So, Where’s My Girlfriend?

Hi

So ironically, after my MBA, the first thing I did wasn’t to get a job but to write a book. Specifically a book on dating. Sure, I could have written a book on marketing or OB…but seriously, who wants to read that stuff?

Anyway, I’m throwing a book launch.

Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time: 6 pm – 9 pm
Location: Roosevelt Room
320 Adelaide Street West, Toronto ON

I know we all have busy lives now so I scheduled it after work on Thursday from 6-9 pm. Perfect time to stop by for a quick drink and then go back to work/go home.

There’s going to be complimentary appetizers as well.
Oh yeah, if you want to get a copy of my book too, here’s the value proposition:

1. My Book
2. Copy of my blog for 2009
3. Voucher for a free speed dating session from Toronto Speed Date
Check out the site at:

http://TorontoSpeedDate.com

All included for $20.00 total.

You can also get the things separately if you only want the book or you’re already married (although the voucher is transferable)

So come by…not a bad way to spend a Thursday afternoon.

Cheers

Mark

*Book also available on amazon.ca / amazon.com

Alright, you’re witnessing something rare…usually, I take my sweet time to write something but this time, I really need to talk about this while it’s fresh in my head. This is also kind of embarassing.

So here’s the embarrassing part: I love watching “The Bachelor” and tonight was the season finale.

The ending was kind of a surprised since Jake chose a girl everyone hated: Vienna.

Vienna winning is the reason why Plato believed in "Philosopher Kings" to make decisions for common people...like our douchebag bachelor.

This came as a surprise to a lot of people due to several reasons: 1) Vienna looks like a horse 2) Vienna is a bad girl…someone that a good guy like Jake, shouldn’t be marrying.

Oppositely, we had the Queen of positivity and the Enchantress of Chastity, Tenley:

My unnatural ability to smile 24 hours a day hides the passive aggressiveness buried deep within. One day, I'm going to kill your puppy.

While comparing the physical looks of Tenley to Vienna would be analogous to comparing the sleek style of a Lamborghini Gallardo to a half-decrepit Mexican donkey, we have to go beyond the surface to understand why Jake picked Vienna over Tenley.

So there I was, watching this show in amazement as Jake struggled to pull every cliche out of his ass to not look like a jackass on tv, as he attempted to break up with Tenley in front of millions of viewers. Then he said something that I think made perfect sense to me (but I think he said it to cover his ass). This is what Jake said:

“Tenley, you are absolutely perfect…but there’s something in me that doesn’t feel it”

From Jake’s perspective, he told Tenley that she was perfect to make her feel better. Then he ran and hid behind the “I don’t feel it” excuse so that he can’t be faulted for choosing Vienna simply because Tenley wouldn’t put out (which is my theory).

Going back to what Jake said, I think this is what he should have said:

“Tenley, you are absolutely perfect…but you’re just not my perfect”

You see, boys and girls, while the concept of “perfect” exists in things that are objective (such as a math test, a figure skating routine and a batting average) when it comes to the touchy-feely things such as “love” and “Chemistry”, the concept of “perfect” is different in every single person’s mind.

On paper, Tenley was perfect: she was cheery, positive and smiley…all the things conventional society would designate as “positive features” one should look for in a mate. What if we don’t want that in a mate?

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you something about me:

I hate perfect people.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’d rather date a pornstar than a runway model because I don’t like it when people are too beautiful. Perfect people scare the shit out of me. I’d prefer people that have issues because that shows that they’re human and it makes me feel human. As well, perfect people are boring. Everything’s so…clean and perfect. We might as well go live in Singapore.

I think my sentiments can best be described by the lyrics of Garbage, in their song “Only happy when it rains”

I'm only happy when it rains
I'm only happy when it's complicated
And though I know you can't appreciate it
I'm only happy when it rains
You know I love it when the news is bad
Why it feels so good to feel so sad
I'm only happy when it rains

I'm only happy when it rains
I feel good when things are going wrong
I only listen to the sad, sad songs
I'm only happy when it rains

I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn't accidentally tell you that
I'm only happy when it rains
You'll get the message by the time I'm through
When I complain about me and you
I'm only happy when it rains

I think Jake feels the same way which is why he chose the person everyone hated, Vienna over the epitome of perfect: Tenley.

