PARDON she SPEAKS

12 Months Without A Date :
The Oscar Nominated Drama

 

Recently a friend asked me why guys aren’t rushing to date her. After listing the various “wifey” material qualities she had, she concluded that it just doesn’t make sense that guys just want to “chill” instead of taking her out. It occurred to me that this is a frequent complaint from a lot of women and that often they blame themselves for not being “dateable.” But this is far from the truth. Believe it or not ladies, guys these days don’t date much either. In fact, your once-a-year come up on Valentine’s Day is probably more than most guys you know. There are plenty of reasons for this generation’s lack of dating and there are plenty of ways to make you the exception and not the norm.

 

Do you even know what a date is?

Between TV shows and movies, it’s easy to get the idea that a date is a romantic action taken by a guy to show interest in a woman. Hands up if this is what you think as well….welp, there’s our first problem. Linking dating to romance limits a person’s options on who they can date since technically, they’d have to already be interested romantically before going on one. Chances are you’ve shot down dating opportunities with a few guys simply because you weren’t interested romantically. Now before you object and say you’ve never turned down a date, keep in mind body language speaks as loudly (sometimes louder) than words. Guys may not pick up all the hints you drop when you want them to, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get any hints.

 

Dating isn’t about being romantic, it’s about getting to know somebody. Think about what that means. People choose to date people they are interested in knowing—whether it is for friendship, for business, for fun or yes, for romance. The funny thing is many of us forget that not all romantic encounters begin romantically, and getting to know someone can lead to that but it doesn’t have to!

 

Dates are not limited to candlelit dinners or movies. A date can be a group of friends going to a bar, going to the beach, sitting outside on a bench. Any personal interaction that involves two or more people getting to know each other is a date. Planned or unplanned, interaction is necessary for it to be a date. I know what you’re thinking, believe me, I do… ” That’s just hanging out” EXACTLY!!

 

Think about how “just hanging out” has led to more— more business opportunities, more friends, more experiences, more romances.

 

Accept that dating isn’t restricted to private dinners with your crush. There you go. You’ve just made your first step to dating recovery.

 

Why should you date?Believe it or not, this is probably the most important part of this whole rant/speech/sermon. Spending time getting to know someone on a non-physical level is more rewarding in the long run across all relationships. Think about the people you feel know you best. Is it because you connected physically or because you connected over conversation and time spent together? Conversation can be the deepest, most noninvasive, soul connecting form of communication you can have with someone without risking HIV or pregnancy. Dating is just a way to facilitate conversation by doing things that promote speaking to one another. With that said why can’t “Chilling” be dating? After all I just got done saying dating is just hanging out, right?

 

The big difference here is the focus and purpose. Chilling in our generation tends to have a focus on conversation or distractions (alcohol, massages, movies, bullshit) as a means to a physical ending. Dating focuses on conversations or distractions as a means of getting to know someone in a non-physical way. You should date because we were made to be social creatures even if some of us are more social than others. None of us is perfect but by exploring others perfections and exposing our imperfections, we become perfected. You weren’t born alone, someone helped push you here. You won’t die alone, someone helped you live here.

 

Who Should You Date?

Short answer, ANYONE. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a date. It’s not marriage or an engagement or even sex. It’s a friggin date. If you are a woman, I don’t even get the issue of going on one date with someone. Worst case scenario, you hate the guy but end up getting free shit and the free knowledge that this guy is not someone you want to be around. One less fish in the sea. If you’re a guy, the worst case scenario is you wasted you’re time with her but you gain the admiration of her friends for being a man and asking her out. There is something to be gained for everyone on any date.

 

Dating has become increasingly harder these days because we are raised in a society that values physical gains. Unfortunately that leads to some guys anticipating sex and some women anticipating committed relationships. This also leads to the rejection of dating outright because people don’t want to experience rejection in those anticipations. Some would rather be in a relationship already before even dating just to avoid that. I call those “on sight” relations, You like me, I like you, now we go together. These people, who basically skip the dating process and end up dating during the relationship, typically are the ones that say their partner became a whole new person when they became official. SURPRISE, SURPRISE. Maybe, you should’ve dated first!

