Last year, after I split up with my girlfriend, the law firm I worked for went belly up. I haven't been on a date all year. Friends try to set me up, and I keep giving excuses for why I can't go, but the truth is, I've totally lost my nerve. I'd like to change that. Money isn't the issue. I work here and there and still have severance pay left. But despite interviewing heavily, I have yet to land a full-time gig and feel kind of like a failure, and I don't want to discuss that on dates.
--Romantic Stage Fright
You lost your girlfriend and were thinking, "At least I have my job." Then you lost your job and were thinking, "At least I have my confidence." Whatever happens, don't say, "At least I have my penis."
After a series of big setbacks, it's understandable that you'd feel most comfortable hiding under the bed. Unfortunately, you won't get a whole lot of dates there unless you have a tiny tea set and are sexually attracted to mice. You likewise are unlikely to find your lost nerve under there, perhaps hiding out from creditors. But, like many people, where you go wrong is in thinking that you need to find your nerve to take action. You don't. You just need to decide that being afraid to do something isn't a good enough reason to avoid doing it.
Of course, you'll do better on dates if you don't arrive feeling like a cow patty in nice shoes. The good news is, you can give yourself a boost pretty easily -- without standing in an open field during a storm and hoping to get struck by a bolt of confidence. A growing body of research finds that "walking the walk" (in your case, just making the body movements of the large and in charge) is actually transformative. For example, social psychologist Dana Carney had both men and women pose for just two minutes like fat-cat executives -- feet on desk, hands behind head. These simple acts raised their testosterone (the dominance hormone) and made them more willing to take risks (a sign of confidence), and they reported feeling more, well, "Wolf of Wall Street" than "Chihuahua of Skid Row."
In other words, when you have a date, you need to get to the place early and do a little bathroom-stall yoga. Ridiculous as it seems, a little powerbroker-cise should help you feel and act like your peer group is great white sharks instead of small brown smudges. And though your inclination is probably to shove all your negative thoughts about your job loss in some mental drawer, research by clinical psychologist James J. Gross finds that this tends to backfire, making you feel worse. Instead, try "cognitive reappraisal" -- reframing your job loss so it works better for your mojo. This would just take emphasizing to yourself what you already know -- that you're jobless because of others' bad business decisions and a tough economy, not because your lawyering skills rival those of a plastic fern.
When you're on the date, don't worry about selling yourself. We tend to believe we can talk people into liking us, but we're actually more likely to listen them into it. And by listen, I mean listening from the gut, not just nodding your head while trying to remember whether you left a load of underwear in your apartment building's washing machine.
Obviously, the easiest way for you to feel better is to start working again, which would give you a sense of purpose. The thing is, you don't have to wait for somebody to hire you. Consider donating at least a few hours a week to provide free legal counsel to people in need. I explain in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" that we can happy ourselves up for, oh, a few weeks or a month by chasing happiness -- buying a new car or a new set of boobs -- but happiness with staying power comes from pursuing meaning, like by making the world a better place because you're in it.
Making the world a better place has the side benefit of making it a better place for you to go on dates. Women look for men to show signs of generosity, and pro bono lawyering stories are way better than hoping she notices that you left a 24.6 percent tip. And ultimately, dates and job interviewers alike should find the natural excitement that comes out of "I'm helping an elderly widow save her home!" far sexier than your current conversation starter: "I like wearing a paper bag over my head and crying myself to sleep; what are your hobbies?"
This adorable, smart, funny guy I'm dating was clean-shaven when we first met, but for the past three weeks, he hasn't shaved much. He has this really weird facial hair pattern (like patches on his cheeks that haven't filled in well), and I don't find it attractive. I didn't know how to bring this up, so I mentioned it to my roommate, and she volunteered to "casually" mention it. So, last week when he and I were having drinks before going out, she popped into the room and said, "Hey, Brad...still growing that beard? I think you look a lot better clean-shaven." He seemed put off, and we went out to dinner shortly afterward, but the whole evening felt a bit weird. And he still has this patchy facial hair thing going on.
--Mangy Situation
Maybe his facial hair is just scared. Like the groundhog, it came up, saw its shadow, and ducked, terrified, back into his face.
Nobody wants to be the one to tell a guy that his attempted sexy-man scruff is a ringer for a Hobbit's feet or plant life struggling up after a nuclear winter. But as uncomfortable as saying something would have been for you, it had to be far more uncomfortable for him to have your roommate do it, especially right in front of you.
As psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker points out in "The Stuff of Thought," we all get that people say stuff behind our backs, but we can let it go unremarked -- that is, if nobody knows that we know (that something was said about us). But, Pinker explains, once some disparagement becomes "mutual knowledge" -- when others know that we know what was said -- we lose face if we don't do anything about it. And unfortunately, in this case, after your roommate said something, probably the only thing he could do to avoid looking like her puppetboy was to stubbornly avoid shaving that comb-over he's been rocking on his face.
Let some time pass, and then tell him yourself, in a way that doesn't come off like criticism. Pet his beard, and say you think he looks good that way but you love his skin and feeling his face is sexy. What he'll hear: He'll spend more time in bed with his chick if he spends more time in the bathroom with his Schick.
I recently texted a girl I used to date about a year ago. I was going to be in her town, so I wrote something to the effect of "Hey, cutie...will be in your neighborhood Saturday. Want to get together for a drink?" I didn't realize she had a new boyfriend, whom she was with when I texted. He saw the text and flipped out, as did she, calling me and accusing me of almost breaking up her relationship. I apologized, but she kept going on about it and made me feel really guilty. In retrospect, I'd like to know what I did that was so wrong.
--Space Invader
It's not like you said, "Hey, cutie, let's get freaky...and if this is being read by a boyfriend, I'm just her grandma, and Freaky is my cat we need to pick up from the vet."
The fact that her current boyfriend went all apey over your friendly drinks invitation isn't reason to treat you like you waited till Game 7 of the World Series and sexted her on the Jumbotron. As for your apology, when a woman starts shrieking at you, it's tempting to say you're sorry first and then figure out what, if anything, you did wrong. But think about it: What could possibly be your error here? Failure to install the latest OS on your crystal ball? Ignoring that "check engine" light in your third eye?
If your text did "almost" break up her relationship, that's on her -- for making her personal electronic device a public one and for lacking the verbal chops to put an entirely clean message from you into perspective. As for putting her little explosion into perspective, think of it the way you would a conversation with the wild-eyed guy at the bus stop who claims he's getting messages from the aliens in his dental work. (I'm guessing your response wouldn't be running home to clear your lawn so they can use it as a landing pad.) Perhaps just view this incident as a cautionary tale -- a reminder that your next girlfriend should have not only the capacity for reason but an interest in using her brain as more than a sort of highway rest area for her hair.
I've been dating a girl for two months, and I go back and forth from thinking the relationship has legs to wanting to end it. I just had a birthday, and she got me a new iPod Touch with my name engraved on the back. I told her it was too extravagant, but she insisted I keep it. For some reason, I now want to break up with her even more, but I feel guilty about ending it after she got me this pricey gift.
--iClod
Desperation is always so sexy -- like Abraham Lincoln in a lime-green mankini.
There is a natural order to things. The tennis ball does not chase the dog. (Imagine how freaked your dog would be if it did.) It also tends to go over poorly when women overtly pursue men. Males evolved to be the chasers of our species (and most other species) -- to do the wooing and gift giving. Females evolved to be the choosier sex, to give men the squint-eye and wait for them to prove they are "providers." When a woman turns the tables and does the wooing, like by giving a man an expensive present right out of the gate, the man tends to suspect there's something wrong with her. If he wasn't already ambivalent, he'll likely get ambivalent. (Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Give a man you just started dating an iPod and you'll be fishing for a new boyfriend.)
What you need to figure out is whether your "lemme outta here" feelings are about her or the fact that she got you what may seem like an iShackle. ("Hey, honey...here's the present you'd get if we had a serious relationship -- so now give me the serious relationship.") Give this a week or two and consider whether her gift was desperation-driven or whether she maybe just got into shopping mode and, oops, went a little wild at the mall.
If you decide that your initial reaction -- wanting out -- is where you really stand, don't be delayed by the price of the gift. The right time to break up is as soon as you know it's over. If you stay with her, you might gently confide that what works best for you in a relationship is taking things slowly. We long for what's slightly out of reach, not what's hanging all over us raining small appliances: "I know you like music, so I'm giving you an iPod." Your impulse: "And I know you like shoes, so I'm giving you the boot."
I'm a 30-year-old single guy. Two friends from college got divorced six months ago after being married to each other for less than a year (no kids or anything). The truth is, I had a crush on the woman before they even met, and I'm fairly sure the feeling was mutual. I'd like to ask her out, but I'm certain this will bring condemnation from all our mutual "bros," though I was never close with her husband. Does that trump the rule that you shouldn't date a guy friend's ex? Or is she off-limits forever?