I’ve met tons of perfect girls in my life: consultants, lawyers, etc…real Type A girls looking for Type A guys. These girls scare me since they’re so Type A, they already have their life planned out and they’re looking for the guy to fit into their life plan. I wonder if they have a timeline drawn out as to when they’re supposed to start popping out kids.

So I don’t like perfect people and I’m the last guy who’s perfect: I’ve been a “B” student my whole academic life and I’ve failed in a lot of stuff (by the way, it helps if you don’t really give a fuck about failing) Just as much as I reject girls, tons of girls have said no to me before…big deal right?

What bothers me the most is when I think that a girl says “no” to me because I don’t portray the objective definition of what’s supposed to be the “perfect man.” I was thinking about this the other day when I was driving (note: I get easily distracted when I drive and my mind wanders – don’t tell my insurance company): I was pondering my lot in life (aka: why am I still single while most of my friends have girlfriends?) when I found a startling pattern: most guys my age have started to conform to this notion of “perfect men”: responsible, career driven, safe, caring individuals.

Usually, they’re professionals who work for a big company and has a down payment on a house. All nice guys and very good at their jobs…in other words, they’re perfect marriage material. Let’s contrast that to me: I don’t know where I’ll be in three months, my money goes to “gentlemanly leisure activities” (boozing, womanizing and gambling) and my hobbies include writing down the list of Obsessive Compulsive Disorders I have. I’d argue that this is far from perfect.

I guess what set off this whole thing was that I met this girl about a year ago and I really liked her. She was a lawyer and I actually felt that we were on the same wavelength and it was going to be one of those Imelda + Ferdinand “let’s plunder the government together” relationships…until she started talking to other guys. I ask around and you realize that your competitor is richer than you and more successful than you. They can give her a Harry Winston and a coat to match. They have their careers in line and you can pretty much see their kids going to prep school. That’s when I realized that I lost to perfection, which you really can’t do anything about. I can’t give her a Harry Winston and my kids will probably end up in public school. Kinda makes me sad…that nobody cheers for the underdogs anymore…no one helps up the girl who gets beaten up in highschool or smiles after getting a B- on their project.

Looking back, I am kind of happy that Jake chose the girl everybody hated over the overwhelming favorite.

He found his perfect.

Just like how I wait for my imperfect.

To me, one of the most exciting plays that can occur in sports is in Football, when a fumble happens. For those of you that can’t tell a touchdown from a home run, this is what a fumble is:

So why do I love watching fumbles?

Pretty much, when someone screws up, then a fumble occurs. Just as fumbles represent screwing up, it also represents opportunity for other people to capitalize on it.

So in today’s lesson, we’re going to talk about

Fumbles in Relationships aka: when a hot girl breaks up with their boyfriend.

So you met a girl a while back and you think she’s really cool. You have good conversations and you find her really attractive. As we previously talked about, you’re having a great time with her when out comes from her mouth:

“Yeah, me and my boyfriend go there all the time!”

Cut.

Turns out that the table was reserved and the waitress was just letting you sit there temporarily. You can just picture this girl’s douchebag boyfriend pointing and laughing at you as he says

“Thanks for buying my girl a drink and keeping her company while I hang out with my boys. Don’t let my foot hit your ass on the way out.”

So, this girl’s boyfriend may have won this round but sometimes, it pays to have faith in people. You should have faith in humankind especially in the fact that we all share one common trait..namely: the ability to get sick of other people’s shit.
When I was younger, I saw an interesting poster. The poster had a picture of an attractive girl but underneath the picture, it had the following caption:

“No matter how hot she is, somewhere out there, someone’s sick of putting up with her shit”

True say, novelty poster…true say.

If you don’t believe me, just look in your closet and count the number of clothing items you bought thinking: “I’ll wear this shirt for a long time” but come next season, that beloved shirt just got relegated to the back of the closet…nearing dish cloth rags status. I think the lesson here is that people get bored and people love novelty. I have a perfectly good laptop but right now, I’m in the hunt for a new one simply because the old one has lost it’s “luster” (Whatever the hell that means)

Going back to relationships, sometimes people get sick of other people and they eject them from the passenger seat. Bad for him, good for other guys.
You see, sometimes people breakup prematurely and the guy miscalculates and dumps the girl in error. In other words, he screwed up.

FUMBLE!!!

