How does your dating Profile Read?

So apparently it’s been “ I need a date” season, and I recently found out that I’m on the short list of people to call if; you need to go to a classy event, dress up or don’t want to be embarrassed. There are worst things to be known for, ijs.

Check the story. I got a call from a young lady that I occasionally hear from, and she asked if I’d escort her to a holiday party. I agreed because she is cool to hangout with. So I asked her what made her call me and she let me know I was on her short list, because I was cultured, could hold intelligent conversation, etc. etc. But as she spoke what I actually heard was good enough to go on dates with not god enough to date. Bet not a problem, I know where we stand.

So any way, we go on the date, a very nice place and set up, people dressed up, nice dinner and dancing, the whole 9.  So when we get there she goes above and beyond to introduce me as her “Friend”. Not a problem for me, the other single women in the room jumped all over the opportunity. I’m not accustomed to being the most desirable man in any room, but I can get used to it quickly. I’ve never received that much attention in my life. Now I figured some of it had to be extra just to make her jealous. The proof that I’ve matured as a man is that, a younger me would have tried to sleep with ever woman giving me attention at once, and damn near forgot about my date. But I was being selective trying to figure out if the girls really liked me or were really trying to just upset her. To shorten a long story, even though she didn’t want to dance in between other dances I made her dance and have fun, being a good date.

Skip ahead to later in the night. By the dessert section were mistletoes, kind of set up so that at some point you’d pass under one. Well as I got dessert you’d have thought it was a kissing booth at the state fair. I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for my date, as she got her revenge by claiming all of the slow dances at the end of the night, and of course she put a little extra on a few dances o make her competition wonder.

SO in the car I asked her if she got a little jealous, and she admitted that she did. I asked why, considering she kept throwing around friends, and considering that in the past she has never wanted to date me or at least that’s what she has told me.  Her answer as that she did once, but she wanted me to basically chase her and I gave up.  LOL, because I have long given up on hoping that my perseverance and persistence would convince a woman to date me, you may call it giving up, I just don’t make investments that don’t payoff.

So after this holiday dating season, I got to thinking that I have a profile, the women that know me, think of me in a certain way and certain things come to mind when they think of me; things I’m good at, things I’m not, thing they’d do with me and things they wouldn’t. And some of the things they think and believe, I may or may not agree with. Your dating profile is kind of like your profile on your social network page, but I like to look at it as more like a scouting report in sports. Your profile is the image you want to give off, but a scouting report is more in-depth. It would consider your strengths, weaknesses, attitude, what you think you are, your habits etc.  In 2014, I think we need to assume that we are under the microscope, and look at our selves under the microscope and be tough on ourselves. We need to look at the things unseen to the naked eye and search for potential problems. The reasons we may be single or not content in our relationships may have something to do with what’s in our profile. We need to search ourselves compared to the best version of ourselves we wish to become and improve. Let’s look at the people we entertain, date, sleep with, reject, place in the friend zone or even worse in the family zone. (The Family zone is a topic Ill tackle in 2014, you maybe guilty of it).  I challenge you all and myself to see what’s in your dating profile, and leave no stone unturned and make no assumptions.Figure out what the facts, figures, statistics, scenarios and data of your dating life are, and what perceptions they give off.

Happy New Year and I wish you all safe happy relationships.

Slin_K

@Slin_k_plymath

Are you sure you want to be pursued…. Are you sure you want to be in a relationship?

  

 

It’s been so long, I apologize for the long layoff. I haven’t been writing many relationship issue or social commentary articles lately. I somewhat stepped away from the sector due to circumstances in the field and I’ve been doing a lot more speaking, and I just finished my first book. It’s called Getting In Our Own Way: The Degradation of Student Organizations, also available on Amazon, and other fine print and e-book retailers. I felt you deserved that explanation.

I have been talking about women being too picky for years and the subsequent extinction of gentleman that this pickiness is having on men. I often hear, meet and speak with plenty of great, positive, successful women, who speak of not being able to find a man, or that men don’t approach them.

The day I got this assignment, I observed something interesting happen in the gym as I was working out.  

A young lady approaches a guy as he is working out, and attempts to start a conversation. Flattered for a while he obliges, but then he does something most guys probably won’t. He tells her he is trying to concentrate on his work out and if she wishes to talk later, it would be a much better time.  And the look of utter discuss, confusion and disdain that came across her face was somewhat hilarious, simply because I’ve seen this same woman in the gym do the exact same things to guys that try to talk to her while she is working out.

