My friend adam recently posted an entry to his Blog yesterday about the "levels of a relationship." His post has images from ppt! this is a guy after my own heart and as a result of his post we've been bantering back and forth about different relationship thoughts. I shared my spreadsheet and some of my core philosophies. He challenged me to blog them -- and before he went to he bed he gave me a 400 word challenge! so here i am blogging about my first dating rule ever.
Rule: Don't date your coffee guy.
History: I came up with this one in High School when my coffee guy had a crush on me (he was very cute too! and a good tennis player...) and i realized that I was going to have to make some tough choices. Do i go for the cute boy? or do i keep the coffee shop where i spend an inordinate amount of time?
How it works: Essentially, my reasoning was that if you date your coffee guy (or in college, your bartender) you have to be willing to give up going to the coffeeshop / bar if you break up. This means I had to evaluate which was more important to me -- keeping my coffeeshop or a new boy. In most cases, at least for me, it seemed that the boys who were interesting tended to work at the places i frequented. I attribute this to having more interaction and so I could see their coolness... This lead, in most cases, to me determining that the shop was more important than the boy.
dating rule #2: Stop thinking about your coffee and start dating
ReplyDeleteDon't stay single for too long. Just go out and date. Or join free dating site or paid one
The logic that drives this rule kind of bothers me. You're starting with the end in mind. Thats great if you're developing a contextual ad service... but it just doesn't work for relationships. Basically, the logic that you use to derive this rule would also dictate that you never date anyone unless you're going to marry them.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I think its a good rule. But, your reasoning for coming up with it has bitten me a few times ("I won't date him because in 4 months he'll be xyz"),
If the logic were: "I don't want to date my coffee guy because I don't want want to lose my hunting grounds..." thats a different story :-)
It's an interesting rule. I disagree with Adam that it is keeping the end or marriage in mind. I think the problem is of entanglement: there's a guy you are thinking of dating, but he is linked to something else you like, and you believe that if you are dating him, then the two will become linked, so that if you dump one you have to dump the other. I think this is the same reason you shouldn't date your boss. You don't want to tie your dating to your work.
ReplyDeleteOnce you have entanglement, then you have this problem: are you staying with someone because of the thing he's linked to? It's more complicated than dating someone not linked to work or your favorite coffee shop etc.
There's a song by Offspring that comes to mind, but I haven't any idea if what they're talking about ("gotta keep em separated") has anything to do with this topic...
Natala!
ReplyDeleteMy kneejerk reaction to this is that you shouldn't think so hard. In my 2nd grade way, I feel that if you like someone, you should go for it. Obviously, though, the context must give some meaning and my more thought out response is that you should be more flexible about how much meaning.
Yes, if you're thinking of dating a coworker, it's impossible not to worry about what issues might result if it doesn't work out. But it's just a coffee shop. You don't spend hours of your day there.
Maybe I just think that way because I'm not committed to any one coffee shop...
PS... MORE RULES PLEASE!
ReplyDelete