Dear Terminally Single Guys (TSGs),
I feel your pain, I really do. It sucks being single sometimes, and to top it off, it's often difficult to meet people and form meaningful connections. I count some of you TSGs among my good guy friends, so I hear your complaints often. I also hear this refrain too many times for my liking: "When I meet the right girl, I'm going to treat her like a princess." Why, in the last week, I must've heard this one from 3 separate TSGs alone!
So, why does this rhetoric bug me so much, you wonder? It boils down to the underlying assumption that you guys are going to get over your boneheaded narcissism for The One when She comes along, and express your love in the form of grandiose gestures (hotel beds sprinkled with rose petals and all that). That's all fine and good, but until you find The One, how about extending some common courtesy and human decency toward the gal pals in your life? Too often I feel as though you TSGs treat us like second-class citizens unworthy of everyday thoughtfulness.
Case in point: After one of my TSG friends broke off a short-lived long-distance relationship, I invited him out for a party. He hemmed and hawed about it all week, saying he wanted to see if his friends were going and so on. I left him messages on voicemail and MSN last Friday saying that I needed a final head count by 8pm that night because I could pick up tickets from the promoter for him and anyone else coming. Not only did he not respond on Friday, he seems to have gone MIA all weekend. I received nary a message on MSN, Facebook, or my cell. WTF? I can't believe he could devote hours out of his day for 3 months straight to a girl he never got to see, yet couldn't take a mere 10 seconds to call a gal pal and say, "Sorry, my friends and I couldn't get our shit together. We're not coming."
Here's the thing you TSGs need to understand in order to not be terminally single. The high-quality girls who are truly worth it are looking for guys capable of courtesy on a daily basis, not guys who will shower them with diamond earrings and roses and poorly written love poems on certain days of the year and treat them like crap the rest of the time. If you find a girl you're crazy about, your romantic fervour will propel you into being extra good for the first few months. But what happens after the fervour fades? You revert to the non-courteous habits you've mastered in all those lonely months and begin treating her like you treat everyone else in your life. How you treat family, ordinary friends, and complete strangers reflects on your innate goodness as a person. If she's a smart, discerning, attractive girl--the type whom you hope to make your wife and the mother of your children someday--she'll see shabby treatment of others as a major red flag.
So, how do you TSGs stop self-sabotaging and start attracting the right kind of girl? There are many things you can do to get positive karmic payback. Start by responding to messages.
Sincerely,
Lisa
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haha Boys will be boys..hopeless! Thanks for your comment! I know they are not necessarily very functional but aren't they fabulous?! He is so talented and so young. So many more exciting collections to come!
ReplyDeleteLove this. So freakin' true. A lot of my guy friends are the "nice guys get left behind" sort. Note to most of them: you aren't that nice; I'm being nice when I say your problem is you are boring. Lacking a personality and not having the guts to say to someone's face that you don't like them, doesn't make you nice...it makes you a bit of a coward...
ReplyDelete"The high-quality girls who are truly worth it are looking for guys capable of courtesy on a daily basis, not guys who will shower them with diamond earrings and roses and poorly written love poems on certain days of the year and treat them like crap the rest of the time."
ReplyDeleteYes, THANK YOU. Another thing that bugs me is when these guys say that all girls want a "bad boy" not a "nice guy" like them. Wake up call: you're not a nice guy if you make statements like that, you're probably a douche and THAT is why girls don't go out with you.
I'm happily married to a genuinely nice guy now and am grateful I don't have to put up with this bs anymore!
hahaha :) this one is really funny. :) being signle has lots of benefits, too so don't despair :D
ReplyDeletejules
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Excellent advice! I hope they learn.
ReplyDeleteIf confronted on this matter, the TSGs of your post might argue that when they meed "The One" (who, incidentally will always be recognizable on sight) they will immediately begin the princess treatment so that earlier poor treatment of unworthy-as-a-mate individuals is quite irrelevant. So I'd point out that (a) it is hard to unlearn some habits - and what you might now consider normal is rude or unappealing to others and (b) how you treat others and others' opinions of you will be a factor "The One" uses in determining your suitability.
