Reasons women don’t approach.

Whenever I bring up the topic of meeting members of the opposite sex, the male commenters here inevitably strike up the “OMG WOMEN MAKE IT SO HARD I WON’T APPROACH ANY WOMAN WHO DOESN’T HAVE A GREEN LIGHT WITH MY NAME ON IT PASTED TO HER FOREHEAD” song and dance.  Their position is understandable, but women are instinctively programmed to put the man through the paces in order to get to her.  This is because (a) women know that men want the most bang for the least buck, and (b) women want to be worth more than a buck.  Women who make themselves extremely available to men have very little way of telling if the man liked them specifically, or if the man was merely taking advantage of convenience.  Making a man work for it is a way of differentiating the warm body seekers from the specifically me seekers.

This is the general reason that women don’t approach men.  Most of the other reasons are situational and personality-centric, as I discuss below:

• She’s shy. Some women are terrified of talking to anyone they don’t know.  Clearly this leads to glowing results when women who are petrified of strangers and men who are petrified of women mix.
• She’s intimidated. This is a little different from shyness.  Shyness is more of an inner timidity, whereas intimidation is externally based.  A woman who is not usually shy may become intimidated depending on the situation, such as:
  • She feels he’s out of her league. Contrary to what the majority of the manosphere thinks – that all women are entitled landbeasts who wear XXL “head bitch in charge” T-shirts over their industrial strength bras and blast men for not being able to “handle them” – many women will balk at initiating interaction with a man they feel is markedly superior to them in looks, popularity, intelligence, socioeconomic status, etc.  A woman will think to herself, “A man like that could have any woman he wants, so why me?” and as a result, either outright ignore the man or only give furtive little glances when she hopes he’s not looking.  (Exception:  women who attend fan conventions and pay for pictures with their objects of affection.  The exchange of money and experience of waiting in a line make it okay to approach, giggle, praise, and sometimes sneak a grope.)
  • He’s surrounded by bros. Much like men grouse that women can never be found alone, women also find men surrounded by a posse intimidating.  Little Susie Sweetheart, pounding heart in her dry throat, will be much less likely to approach Hal Hotness if Hal is surrounded by five bros who are all slapping each other on the back while grunting about the manliness of Tom Brady’s hair football.  Same goes for Susie approaching Tom Tron and his five engineering buddies who are discussing their latest Halo 3 strategies.  Too many bros, especially if one of the bros is a class clown type who is loud and attracts a lot of high-energy attraction, says to a woman that the man doesn’t want to be bothered.
  • He’s surrounded by attractive women. While some women will be motivated by preselection competition, most women are not self-confident enough to cold approach a man who is constantly surrounded by other women, especially if the other women are good-looking, or at least popular (the good-looking vs. popular Venn diagram doesn’t always have the greatest overlap), or THINNER.  Susie won’t want to deal with the competitive shunning by the women, and she will also ask herself why Cory Cubicle would talk to her when he’s already got his hands full with some nice stuff.
  • He has never shown any previous signs of acknowledging her existence. A hurried “thanks for holding the door” at the elevator at work, followed by pushing the button and zero conversation, doesn’t count.  Non-communicative inertia just begets more non-communicative inertia.  There’s little more humiliating than attempting conversation with someone six months after seeing the person every day, and having that person look at you like they’ve never seen you before.
• She’s a creature of habit. Some women (and men, too, for that matter) settle into a rut of existence and find it immensely difficult to break out of the daily grind.  I don’t know if it’s that they find it too energetically taxing to vary their routines, or what, but there are just some people who habitually refuse to stray from the path every once in a while, even if it’s at the cost of meeting new people.  This means that if you’re not currently on the schedule, you might never be.
• She’s not interested. Yes, sometimes this is the reason women don’t initiate contact.  It usually means that the man hasn’t done anything to make himself stand out as someone to consider.  He hasn’t demonstrated any personality, any leadership or expertise, any sense of humor, any smidgen of fashion sense, any physical fitness, any special talents.  If you are the definition of drab, you’re stacking the deck against yourself.

I’d say that intimidation and interest are the most easily solvable issues.  So if you’re a man and you’re frustrated that women aren’t cold approaching you, understand that just as, if not more, difficult for women to do than men, and then check and see if you’re doing things that make it even harder.

If I like him, he can do better.

I met today with a couple of female friends, and, as is usually the case when two or more female friends gather, conversation turned to dating and male/female relationships.  At the moment, none of us is dating anyone nor has any prospectives in the pipeline, so whoever out there thinks that “good girls” get snapped up like cake at a Weight Watchers meeting, think again.

