The guy I'm dating is a high school graduate with a manual labor job. I have a master's and a corporate career, and I'll eventually make several times his salary. He's a great guy, and does stuff like spontaneously buying me flowers at the farmers market and calling just to say goodnight. We talk sports, which I love, and he shares his work gossip, but I can't talk to him the way I talk to my egghead friends. I use five-dollar words (my natural speech after years of schooling), and I can tell he sometimes has no idea what I just said. My friends seem put off by him and question whether we've got enough in common. I'm more concerned with how he feels around them (going silent, fumbling words, getting grumpy). Is it reasonable to give up this sweet, attentive man for somebody married to his work, but who can match wits with anyone, anytime?
--Opposites Attract
Opposites might attract, but then they start talking. You say tomayto, he says tomahto, and you throw in a side order of antidisestablishmentarianism. (Man is from Mars, Woman is from Encyclopedia Britannica.)
It's amazing how you can be in a man's arms and over his head at the very same time. In a way, this is a case of terrible timing. If you'd both been around during the Oklahoma Land Rush, he would've been a much wiser choice of boyfriend than some pointyhead who'd just read the collected works of Charles Darwin. But here you are in 2008, probably all cozy in some starter condo, feeling the constant grate of his intellectual incompatibility, especially at those smart people clambakes you're always attending.
Perhaps out of concern that you're in an impaired state -- huffing from the hormonal spray can and dizzy from the sudden flurry of romantic goods and services -- the jury of your peers has taken a break from rereading Newton in the original Latin to weigh in on your relationship. Meanwhile, your boyfriend's pleading his case the best he can. No, he might not know the meaning of nihilistic, but couldya make do with two dozen peach roses?
While people will tell you money can't buy happiness, if you make lots more than he does, you might end up feeling pretty miserable. There was this theory that women only wanted rich, powerful men because they couldn't get money or power themselves. Studies by evolutionary psychologist David Buss and others actually show that rich, successful women tend to go for even richer, more successful men. Most hilariously, when researchers interviewed high-powered feminist leaders in the late '70s, these women nattered on about how the right man for them would be some "very rich" or "brilliant" or "genius" guy who'd leave large tips after buying them lavish dinners.
Yours isn't an either/or scenario -- cold, distant Rhodes Scholar or cuddly, attentive road worker. While there's no such thing as "the one," with attention to your needs and patience in the search process, you could find "the .89" or even "the .966." Strip away the farmers market flowers and the nighty-night calls, and decide whether what's left is enough. Do you need a guy who can hold his own with your friends? Do you get enough smartypants talk to come home to "How 'bout them Mets?" As a woman who uses five-dollar words, can you be satisfied with a man who only has $2.75 or so to play around with? Most importantly, do you admire him? And will you -- when he stretches his hand skyward and promises you the stars...without the faintest idea that he's actually offering you a passing satellite?
September 23, 2008I recently discovered that my boyfriend of four years has been secretly searching for his ex-fiance online. I'd say most girlfriends check their mate's cell phone or Internet history, so I think I'm not alone in looking. When I confronted him, he said he wasn't trying to make contact or anything, he just never got closure, and wonders about her sometimes. (About eight years ago, he caught her cheating on him, and they haven't spoken since.) Now I'm all jealous, and feel like I'm competing for his love. Does he secretly feel like he lost "the one"?
--Isn't Easy Being Green
If your boyfriend's next girlfriend thinks he's being kind of forward on the first date, chances are it isn't because he's trying to find the clasp on her bra; he's just looking for the transmitter. And his wistful glances out into the moonlight? He's checking for the agents in the bakery truck running the voice-print analysis to see if he's lying.
Yeah, you read right. His NEXT girlfriend. If he wrote me, I'd tell him to break up with you, or at least put you on probation and rig his keyboard to give meddlers a little electric shock. You're the guy's girlfriend, not his Net Nanny. You have no right to snoop in another adult's stuff -- and no, not even if you're really needy and insecure (perhaps the real problem). If you suspect your boyfriend of some misdeed, you get to ask him about it, period. In general, you figure out how your partner feels by paying attention to what he says and does, and by assessing whether you're more like "two bugs in a rug" or "two bugs trapped under a glass."