 

Best way to approach dating is not to anticipate anything physically gained beyond the experience of the date. You had a good time, great maybe you should go out again. You had a bad time, cool, don’t have to do that again. It’s good etiquette to be clear in communication on what the date is. Unfortunately again due to fear of rejection, people like to use the grey area and just hope the person understands their intentions. If you let the first and second date slide by without being sure what the intentions are, DO NOT GO ON THE THIRD DATE without knowing for sure! Ladies, the guy has been nice enough to pay for your time, company and conversation, the least you can do is clarify some things for him. If you can’t tell what his intentions are, ask him outright, especially if you want there to be romantic intentions. If you want to steer the intentions to friend zone, use my go to move “Homie.” Call anyone homie enough and they will get the picture. I still believe stating intentions outright is the best but to be fair not everyone knows what they want right away. If he isn’t sure then it’s really up to you to keep dating. If you aren’t sure (that’s ok too) let him know, then it’s up to him to keep dating you.

 

How Do You Get To Date The People You Want?

Clearly many of us typically have romantic intentions or at least an attraction that has led to some kind of interest in someone when we want to date someone. If you’re anything like me, the person you want never really wants you the same way at first and getting their attention is like walking on glass, keeping their attention is like walking through hell. Because of the aforementioned horror of “chasing someone” or “looking thirsty,” many of us won’t end up dating who we initially think we want.

 

I understand that women often employ the old fashioned “guys need to go after what they want if they want it” rule of thumb. That is a great rule except now you are trapped in a passive stance, waiting for whenever that guy happens to notice you and take action. Of course, if he wanted you in the first place, you wouldn’t be reading this. That’s the issue isn’t it? He either doesn’t notice you or doesn’t think of dating you. Some women would blame this issue on the hoes he surrounded with that are currently winning his attention. Well, duh, his attention is being paid in return with sexual/physical attention. If that’s the only thing you want from him, go copy the hoes and be happy. If you want something more than that, you can’t look at hoes with envy, yall got two different goals in mind!

 

The difference in dating someone you want as opposed to dating someone you have no clue about, is just that, YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT ALREADY. You are already interested, they aren’t yet. You need to generate that interest. Batting you’re eyelashes and shaking you’re ass is gonna make a guy attracted to that…you’re ass. As incredibly complex creatures we are as men, sometimes that’s just enough (really depends on how large that ass is and how well you demonstrate it) to initiate a physical interest. You have to understand that physical interest means exactly that, it doesn’t mean he wants to know you personally. You can steer that towards the personal direction by generating personal interest, have a conversation. Peep what I said there.

 

HAVE A CONVERSATION, not sex, a conversaaaaaaation.

 

Yes I know that’s pretty hard to do in a club/party/large music setting. That’s why you exchange numbers. Yes, YOU ask for the number because YOU are interested. He may or may not be that mesmerized by your twerk enough to ask for it. Text. Yes YOU text first because YOU asked for his number. Pay attention to details in the conversation. Is he steering the conversation to relevant topics or towards sexual things? You can tell what person is about and what a person wants to be about with you based on what they talk about and how comfortable they are talking about it. Next, hit him with a group activity on the slick tip like this, “I’m going to the pub on Thursday with some friends, you should come through.” You are establishing an interest in his company, maintaining a friendly dialogue (not necessarily friend, but not necessarily not friend), putting it out in public so no one would think he’s there to see you, lots of liquor to gets the conversation flowing and you can get close enough to have private conversation in person. Congrats you just slid your way to a first date and didn’t een no it.

 

How to Get the Second Date after you swindled the first?

You need to create something complex from simple elements. As basic and cliché as it sounds, chemistry is the answer. Hanging out together is the perfect way to explore the simple elements of your natures. What makes you laugh together, what made you agree or disagree with each other, are all basic ways of trying to discover if there is chemistry. The huge misunderstanding is that all chemistry is natural in relationships. We kinda just expect that everybody that should hit it off, will. That’s absolutely ridiculous. Consider yourself really lucky if that’s the nature of all of your friendships or consider yourself really unfortunate since you probably could have had more if you weren’t waiting for the stars to magically align to give you their blessing. I’m not saying you should force anything but just consider that nature (and by correlation, life) is just as active as it is passive. You weren’t passively born and you can’t passively give birth to anything new without taking some sort of action. Some of my greatest friendships are with people I didn’t even like at first.

 

With that said, the second date is probably going to be more telling than the first. You can get access to that date by making yourself interesting enough to be worth it. This does not mean you are prostituting your personality. It means being yourself enough that the guy will be genuinely interested in seeing more of who that person is. I say be yourself because I’ve had the unfortunate experience of not being myself with someone just to get them and then realizing it wasn’t me she liked, it was the façade. Being yourself is the best way to get a person to be genuine with their intentions with you. I’m not saying that being genuine will always create honesty, just saying it’s the best way to get honesty. These were all my genuine opinions on this dating crisis our generation is experiencing. I hope you will come up with honest answers for yourself.

@stylzdotcom