In football, when you’re on offense, there are only certain players that are “eligible receivers”. You can’t just throw the ball to anyone. During a fumble however…anyone can grab the ball. The gloves are pretty much off.
Same goes in dating: when the girl was taken, guys in relationships weren’t having any of that. Once they hear that she’s single however…every guy is coming out of the woodwork as illustrated by Mr. LL Cool J:

So I was talking to one of my friends the other day and she’s recently single. Being young, she doesn’t really know about this “Fumble” phenomenon guys have so she wondered out loud to me:

“Ever since I’ve become single, a lot of my guy friends I haven’t talked to in a while have been messaging me, just saying hi…”

So I said: “Obviously, they’re trying to get with you”

She says: “No. They have girlfriends!”

Right.  For now.

Clearly, we can see what’s going on here.
You see, as my man Chris Rock professes: guys will only be as faithful as their options. Guys are selfish bastards and will always upgrade to first class when possible. Then again, it goes both ways: girls in relationships give numbers to other guys all the time. Back when I was a young, starry-eyed chap – I actually thought that being in a relationship made people good…but after a while, when you see infidelity happening right in front of your own eyes, you start believing that maybe relationships bring the bad out of some people. Just because you start calling someone “your boyfriend/girlfriend” doesn’t mean that the curiosity inside us…to see if someone else is better for us is exterminated.

This is called “being human.”

People cheat all the time. What does Revered Jesse Jackson, Albert Einstein and someone you probably know have in common? They’ve all cheated on their spouses.

So I think there are two things we need to learn here:

1) Just because your boyfriend’s friend is in a relationship, that doesn’t mean he never thinks about the day when she breaks up with her man. You should ask him why they never dated.

2) People cheat all the time. Always have and always will. You really can’t control that stuff.

Sometimes, when there’s a fumble and the other team scores…you shouldn’t take it too tough…

It’s all part of the game.

"Should have seen it coming when she said she only hooked up with him 8 times in college"

So I was talking to my friend the other day and he informed me that our mutual buddy is getting married.

In that moment, me and celebrity hype-man  Lil Jon said the following in unison: “What?!?!”

Apparently, this guy has only been dating the girl for half a year and now he’s engaged to her. When asked why he’s marrying her so quickly, his answer was simple but made me think for days:

“The second I saw her, I knew right away.”

Apparently, she said the same thing.

So two people meet each other and thought: “this person is the one for me” and now they’re getting married.

This got me thinking for a few days about how I’m supposed to find my girlfriend:

So the first thing we have to talk about is Predestination.

Predestination is a school of thought in Religion made famous by a guy named John Calvin:

Little known fact: Calvin was also a member of Wreckx-n-Effect

So this is what Predestination is all about: Calvin believed that the moment you were born, your fate was already decided by God: whether or not you’re going to Heaven or Hell. Everything you do in your life is all according to God’s plan so nothing you do will change where you’ll eventually end up.

This is good news if God decided that you’re ending up in Heaven.
This is really bad news if you’re destined to go to Hell.

So, this pretty much takes away the concept of free-will since you can’t change your lot.
What’s funny is that you’d think that if people believed that they can’t control their lives, they’d do whatever the hell they wanted. In fact, the opposite occurred among the Calvinists. Despite this belief, Calvinists were known to be extremely God-fearing and good because they believed that if they were really good, God might give them a sign/warning of where they’re supposed to end up. That’s the funny thing about people – you can get them to do anything when you hang eternal damnation over our heads.

Now we’ll take this and apply it towards relationships –> on one hand, you can see relationships like the way Calvinists see predestination: If God determines that you’re supposed to end up with your partner, then you really don’t have to do anything. Just live your life as dictated by God and let life run its course.You don’t really need to make an effort to cut your hair or go out to meet people since you’ll meet your soul mate somehow. I’m also guessing that this would mean that you’ll know when you’re in love since it’s just going to happen…which is why I find it hard to believe in this stuff.

You see, I have a bit of a problem: I really don’t know when I’m supposed to be in love.

I’m sure if I asked my friend, he’d give me his useless answer: “You’ll just know”

I think about this all the time: How do you “just know?” – again, one time I was talking to an ex-coworker and he was telling me about his best friend and roommate. He said that after interviewing roommates throughout the entire day, his future best friend knocked on his door and the moment they saw each other, he “just knew” that they were going to be friends.

It’s hard to take that story straight up without factoring watered down things such as hindsight bias.

Again, how do you know when you’re in love?

