Dear Men

I would like to take a few minutes to address the men of the world. This is because I have noticed recently, and it does seem to be the portion of living males within myself and my friends' dating age range, that you seem to think it is OK to behave like utter vermin.

Maybe the world has lost a general sense of decency. Maybe your fathers were philandering anti-role models, giving you an odd compulsion to attract a mate but then quickly sabotage the situation with the gusto of a toddler making a sandcastle. Maybe your beloved pet recently died, sending you into a spiralling mentality preoccupied with darkness, futility and apathy. But I am calling time on the 'men are shits' parade - right now.

I didn't always feel like this towards you. I used to love meeting new men, finding out about them, all of their little quirks, playing the game. Now, it seems, one or two solid relationships into our twenties, we are not potential conversation and meal-sharing partners but faceless targets for astonishing levels of sleaze and timewasting.

I could blame your ex-girlfriends for no doubt 'messing you up', leading you to believe relationships were simple and long lasting and then running off with some tattooed lothario from the local indie bar. But at some point, a man in his twenties has to stand straight, look himself in the mirror and take responsibility for whatever kind of knobbery he is inflicting on unsuspecting womankind.

I never used to understand why women I knew stayed with the wrong man for years, or kept going back to someone who was never going to set their world alight (romantically rather than pyromaniacally speaking). Now I know. Because when they stepped, emotionally barefoot, into that big single world of dates and tentative texts, they were rewarded with nothing but bullshit.

I will never again admonish a friend for hotfooting it back to a shabby ex (or contemplating it) because it's seriously tough out there. There seems to be a trend for appearing completely normal and then knocking you for six with sudden, unspeakable wankery.

Boys - if it's genuine ignorance and you would like a legal document entitled Things That Are Not OK, please do just let me know. How we get from this stage of dating life freakshow to the one in the misty future where people are cohabiting and procreating all over the shop is beyond me.

I don't want this to be representative of the Miss Write experience since I hopped on a train to Cardiff, acquired all kinds of journalism savvy and snapped up a fabulous job and a cute little flat in the big city. It's been ace. But my goodness, do boys know how to erase all of that good feeling with blunder after blunder.

Yours sincerely,

Miss Write (and females everywhere)

Image: newsthump.com

Know thy Enemy

It's interesting to me that however many books and articles are written about men, how many Cosmo quizzes and pieces entitled What Men Want, What Men REALLY Want, and What Men Want You to Think They Want are churned out, there is still always a market for this 'insider information'. The generalisation of 'men' is nearly skipped over; they, as opposed to us, want certain things. They are animals, cavemen, an alien race. They need to be manipulated, seduced, decieved in order for us, the often-wronged party, to get what we ultimately want. I know there is still a readership for this frenzied speculation, because when a workmate sent me this link today, I clicked eagerly and scoured it for some useful new data on Why Men Do What They Do and How to Beat Them at It. What's funny is that this gender war is only really evident in print; I don't know that many women actually engaging in such media-advocated mind games. We're supposed to hold back and say certain things, not get in touch too much and under NO CIRCUMSTANCES mention weddings, babies or meeting parents - but most women I know just follow their instincts (or hormones) and turn into romantic fools, after which sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Foolishness aside, my problem is I do still have faith in men, however much evidence life and Cosmo continue to throw at me. I still implicitly hope, if not believe, that when someone is being inconsistent, hurtful or confusing, that they themselves are just confused/busy/immature/having a hard time and will turn out to be perfectly-formed boyfriend material eventually.

Of course, being friends with boys throws a spanner in the works. If you've ever lived with men or just spent enough time at the pub with them, you'll have been privy to the sort of bluntly expressed mantalk which makes you despair for your lovelife. Coming from a family of four women and one fairly reserved man, I had been cocooned in a world where dates and relationships were only talked of in terms of hope and romance. 'It sounds like he really likes you,' we would coo, showing each other sonnet-like text messages and giving dreamy accounts of magical first dates. Even the bad boys were talked of with gentle fondness. Talk new relationships with your close, platonic male friends and you're speaking an entirely different dating language. 'She's alright,' they'll grunt. 'It's not a big deal but she's quite fun and her dad's got season tickets.' We're really just sleeping together', they'll say of the girl you saw glowing with excitement as she cooked him lasagne hours earlier. It's agony, because even if your friend is just a player or a bad egg, the current object of your affection could be saying the very same thing to their girl friend at that moment. And you know they're not a horrible person through and through, they wouldn't be your friend otherwise. It's the male capacity for early dismissal of a new love interest and their ability to keep up a romance while publicly declaring their indifference elsewhere. 'I know I'm not going to marry her, but it's ok for now' is another painfully common statement. But does she know that you're potentially wasting her time and emotional energy while you scout around casually for something more spectacular? I'm not saying women are never as badly behaved, but in my experience if they find themselves having lead someone on or having to let someone down, they do feel bad about it and try and get out as quickly and neatly as possible.