As for your defense -- "most girlfriends" violate their boyfriend's privacy -- lots of people used to think the world was flat, and blacks and whites shouldn't marry each other. In fact, it seems the majority drools more often than it rules. Meanwhile, your big discovery is that your boyfriend sat at his desk and unsuccessfully Googled his ex; you didn't find him dry-humping her on your couch. Do you know how many people look other people up every day? Their old next-door neighbor, the suspected pedophile down the block, exes they never want to see again? People would've been Googling people in 1786 if they could've. Instead, they had to ask somebody passing through town, and maybe learn the answer, not 2.6 seconds later, but 16 years later, when the guy came back on his horse to return whatever they gave the neighbors leftovers in before Tupperware.
Maybe your boyfriend sees a future with the ex, or needs to make peace with the past, or maybe he hates her and wants to see if she got fat. Worry less about what your boyfriend thinks of other women (which you have zero control over) and more about what he thinks about the newly revealed unethical you. From my perspective, you should only have a person in your life who you can have alone in your house with, say, a box containing gold doubloons and a stack of your diaries, and feel secure that they'd use the box as a makeshift stool or as a place to set their shaving kit. (Admittedly, I'd probably stash the notebook titled "Hot Sex With All My Old Boyfriends" somewhere near the bottom.)
I'm 42 and in love for the first time. I live in a beautiful house with the most kind, generous, sweet and gentle man imaginable. Unfortunately, he's a slob, and it's making me crazy! The worst is walking downstairs in the morning and facing the mess. Aaarrrgh!! It can make me irritable/angry/depressed all day. I've begged and cajoled. Most embarrassingly, I've even thrown a fit. When I pick up after him (I have to -- his stuff gets in my way) I feel angry and resentful. He claims he doesn't like the mess either. On the rare occasion he does clean, he'll do one small area and immediately begin trashing it. Should I just accept that my living room will always look like a garbage dump?
--Besieged
Little girls play house. Little boys play war. War is messy, okay? Like, when you're in the foxhole, nobody's complaining, "You left shells everywhere again, and you never pick up the fresh flowers when it's your turn!"
The irony is, probably the neatest guys out there are those who've been in the military. And sure, there are plenty of women who have to bring in a disaster cleanup company just to find the telephone. But, as I've written before, many straight men just don't have the eye for clutter that women do. It's a hard-wired biological thing, and no, I don't mean biological warfare. Studies (see Silverman & Eals, The Adapted Mind) show women and gay men seem to have a better eye for ultra-local detail, and straight men seem to have better distance vision; as in, "Hark! There's a wildebeest on the horizon. Let's go spear it!"
Yes, it would be great if he could become as fastidious as some archetypal gay decorator, or if you could say to yourself, "Sure, I hate a mess, but seeing his underwear hanging off the curtain rod where he tossed it four days ago reminds me how lucky I am to have the most kind, generous, sweet and gentle man imaginable." Yeah, group hug, y'all! (Right after you finish fantasizing about beating him senseless with a bottle of Febreze.)
This mess you're in probably started when you visited the home of the man you love and saw him missing the bowl, the sink, the trash can, and the dumpster, and tried to believe, "Oh, it'll be different at my place." And it is. Now, he's missing your bowl, your sink, and all the rest. And here you are, angry and resentful, and for what? It's cute that he claims to be as disturbed by the mess as you are, but there's a good chance he's one of those guys who never cleans, but just moves when the bacteria-to-human ratio starts to reach CDC alert levels.
Sometimes the best way to share your life with the person you love is from the other side of town. Works for me. I live 13.2 miles from my boyfriend of six years, and we have no plans ever to move in together. Like us, an increasing number of people, called Living Apart Togethers (LATs), are in committed relationships but live separately. But, think of the cost of living apart! Then again, think of the cost of living together, growing to despise each other, then living apart. Maintain separate residences and you can both agree on the important stuff, like how hot sex is thanks to having a chance to miss each other a little. You should also find it easier to laugh about your differences, like a certain person's impression that a ring around the bathtub doesn't really count as a ring until it's visible from space.
September 9, 2008I grew up witnessing my sister and close friends being chased after by many guys, some even claiming to be in love. Then there's me, 23, never in a relationship, and barely ever sought after. I'm not unattractive, but I've just begun to get it together with the clothes, the hair, and what not. I lost my virginity last year in a hookup on vacation. I'm now dating somebody I don't see as relationship material, but who goes MIA, calls randomly, and makes me initiate us hanging out. I'm literally STARVED for attention, tired of coming in last place, and meeting men who act interested, but turn out to be distant, sex-crazed maniacs. I feel sick to my stomach when I see how late in the game I am compared to my friends. Am I doing something wrong?
