I've been dating an amazing guy for a month. Our first amazing date turned into an amazing night, which turned into an amazing month. We completely adore each other. Every time we hang out feels like the greatest day with a best friend. The problem is, I work and go to college full time, and I really wasn't ready for anything more than fun and sex. In fact, "more" is freaking me out. Because we'd initially agreed that we were only looking for something casual and short-term, I told him that I was developing feelings for him and gave him the option of walking away, but he actually seemed happy to hear how I felt. I have such jitters now because I cannot afford to risk getting distracted from my studies. When I think about this, I sometimes get so anxious that I feel I need to ditch this amazing guy, which is the last thing I want.
--Good Reasons To Avoid Getting Serious
Love sometimes calls upon people to do more than just show up to bask in its glow. Take that emperor, way back when, in India. When he wanted to memorialize his beloved wife, he built the Taj Mahal, not the Taj Ma lean-to.
Luckily, Mr. Amazing won't have to muster 20,000 workers to spend 20 years building an "elegy in marble." What you need is a boyfriend who's willing to have what amounts to a long-distance relationship while living only a short distance away. In other words, he'll have to be up for long walks on the beach -- by himself -- while you're back in your dorm room, in bed with both Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare. And as lovely as it is when a man "says it with flowers," when you need to pry yourself away from him to get back to your studies, he should show you that he loves you by handing you a single red crowbar.
It's possible that spending the next few years as your sainted boyfriend will wear on him and cause him to walk. If, however, he does stick around, it's either because he prefers martyrdom to checkers or Ultimate Frisbee or because you two have something special. It's easy to be supportive when a big bed and a couple of mai tais are all that's on the agenda, so it says a lot when a guy's always got your back, and not just because he's looking to unhook your bra. Be sure that you don't take this for granted and that you regularly express your appreciation. It won't be easy to maintain your job, schoolwork, and even a muted form of a relationship simultaneously. The stress may leave you needing to lose the freshman 15 pounds, but if your amazing relationship is as amazing as you say, there's a good chance you won't need to lose the freshman 165.
My girlfriend is a smart and accomplished 33-year-old woman who wears little girl-type clothes. She always looks pretty, but there are times I wish she would dress more like an adult. For instance, last week, we had dinner with my boss, and she wore a pink Hello Kitty T-shirt and pigtails. How does a man ask a woman to sometimes dress a little more sophisticated?
--Eggshells
I used to worship Hello Kitty, and then I turned 7. Some women do work the head-to-toe little girl look longer than others, but 33 sounds a little late for it. Maybe your girlfriend has gotten in a style rut and hasn't noticed that she isn't pulling off 22-going-on-12 like she used to. Then again, she might be wearing these clothes because she's aged out of them. (Paging Alanis Morissette, because isn't it ironic?)
Clothes say a lot about a person, but there are times your shirt or skirt or whatever really needs to shut the hell up, like when you're accompanying your boyfriend to dinner with his boss. This would be the time to dress to make him look good (more business casual than monkey bars casual).
Tell your girlfriend that you always love looking at her and that you aren't asking her to change her style entirely, just to dress more sophisticated on occasion, especially occasions for your work. She probably has something passable in her closet, but you might offer to take her shopping for a few new additions to her wardrobe. If she's just forgotten to look up and notice she's 33, a new little black dress might lead her to realize it's time to say Goodbye, Kitty, and start dressing in a way that suggests she got out of college about 10 years ago, and not the stroller.
A man my friend was crazy for just broke up with her. I kind of saw the breakup coming, as I thought they were too different, but she thinks he just falsely advertised who he really is. They met online, and he made himself out to be this guy who loves art and culture, which to her means going to museums, shows, and lectures and to him means staying home and making things. She now insists that the only way to meet people is in the activity you want them to be doing. For example, if you want a guy who likes art museums and going to cultural events (which she does), you'd better hang out in an art museum to find a date. I think it's a mistake for her not to keep online dating, because I think she'll meet a lot more men.
--Friend Of Stubborn Woman
People try to put their best foot forward on dating sites, and rather often, it turns out it's not actually their foot.
Of course, deceptive self-marketing is not exclusive to online dating, and online dating does offer certain efficiencies that trying to meet a man at an art museum or cultural event does not. For example, people join a dating site specifically because they are looking for a partner. Some man you spot in a museum may also be looking for a partner -- his wife, who was right behind him just a room ago.
It sounds like your friend is blaming the Internet because a guy she liked didn't like her back. They maybe both projected what they wanted on each other and needed to dig deeper to find out who the person they were dating really was. This is what dating is for. It's supposed to be a process of finding out about a person, not "I baited the hook; I caught the fish; now let's decide what's for dinner at the wedding!"
