I have a suggestion for the woman wondering whether her boyfriend really has money or is carrying a million in debt: run a credit check. A friend's daughter almost married a wonderful guy who turned out to be a gambling addict. After that, my friend started running credit checks on every guy his daughter started getting serious with (she was over 30 at the time). Some of us aren't the greatest choosers, and talented liars pick partners who can't or won't confront them, so a little sleuthing isn't unreasonable.
--Been Bitten
There are some good liars out there, but even the craftiest can't hide everything all the time. Something will eventually slip through the cracks. Sometimes, a femur. Remember, Scott Peterson didn't have a gambling problem. And sure, a credit check would probably pick up on a man who does. Unfortunately, it's illegal to do one without permission. And since the credit check, and who ordered it, will likely show up on the person's credit report, what you're suggesting is like throwing a brick through somebody's window, but taping your business card to it first.
Your friend apparently fails to see the irony in taking the devious approach to helping his daughter avoid the devious. He probably tells himself he's just protecting his little girl -- his little girl of 30-plus, who he never managed to teach to vet men for herself. He could really mess things up for her, should some nice guy find out Daddy's been feeling up his finances. Being in a relationship isn't license to gallop through a person's privacy. "Make yourself at home" means "my fridge is your fridge," not that you should feel free to scoop up hair and nail clippings and bribe somebody at the crime lab to run them through "Trace."
If you're continually ending up in the arms of con boys, you don't hire Nancy Drew; you work to change that. Don't assume you're a poor chooser. You might be an excellent chooser -- excellent at choosing the best partner to replay whatever number Mommy Dearest did on you. But, chances are, you're desperate for love -- making you desperate to ignore pesky inconsistencies that scream "That isn't his yacht, he doesn't work for the CIA," and in worst cases, "Get out before somebody has to get you out -- by digging between the rose bushes for your remains."
Of course, most bad guys you'll meet are serial jerks, not serial killers. To avoid them, lose any romantic notions about "love at first sight," which is really idiocy at first sight: deciding somebody's "the one" because they have a cute cowlick and broad shoulders and you haven't had sex for six months. This doesn't mean looking for love should give way to looking for evidence, just that you should reserve judgment until you've had ample time to see somebody's true character, which comes out in those little moments when they think nobody's looking.
To catch particularly clever cons, Dr. Barbara Oakley, author of Evil Genes, advises talking to "the little people" -- a receptionist, the janitor, someone who knows them in passing: people they aren't trying to win over. You should also meet the medium-sized people -- their friends, family, and co-workers -- and see if you all seem to be talking about the same guy. But, most important, you have to be comfortable enough being alone to want to know who somebody really is -- before they steal your heart, then head over to the pawn shop to see what they can get for your iPod and wide-screen TV.
I have a crush on my neighbor of two years. I don't rush into dating -- I like to get to know a girl so I see we'll be a good fit. Typically, I end up making more friends than girlfriends. I now see this girl's everything I'm looking for. Unfortunately, she now has a boyfriend. I don't want to break anyone up, but I'd still like to say something.
--Late
It is wise not to rush into asking a woman out. At least wait until she turns around so you can see that she's a woman -- one you happen to be attracted to -- and not a guy with really pretty hair. Be honest: You're yet another guy floating what he hopes is a plausibly deniable wimpout -- a creative excuse for being too big a weenie to risk rejection. You get to know a girl by dating her. If you don't like what you get to know on the first date, you don't ask for a second one. If you must say something now, try this: "Got any cute friends?" Should you meet one, see that you ask her out before you're so far into the friend zone that you're French-braiding each other's hair.