--Late Bloomer
Your problem isn't that you don't have the perfect boyfriend right here, right now, but that you're in a panic about it, probably making you about as seductive as a mountain lion that hasn't eaten for weeks: "Shall I pounce on you from above, claw your heart out and eat it raw, or do you feel you need a glass of wine first?"
You appear to be confusing your love life with "The Amazing Race." Your sister, your friends, and all their men are licking fondue off each other's fingers on a plane to the Swiss Alps, while you're in the dressing room of some dusty sporting goods store, waiting for the manager to come back from lunch and unstick the zipper of your snowsuit. And why aren't you doing exactly what your sister and friends are doing, exactly when they're doing it? Um...because you are not them? Sadly, there's a good chance some of them are also better at long division, and have much shinier hair.
At the moment, you're with some guy you're not that into, who makes you feel bad because he treats you like an afterthought. This should tell you something -- something like, "Hey, self, maybe it's time to leave!" What, leave? Because a guy has you feeling not just starved but "STARVED" for attention? Well, does sticking around for more seem like a better idea?
Yeah, it's harsh out there, particularly at 23. Guys are distant because they're 23 and not that comfortable with themselves. They're also vats of hormones with shoes and maybe a mustache for a disguise. In other words, it's not exactly the ideal time to find lasting love. It is, however, a great time to figure out what you want in a lasting love by trying on a lot of fleeting "love." To do that, you'll have to stop living like you'll turn into a cleaning lady and your car will turn into a corn dog if you don't land the romance of the century by midnight.
While you're at it, you might relax some in the "grass is greener" department. Judge the value of what you're doing by whether it makes you happy, not by whether your friends did it by age 12. Try to remember that things aren't always as they seem from the outside. Sure, way back when, maybe there were a few claims of love tossed at your sister and friends, and maybe even a "Wherefore art thou, Heather" -- if that's what it took for a 14-year-old boy to get Heather to let him stick his hand inside her bra.
September 3, 2008My wife and I are newlyweds. We went to breakfast, and I ordered coffee, and she said she wanted only water. The waitress kept refilling my coffee. A couple times, my wife took sips. The waitress asked if she wanted coffee, and she declined. The manager also asked politely, "Nothing to drink for the lady, just water?" Later, my wife took another sip. I told her it wasn't proper to keep drinking from my coffee, and she should've ordered her own. Now I'm the bad guy. Her comments before she refused to talk to me at all were that the rudeness was "all in (my) own mind," and, "What are they gonna do, throw us in jail?" and, "You're just criticizing me to put me down." Was I wrong?
--Doghoused
Why not take home the silverware and condiments, and maybe a chair or two? After all, they do say "Let me show you to your seats." And why order food at all? After the guy at the next booth gets up without finishing his breaded veal chop, just reach over and grab it. When the waitress comes around, say, "Thanks, just water for me, and a nice empty plate. Oh, and would you mind heating this up?"
Does the corner diner really need to bring in a legal team to have you sign off on the terms of your breakfast? ("Initial here: Drink refills are per person purchasing a beverage.") Life is filled with unwritten rules, "social norms," that everybody just knows and follows -- which is why, even without signs all over the diner, when nature calls, you don't see some guy striding up to the pastry case, unzipping, and doing his business down the side.
Is a little beverage grifting really such a big deal? You could argue that a $2 cup of coffee sets the restaurant back about 10 cents -- that is, if they give you the dry stuff and you brew it over a fire and drink it on a park bench from a cup you pulled out of the garbage. The restaurant owner's got a right to charge $65 a cup if he wants, and if you've got a problem with that, well, collect some cockroaches, hire a busboy, and yell "eggseasytoastbacon!" at home.
Don't let the big grown-up girlparts fool you; your wife, like all of us, is basically a large, easily wounded child. This means being right isn't enough: You have to communicate your rightness without putting her on the defensive. An emotional appeal is wisest, per 18th century economist Adam Smith, who wrote that sympathy motivates people to put others' interests before their own. So, instead of telling her she's wrong, tell her you feel bad, like you look like a total cheapwad, and worry aloud that the waitress, who's tipped on the total of the bill, will feel ripped off. Another emotional appeal might be in order to break your wife of her hit-and-run method of conflict resolution: You're dumb. You're wrong. You're mean. Conversation over. Oh, and could you pass the cream?
Since you're only now discovering how your wife takes her coffee -- without paying for it -- you might explore whether her ethics in general hinge on whether jail time would be involved. While mystery is essential to romance, that's not supposed to mean agonizing over whether your wife will end up in bed with the neighbor or just stand at the salad bar eating out of all the containers until she spots the SWAT team gathering at the supermarket doors.