To get some guidance, I started watching a show devoted to falling in love: “The Bachelor” where a harem of women take turns trying to seduce some guy with a nice smile and a cardboard personality. So, with nothing else better to do on Monday evenings, I’ve incorporated wasting two hours of my life watching “The Bachelor” while I eat a bag of chips.

"What's he got that I don't?" as I sit on my couch eating Doritos in my underwear.

It’s very interesting to hear what these girls say. In fact, I think we should play a game on what these girls say:

Bachelor Family Feud:

The top 5 things these girls say on the Bachelor:

5. “I came here to fall in love”
4. “I think I’m falling in love”
3. “I’m really falling for him”
2. “I think I’m in love”
1. “I’ve never felt this way before…I’m in love”

Every time I watch this show, I always compare it to a group of highschool kids trying pot for the first time:

“Dude, let’s try and get high”
“I think I’m getting high”
“I think I feel it”
“I’m high”
“I’ve never felt this way before”

Falling in love is like a high everyone chases and hopes that when they catch it, it’s gonna make them feel better.

So, again, how do you know when you’re in love? When you feel good? When you can’t feel your fingers? When time goes by so slowly?

Surely, knowing you’re in love just can’t be a physical thing, if so then every drop of ecstasy and cocaine should be a shot of love. Maybe they should have crackheads on the Bachelor next time.

Maybe it’s just not physical, it’s emotional as well…this person makes me feel good therefore I’m in love with him/her. So what draws the line between love and friendship? My friends make me feel good but I’m not putting a ring on it. Maybe love is more complicated than that – I think to better understand the concept of love, we have to do some big-picture mind fucking…we have to re-evaluate the concept of the language.

Since I’m typing in English, I’m assuming that we all have a fairly good grasp of English knowledge here – for those of you who’s only language is English, this might be hard for you to understand but there are feelings and situations that occur in this world that the English language can’t capture…simply because it has no word for it. Just because you have no word for it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, you ethnocentric bastard. So, when it comes to love, there are other languages that capture different varieties of love that English fails to capture.

I think love is a grey area in everything – friendship, family and anything else in this world loves on some kind of love, I just don’t know what it is.

So falling in love might be a physical and an emotional thing…it can also be luck.

Luck that you both met each other thinking each other is “the one”. Luck that both your families happened to know each other and introduced you two love birds. Luck that you kept your marriage together for 10 years…before you divorce.
It’s not luck that 40% of marriages end in divorce.
It’s marriage breakdown.
I always wondered for couples that eventually divorced, if they also thought “this is the one” when they first met their mate. If the thought of ever hating this person crossed their minds on their wedding day. There I go being a party pooper with my thoughts.

Jon and Kate has given America 8 future strippers/over-compensating bodybuilders

So, with so much questions and little answers…it sure seems like this love business is a complicated thing. We can sit here all day and talk about stats and theories but at the end of it, someone can just throw John Calvin into the mix and throw all rationality out the window.

How are you supposed to know when you’re in love?

I don’t know.

I was watching the movie, “Up in the Air” tonight and there was one scene in the movie that really struck a chord with me. It’s the part when a heart-broken Natalie tells Ryan and Alex (Alex is a girl) about what she expected from her life by now:

Natalie: When I was sixteen, I thought by twenty three, I would be married, maybe have a kid…Corner office by day, entertaining at night. I was supposed to be driving a Grand Cherokee by now…but sometimes, it feels like no matter how much success I have, it all won’t matter until I find the right guy.

Alex: You really thought this guy was the one.

Natalie: Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. I could have made it work. He just really fit the bill.

Ryan: The bill?

Natalie: My type. You know, white collar. College grad. Loves dogs. Likes funny movies. Six foot one. Brown hair. Kind eyes. Works in finance but is outdoorsy, you know, on the weekends. I always imagined he’d have a single syllable name like Matt or John or…Dave. In a perfect world, he drives a Four Runner and the only thing he loves more than me is his golden lab. Oh…and a nice smile…

Alex: Well, by the time you’re thirty four, all the physical requirements are pretty much out the window. I mean you secretly pray he’ll be taller than you. Not an asshole would be nice. Just someone who enjoys my company. Comes from a good family – you don’t think about that when you’re younger. Wants kids…likes kids…wants kids. Healthy enough to play catch with his future son one day. Please let him earn more than I do. That doesn’t make sense now, but believe me, it will one day. Otherwise it’s just a recipe for disaster. Hopefully some hair on his head..but it’s not exactly a deal breaker anymore. Nice smile…yep, a nice smile just might do it.