--Wary
It's natural to want to express your sympathy to a guy whose marriage just broke up: "Hey, man, so sorry to hear you two didn't make it. By the way, did she happen to mention me?"
Asking out a buddy's ex can seem like the dating version of poking your head over the booth divider at the diner and asking, "You gonna eat that?" It's especially unseemly to forage in the remains of a guy's relationship if he isn't exactly skipping away from it. But assuming the Jaws of Life aren't required to pry the guy out of the fetal position, a divorce is a breakup, not a "bent but still usable," meaning post-divorce, it's time for the ex-husband to release his ex-wife back into the wild.
People typically advise choosing the friend over the girl (sometimes because they think they'll sound like bad people for advising otherwise), but you should consider what matters more to you -- possibly having a crack at her or maintaining your social cred. If you do go out with her, do it discreetly at first: Go places where people won't know you, and avoid the temptation to Facebook or live-blog your entire evening. If, after a few dates, you're hitting it off, it's a good idea to give the guy a heads-up via email. He might still be mad. But at least you'd just be a jerk, not a sneaky jerk. If it turns out you and she have something lasting, in time, people should begin to think of your relationship as something "meant to be" -- while perhaps hiding the silver and the women when you come around.
When my boyfriend and I started dating, he was kind of a hothead. His first encounter with my friends was a game of touch football on the beach. He and another guy collided, and he lost his temper. There was a good bit of yelling, and I think people were pretty shocked. To his credit, he realized he had an anger problem. Over time, he has worked hard on it, and now he doesn't blow up anymore. He really is a changed man, and I thought people would recognize it, but I've recently learned that they all still see him as the scary-angry guy. Is there any way to change that?
--Asking For A Second Chance
In touch football, you're only supposed to put a hand or two on another player -- as opposed to, oh, tearing out his soul with your bare hands, grinding it into a fine powder, and sprinkling it on your cornflakes.
Sure, in the months following that friendly Sunday afternoon death match, your friends had various opportunities to see that your boyfriend's changed. Sadly, this probably hasn't made the slightest dent in their opinion of him, thanks to our brain's penchant for energy conservation. Once we've figured something out -- some bit of information or how to do something -- our brain creates a cognitive shortcut, shrink-wrapping and storing the knowledge set so, the next time around, we'll react automatically instead of having to think the thing through. These cognitive shortcuts work great when you, say, want more light to read by. You know to reach over and switch on a lamp; you don't have to figure out what a lamp is or whether yanking the dog's tail might make his eyes light up the room.
Unfortunately, this autothink makes undoing first impressions like trying to unspill red wine on a white rug. The next time we see a person, our brain shoves us our mental flashcard on them -- "Oh, right, Explody McSploderson." There's no mulling over whether that view of them might be due for revision. Researchers, predictably, call this cognitive laziness "first impression bias." It's a form of confirmation bias, our tendency to favor information that confirms our beliefs and ignore any that suggests we might be mistaken. Information updates are especially easy to overlook when they're subtle, like an explody guy shrugging off a small affront, which is far less visual and memorable than that time he turned into Conan The Touch Football Barbarian.
A way to overcome first impression bias, suggested by research by Kai H. Lim, is presenting new information about your boyfriend in such "unambiguous" and "vivid" ways that it becomes hard to ignore. Tell friends straight-out that he's changed, and explain his motivation -- ideally while walking past him meditating on a park bench with the Dalai Lama or running a rescue for hummingbird single mothers. At the very least, tell stories -- true stories -- laying out how differently he now responds. Information presented in story form tends to be stickier, and "vivid" mental pictures of his transformation may quash the ambiguity that helps maintain first impression bias. Finally, add a call to action -- a request that friends give him a second look through the lens of this new information. They just might see that they can sit down to dinner with the guy without worrying he'll go off on them: "My name is Inigo Montoya. You bumped my arm reaching for the bread. Prepare to die!"
Is there a way to make sure someone is on birth control? My girlfriend says she is, but I don't believe her. I know she really wants to have a baby. I'm not ready to be a father yet -- or maybe ever -- so I need to get to the bottom of this.