One friend mentioned how she had gone to a recovering addicts celebration/gathering at another local church and had become annoyed by the fact that as she was walking to the venue from parking, a very good-looking young man was walking not far behind her yet did not attempt to strike up a conversation even though it was evident that they were going to the same place.  Eventually they were forced to stop at a light, whereupon my friend took it upon herself to start talking to this guy, and they chatted all the way to the church.  Tonight she was planning on returning to the same church with some hopes of seeing him again.

After hearing this story, I said that I almost never talk to men who I think are good-looking because I assume that I will not meet their minimum standard of attractiveness and they will act like they would rather have their teeth drilled without Novacaine than talk to me.  I’ve had this happen before.  The man will give half-hearted, simple-sentence responses, never look you in the eye, act agitated, and generally give the impression of someone who is silently cursing his upbringing as he tries to tolerate your substandard presence for the minimum time required to feign politeness.  It is a simultaneously depressing and infuriating experience and is a huge waste of time.

My friend expressed great surprise at this revelation and quickly assured me that I could have anyone that I wanted.  I immediately shut down that possibility, citing, well, my life to date.  My friend told me that I needed to stop thinking this way.  I pointed out that life experience made it pretty difficult to.  My friend then said something that surprised me:  that she talks to men assuming that they will be interested and that men’s standards of attractiveness are not actually very high so long as you act smiley and bubbly.

I suppose, on the one hand, that to have success, you first have to have a successful attitude.  Surly warts do not win hearts.  On the other hand, the laws of the sexual marketplace are pretty immutable, and the likelihood that you will be the one to defy them successfully is pretty low to nonexistent.  I just know, both through reading and from experience, that if I find a man attractive – especially if he is objectively good-looking – then lots of other women will think the same.  And given the statistics of it all, the likelihood that I will be better-looking than all of the other women who are interested is probably going to be more or less zero; in other words, he will always have more appealing options than myself.  There is always going to be someone who laughs more at his jokes, who thinks he is smarter than I think he is, who wears a smaller clothing size than I do, who has a prettier face, who has a better body, who is more charming than I am, who is less opinionated than I am, who is willing to get in psychological turf wars with other women in order to get the guy, who is willing to make herself more sexually available, and – the older I get – who is younger than I am.

So whose approach is better – the optimist’s or the rationalist’s?  I don’t know.  Probably the best thing is to find someone you think is good-looking that no one else thinks is good-looking* and who honestly thinks you’re the best he can do even if it’s not true (if he’s good enough for you, he can probably do better than you).  I think it’s pretty rare, though not quite as rare as finding a unicorn or a chupacabra.

*The guy I had a massive crush on during my freshman year of college is someone I thought was fairly textbook tall, dark, mysterious, and handsome (AND A GOOD DANCER. AND SMELLED DIVINE), but my friends all made eww faces when I said I thought he looked great.  Of course, he ended up marrying the annoying girl from our dorm.  Oh, well.

Men and smart women.

A reader emailed me a blog post suggestion with the following comments:

You sometimes complain (not exactly the right word) that men avoid smarter women.  You should expect this, shouldn’t you?  Don’t you believe that, all else equal, a) a woman a man can’t credibly “lead” can’t be happy with him, and b) a man can’t credibly lead a woman who is markedly smarter than he is, due to “the truth-extracting powers of time and familiarity”?   Maybe guys  know enough to avoid things they can’t (by definition) appreciate anyway.

Hmm.  Yes and no.

I think the key here is that a woman can’t respect – and therefore can’t feel romantic passion for, and therefore has no interest in being led by – a man of small intelligence relative to her own.  If she feels that he is a dunderhead, there’s no way she’s going to put her life and well-being (and those of her future children) in his hands.

However, a man does not need to possess book smarts in order to be impressive in intelligence to a woman.  Here is why:  book smarts aren’t as important to women as street smarts/people smarts.  A woman will be more attracted to the guy who got all Cs in high school but is resourceful, witty, and well-liked than to the guy who was valedictorian but can’t leverage his intelligence into social currency.  It follows, then, that very bright women can be attracted to (and naturally soften themselves for) men who aren’t Einstein but are socially savvy and quick-witted.  The key typically with smart girls is that the guy must have some aspect of intelligence that the girl admires.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be book smarts.  As long as the man can parlay his brainpower (in whatever form that may take) into increased social dominance, many a smart woman will be happy to follow such a man.