ReplyDeleteThe mentioned argument about reversion to form after the honeymoon period wears off is weaker, in my opinion, because the problem seems to be terminally single guys who can't even find "The One" - not losing the one after two months because you were an ass.
About the example - everyone flakes sometimes - and I had the opposite (in terms of gender roles) experience this Friday. As a guy, a girl had invited me and my SO to a party and I expressed interested and request that details be forwarded when available.
However, no further information followed, so I did not attend. So I think the example in your piece can be best viewed as an attack on flakiness, which is not a gender-specific phenomenon - it could apply equally to TSGs!
Travis, you bring up some excellent and valid points. (I'm blushing because I know exactly who you're referring to when you mention the flaky girl! Oops.)
ReplyDeleteRe. your points...
1. The point that some guys can't even find The One to lose in the first place: Perhaps this is an example of how their behaviour is hurting themselves and preventing a relationship from forming in the first place, and preventing the girl from seeing the TSG as boyfriend material. This is definitely not the case with every TSG out there, but it could be the case with a fair number of them.
2. Flakiness could apply equally across both sexes...that's definitely true. I think I was more offended because of the differential behavioural standards that TSGs hold themselves up to for girls they're romantically interested in versus girls they have platonic feelings for. In the case of the TSG I mentioned, in all fairness to him, I later found out there was a very legitimate explanation for his behaviour, and it had nothing to do with his lack of courtesy for platonic gal pals.
The logic of the "I'm not romantically interested in her, therefore I'm not obligated to treat her well" rhetoric is what really gets to me. The message-neglecting TSG I mentioned isn't a good example, perhaps, but I can think of another one: guys who worry about whether a girl going home alone late at night made it home in one piece. In my experience, guys who are romantically interested in the girl will message them later to make sure they make it home okay, or even offer a ride home to a girl they're romantically interested in almost every time, whereas the chances of this happening for a platonic girl friend are more of a toss-up.
hahaha awesome points!
ReplyDeleteSo true. Too often guys like to think of themselves as the "nice guy" when really they are only nice when it is a situation that will benefit them in the end, ie getting some to put it politely. These guys need a serious wakeup call. At least the "bad boys" don't have such false BS illusions about themselves!
ReplyDeletePoints taken, but I took your piece as "advice to TSGs" - on how to improve their situation with their terminal singleness. Pointing out that they aren't treating their platonic gal-pals with the same courtesy as they would treat "The One" probably isn't news to them. They are geared around saving all their chivalry for their princess-to-be.
ReplyDeleteSo pointing out that they don't treat their non-candidates the way they they would treat "The One", or as you put it: "I'm not romantically interested in her, therefore I'm not obligated to treat her well" might not change their behavior, because of course it is human nature to treat things of different value differently - you probably would treat your own baby differently than you would treat a rental vacuum cleaner, since the former is presumably worth a lot more.
If you're suggesting that they are ruining their chances up "upgrading" a particular gal-pal to something more, forget about - that usually isn't in the cards: someone categorized as not-potential-mate* will rarely move into the other category.
So I think you can get the best outcome by playing to TSGs' real concern of landing "The One" by pointing out that you'll burn your chances if you've already treated her friends like crap, if others speak badly of you, if you can't unlearn your habits, etc.
Appealing to their sense of fairness or "do unto me as you'd do unto her" has little chance of working since they've already proven by their behavior that they are self-centered jerks, after all.
LOL "baby vs. vacuum cleaner"...I like it! Awesome.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit the nail on the head with this part: "So I think you can get the best outcome by playing to TSGs' real concern of landing "The One" by pointing out that you'll burn your chances if you've already treated her friends like crap, if others speak badly of you, if you can't unlearn your habits, etc." Indeed, if I'm a girl who has cute, smart single girlfriends, why would I want to introduce them to a guy I think is self-centred? The TSG may say to me he'll treat the girl right if she's the The One, but empirically speaking, all I may see from him is selfishness and thoughtlessness.
Exactly - hit them where it counts! The nice ones will already treat you right (gal-pal or otherwise) - but to get the selfish ones in line you need to appeal to (what else?) their "selfish" desire to stop being single (or at least hook up once in a while).
ReplyDeleteSo much misandry and hate. I feel sad for you people.
ReplyDelete