with us!"

"Why don't you have a boyfriend?"

"Why are you alone?"

It comes in various forms, but the fact remains - I get this question a lot. In fact, it came up again just last night, and now that I'm done with grad school and I no longer get asked, "So when are you going to be done with school?" it is officially my Least Favorite Question.

To those asking it, let me answer your question with another: If I knew why I didn't have a boyfriend, don't you think I would have done something about it by now? I mean, you people seem to think I must be choosing to be single, because if I wanted a boyfriend I'd have one, end of story. While there are lots of things I like about being single, I think it's a rare person that, given the choice, would opt for being single rather than having someone special in their life. I mean, I'll take being alone over being with someone just for the sake of NOT being alone, but like everyone else, I have been programmed by God and evolution to need to pair up. It's like yin and yang - two separate, opposing, but complementary forces...each still a tiny part of the other. If you try to separate one from the other, each is left with a hole right through its core. We all need people in our lives that, though they are different from us and may have different priorities or beliefs, love us unconditionally and hold us up when we need it. And we all need that one person that can hold us up in a way that nobody else can.

When I was younger, there was a period where I was the kind of girl who always had a boyfriend. I'd date a guy for a few months, then break up, and about a month or two later I'd have a new one. And these were good guys - I've always maintained good friendships with my exes (a couple of them I happen to know read this here blog regularly), and they are all people that I still think highly of, even though they weren't right for me.

In the last year, I've had two dates. With a guy who just sent me an e-mail forward that I found not only unfunny, but more than a little bit racist.

How did I go from always having a good, quality boyfriend to bland dates with people who may or may not be racist?

Mrs. Landlord was trying to give me advice on how to land a man. Her advice pretty much boiled down to "mess with his mind and make him think he can't have you - make him think he's in danger of losing you." Basically, she told me to play games - be a bitch and they'll come after you like a puppy dog. And you know, that works...I've seen it in action. Women that have mastered the rules of that game not only always have a man in their life, but get them to give them anything they want. Remember my infuriating labmate? She was all atwitter yesterday because she was going out with her ex-boyfriend and afraid she was going to be a bad girl. And I haven't gotten the rundown of the evening yet, but I'd put money on the fact that she probably DID do something that her boyfriend won't be happy about, and she'll tell him, and it will somehow result in him showering her with lovely things that she doesn't deserve. But I can't do it. I hate the game. If I like someone, I want to be able to tell them that, not make them think I DON'T like them or that I like someone else better. Flirting with someone you are attracted to and interested in is one of the great pleasures in life - acting like they don't exist is no fun at all, at least not for me. I could play your game, but here's the thing, Mrs. L. - I don't want to be like you. Yes, you are a passionate, strong, beautiful woman with a fantastic husband, but you get into long, screaming fights with him, your mother, your daughter...every important person in your life. I have spent many an evening or long Sunday trying to pretend I'm not hearing your arguments through my ceiling. If that's what playing your game gets me, no thanks. It is, in fact, possible to live a life of passion without complete chaos.

Now, if you're a regular reader, then you know that I got exactly opposite advice on how to land a man from my good friend BNL. How's that for yin and yang?

I had a moment a couple of weeks ago that confused me even further. I met the girlfriend of someone I briefly had a crush on (a crush that was squashed and pretty quickly gotten over once I found out about said girlfriend, even though this was the first time I had actually met her). (WARNING: the rest of the next couple of paragraphs probably makes me look like a not-very-good person. However, we all have moments and habits that make us less than perfect, and admitting you have a problem is, after all, the first step to recovery.) Now, I don't know if guys do this, but it's a fairly universal female instinct to, when faced with a picture or real-life meeting with an ex of a boyfriend, a new girlfriend of an ex, or any female a guy you are or have ever been interested in might be attracted to (past or present), do the incredibly petty "am I cuter than her?" mental size-up. In this case, the answer in my head was a resounding and emphatic yes. She's a perfectly lovely woman, and a good match for the guy in question from what I could gather in our very brief contact, but I did get some smug self-satisfaction out of knowing that I am, in fact, cuter. I know - it's petty, immature, and superficial, and dammit, I just can't help it. It's a reflex - I ALWAYS do it, and I always feel pretty bad about feeling good about it. But I was thinking about it on my way home that night, and I naturally went through my mental catalogue of previous size-ups and came to the sudden realization that about 90% of the time, I have genuinely felt like I came out on top in the comparison.

(I feel the need to point out here that the comparison is strictly physical - I make no claims of being a better person, merely more attractive. Also, none of this applies to the aforementioned exes who read this, because thankfully, I have never to my knowledge seen any of the women you dated before or after me. I'm sure they are lovely and WAY hotter than I.)

I mentioned this to a friend on IM, and her respose was, "So basically what you're saying is that you're out of the league of every guy you've ever dated." Well, that's one possibility - the other is that I just have a wildly over-inflated ego. It's probably a combination of the two...I do tend to like the guys who are fantastic people, but don't have the confidence to go after the super-hot chicks they could probably get if they just tried. But there's also certainly no shortage of people out there who don't like me nearly as much as I like myself. It all just serves to drive home the point that I haven't the slightest clue what My League is anyway. I feel like I should try to re-evaluate it, but I have no idea how one goes about figuring something like that out. But if I think My League is a guy who thinks I am Out of His, then clearly a love connection will never be made.

So everybody seems to have a different theory on why I don't have a boyfriend, including me. Unfortunately, none of us seem to agree. So I officially throw in the towel. I'm clearly not doing a good job when it comes to making things happen or figuring anything out, so I think I'm done trying. I never used to have to try to make things happen - they used to just happen to me. So maybe my new strategy should be a complete lack thereof. I think that, at least for now, I am officially on strike...I am going on record as a conscientious objector...to put it simply: I give up.

Feel free to place your bets in the comments as to how long this strike will last - I doubt I'll be able to go very long before I once again fire up the decadent romantic self-analysis engine.

Unfortunately, this will NOT help the fact that I very much need to get laid. At this point, it's been so long that I'm not sure I still know how to do it, although the way the VGLM was dressed yesterday was making me desperately want to remember. Any straight man that can actually pull off a pink dress shirt is a force to be reckoned with. Damn.