I think I've had enough varied man experience (and eavesdropping) to have a fairly rounded opinion of how they function. In their defence, it's usually the case that only someone very special is enough to lift them out of their wayward commitment-phobe habits. But I do agree that they need to let the non-specials know much earlier if they aren't invested. Much of the above Times article is utter bullshit:


What he says and what he means

Says: “Great to meet you.”
Means: “I didn’t love meeting you and probably won’t be calling.”


Well, this is just a little too easy. For British guys, in all probability this is just a polite reflex their mothers drummed into them as a child, plus if you were a friend of a friend or met online, maybe it really was great to meet you. I'm not going to go around slapping every dude who tells me I was nice to meet, anyway. Writer of this article and author of What The Hell is He Thinking?, Zoe Strimpel claims she spent 'almost a year' talking to a variety of men about their feelings and actions towards women in order to give us such titbits as these (cooking you dinner or watching a dvd early on are 'a studied, and not unenjoyable way of getting you to sleep with them.') But some of her findings, such as men going all out in the beginning in a desperate pursuit of love and attention, then cooling off as they process the long-term potential, join a lot of dots in the man-puzzle for me. In a collision of interpretation, women are taught by the fundamental sources of Disney and romantic novels that an immediate rush of gestures and words is a sure precursor to the L word. In turn, lots of (particularly young) men think they should go in all guns blazing but don't get around to doing the compatability mathematics in their head until much later. I think Strimpel is on to something here, not necessarily groundbreaking stuff, but a decent explanation for the 'mixed signals' dating epidemic currently sweeping my social circle. Strimpel does come across a little bitter in this piece, it's all bad intentions and worse communication, focusing entirely on male cowardice and insensitivity. There are a lot of lovely men out there (there are, there are, there are) who aren't just waiting for the next chance to make you feel stupid and irrationally attached. But my God, do they have their moments.

UpDate...

I've officially been online dating for a whole week now. Well, I haven't really in the sense that I haven't been on a date yet (the ettiquette appears to be a lot of back and forth messaging and covert sizing up of people first), but I'm out there and it's a work in progress. Maybe three or four interests so far, all with fairly interesting degrees and quirky profiles. I've mainly gone for mid-twenties, good looking (but not scarily adonis-like) cuties with a hint of geekiness and wit to their profile. Only one has already asked me out for a drink outright, but I'm happy with a bit of web chat for a while. I suddenly feel a bit self-conscious about the whole blind (well, I've seen a picture - visually impaired?) date thing. What if I'm not very interesting? What if they're nothing like they say? What if it's a total clash of peace-loving, unwashed barefoot hippie and high-maintenance me looking for a nice cocktail and a great view? I know I'll be employing my failsafe 911 tactic of having a friend on call to text if I need them to call me with 'bad news' so I have to dash out of there. In some ways you've got nothing to lose by going on such a date because you haven't had a chance to get excited about them as a person, but I also haven't had one in about a year and a half, so I feel rusty and useless.

Out of the 32 messages I've received from guys on the site, only four were from people I'd added as favourites, and the range of email subjects ranged from the standard 'Hi' to the more bizarre 'sup, fellow aspiring writer' and 'fancy taking the kitkat challenge?' I didn't stop to find out what the challenge was but I'm pretty sure it was a bit unsavoury. Lots of people have got the big comedy thumbs down (sorry overly sensitive readers,* but I'm not on there to be nice to weird strangers.) I haven't recieved any thumbs down but I have had a couple of my messages go unanswered (worse, I think). So it's not like I've whooshed in there and stolen lots of hearts, but it's ticking along quite well; it's heartening to log in now and again and see messages waiting. I'm still surprised by how great some of the men on there seem, very funny and successful - I think a lot of people are just there looking for a bit of a flirt in a city where much of your out of work time is spent wedged in a train with someone's armpit in your face, or being heckled by tramps. It's not the most romantic way I've been wooed, and it's fairly businesslike keeping on top of your mails and who's added you as a favourite, but there's something to be said for organised fun. Less painful uncertainty and less at stake, in some ways. I'd be interested to hear anyone's experiences of internet dating, all romances and horror stories welcome...


Ones to keep at bargepole distance:

Anyone! Who uses too much! Punctuation!!! Just sounds desperate/amphetamine-laced.

Or an overload of smiley faces. :) ;) :P Be a man.

The seriously, no-way-on-this-earth-are-you-a-day-under-forty thirty year old who just messaged me saying I had great pictures, but 'hope you don't run screaming from mine!' Sign me up.

Someone who wrote a boring three-liner about not knowing what to say in these messages, trying out the weather and plans for the weekend, before concluding that both approaches were rubbish. Yup.