December 23, 2009Nice Review Of My Book By Ed Rampell
Last minute gift idea? Ed Rampell suggests buying my book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, and I second that! An excerpt from his review:
Arguing that "rude people are actually stealing from the rest of us by taking communal resources [such as time, space, peace and quiet] as their own," like a Howard Beale of etiquette, Alkon is mad as hell and isn't taking it anymore. The self-described "Revengerella" is striking back -- shooshing bigmouths publicly shrieking into their mobiles; correcting the misbehavior of under-parented children for whom the whole "world is their daycare center"; and, most famously, tracking down telemarketers' phone numbers and calling them at home during dinner. Ah, vengeance is sweet -- but not always.December 22, 2009Alkon notes a puzzling phenomenon: Those who speak up against discourtesy are often themselves criticized as being rude scolds. And not only by the perps -- but by twerps who are actually, along with Alkon, being victimized by the miscreants' antisocial boorishness. The "Advice Goddess" considers this to be a form of "Stockholm syndrome," and calls those who pay a price for the public good "costly punishers."
We live in an era of unaccountability, wherein war criminals get off and are even awarded the Medal of Freedom; Wall Streeters who devastated our economy are given multi-billion dollar bailouts with money taken from the same taxpayers they've ripped off and thrown out of work; etc. I See Rude People is a badly needed tonic on the micro level, a step towards holding people accountable for their actions. Alkon strikes a blow for an all too uncommon common courtesy.
At a recent dinner, the hostess's cousin rudely spent most of the evening thumbing through his BlackBerry. Upon returning home, I received an e-mail from an acquaintance: "How was dinner at Elaine's?" When I asked how he knew I was there, he said Elaine's cousin had Twittered my presence. (I'm known for my business accomplishments, but I'm a private person, and felt violated). Days later, I dined with an old business colleague, and got Twittered again. I came home to four forwarded e-mails he'd received from our former colleagues, one of whom invented from whole cloth an anecdote painting us as great friends. (He'd actually tried to get me fired.) Again, I felt my privacy had been violated. What are the rules here, for the Twitterer and their unwitting victim?
--Publicized
Suddenly, everybody's internationally famous. Not because they write like Cormac McCarthy, or they're co-starring with Robert De Niro, or they saved 30 people's lives, but because they posted a 30-second clip of their dog wearing sunglasses.
We've come to the point where everyone -- from assassins and terrorists to 8-year-olds -- has in their pocket a level of telecommunications power that, just decades ago, would have taken up an entire wing at MIT. This is simultaneously thrilling and terrible. The average person now has the power to expose injustice, ruin lives, and upload video of you picking your nose in your car that's viewed around the world before you even have a chance to roll and flick.
If you're a movie star, spare us the whine that you can't make tens of millions of dollars on a movie and also pick up a quart of milk without having 100 lenses trained on you to see whether you go for skim or 2 percent. But, as an ordinary (or relatively ordinary) citizen at a private dinner party, you do have the expectation of privacy. Sure, assume people might tell a friend or two something you said, but nobody has the right to release your whereabouts and dinner conversation to your friends, enemies, and five utter strangers who now get mobile broadband on their houseboat in Belarus.
In general, people think (other!) people are ruder than ever, but as I explain in my new book, "I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society," rudeness is actually the human condition. People are, by nature, self-absorbed, they've always been self-absorbed, and these gizmos bring out the worst in them (they don't call it the iPhone for nothing).
In the absence of social norms for device use and abuse, many people with these wireless binkies are essentially chimps with nukes. But, the root of manners is empathy -- stepping away from yourself and your gadget and asking, "Wait...is there some tiny chance in hell this guy doesn't want his whereabouts published for an international audience?" Unfortunately, the thumb jockey at Elaine's dinner apparently leapt straight to "Hmmm, he seems important...if I tweet about him, I'll seem important!" (And then, it's back to his regular profundities like "late to yoga" and "I had the ham.")
Just as we're forced to ask grown adults barking into cell phones to "please use your inside voice," we need to get proactive about our privacy. Because it's presumptuous to set policy for a party you aren't giving, you might tell future hosts about your experiences with these antisocial networkers -- hinting at the need to announce a "what happens at dinner stays at dinner" media embargo. Guests will have to satisfy themselves with being rude in old-fashioned ways -- hogging the mashed potatoes, passing gas and glaring at the person next to them, and rummaging through the host's medicine chest...but refraining from uploading a shot of its contents to Flickr.