We often don't need anybody to go to the trouble of deceiving us. We do that really well on our own, like by telling ourselves we've found the "perfect person" and ignoring any evidence to the contrary. Instead, there needs to be a vetting process, whether you meet a man online or at an artwalk. It involves asking questions and looking to see who he is and being willing to find out that he isn't right for you. This vetting is essential because, wherever you meet men, there's one thing many will have in common: insisting they're interested in whatever you are if they think you're hot. Try to help your friend see that holing up in the art museum isn't the answer. Sure, it might be kismet that Mr. Dreamypants is standing in the lobby right next to her favorite sculpture, or he might just be waiting to enjoy the work of Sir John Harrington, the guy who invented the flush toilet found in the free public bathroom.
I'm 5'8"; my fiance is just at 5'7". I'm only comfortable when he wears lifts, especially if I'm wearing heels. It may not seem like a big height difference, but when he doesn't wear them, he feels like my son. I know they're uncomfortable, and he sometimes doesn't feel up to wearing them. Mostly, though, he won't let me see him without them, because he knows I'm way more attracted to him when he's a tad taller. I feel bad about this, and I've prayed that one day, my strong love for him will let me ignore this minor "flaw."
--Trying To Get Above It
The dream was tall, dark, and handsome. Not elfish, dark, and handsome. Still, the problem here could be seen another way: You need to be shorter. Unfortunately, accomplishing that is the less practical solution, as it would require a saw. It might help to understand that you want him to be taller not because you're a bad person but because you're a product of human evolution. In our ancestral past, height in a man likely had mating and survival advantages. (The short caveman would have been less able to reach the lion with his spear: "Take that, you big meanie!") As for what to do in the present, elevator shoes might be the solution you're both looking for. While lifts are inserts stuck into the shoe, mainly raising the heel, elevator shoes, which can be custom-made by a podiatrist, have a hidden platform built in throughout the shoe. The latest models are cleverly designed and appear to be normal footwear. This means that a man needn't suffer the discomfort of tromping around in heels just to be attractive to his partner. (Next thing you know, he'll be complaining about the scratchy red lace and underwire digging into his flesh.)
I have had a huge crush on a man for several months and finally asked him out for drinks. During our "date," he mentioned his friend he wanted to set me up with, and I told him that HE is the person I'm interested in. He laughed nervously and seemed a little shocked. We went back to his place and spent hours just talking. He revealed that he's dating his ex-wife. She lives four hours away, and he visits her a couple times a month. We've since hung out at the pool and had drinks, but he again mentioned that he's dating his ex-wife. I've never been this attracted to a man, and I can't stop fantasizing about meeting him for much more than drinks! Do I lie low, waiting for him to drop his ex-wife, or do I make a move?
--Magnetized
There was a reason the guy wasn't asking you out, and it wasn't because a cartoon witch put a spell on him and he was unable to say "How about a drink on Friday night?" until three animated teapots and several woodland animals broke the evil curse.
The wisdom of grandmas remains wise: If you want to catch a boy, don't run after him. As I explain with some frequency, women evolved to be the harder-to-get sex because having sex meant they could end up a single mother dragging a kid around the Sahara. Men coevolved to expect women to be choosier and to suspect that something's wrong with a woman when she's doing the chasing. This evolution and coevolution got burned into human psychology over millions of years -- as contrasted by the drop in the bucket of human existence that is the women's movement in the past 50-some years. So, even if a man's ego is saying "Well, how groovy that she's pursuing me!" his genes are probably starting a betting pool for whether you are seriously loose, are seriously needy, or will soon be frying up his pet koi and feeding it to him in a little lemon butter sauce.
Assuming some guy isn't too fragile a flower to lay his ego on the line (in which case he's lame partner material anyway), if he isn't asking you out, he either isn't interested enough or isn't available enough. You're now making this guy out to be the greatest thing since the four-slice toaster, probably to justify hanging around like a dog waiting for a scrap of food to get knocked off the counter. (In the wake of making a mistake, we have an unfortunate ego-coddling tendency to come up with reasons it wasn't a mistake instead of admitting that, in fact, it was, which would allow us to move on.)
Any further date-flavored get-togethers with this man are a bad idea. By continuing to throw yourself at him, you'll turn your self-respect into a chew toy. And even if he eventually detached himself from his ex-wife, there's a good chance that, by chasing him, you've already screwed up the equilibrium for any relationship. A more productive deployment of your time and ego would be dating that man he offered up as a decoy or finding men on your own -- the available kind -- and flirting with them, which alerts them that you're there for the chasing and interested in being chased. Flirting actually allows a woman to make the first move -- but far more alluringly than by yelling "Can't you see I want you, you moron?!" while clubbing a man over the head with the poolside clue phone.