With the whole work out craze, health and fitness movement happening, I’ve seen and heard numerous women complain about men trying to talk to them or pick up on them at the gym, or park, and how it’s a place for working out not a place for being social. Ok, so we see the double standard being placed here right, at least in this one case.  Boy how the rules change when they’re the interested party, or making the approach. 

But here is the question. Where is a good place that you can talk to a woman anymore? Because due to the thirst movement and an infinite amount of other factors; men pretty much are not allowed to talk to women, yet somehow they are still expected to pursue them.

Honestly ladies, where is a good place to meet you? It’s Ironic that both the club and church are pretty much out of the question and off limits for meeting someone. While you’re working out is a big no-no. While you’re on the job, is out of bounds? This is getting much harder also, due to strict non fraternization policies being put in placed at many companies, but is this a good place or no?  Is the grocery store acceptable? How about the library, or would you scold him that you were trying to study?  What about at a stoplight?  The train or buses on your morning commute to work? At a concert? Line at the DMV? At the mall? Speed dating, or are many of you too closed minded for that? What about across the internet, can you ask someone via social media out on a date? We know the taboo associated with that. What about if he sees you at your job? Or, if you see him at his job?  It almost seems as if unless you have a job that requires a suit and tie, this is a no-no also.  We can’t approach or be approached in our work uniform.

 A friend of mine recently complained about guys always trying to pick up on her at her job, and I couldn’t see the problem. She’s a beautiful girl, like with a capital B. So I asked her, where else is he supposed to try? Where else would he see you, in order to make this approach? Is he supposed to stalk you and find a more appropriate setting other than your job? That would be creepy. 

Let me explain why men approach women wherever you are. Literally, I’ve seen men approach women at weddings, funerals (yes I said it), graduations, dinner parties, while she was out with her girls (ask any man what a lions den that is to enter), you name it. Because when we are young boys we are taught to seize the moment. We usually learn this in grade school, the first time we go on a field trip and there are other schools there, and we see a girl we think is fine. We want to talk to her and a friend encourages us to, we usually say something like “later”, but that friend reminds us quickly by asking us “when will you ever see her again.” So we go through life with that reminder, and I don’t think most women think like that or acknowledge that.

It really makes me think do you really want to be pursued? Because, you can’t be in control of every aspect of a relationship. You can’t control how he looks, what he does, what he has, where he approaches, when he approaches, etc. I know many live in this Disneyesque world where everything is perfect, but we live in the real world and are adults. Good people show up in your life at the weirdest places. We’re supposed to be more open minded that that.  I assure you that more often than not Prince Charming will approach you at an awkward time with a decent conversation, and nervous, more than with a glass slipper he found after the royal ball, that he wants to put on your foot to see if it fits correctly. And lets be honest even if he did show up with a glass stiletto, most of you would find that creepy and wouldn’t take your shoe off for him to see. IJS, You can have too high of standards or too many standards. You do realize that many women with their list wouldn’t date Jesus, or any of the Disney Princes.  The reason, many don’t know how to love an imperfect person, but they wish for someone to love imperfect them.

We live in a world now where men have to ask for permission to be gentlemen, because we don’t want to offend the woman that doesn’t need you to do anything for her. You don’t want your friendliness or helpfulness mistaken for thirst/ desperation. And you don’t want your well intentions mistaken for malice. This generation of men is completely confused. The rules have changed, you want to be modern, but still be old fashioned and we don’t know when to do which, because women switch between those two based on which is convenient for them at the time.

So ladies please answer this question for men across the world? Where is a good place to meet you? If you get hung up on where a man tries to talk to you, you really, seriously have to ask yourself do you really want to be in a relationship, do you want to be pursued and are you available? You may have control issues or are out of touch with reality. If a man is approaching you and he does it respectfully, don’t focus on where it is, focus on what he’s saying. He finds you attractive, trust me there are plenty of women that would love to have that problem and be thankful of men asking them to dance, buy them a drink, try to pick up on them anywhere. Just think about it.

That’s my perspective. What’s Yours?

@slin_k_polymath

Is your selection Process the Real Handicap ?