Twenty-five years ago, when I was 18, I had a several-month affair with an older married woman, ending when I met my wife. The woman's still with her husband, who still hates me. My wife knows nothing about the affair, but we live in a small town and are starting to run into these two at parties. Should I reveal any of this to our mutual friends? It would make things less awkward when we're all together.
--Boy Toy Of Yore
Yes, nothing to make small-town life less socially awkward than standing up at some event, clinking your glass with a butter knife, and announcing, "Guess whose wife I had sex with!" Come on, what you're really interested in lessening is your load of guilt by opening up a really old can of worms and passing them around at parties. Sorry, Kitten. Part of the job description of being a 43-year-old man is living with your mistakes -- terrible as it must be, getting the occasional squinty-eye or cold shoulder from the guy who came home to your acid-washed jeans on his bedroom floor.
December 15, 2009I have a knack for finding the lowest of the low in the trash piles of human existence. Being too nice and having low self-esteem has meant that I've dated a long list of losers. The most recent loser works with me. Without my knowledge, he took photos of us having sex, and e-mailed them to men at our workplace. I'm totally embarrassed. I wanted to press charges, but miraculously, no one claims to have seen these photos -- unless they don't want to humiliate me by saying so.
--Mortified
If a man's going to make your dream come true, it's best it isn't that one where you suddenly find yourself naked in front of everybody at work. The good news is, on the humiliation front, there's no place to go but up: Toilet paper on your shoe, tuck your skirt into your pantyhose? You're having a good day!
You could consider legal action. Unlike in sexual harassment cases where somebody claims "After he said I had pretty hair, I could no longer do my job as an accountant," your experience sounds like textbook "hostile workplace." According to law prof Kingsley Browne's "Biology at Work," that's a work situation that's "permeated with sexuality or 'discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult'" severe enough to change the conditions of the victim's employment and create an abusive work environment. If you talk to a lawyer, you may find that you could have a pretty good case. After all, what could the guy's defense possibly be, "I don't have a kid so I thought I'd celebrate 'Bring Your Girlfriend In A Compromising Position To Work Day'"?
But, even by winning a case, do you actually win? Just by filing suit, you're probably setting yourself up for "The Streisand Effect" -- which, unfortunately, doesn't mean gay men will drop everything and fly across the globe whenever you sing anywhere but the shower. The term was coined after an aerial photo of Barbra Streisand's Malibu home was one of about 12,000 included in an online database documenting coastal erosion. These still shots of land eroding weren't exactly garnering TMZ-style traffic -- until Babs filed a $10 million lawsuit against the photographer to get the shot of her house removed, driving more than 420,000 people to view it in a single month.
In other words, even by talking with co-workers about what happened, you could end up, well...making a mountain out of a thigh mole. Try to remember that the maggot who did this to you is the one who's gotten naked in the ugliest way -- exposing himself as somebody who gets off on doing violence to a girl's reputation. What happened, was he no longer getting the same thrill out of Xeroxing his butt?
Barenaked Saturday didn't show up on Bagel Monday because you're "too nice," but because you're too willing to accept losers as your lot in life. Having low self-esteem isn't the problem, either -- it's having it and not doing a damn thing about it. You can have a nice guy in your life -- if you develop yourself into a person who feels she deserves it, and actually demands it. In the meantime, hold your head high. Time will pass, and eventually, feeling naked at the office will once again mean knowing that they can all see you forgot to wear earrings -- not that you forgot to make an appointment at the waxer.
I've been dating my boyfriend for three years. His wife of 30 years died six years ago, but he still calls her "my wife," talked about her in the bedroom until I got mad, and still mentions her constantly. When I got angry about that, he blew up and said he'd talk about her whenever and however he wants. I love him, but is this normal?
