I Had a Nice Time And Other Lies...: How to find love & sh*t like that (6 page)

3. Truth be told, guys don’t give a shit about a girl’s success, at least not initially. Of course ambition and goals are important long-term, but no one says, “one of the things I find hot about her is how well she’s doing career-wise.” I mean, guys will hit on the cashier at Chipotle if she’s hot and looks like she might have a story to tell, for fuck’s sake. People really only tolerate talk of work from their friends, family, and other loved ones. Until you’re one of those things, you’re not doing yourself any favors by making it seem like your job is all you have going for you.

So no, guys aren’t only attracted to “anorexic bitches,” and there’s nothing “gross” about an education or a career. And no, by no means should you dumb
yourself down, not for a guy or anyone else. It’s more that no one wants to date what you present as a walking humanoid combination of a resume and a credit card statement. There are better ways to use your success and ego to your advantage— have a little mystery about you. You should make them
want
to find out these things about you, not beat them over the head with it on date #1.

Disinterested kisses,

Head Pro

SPARK NOTES

If you couldn’t pay attention to anything we just wrote because you were busy drying your nails or concentrating on your tan, it’s okay. We’ve been there. Life’s hard when you’re a betch and poss not/def have ADD. So let’s break down what happened in this chapter.

Before you even start to date, you need to make sure you’re ready. But there’s a catch. Being ready doesn’t only mean being over the last guy you were with (which requires a certain element of emotional intelligence, introspection, and not being a fucking Karen). What you really need is to have your shit together. You need to be confident with your hot bod and your brain. And if you’re not into your bod and brain, work on it. You need to believe this phrase when you say it to yourself:
I’m totally chill being single but having a boyfriend sounds like it could be fun. Who wouldn’t want to date me? After all, I am the shit.
Only then are you really ready to enter into the big, bad dating world.

¹
Made-up percentage. Whatevs, you get it. Most people don’t have their shit together.

²
By no means do we suggest this as a way of life. This is simply a test. Please continue to get fucked up with your besties.

N
ow that you know you’re hot shit, it’s time to go out there and get him. It’s important to remember that the goal of any activity or experience should never be to find a boyfriend. When you give off the vibe that you’re desperate for love, men are repelled by it because it makes you seem like you have a mission that has more to do with checking a “boyfriend” box off your list of shit to do than meeting someone truly amazing with whom you just happen to want to spend a lot of time.

As Bethenny Frankel says, going out with the mind-set that you need to meet a guy is like going to a casino and betting with your rent money. Scared money never wins and scared dating just reeks of desperation. Your goal in all your activities should be to have a good time with whomever you’re with and if you happen to meet someone, that’s great, if not then whatevs. No one wants to date the girl who seems desperate to settle down. It’s lame, and it shows you don’t have much else going on in your life. Ideally you want to meet someone while doing things you love. If you’re doing you, you’ll attract guys that are impressed by your independence and fun attitude. You want to meet someone during your life’s journey, not have the journey be just checking items off your to-do list to accomplish the goal of meeting someone.

That being said, you can meet guys like, literally anywhere. I mean, there are three billion of them in the world and probably at least two hundred acceptable ones. Besides the chance encounter of meeting a guy on line at Just Salad (which is pretty rare in a city like Manhattan, where, when anyone talks to you soberly, your first instinct is to clutch your pepper spray) there’s a shit-ton of casual ways to run into the opposite sex while actually doing things you enjoy.

Sober Activities:
If you like sports, join a coed intramural sports team. If you actually like helping other people and planning events, join a charity committee. If you like skiing,
plan ski houses with friends of friends. If you like reading
50 Shades of Grey,
get a life. Just kidding, join a book club or some other activity that involves something that you actually like doing that has nothing to do with men. That way, you’ll wind up meeting guys who have a lot in common with you without the pressure of being forced to decide if you like each other immediately. Summerhouses in places like the Hamptons and Nantucket (or whatever local lake you have where you live) are great for bringing together extended friend groups and introducing you to people you can safely assume are normal by association.

Work:
Dating someone you work with is usually frowned upon because if things go sour, the awkwardness and discomfort is surrounding you five days a week and at every office happy hour. Plus, your office goggles almost always make the only moderately decent-looking bro in the office look like Ryan Gosling by comparison to his middle-aged balding counterparts. No doubt spending a ton of time with someone in that close of a setting leads itself to a ton of hookup opportunities, but it’s almost always best to not go there. I promise you that the Christmas party make-out sesh will not lead to marriage. Instead, it’ll lead to you having to avoid questions from your office mates about how big Jason’s penis is for the next three to five years.

One exception to this rule is meeting men you work with peripherally or meet through work events, which can actually be a great way to meet people who have a lot in common with your work interests without the horror of having to see
them every day. Be careful with client-relationships, but keep an eye out for tangentially work-associated people.