Anything with too much self conscious LOLing at their own sentences. Nothing that funny - this is a weird pick-up scenario, so just try to sound as normal as possible. Shouldn't be too hard. Haha. Lol. Rofl.


*For the record, I am aware that I'm not perfection personified myself, but I don't think I should be agreeing to a date with people who come across as awkward, basement-dwelling or psychopathic just because it's nice to be nice. A couple of people have pulled me up on this, but I don't settle for average in my normal dating life, so I haven't lowered my standards for this approach. Plus so many males (the gender most critical of my attitude in this respect) treat women they're dating far worse when they do know them. I see it as being smart and assertive to be straight about what I'm looking for. I'm not just hunting for a perfect Action Man type, I'm scanning for a glimmer of humour and intellect, so it's not entirely superficial. If you've got a nice face and don't LOL your way through life, you've got a shot. Over and out.

D is for Dating

We don't really date, as a nation, and I think that's a shame. There is a bit of a suburban culture of one-at-a-time, orderly queue relationships, where it's considered somewhat exotic and experimental if you have a drink with more than one of the opposite sex in the same month. If us Brits did as the Yanks do and shop around a bit for a significant other (with no confusion about the casual nature of a single date) I think we would have better relationships and less painful break-ups. Due to the city pressures of careers, commuting and the sheer volume of human traffic, London in particular has started to embrace singles events, speed dating and the like in last couple of years. In the spirit of this new urban date market, I have decided to cast aside my closing-in-on-5 months of wallowing singledom and join a dating website.

Online dating? I hear you gasp. Surely this is for painfully awkward folk, those almost clinically inept at attracting a mate, or merely specimens with unnervingly lopsided faces? Well yes it is, in some ways - of which more later. But I've jumped on the bandwagon anyway. I felt my attitude towards online dating change gradually this year as I kept finding myself chatting to very normal, attractive, charming people who had given it a whirl and reported back with mixed, but often positive, experiences. A particularly attractive male acquaintance confided that he had tried most of the big sites, and admitted it was awkward at first but on the whole, great fun. A good female friend (who is a dating dream: bright, successful, pretty & interesting) was giving it a go and feeling boosted by the assertive nature of the process, and even one of the most straight-talking, no-nonsense girls I know was nosing into cyberspace in search of a hottie. Maybe it's the facebook revolution or perhaps people are just bored with pretending that we meet fantastic potential life partners every day, but it's no longer weird to approach your lovelife as you would an ASOS spree. So as a single, slightly bored blogger, I felt I needed a slice of the action too.

I plumped for MySingleFriend.com, highly recommended as the least intimidating and most relaxed UK dating site. Instead of trying to match you intensely based on life values and pet preferences, MSF aims to be more like a large online pub - you scout around for faces you think look nice, get the insider info on them from their friend, and 'favouritise' them much like a facebook poke. The idea to have a friend write your description is a stroke of genius - there are no cheesy 'I like walks on the beach, sunsets and a nice glass of Merlot' spiels, as well as it hugely taking the pressure off creating your profile. As a result of the recommend-a-friend system, there are no GSOHs or 'free-spirits', just a lot of quirky descriptions and jokey speculation as to why their single pal hasn't met the right person yet. On my first man search (a heady experience, shopping online for cute boys) I was surprised by the amount of passionately bromance-y descriptions by male friends, even more so by the amount of older sisters giving their hapless little bro a nudge onto the market, but most of all by how many friendly faces and witty profiles I actually came across.

Now, don't get me wrong, MSF is no Cosmo centrefold; there are plenty of nice guy/hopelessly lopsided face scenarios, and even a few tanned and waxed Adonises who appear to have clicked 'seeking a female' by mistake. But now and again you come across an interesting description, a lighthearted picture and a hook of some sort, be it an Anchorman quote, a PhD or a winning closing sentence. Considering I don't tend to go for muscley dreamboats so much as funny geeks, I was quite relieved to see the focus was firmly on personality. If nothing else comes of this experiment, it has proved a huge ego boost with minimal effort from me. I asked a friend to back up that I was not a psycho or a misanthrope, came clean about my musical theatre habit and lust for Greek food, stuck a couple of pictures up and went about my own business. On returning to my inbox 24 hours later, I had 30+ notifications that people had added me to their favourites, and even a few messages were coming in (some concise and witty, others stilted and cliche-ridden). So it's good to know I am not hideously malformed or tragically invisible. Granted, some of the aforementioned facial landslides were among those singling me out as a possible match, but as part of the well-organised wonder that is MSF, you can send a delightfully crisp and cruel 'Thanks, but no thanks' message to any real Quasimodos. It's actually a bit nicer than it sounds, more 'I don't think we're a good match but good luck with your search and all that', but it does mark the rejected party's messages with a cartoon thumbs down sign, clearly separating the tasty wheat from the dating chaff.

