Adult Women’s Guide to Dating Volume III: Explain My Ass

I dated this guy in college for a few weeks and then he stopped calling me.  Suddenly.  By no means were we in love but I really dug him.  He had fantastic green eyes and tousled hair and could kiss his FACE off!  I was bummed with the sudden change.  Then I see him on campus one day not long after with his arm draped over the shoulders of a girl I knew from my Spanish lab.  It was clear they were together.  He stopped awkwardly, disentangled himself from her, mouth falling open, and his hands widening in full blown explanation posture.   I smiled and said hello, politely cutting him off before he started, and walked away.  Then, I NEVER THOUGHT OF HIM AGAIN.  Well, until just now telling this story.  You get my gist.

An explanation was irrelevant.  He was dating her and NOT me.  I hadn’t done anything and we weren’t exclusive or serious.  An explanation wouldn’t change the outcome and certainly wouldn’t make me feel any better.  In fact, the only one who generally feels better during an explanation is the explainer.  And that’s super lame. 

This holds especially true with the liars and the cheaters.  You don’t explain your way out of sleeping with another woman.  You can’t.  And hearing the intimate details only makes the burn more severe for the person wronged while simultaneously lessening the burden the cheater has been carrying.  That’s the shittiest math equation ever.  Knowing you went four rounds on the sofa with a 22 year old waitress “but you don’t love her” isn’t going to make swallowing the cheated-on pill any easier.  And that visual is all I am going to see every time you leave the house. 

So, I know what you’re thinking right now.  “What the hell am I supposed to do if I don’t get an explanation?  Do I just stare at him in muted rage?”  The answer depends on the scenario.  There are two.

I give you Volume III in all it’s Glory:
9.  As a grown woman, I will not let myself be subject to explanations or excuses for bad behavior. If a man fails me he doesn’t have the right to try to excuse it away. I will either walk (as in away forever) or I will talk.

• Walk aka The Deal Breaker: If the grievance is unforgivable, the answer to that question is NO.  In a deal breaker scenario you walk the hell away but not before introducing his face to the Eff Chair™.  Make him carry that shit along for the duration.  Don’t let him unload his excuses on you and feel better.  You sure as hell don’t.
• Talk aka The Forgivable: If he forgot to take the trash out, we can leave the Eff Chair where it’s at and spare his face, but the answer is still “No.”  If what he did is still pretty significant I suggest a different tactic.  Instead of listening to explanations that don’t make things right tell him how it made you feel and what you expect in the future.  He agrees or he doesn’t.  It’s not on you to make it right. 

Example: “It hurt me that you lied about going to serve soup to the homeless and got drunk with your buddies at the driving range.  Let’s not make this a habit.” 

Enough said.

Eff Valentine’s Day: My Rant for YOU

I know what you’re thinking… here comes a Valentine’s day fuckfest of a rant from an angry, bitter, and perpetually single white woman.  And I won’t pretend I didn’t start and delete a post like that about a dozen times, but that’s really not my message.  So, I’ll rant, and I’ll rail a bit, but it’s not against anyone, especially not mankind.  My rant is actually for you.  So suck it, Valentine’s Day.  It’s not about you anymore. 

Red Flags Revealed

So Eff.  It’s almost Valentine’s Day and have absolutely no plans that involve any kind of romantic anything.  It's true.  Nothing like running your single flag up the flagpole for everyone to see.  And speaking of flags… I have a new friend/knowledge dropper I’d like you to meet. 

You’ve already been introduced to my friend Tristan and his timely insights into men’s emotionally retarded tendencies was a good one… but I also have another source of wisdom on my dream team of dating advisors.  I am pleased (and thankful) to introduce you to one of my new friends and 1/2 the brain power of the site 100 Red Flags, Ryan Luedecke.  His site is dedicated to listing 100 red flags as to why women are single.  Their knowledge is vast, their insights are compelling, and their use of the eff bomb is always well-placed.  These guys are good, and thankfully I follow instructions well.  (I am also guilty of far too many of their red flags so I have my work cut out for me… I’ll let you guess which ones.  Hint: I did NOT go to Notre Dame.) 

For their first ruminations on love (or lack there of) I told them to take it easy on me and lay down some first date red flags… Ryan delivered in spades. 

