Dating For Dummies!

Putting yourself under house arrest

If the first way to get on with this dating stuff is to get out there, don’t put yourself in prison, even if it’s homey and comfortable to begin with. It is very unlikely that someone is going to come up to your door and ask you for a date (and even if they do, think about what you’d be wearing . . .). Don’t allow yourself to fall into the La Brea Tar Pits in front of your TV. Get out and be active — and that doesn’t mean finding a neighborhood bar as a substitute home away from home either. Bars aren’t the best place to find anybody other than lonely people drinking in the dark. Let’s make a deal: Avoid any place with bars — they’re all a kind of lock-up and confining. Let yourself be free.

Whining

Whining is the vocal manifestation of house arrest, pity parties, blaming, and comparing. It’s hard to listen to, will give you wrinkles, and is social suicide.

Nobody likes a whiner, which makes it so remarkable that all of us do it from time to time. The worst of it is, the more we whine, the whinier we feel, so make a big sign with a goblet inside a circle and put a slash through it. Get it? No whine (or wine, as the case may be).

Occasionally whining is okay — that’s what friends and family are for — but the amount of time you spend whining should certainly be no more than the amount of time you’re willing to spend listening to someone else whine.

I’ve already told you not to blame yourself and not to blame the entire opposite sex. Unfortunately, these days, I may need to remind you not to blame anybody else either: not your parents or your first grade teacher or your baby-sitter.

If you think you’ve got a problem because of something that someone did or didn’t do at an earlier time in your life, ask yourself whether there is anything you could ask of that person now — other than an apology — that would help you. (Styles of parenting change every ten years or so, which means everybody gets caught. Most of our parents did the best they could with what they had, and the rules keep changing.) If you think your mental health and dating abilities would be helped if you had a better relationship with your dad, get baseball tickets and invite him, but don’t expect him to apologize for the person he is. He may not have been the perfect dad, but you may not have been the perfect kid, either, so let it go. Or find a therapist.

If talking to your mom about the things she told you about sex would help — and if you can manage such a discussion without making her feel defensive or guilty — go for it. If you can’t manage it without making her feel bad, you’ll end up feeling awful, too. Then what have you accomplished? Blame locks you in the past and makes someone right and someone wrong, which means it’s likely that someone’s going to fight you if you’re blaming them, or if you’re doing the “it’s all my fault” routine, you’re making yourself unhappy. Who needs it? So go to a therapist or go to a ball game, but whatever you do, get on with it. Figure out what to do differently and let’s go.

Beating yourself up is a waste of time and painful, and because you’re the only person you are guaranteed to be with your whole life, why hurt yourself?  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take stock when something has gone really wrong (see Chapter 23). Who needs to walk into a propeller blade more than once?

Instead of beating yourself up, why not ask yourself what you could do differently next time? Make sure your answer is very, very specific.