 

 

What’s happening family it’s been a long, long, time since I posted something. I ‘ve been busy speaking, traveling, and haven’t had any articles/ topics that I was really interested in or believed in to write about, its part of being a writer and apart of a collective, sometimes you get things you’re not interested in. But you have to pay the bills, right?

Well as of late we’ve been dealing a lot with preferences, in this blog and in my “How Am I Still Single?” workshop, I deal a lot with preferences. Its my belief that many people are single, not only because they don’t know how to date, but also because they have too many requirements, obstacles, and hoops for people to jump through before liking someone enough to give them a chance. Having to many items on your checklist is a fantasy, and it’s also how people end up making their dating pool, into a dating puddle. Most times the things we think we need are merely wants, but we make wants bigger than actual needs for healthy relationships. We have so many filters for potential mates that we start to filter out good candidates also, to the point that Jesus himself wouldn’t be good enough.  

Had a conversation the other day with the collective and we had a letter about dating someone handicapped. So let me ask the question . Would you date/be interested in someone that’s handicapped? If you were dating/married to someone and they became handicap would you be less interested all of a sudden?

It’s a tough question for many, and when answered, all the wrong reasons and excuses come out for most people. The ever popular, love is unconditional phase pops up. However, like is not unconditional, and you cant fall in love with someone if you don’t like them and never give them a chance to date you. We cant say love is unconditional out of one side of our mouth, then find reasons to not give ourselves the chance to love/be loved by someone unconditionally, on the other side. Those that say “NO” are often worried about how others in society will perceive them.  Fellas imagine catching flack from your boys in a trash talk session or ladies when describing your new interest, wondering what the girls will think when you get to the in a wheel chair detail.  We often trap/ box in ourselves, not society, us and our way of thinking.

Many say they would not loose interest if they were already with someone and they ended up handicap. But for many, that’s about loyalty and not looking like a heartless person.

What does this say about us honestly? Is it fickle? Because even in our reasoning for not leaving, its about us and how we feel, not the handicap person. And for many of us to even deal with a handicap person we would have to have gone through the event that made them disabled with them. This from the equal opportunity generation? The MLK generation that is supposed to judge people by the content of their character.  We’re the diverse generation, in every way, except the types of people that we’ll date, and then we wonder how we got boxed in to this little pool of available people to date.

What is it about a handicap person that makes you just completely close your mind? We in the modern generation know of handicap people with abilities that exceed our own. They work, they go to school, they compete and stay active, they live normal and sometimes exciting lives and just want to be treated like everyone else, but many of us would deny them our affection.

Think on this, what if you met a man/woman, they were everything you hope, wish, and pray for in a mate.  They want the same things in life you want, you’re compatible, they’re available, they like you, they’re supportive of you, they make you happy, and they make you better. They complete/compliment you, but they are just not able bodied. This person is not a vegetable, they have a life, they are independent, they don’t need you to take care of them, they just want companionship and someone to love like everyone else. Would you walk away from that, because the disability was too much for you to overcome mentally? Would it bother you that much, that you’d rather stay single? You could be missing out on a soul mate being small/close minded.

Is it fickle? I believe so, its not that far from, “ I’m not color struck, I just like light skin girls” or “ I’m not a gold digger, I just like men that are successful or that have white collar jobs” or “ Its my preference”. Our Preferences are what make us fickle, especially when it’s something they can’t help. It’s a big difference from preferring someone that has ambition, is respectful, treats you right etc.

People often miss out on their blessing, because it didn’t come the way they though it would, it wasn’t wrapped up in the packaging they imagined it would be, so they reject the blessing. The blessing was given, prayer was answered, and you rejected it, accepted and went after something else. Your dating pool becomes a puddle. There are a lot of fish in the sea, but if you’re only going to fish in one area, you’ll always catch the same types of fish. Go further out and deeper down, and you’ll catch some different types of fish.

To each its own, but I think it’s crazy to completely right off and overlook an entire demographic of mature responsible people, especially when they want the same things in life we all want. Maybe we all should expand our thoughts, if we feel we could not be attracted/ interested in a person with a handicap, maybe we should question ourselves as to why and figure out what the real reasons are.

Just something to think about, until next time. My opinion, my experience, my perspective. What’s yours?

Slin-K

@slin_k_polymath on twitter