--Sad Heart
Three's a crowd, even if one of you is dead. Now, after 30 years, it's normal that he'd still talk about her. To a point. Yet, there you are in bed, enjoying the afterglow, and he rolls over and says, "Betty and I went to the Ozarks one time. Had a great time. Doubt you and I could ever match it. Might as well stay home and talk about Betty!" What he really needs to talk about is whether he wants a new life or just an audience for the old one. In a neutral moment, tell him you know he loved her and had a wonderful life with her, but it hurts to always be hearing about her -- and in a way that sounds like he's married to her and getting some on the side from you. If he wants to be with you, he needs to act like he accepts that he lost his wife -- and not just somewhere between Spencer's Gifts and Cinnabon.
December 8, 2009I'm planning to marry my boyfriend in December. I love how he makes me feel like a supermodel even though I'm slightly overweight, and how he's always saying he loves me. This is in sharp contrast to my mentally abusive ex-husband always saying he never loved me. Recently, my boyfriend asked me to clean out his car, and I found a black bra under the passenger seat. He said, "Baby, I bought that for you, it was supposed to be a surprise." When asked to produce the tags or receipt, he responds, "Excuse me for trying to do something romantic" or says he'll show me the rack at the store where he got the bra. Should I really believe he accidentally bought a bra way smaller than my size and lost the tags and receipt? He's proven to be romantic on several occasions -- only several because we only met in March. He swears he's being honest, but he lies a lot; even his parents tell me they can't believe much of what he says.
--Hopeless Romantic
There are two sides of you talking here: the side dying to believe he'll show you the rack at the store where he found the bra, and the side that can't help but know that the rack he got it off belongs to some skinny blonde.
Come on...you know as well as we all do, when a guy's buying his girlfriend lingerie, the salesclerk doesn't say, "I could wrap this in pink tissue paper, slap on a gold sticker, and pop it in a fancy little bag. But, you know how your girlfriend would really like it...under the passenger seat, with a Life Saver stuck to it, next to a crumpled Burger King wrapper and some crunched-up leaves." Yeah, I know...excuuuuse him for trying to do something romantic. Next on Romeo's list, "I have a box of chocolates for you -- they've been in the trunk for a month!"
He does have his good qualities, all two of them: He makes you feel like a supermodel -- one whose boyfriend cheats on her -- and always tells you he loves you. He especially loves how you look in the moonlight when you're believing just about anything. His other character witnesses are less dewy-eyed. While parents of murderers step over the dead bodies in their foyer to defend their kid's honor, his parents came right out and told you he's a relentless liar. You later e-mailed me that he yells and swears at them, and even threatened to vandalize their new car if his dad didn't do what he wanted. (Apparently, telling Dad he's pretty doesn't cut it.)
Do you actually find anything attractive about him; I mean, besides how attractive he makes you feel? You're clearly trying to make the best of a really bad situation, because for you, being without a man is an even worse situation. This boyfriend isn't a good guy, just a different kind of bad guy than the last one. Once again, this isn't going to end well -- none of your relationships will until you do the hard work it takes to build up a strong self and standards, and the guts and dignity to stand up for them instead of settling for pretty talk. For a guidebook, pick up Nathaniel Branden's "The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem." You'll be ready to date again when you find it unbelievable that this guy was ever in a position to ask you to marry him -- and even more unbelievable that your answer was "Yes" and not "Why don't we skip straight to the bitter divorce?"
My boyfriend is moving across the globe. I love him deeply, but he says he's battling commitment phobia, doesn't think I'm "the one," struggles to say "love," and doesn't have butterflies in his stomach for me anymore. Instead of breaking up now, he wants to play it by ear after he leaves. I'd do anything for him. I'm so sad he's struggling to love me back.
--Crushed
Welcome to the low-impact breakup: "Nothing comes between you and me, Babe, except maybe the world's largest body of salt water." Not to worry -- after he moves, you two'll "play it by ear." Translation: He'll gradually stop calling and blame the time difference. Or, he'll finally tell you it's over, but only when he can cut short your crying jags with "Whoops! Looks like my phone card's about to run out." Sorry for the tough love, but the guy's told you in numerous ways that there's nothing left. Even the butterflies have hit the road. You can wish things were different, but the kindest thing you can do for yourself is admit the obvious, and stop editing the writing on the wall into something a little less "I'll soon be in bed with Svetlana!"