Do you text a guy after getting home from a fabulous date to hint that you want to see him again? Maybe to tell him how awesome he is or hint at your schedule? My girlfriend says no, but I think a guy should know you liked him so he feels he can ask for a second date.
--Considerate
There are times when a guy knows better than to ask a woman for a second date, like when she ended the first one by throwing herself out of his car while it was still moving. Otherwise, a man doesn't need hand-holding and encouragement in the form of texts: "Here are all the dates I'm free through 2015. Also, I'm double-jointed. Pick me! Pick me!" When you like a guy, you tell him so during your date by seeming happy and engaged and thanking him for a great time at the end, which suggests you'd be amenable to another date without also suggesting that you're controlling and desperate. Just because we have all these fabulous high-tech ways of communicating doesn't mean we should always be quick to use them, tempting as it can be to help a man along to the thought, "Wow...what a wonderful helicopter mom she'll make someday."
I've been seeing my boyfriend for 10 months and living with him and his 12-year-old daughter for half that time. He broke up with his daughter's mother after she became addicted to coke and then meth. She has been in and out of jail and has a massive number of possessions, loads of which are still here: furniture, little picture frames, small decorative pieces, jewelry boxes full of random junk (earrings, magazine clippings, makeup, little figurines, candy wrappers). When I moved in, I spent days boxing up many of her possessions, but she claims to live in a tiny apartment, won't divulge where, and refuses to take a single box. She even freaks out at the mention of getting rid of her dumb garden gnomes (which she stole from someone's yard while high). If my boyfriend tried to make her take her things, she'd have a huge meltdown, putting their daughter in the middle, and he's submissive to her because of that. I'd put everything in storage, but we don't have the extra money. My boyfriend's getting exasperated about this, and I'm thinking I should just drop it. I hate living among all of her things, but I love him so much that I don't seem to have a choice.
--Smothered
You're a hard lady to buy a housewarming gift for, as they don't make plaques that say, "Home is where the heart-shaped jewelry box full of your boyfriend's daughter's mother's candy wrappers is."
It's no small thing, having to wake up every day in some other woman's two-bedroom junk drawer. But like many women, you seem to prioritize your relationship over your feelings and well-being. There are compromises to be made in any romantic partnership, but being gnawingly miserable in order to be happy doesn't end well, assuming you weren't looking to live resentfully ever after. Healthy compromise involves expressing your feelings and together figuring out solutions that work for both of you, not keeping your feelings to yourself until clutter control suggestions like "put random stuff in pretty baskets" give way to thoughts like "commit arson."
There is a way to turn this situation positive -- without lighting a match or opening your front door and yelling, "Yard sale!" Use this as your training ground for developing healthier conflict resolution. To bring up how you're feeling, open with the good stuff -- how much you appreciate him and your life together -- and then tell him that you're unhappy living in a house that constantly reminds you of his ex. Let him know that you understand his concern for protecting his daughter but that the solution isn't submitting to emotional blackmail; it's talking to his daughter in advance about what you're doing and why and maybe scheduling a sleepaway for her on the day the trash hits the fan (or, more prudently, the storage unit).
Tempting as it must be to "store" his ex's things in a landfill, it's safest to proceed with the expectation that she'll sue him for that and claim that the bud vase that was under the bed came from the Qing dynasty and not free, with a Wednesday wax job, from the carwash. As for your not having the "extra" money for storage, tending to your feelings, as well as your boyfriend's, may mean that you both go without lattes or do odd jobs so you stop living as a second-class citizen to two stolen garden gnomes, 17 partially filled shampoo bottles, and all the rest.
University of Chicago law professor Lior Strahilevitz said that the law typically regards a situation like you've described as "gratuitous bailment," legalese for a person's temporarily holding someone else's property without benefit or compensation. He suggests that your boyfriend send several emails and texts and leave phone messages telling the ex that she needs to pick up her possessions from the storage facility "within a reasonable amount of time." (What that would be varies by jurisdiction.) I suggest that you also photograph her stuff and document all the steps you take. According to Strahilevitz, your boyfriend would be wise to hang on to small valuables, like photos and fine jewelry, which aren't a menace to store. But, he says, "donating or disposing of the furniture and junk after a few months in which emails and calls ... asking her to remove the property were ignored probably would not constitute gross negligence," a scary legal term that merely describes being really careless with someone's property.
Although, at the moment, one woman's trash is another woman's trash, the prognosis looks good for that "another woman" no longer being you. Personally, I'm picturing the winning bidder on "Storage Wars" dreaming of abandoned art treasure in her unit and finding it -- from Rodin's little-known "garden gnome sitting on a toilet" period.