Ugly Stepsisters

Far be it from me to let a good clothing analogy die. There’s a name for people who are so desperate to have something, they’ll do anything to make it fit. They’re called ugly stepsisters. They’re going to cut off their toes to get their feet into the shoe and MAKE it fit. My last date was with an ugly stepsister. Ugly stepsisters agree with everything you say. When you say you’re afraid of commitment, they agree and tell you that they’re not even thinking marriage for the next couple of years. They are then confused when you tell them you’re not looking for the same things. Ugly stepsisters hear you tell them you never have a second date with a guy that wasn’t arranged on the first date, and then ask you on a second date the next day. Ugly stepsisters love that you have strong opinions, but ignore what those opinions are.

Ugly stepsisters can be hard to spot. They want the shoe so much, they can seduce you into believing that they should have it. So what makes an ugly stepsister?

1. Too many compliments. An ugly stepsister wants to keep attention focused away from themselves so no one notices the blood dripping out of the shoe.

2. Imperviousness to blisters. You can’t rub an ugly stepsister the wrong way. They’ll turn any negative aspect about you into a positive.

3. Warts. Obvious sign of an ugly stepsister.

4. Fatigue. Trying to shove the shoe on their foot makes for a tiring date.

5. Stubbornness. Ugly stepsisters won’t take no for an answer.

6. Underhandedness. When they’re not locking your true love away from you, they’re tricking you into a date.

7. Inferiority complex. You know it and they know it. They’re no Cinderella.

Given my charming personality, I've been out with quite a few ugly stepsisters in my time. It's hard to explain to other people why I don't like them. "How is a guy who compliments you a bad thing?"  I'm glad I finally have the terminology down. 

Trying on the dress

Male readers, bear with me through this analogy. You know when you’re out and you happen to see this really beautiful dress in a store? Check out the price tag and it’s expensive, and it’s not like you were looking for a dress in the first place. You have two choices. Walk away because you can’t afford it anyway. Try it on because it might not fit. If it does and looks fabulous, then it’s worth the money. The advantage of the walk away plan is you don’t then have to go into a dressing room, take off all your clothes, and spend five minutes deciding whether the fluorescent lighting is creating the appearance of cellulite or if that’s what your butt really looks like. The disadvantage is you keep remembering that beautiful dress that you didn’t buy.

My position is, try on the dress. It never fits. So I never have any regrets, and it’s worth the effort. It’s like that with dating too. Sometime a guy I’ve become friends with asks me out. I don’t think we’re a fit, but if I say no to a date, he’s left wondering what would’ve happened if I had just given him a shot. So I let him try on the dress. This way he’ll see it doesn’t fit and we can carry on being friends with no wondering what might have been. And on the odd chance that the dress looks amazing…

The accessories make the woman

A good friend of mine has advised me to buy a more expensive purse. In fact she believes "we all need gucci purses." My $35 purse is not doing the job apparently. Oh sure, it's holding all my stuff, and has lasted for a couple of years despite heavy use. But it's also convincing guys I’m 25. I don't wanna buy a Gucci purse. I don't wanna get crows feet or grey hair. I don't wanna wear sweaters sets or pearls or jeans that go all the way to my waist. But I also don't wanna find myself on a date with a 23 year old. Again.

* That is my actual bag in the picture, except mine is brown. Feel free to judge.

The economics of pickiness

Alright, all of us singletons have been accused of being too picky at some point or another. Don't worry; this is not where I go into a rant about why someone who's such a great catch should start lowering standards. To lapse into economics for a moment, the essential question is whether the marginal benefit of being in someone's company outweighs the marginal cost. In equation form:

where i = all the things you like about the person and j = all the things you don't

and α, β, δ, and γ are weights

So you're out on a date. You're getting to know someone. Every new piece of information is either an i (positive) or a j (negative). You keep dating the person until the next j added tips the equation in that direction.

Where we open ourselves up to attack is what that j is. The proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back, the last j is unfortunately what we give as the reason we don’t want to keep seeing the person. So if my last j (under the category of Interests) is he likes the American version of The Office EVEN THOUGH he's seen the original, I get called out for being too picky. Which, if you look at the math, is totally unfair.

First, there's the issue of weights. One part of being accused of being too picky is when people don't like our weights. If my α is 0.85 and my β is 0.05, someone is going to come along and tell me I care too much about personality, and I should focus more on whether or not he's a good person. Actually, a friend of mine who got married by an arranged marriage keeps telling me I need to weight γ zero. That's going to make for a fun marriage when the kids are out of the house and that was the only thing you had in common.

Generally, I think it breaks down like this for me*:

α = 0.27

β = 0.27

δ = 0.19

γ = 0.27

So, liking the US Office added 0.27 to the right-hand side of the equation. That's really not very much at all. What it really comes down to is that the left-hand side of the equation didn't have enough i's to balance it out. If he were better looking, less religious, less inclined to spend the date talking about his exes, then that little 0.27 wouldn't have been enough to tip the balance.

So the next time someone gets on your case for being too picky, hand them a copy of this equation. Then plug in some numbers to show them quite clearly how rational it is to dump a woman for having man hands.

*Feel free to put your own numbers in the comments section—if you can't type greek, that's alpha, beta, delta, and gamma.

Shitting where you eat

Surprisingly, work has suddenly become a place to pick up guys. I say surprisingly because everyone here is old. Even the young people. The coworkers at an old job used the labels "old 30" and "young 30" to describe what I mean. While almost all 20 year-olds there were single, lived in or close to the city, and attended happy hours, only some of the 30 years-olds were similarly situated. Hence young 30 to describe the people who weren't way out in the suburbs with spouses or kids who no longer had a social life.

In the year and a half I've been working this job, I've only met one other young 30 person. I'm going off on a tangent because this is a good story. He was leading a training given to new employees. One of the other trainers was an older woman who kept trying to set us up. She would start extolling his good points to me every time we got near each other. Which would have been fine except this guy was currently playing Brad in a production of Rocky Horror Picture Show and was a really snazzy dresser. Awkward. I wonder if she ever figured out she was trying to set me up with a gay guy.

Anyway, I started a flirtation with a guy who sits near me and eventually he asked me out. This is was a big step for me, because he is old. Like in his 40s old. This has its advantages. He literally wined and dined me, but since he's so much older (and consequently farther along in his career), I didn't feel guilty about him picking up such a large check.

Some more lessons learned

I don't make it a habit to regret my decisions, and I'm happy to say I think my experience with the BT was beneficial. My post-breakup take home is that I need to date guys closer to my age. Yes, they have pot-bellies and receding hairlines. But at least they have their shit together. I'm saying goodbye to the younger guys who are still trying to figure it all out. However valid their search, they're a pain in my ass.

The second thing that came out of the experience was an unexpected trip into DXBF nostalgia. Post-breakup with my one serious boyfriend was quite a bit of recrimination for being with someone so completely messed up. But my trip down memory lane reminded me that giant emotional problems aside, we were really compatible. I haven't found anyone else I get along with that well. So years after the fact, I feel much better about the relationship and less bad about getting dumped.

Thank you, BT.  I'd tell you that in person, but that's going to make for one awkward conversation on the sidewalk when we finally run into each other.