So what have I learned in part one of the saga? A good male friend took the time to say that I'm quite a nice person (I blushed a little), 60 random males took the time to click on my profile and liked what they saw enough to add me as a favourite (woo-ha) and I learned just what my bizarre and fairly shallow manhunting criteria are, doing it as I was sober and from the comfort of my sofa. In short, nice face - tick, good smile - tick, too much sport - no thanks (they'll only be disappointed at my lack of ineffectual berating of little men on TV), too much travelling/skydiving/shark-wrestling - next, any mention of food loving - on the right track, bad spelling - chaff, chaff, chaff, and any admission of guilty pleasure films or TV are also surprisingly attractive amongst hundreds desperate to look cultured. I am being a little brutal, but that's the great thing - you never have to meet these people or worry about crushing their feelings so you can judge away on first glance. Knowing how to sell yourself (and having a witty friend) goes a long way on this site, so it will be very interesting to see how profiles compare with the real product... if I ever stop hiding behind my laptop and actually accept a date with any of these virtual suitors.

My top tip so far would be ALWAYS look at the 'secondary' pictures as well as the one on the profile. Some people just have one very flattering shot (or have gone for black and white, moody lighting or a good angle) and their further shots are nothing short of horrifying. I'm also watching out for anyone who has 'possible marriage material' selected as one of their personality traits; I don't care if their friend ticked it, it's totally weird for a man not to appear shrouded in commitment-phobia at first and it actually isn't what women want to be hit with before they've even met the bloke. There are also a few 'thirty year olds' who have either spent a large proportion of those years chain-smoking in bright sunlight, or are in fact not thirty at all. No one said it wouldn't be a minefield, but just like a Wetherspoons on a Friday night you have to dodge the old creepies, sidestep the court jesters and keep an eye out for the cute advertising exec at the bar with a nice glass of red. Next stop: testing out the actual dating bit...

Homos and fauxmos and straights, oh my!

One huge thing I've learnt in the single patches of my tempestuous dating life is that men are tricky. When you're young you're taught that boy will meet girl (eyes across a crowded room), say hi, be lovely - and single - and love will blossom in the blink of an eye. Not so. Noughties males seem to make the already baffling task of meeting a decent specimen much harder than it needs to be, not least because sexuality has become so flexible. Some social scenarios are easy to navigate; last week I went to the fabulous West End Eurovision, and I knew I didn't need to bother with looking hot in a squealing sea of gay men and dancey girls. But, confusingly, there's such a thing as the Gay Straight Man; I once worked with a gorgeous guy at a kids' summer camp, and was convinced he was flirting with me... until I added him on facebook and checked out the photos of him at a recent Gay Pride event. Many just don't go for the tank tops and hair product, and there's nothing more embarassing than thinking you were having a frisson with someone who was merely checking out the darling embroidery on your cardi. Please see Sue Sylvester's 'Sneaky Gays' rant for further disapproval.

Fauxmosexuals are even harder to spot - these are very well-dressed straight men who play up to the Gay Best Friend-type relationship (bitching, gossiping, hugs) and then BAM! hit you with the news that they actually like girls, usually by launching themselves at you. Goodbye potential GBF and hello bafflement. And don't even get me started on Bromance. Our formerly boisterous and marginally homophobic straight friends are now free to frolick with their boy pals, cry, hug and jump on each other in a non-rugby context without any censure. This is beautiful of course, and I would never want to turn back the clock, but then what chance do potential girlfriends stand? If their mancrush doesn't like you, you're out. If you hang in there, chances are your new boyf would rather cosy up with him of a weekend. The boundaries have changed, and we don't always enjoy it. 'Metrosexual' I have a bit of a problem with - is this not just another word for 'preening git'? By all means guys, spray tan, manicure and guyliner yourself into the blurry area between gay and straight, but I certainly won't be going there. Who wants a boyfriend who can lend you organic lipbalm and a tiny mirror at a moment's notice?

Mixing in drama circles, you'll find the tiny percentage of straight men are bursting to prove their hetero virility between trills and pliés. They'll hit on anything in a skirt to boost their fragile ego (yes, the jig is up, we all know you were the fat/spotty/weedy kid in school) while certainly having a covert girlfriend, and being a thespian, having the ability to pull out any line at any time to charm you. So the point is, I'm puzzled. Single life seems shark-infested right now, as I lose track of the types I need to mentally cross off the list. There seem to be so few simple, unbaggaged, nice men out there available for a straightforward drink and a no-surprises flirt. I've had enough drama for one year and am in the market for some smooth sailing. Although for now, the (non-sneaky) gays are perfect for drinking and dancing your troubles away with...