Tristan Speaks: The Eff Calvary Has Arrived…FINALLY

When I was nine I made this boy I liked cookies because I thought he was cute.  I made them from scratch and by myself watching them rise slowly in the oven, making sure they were the perfect shade of brown.  I wrapped them carefully in a paper bag I decorated with little pink and red hearts I cut out of construction paper and glued them meticulously into patterns on the side of the bag.  I was so nervous walking up to him to give him the bag I almost peed my Rainbow Bright underwear. 

When I presented them to him with, “They’re chocolate chip macadamia nut, you’re favorite.”  He unceremoniously took the bag, ripped it open, stuffed two in his mouth, and walked away.  I was devastated.  He was oblivious.  And so that same pattern would play out over my adult dating life from the petty: unreturned phone calls to the extreme: sleeping with other women without my knowledge or permission.  It’s been a vast spectrum of dumb ever since. 

Eff Conventionalism: A to B is Lame

A friend sent me this picture last night.  When I read the bottom part the first time, I totally heard Morgan Freeman's voice saying it like, "What. (pause) The Hell.  (pause) Is Happening”.  (Like, without a question mark at the end.  A period.  And calm, because he’s Morgan Freeman and it just sounds so bad ass how he says it.)

Then I thought of OTHER celebrity voices saying the same line.  Alec Baldwin’s silky, snobby voice saying it all condescending, “What the HELLLL is happening”?  then adjusting his cuff links with elegant annoyance. 

Vincent Price’s version was pretty awesome in my head too.  More sinister and with his evil laugh at the end.  Liam Neeson’s accent made it kinda cool, but he was more angry about it when he said it, like how he was in the movie Taken, and his voice rose with each word like, “WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING!”  And I pictured him on his knees and looking at they sky shaking his fists at God.

Peter Griffin from Family Guy was pretty rad too.  I did all the characters of Family Guy actually.  My daughter was sitting next to me when I did that.  She kept asking me, “What are you laughing at”?  When I would giggle to myself. 

Michael Jackson said it all scared and hurried like, “whatthehellishappening” and then did a spin and grabbed his crotch.  There was the guy from the All State Commercials, whose name I don’t know… (at this point I then tried to name all the shows/movies he’s been in and yet I’ve never known his actual name.)

So, these incoherent ramblings have nothing to do with the actual picture’s content which I think was her point in sending it, but I know she’ll appreciate that I spent 30 minutes doing bad celebrity impersonations of the same line in my head for entertainment purposes.  That could be why I’m not in the A -----> B category. 

In unrelated news, I’m easily distracted. 

Happy Friday.  (Said in the voice of Morgan Freeman.)

Eff and Other Words does E-Cards: Suck it Hallmark

Last year on Valentine’s Day I was single and I was not the happy recipient of a boyfriend love fest card/flowers/chocolates like a lot of the women I know.  In fact, I don’t even remember much of it – I’m fairly certain I blocked it out or drank my way through it all.

This year will be different… not because I have a date.  I don’t.  BUT, I have some fantastical ways to tell the significant and insignificant others in your life how you feel.   Courtesy of, and EFF approved, I’m introducing a FREE line of e-cards to be shared en masse.

There are cards being added each day and I assure you there will be one for you and the one you love/don’t love/dislike a great deal/just want to make out with in the mix somewhere.

So check out the page HERE and make it an Effable Valentine’s Day! 

I know I will. 

The Break-up: On Skype… Because of Twitter

Ah, remember the days when dating meant waiting anxiously by the phone waiting for it to ring? The wondering if he would call the next day or three days later when you’d been pacing furiously wondering if he really liked how your hair looked in the moon light.  Now, with a fully charged smart phones the wait is over.  It’s immediate feedback, immediate interaction, immediate gratification… but why does it feel so personally impersonal? 

Last year I was dating someone who lived in another state.  We’d been able to get together a few times and we always had a great time.  Long distance relationships are tricky and he admittedly didn’t like talking on the phone.  With the plethora of digital platforms, we began using Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and text to stay in communication.  At first, it was fun seeing what he was up to and with mutual friends we were able to interact and text all the time when we were apart. 

Lame Date? The Crying Lawyer and the Drive-by

Since my dating shame spiral that began circa 1995 I’ve racked up a lot of experiences on the deep (and dark) end of the dating pool. Never one to just dip my toe, I generally cannonball into the shark infested waters and I’ve got the flesh wounds to prove it. I spent over an hour last night with some friends online talking about all things “bad dating” and it inspired me to share some of my stories in a new series where I'll assess dates for their lame status.  Lame isn't an exact science, more of an art form really of which my life has been the canvas.  Let's get right down to it...