Natalie: I don’t mind being married to my career, and I don’t expect it to hold me in bed as I fall asleep. I just don’t want to settle.

Alex: You’re young. Right now you see settling as some sort of failure.

Natalie: It is. By definition.

Alex: Don’t worry, by the time someone is right for you, it won’t feel like settling…and the only person left to judge you will be the twenty four year old girl with a target on your back.

After this scene, I couldn’t believe how bang on they were about my change in perspective as I get older. It’s funny, when you’re 28, you’re at this border where on one side, you see the naive, starry-eyed twenty something year olds like Natalie, still clutching on to her pipe dreams of finding the man she envisioned throughout her life. I still know girls like that…which astounds me. I only ask two questions:

1) Does this mean that I really am growing up?
2) Was I that naive when I was in my early twenties?

On the other side of twenty eight are the people that have lived through the war that is their personal life. The emotionally drained, maimed and injured. On this side, you have a group that’s jaded and has resigned themselves to the fact that they’re willing to settle for someone, anyone… that can love them back…even if they’re shorter than them. At first, I scoff at this mentality, but after a while I do start to see the rationale in it.

You spend the first half of your life thinking you’re right and you spend the second half atoning for your mistakes (because you’re usually not right) When you’re young, you really think the world is your oyster so you take your time picking and choosing just the right oyster with the perfect pearl. You find it hard to stop at one oyster because…who knows what the next oyster might hold? As age creeps up on you however, you realize that you’ve gone through the entire pile so you start to go back to the old oysters you’ve opened to pick the right pearl. Alas, when you turn your head, you realize that all the oysters you’ve opened have already been taken by other people. Now, you’re just happy to grab any oyster that you can snatch.
This is a tragedy of life that needs to be played out by each generation in order for them to warn the next generation; so that it can fall on deaf ears of the young and brash.

For me, I began to think about my life and how far I’ve deviated from what I imagined it to be.
I guess I wasn’t very imaginative when I was young. I opted for combo #1: being married and possibly having two kids.
When I was young, I’d make guesses as to what my career would be but having a wife was never an issue. There she was, my future companion who was always going to be pretty to me.
Whenever I encountered a girl I didn’t like, I received solace from the fact that my future wife was never going to be like her. My future wife wasn’t going to be fat like girl A and way more witty than girl B.

I guess this is what Plato referred to as “The Theory of Forms” – that somewhere in another universe, there’s an ideal version of everything. For example: How would you know if this thing in front of you is a good or bad table? If you can criticize whether something is a good or bad table, then somewhere in the back of your mind, you have to have an idea of what the ideal table should be.

Here I was, going through life with my Ideal Wife in my head. With each girl I encountered, I sized them up like the table and compared her to the ideal…of course they were never good enough. You go through life with a picture in your mind that doesn’t exist and hope you run into the impossible until one day, you start to doubt the validity of that picture. You see two ugly people getting married and they’re madly in love with each other. The husband stares at his cross-eyed wife and says through his buck teeth: “You’re perfect for me. You’re the only one I’ll ever want” and they ride off into their honeymoon at Niagara Falls. There you are, sitting by yourself at the buffet table thinking: boy, those two people are happy and here I am feeling like shit.

That’s the trade-off between holding out for your ideal companion versus settling.

So last October, I made a trek to India. I started from the North and traveled all the way to the South in two weeks alone (minus my punjabi driver Manpreet). There was a moment when I spent two days in Udaipur, arguably one of the most beautiful places in the world. As I got to my hotel during low season, there was hardly any tourists in the hotel. I can vividly remember one moment during my stay when I went down for breakfast. The restaurant was empty, minus one server and an old man playing a sitar. There I was, literally the third person in the dining room sitting by myself, eating my scrambled eggs looking out the window at this beautiful city while this old man played the sitar. This old man played a song that was so lonely and longing, it connected with me. I never felt music change my mood so drastically and as his sad song played, I looked across my table at the empty chair facing me and began feeling miserable.

Where did my ideal future wife go?
Did she elect to stay with the youthful side of me?
What do I do now? What do I tell myself?

I start to think back to all the girls I’ve spurned or all the things that somehow went wrong and I wonder if I can take it all back if it means having someone sitting across from me during my breakfast in lovely Udaipur.

Alas, I’m too old and wise to see through the foolishness but inside my heart, I know the truth but sometimes,

I wish I was wrong.