December 1, 2009I kept seeing this woman I was interested in at pool parties, but I've always been very shy and reluctant to make the first move. At the third party, she hugged me as she was leaving. The following week, she kissed me. I invited her to come up for dinner. We had a great time. I even kissed her, and she didn't resist. Several days later, she said she'd see me at my condo's pool that afternoon, but never showed or called. Midweek, I texted her, inviting her over for "drinks, soft music, and a nice relaxing massage to ease the stress of the work week." No response. Amy, I just meant a back rub, clothes on, like I once gave a female friend. I've never thought of a massage as having sexual connotations. Do you think she inferred that from my offer of a "stress reliever," and is that where I went wrong?
--Devastated
A guy who's "never thought of a massage as having sexual connotations" is a guy who thinks it's an act of rudeness to be male. No, none of that sexually aggressive "Me Tarzan, you Jane" stuff for you: "Um, if it's not a big deal...and if it is, I totally understand...but maybe we could spend a respectful, gender-neutral afternoon exploring the Tarzan archetype, then use this coupon I have for a two-for-one cucumber facial."
Of course, offering a woman a massage is, like, the oldest college boy sex gambit in the book: "If you'd just take your shirt off, I could really get at that knot." The thing is, if the woman isn't already sleeping with you, she's going to find the massage offer creepy -- unless it comes as a spontaneous (or seemingly spontaneous) idea in the context of hanging out. Women do expect dating to lead to getting it on: two people engaging in some naturally occurring, mutually satisfying makeout-type stuff -- not "Hey, why don't you come over and lie there face down while I tenderize you like a roast?"
A woman doesn't want a "stress-reliever"; she wants a date -- with a man who's man enough to say "Hey, let's go out." This simple approach suggests he feels he's enticement enough; he isn't telling her "I know an evening with me isn't that great an offer, but maybe if I throw in free spa services?" Chances are, you also take rejection personally instead of thinking maybe the woman has a boyfriend or a girlfriend or maybe you aren't her type -- all of which should lead you to the same simple, unemotional conclusion: Whoops, time to move on to the next.
No, no, you couldn't possibly take that approach. Poor dear, you've "always been very shy and reluctant to make the first move." Well, for sure don't do anything to try to change that. Continue taking the mousy way out, admiring your favorite pool bunny from afar, and praying she'll be man enough to throw herself at you. Instead of getting her on the phone and asking her out, continue to duck rejection -- or at least knowing whether you've been rejected -- by text messaging her. It should help you while away the weekends, trying to solve the mystery of whether she has texting disabled, whether her phone fell in the toilet, or whether she did get your message -- the intended or the unintended one: "There are alpha males, and then there's me -- alpha moss."
A friend and I got sucked into the recent saga between author Salman Rushdie and his ex-girlfriend. She told a British paper he dumped her by e-mail and is still seriously hung up on his ex-wife. He retaliated by telling the New York Post the ex-girlfriend's "broke, unemployed," "an accomplished liar," and always carrying around "a large, radioactive bucket of stress." We're debating what to do when an ex, famous or not, publicly dumps on you. Your thoughts?
--Two Curious
Rushdie, who still has a fatwa on him for insulting Islam with "The Satanic Verses," has now made such a public jackass of himself that he's probably sending the jihadists MapQuest directions to his apartment. Of course, his first offense was dumping his girlfriend by e-mail. Not only is that rude, but any man with three morsels of sense knows better than to do it to a woman he believes is carrying around "a large, radioactive bucket of stress." When publicly attacked, the temptation is to leap up and offer corrections and finish with a little turn of the knife. It's a temptation to be avoided. Famous or not, the high road is always the wisest direction: "I'm sorry she feels that way. It just didn't work out between us, and I wish her the best." (Translation: "Hey, crazy women are good in bed. Guess I succumbed. Won't happen again.")