Читать книгу It’s Just a Date: A Guide to a Sane Dating Life - Greg Behrendt - Страница 8

The decision to start dating was a simple one. It started with a skillet. Not even a nice one, but one of those gun metal grey now singed black, workhorse skillets that you burn fried eggs with. “Wait Greg, are you telling me the interested reader that a dirty skillet got you dating? I’m not convinced.” Yes I remember thinking as the greasy black pan was heading towards my skull, “This might not be the right relationship. I’m not choosing the right lady for me.” Here’s what happened. I was newly “drinks free” (I like that better than sober because it almost sounds like free drinks and that makes people happy) and had been set up with a girl who was also “drinks free”. She was foxy and funny with a little edge. Anyway we went on two dates, one a formal dinner and the other we hung out at a thing then had awkward sex too soon and became girlfriend-boyfriend. We didn’t really know each other but because we had had sex we felt beholden to one another and after all, this is how most of my relationships started in the past. Why should this be any different? Ever since college the recipe had been the same. Meet someone, take them out twice, have sex on the third date, become a couple, then fight until done. Ding! It wasn’t either person’s fault it was how the game had been set up. I had a pattern, it didn’t work and I was sticking to it … until the skillet. I remember calling my mom that day and saying “… you know what? Maybe I don’t end up with anybody. Maybe I’m just destined to be a bachelor. And if that is the case then I’m gonna bachelor the shit out of it.” I went at it like a sporting event. I got my own apartment. Taught myself how to cook and to clean. Picked out my own furniture. I went to movies by myself, ate at restaurants by myself and bought my own clothes. I began to teach myself to live as though I might never meet someone but if I did they’d be blown away by how self-sufficient I was and by my matching bamboo end tables. Like Field of Dreams. If you build it they will come. And then the weirdest thing happened: I started meeting girls. Everywhere. Department stores, flower shops, cafés, softball games and hair salons. See a pattern, fellas? Go to where the girls are. But don’t go just to go. The fact that I was now not actively looking for a relationship made me appear to just appear. And for the first time in my life I had the opportunity to date more than one person. And I took it. I’d never done that, so why now? Well, I was at my parents over a Thanksgiving break and I was in my mom’s office looking for something when I came across an old date book of hers from when she was dating my dad. I flipped through it and I noticed something almost revolutionary. She had begun dating my dad in May. I know this because his name appears periodically through out the month. Thursday Richard. Saturday Richard. But there are also two other names that appear throughout the month. Steve and Aaron, but as we get to June Aaron drops off like a stone and Steve’s name appears less and less until it fully goes away in July. My dad kicked some dating ass, but the real lesson was my mom wasn’t limiting her options until she was sure. I asked her if my dad knew about the other guys. “Not at first. But you didn’t ask in those days. It was just assumed that you were dating.” “Assumed you were dating? And he was cool with that?” “He didn’t love it but he respected it and in some ways I think it made getting me all the sweeter.” Dating!? What a great f*#king idea. Imagine, just going out with someone a few times to see how you really feel about them. So I decided to give it a try. And I found that I liked it and that I was pretty good at it. Were all the dates good? Hell no! There were some nightmares you will read about later on in the book. Did you get your heart broken? Not as badly as if I had tried to turn them into relationships. But it led to the best relationship I ever had with another person on this planet. And that’s why I wanted to write this book. There is an option out there and it’s the only one we have besides arranged marriages. Wait—we don’t have arranged marriages. But I have supplied a petition at the back of the book if you want to lobby for arranged marriages. So why go on a date? Because they work, because dating is the best way to get to know someone you don’t know and someone you do, because it’s a great way to set the tone and speed for a relationship, because there are snacks, because you might make a friend or meet a future business partner, because you might have the worst night of your life and that could lead to you writing the next great novel, because you’ll never know if you don’t, because it’s just a f@#king date.