Getting Set Up:
Getting set up can be a disaster or a miracle depending on who you let be your fairy godmother/yenta. The ideal matchmaker should be someone who has high standards for you and knows you well enough to know that someone shorter than five feet ten and employed at Equinox is simply not acceptable. They should know the kind of personality traits you value and the shit you can let slide.

Never trust your grandma for a setup because she is half blind and therefore can’t see the receding hairline. Also, old people tend to see all young people as attractive both because of flawed vision and an idealization of youth. Likewise, your mom’s ideal match for you will likely have more to do with his 401K and less to do with how well he tans in the summer months so unless your mom is cool as fuck, leave the setups to your friends and well-connected coworkers.

Bars/Clubs:
The chances of you finding someone to make out with at a bar or a club are far greater than you finding someone who is boyfriend material. I mean, very few people find meaningful relationships with a guy who grabbed their ass during a dance floor hookup. Having said that, it does happen—on rare occasions—that a guy
you meet at one of these places asks you on a date because your drunken coordination of the Uber was just so impressive and he can tell from your six-inch stilettos that you’re going to make a great mom someday. Use your best judgment when deciding whether to accept.

At this stage of the game when you go out it should be to enjoy your friends’ company. If you happen to meet a great guy while out, that’s just the icing on top of the cake you shouldn’t be eating. Going out just to meet guys is super sad. Go dancing with your friends and do activities you’d enjoy whether or not guys are in your presence, and you will attract guys who are attracted to your essence, not the person you’re pretending to be.

Remember that casual bars are usually better than clubs for meeting decent guys and that if you do want to meet someone while socializing at a drinking venue, it’s best to not be totally blackout. It’s one thing to exchange numbers with a guy you got buzzed off a few vodka sodas with at a chic
lounge but it’s quite another to be so plastered at 1 Oak that all this guy remembers about you is your nice ass and the fact that you’re obsessed with grinding to “Drunk in Love.”

If you’ve been around the block and these things are simply not working for you, it might be time to look into online dating . . .

The topic of online dating is very much debated. Not really publicly, but like, a lot at Sunday brunch. Sure it’s super fun to tell horror stories of your experiences of talking with guys on Tinder but when it comes to a successful match, do you feel weird saying you met online when someone asks your story?

Since we googled this one statistic that says that one in five relationships start online, we’re pretty positive the stigma attached to online dating is disappearing faster than Shia LaBeouf’s relevance. Sure we still feel a little weird when we tell someone we’re going on a date with someone we met on Match but it’s definitely not that bad anymore. In an ideal world, you meet a guy because he saves you from getting hit by a cab and immediately takes your breath away. But this is real life, not a shitty Jennifer Lopez movie, so do whatever you have to do to stay in the game. This includes online dating.

The simple fact is: Everyone’s doing it. And by “everyone” we mean just a lot of people you know, and once you see a lot of people you know doing something questionable, like instagramming their food or going back to school for a master’s degree, it becomes kind of cool.

Now, we are not saying online dating is actually cool. It’s just not uncool. What online dating does that meeting people in real life doesn’t is it allows you to branch out without leaving your normal routine. Now you are able to “meet” people outside of your immediate network without having to do something arduous like go to religious services or like, volunteer at a soup kitchen. The ease and accessibility instantly increase your chances of meeting someone you would have otherwise never met, which in turn could increase your chances of meeting your next boyfriend without having to interrupt your carefully cultivated life. The trick is to go about it casually. Don’t stop meeting people in real life. Like becoming a fashion blogger, online dating is something you do on the side. Treat it as such.

We take issue with complacency in “dating culture” that says it’s okay to just hook up with someone who has never taken you out to dinner and hoping that one day it’ll become a real thing.
WRONG
. Online dating eliminates that pseudo-date/hang-out shit and forces the guy to ask you on a real date, in public, because you two haven’t met before and he can’t just run into you at a frat party when you’re too drunk to know better.

Side note: First dates that aren’t in public are scary and you should not go on them because you will probably be murdered.

However, there are cons of looking for bae online. The biggest one is relying on pictures and meeting someone you’ve never met before. This is scary fucking shit. What if he like, only used pics from 2014 when he was really on his
workout grind and has since gained back an entire chin?! What if he shows up and is about five inches shorter than the height he selected in his profile!? What if he only makes five figures a year? What if he has a super-thick Scottish accent and you don’t understand a word he’s saying because he sounds like Shrek!?!? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

These are called the HODs (Horrors of Online Dating) and they’re the most terrible to experience in the moment, but the most fun to recall to your besties afterward. In order to avoid these you just have to be really good at reading and translating someone’s profile and messages. Yes, this is really judgmental, but you two haven’t met yet so what’s the harm? Plus, you’re a betch so you can be as judgmental as you want. Your weeknights are precious and you would so much rather be sitting braless binge-watching the new season of
Orange Is the New Black
than having a drink with some finance guy who has an acne problem and may or may not ask you to split the check. Hence, you need to draw some conclusions based on what they write.