--Worried
You're perhaps more of an adoption man -- into adopting the sort of little rascal you can leave tied to a parking meter during brunch without anybody calling social services on you. Unfortunately, a man has limited control over whether a woman he's with gets a bun in the oven with his DNA baked into it -- that is, unless he gets snipped or padlocks his zipper and chucks the key in the ocean. Of course, the single worst form of birth control is trusting that a woman -- especially a woman longing for a baby -- is actually taking or using hers. A mitigating factor is whether she's shown herself to be ethical. Consider whether that describes your girlfriend. If not, you might want to make that a requirement for any partner of yours -- before you find yourself reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" aloud for the 300th time in a week, as it's the only way to keep your toddler from screaming like a goat being slaughtered.
A close friend has a drinking problem. His wife kicked him out, he lost his job, and he's been a lousy father to their 1-year-old son. He begged to stay with me (his only single friend) and has been sleeping on my couch for months. Despite my lecturing him a thousand times, he's still going out and getting wasted -- while trying to talk his wife into taking him back. She called to ask how he's been. I said "pretty good," though the truth is, I just want him out of my apartment.
--Feeling Guilty
No wife, no job, probably no car, and no house -- it's like there's a country song sleeping on your couch.
You have been helping him -- helping him stay exactly where he is. Welcome to the dark side of empathy: empathy that backfires, ultimately causing harm. Dr. Barbara Oakley, who studies this "pathological altruism," explains in a paper that empathy is a knee-jerk emotional response rooted in our fast-responding intuitive thinking system. Empathy jumps right in, shoving us into action. Our slower rational thought system often isn't consulted, isn't given the chance to say, "Hey, wait a minute, Bub. Will you maybe be helping a drunk stay a drunk by turning your living room into the Schlitz-Carlton?"
Perhaps contributing to your unhelpful empathy was the myth (not supported by science) that addiction is a "disease," a condition that, like multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's, people are powerless to overcome. Sociologist Lee Robins first dispelled this disease myth with her 1974 research on heroin-addicted Vietnam vets. Robins found that one-fifth of the American soldiers in Vietnam had become addicted to the heroin or other narcotics they used to escape the horrors and lack of control they experienced while over there. Yet eight months to a year after returning home, about 10 percent had used opiates, and less than 1 percent were still addicted. What made the difference was no longer needing to escape.
Outside a war zone, addiction is adult baby behavior. As clinical psychologist Dr. Frederick Woolverton explains in "Unhooked," addiction involves ducking into a substance or activity to avoid experiencing uncomfortable emotions that are a normal part of adult life. Take a new father's feelings about the ginormous responsibility ahead of him. Understandably scary. But rather than try to figure things out, your friend resorts to child abandonment in liquid form -- instead of running away, floating away: clinging to that worm in the tequila bottle like a rat on driftwood.
You can't lecture a guy out of addiction. To overcome one, a person needs to realize that it "interferes with their deepest values or goals," explains addiction expert Dr. Stanton Peele in "Recover!" Peele gives the example of Phil, a lifelong smoker who'd made numerous failed attempts to quit. After a heart attack, Phil woke up in the hospital longing for a smoke. His daughter said that if he had another cigarette, he'd never see her again. That moment was the end of Phil's smoking. Peele notes that "Phil's core life" was about being a father, not a smoker. When forced to choose, smoking got tossed fast.
Peele says that even someone who isn't a therapist -- you, for example -- can remind an addict of what he values through "Motivational Interviewing," a sympathetic, nonconfrontational questioning technique Peele details in "7 Tools to Beat Addiction." First, draw out what matters to the person -- in your friend's case, maybe how it felt to have a child born, what he wants for his son, etc. Then, gently inquire about how his goals and dreams square with his current life. Don't push; if he's resistant, pull back. Your job is simply asking questions, not judging or criticizing. By getting him to recognize the discrepancies between what he wants and what he's doing, you're getting him to do the math: that he needs to make some changes if he wants more out of life than cirrhosis.
It's also time for some healthy kindness -- the sort that feels bad in the moment but, in the long run, may get him on the road to contributing to a college fund (beyond the one for his bartender's kids). Give him some deadlines. First, he has to tell his wife the truth, or you'll at least tell her you weren't completely honest. Next, inform him that your apartment is retiring from its stint as the Motel 6-Pack. Give him a move-out date, and be prepared to stick to it. Remember, your being cruelly kind is his best shot at getting a handle on more than the sides of your toilet bowl. It's also your best shot at charming a woman into bed without the added challenge of explaining the guy in your living room who can't figure out whether to hit on your plant or vomit into it.