Monday, May 19, 2008

Monday's Best Of -- The Levels of Dating

From January 24th, 2008
Editor's Note: This blog has been my most popular post so far, both with regards to views and comments....and I still haven't been beat up.

I have a lot to learn about women. I'm slowly learning, but they don't offer the classes online, so I have to learn through my friends. Dating is a prime example where verbs are everything...

As a guy, there are basically two levels of dating:
1) Single -- can see as many girls as we want as often as we want.
2) Married -- can see one girl as often as we want.

Most guys hang on to number 1 as long as they can because #2 is kind of limiting. It's really a simple thing: Level 1: You meet a girl; you like her; you have sex with her; you have sex with her enough and like it you buy her a ring so you can keep doing it with her for a number of years. This leads to level 2...

But with women, there seems to be a few more stages.
In order:
1) He's really nice
2) He's cute
3) I'm interested in him
4) I'm seeing him
5) I'm going out with him
6) I like him
7) We're seeing each other
8) I'm dating him
9) He's my boyfriend
10) I love him
11) Probably going to get married
12) I'm pre-engaged
13) We're engaged
14) We're married

That's not even including these "one-off" situations that you can insert at any stage:
1) Infatuated with him
2) He's my friend
3) My fuck-friend
4) A friend with benefits (note this is different than #3, I've been informed).

Getting into details about all of these levels if for another posting...or five.

But, this is why men get confused about relationships so easily. He proudly introduces his girlfriend to his friends: "Meet Suzie. We're sort of seeing each other." She glares at him: "Seeing each other?! What the hell?"

See, in his mind, he's somewhere on Level 1 for a guy. For a girl, she heard "We're at level 4" while in her mind, they're at level 8. Biiiiiiiig difference in levels. That's a whole 100% difference, in fact.

It's easy to test this theory. Ask any non-married woman friend the status of their relationship and guaranteed she'll select from one of the 14 on the list (or in combo with one of the one-offs) very quickly and definitively.

Ask a guy the same question and he'll always start the same way: "Uh, hmmm. I dunno. I guess we're..."

I'm going to get beat up now, aren't I?

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