Obviously, there are some limits to how big an intelligence gap can exist in a couple.  Educational level and socioeconomic status are reasonable proxies for determining this gap, though not absolute.  For example, I’ve found that a lot of people with bachelor’s and graduate degrees, both men and women, may have “smarts” but not really much intelligence.  Really, though, the “dunderhead test” is probably the most reliable.  Dunderhead-ism kills admiration and respect, the two crucial ingredients for a woman’s attraction and voluntarily submission to a man’s leadership.

Finally, yes, I think that men tend to avoid women they perceive as smarter.  Most men assume that they will have a hard time being impressive to such women and therefore bail without even trying.

Hot and cold.

Can some of the men here please explain this phenomenon?  Typical scenario:

Man and woman meet at a social gathering (church, house party, bar/club, online).

Man and woman hit it off.

Man starts to call woman every day and sends dozens of flirtatious texts.  This goes on for weeks.  Woman raves to friends about “chemistry.”

Man and woman finally go on a real date (or just have an official one-on-one “hanging out.”)

It goes well.  There may be kissing.

Woman does not hear from man for days or even weeks afterward.

When woman finally screws up the courage to ask the man what’s going on, he says that he’s been “busy” or “has a lot of personal stuff going on.”  (Or HAS CANCER.  This actually happened to a friend of mine, who had dated a guy for a few months.  She thought things were going well.  Then he went completely AWOL.  When he finally resurfaced, he told her that he had been dealing with CANCER.  That was the end of their relationship.)

Woman wonders what went wrong/puts man on lifelong hate list.

How can a man go from hot to cold so fast?  Women interpret pursuit, especially consistent pursuit, as a sign of romantic interest.  For most women, feelings don’t turn off and on light a light switch, so when men flip-flop instantaneously, it throws women for a very confusing, and sometimes heartbreaking, loop.  Note that the younger and more inexperienced the woman, the harder this kind of flip-flop is to take.  It’s still hard for older women to take, but they usually have enough life experience to know that they have to harden their hearts and move on.

Male IOIs.

Happy Election Day, Americans.  (At least I hope it ends happily for me, which, living where I live, is an iffy proposition. We few, we happy few…. But I soldier on, pen in hand, mighty as the sword, or at least a plastic butter knife…)

I have some thoughts percolating about “fat bigotry” in light of the recent Marie Claire ~scandal~, but until I get them organized, I thought a post about male IOIs might be a good pasttime.  I suppose this will end up being a discussion appealing mainly to the ladies here, since persons of one sex find their sex’s IOIs extremely obvious.  For example, I can always tell when a woman is trying to attract a man’s attention, but quite often the man may as well be wearing a bag over his head.  (Then the man goes home and complains that no women like him.)

These are the IOIs I usually recognize from men:

• Staring
• Prolonged eye contact
• Attempts to isolate
• Attempts to monopolize time/attention
• Standing too close
• Overly earnest compliments about my appearance
• Overly earnest questions about myself
• Upper arm touching
• Seeking me out

Feel free to add/subtract/correct me if I’m wrong.  I think a lot of confusion arises for a woman when she feels she is receiving IOIs but they don’t translate into dates.  Then she is stuck with the dilemma of whether the man is just being friendly* – does he treat all women this way? – or whether there is something wrong with her that he won’t make a move.  For a woman, context is key, so if she doesn’t feel she is getting a clear read on the situation, she will spend too much a lot of time, usually with girlfriends, analyzing each situation for clues to the man’s mental state.  This is why He’s Just Not That Into You was such a watershed moment for a lot of women.  It gave women the freedom not to waste time and emotional energy analyzing men’s motives.  It’s a great relief to have a more or less bright line test for men’s interest:  if he asks for a date, he’s interested; if he doesn’t ask, he’s not interested (or at least not sufficiently interested).  Not that asking for a date means that he thinks he is developing feelings – he could just be trying to get sex – but it’s a much more concrete move, at least.

* How to know a man is not attracted to you at all and considers you well beneath his standards of attractiveness for even association:  he will act like you do not exist.  This means never making eye contact, never saying hello, never making small talk.  This is why reasonably attractive men who are also genuinely kind and friendly have so many women nursing crushes on them.  Even the smallest amount of attention is manna from heaven.

Feeling free to flirt.

It has been my experience in the church that flirting is implicitly frowned upon.  Growing up, I never heard a youth group sermon denouncing flirting, but in advice columns and articles written to youth and singles, flirting is usually cast in a negative light.  Although flirting at its purest is a natural way for two people to express chemistry and attraction, it often leads to confusion, manipulation, and drama.  Women naturally interpret a man’s playful attention as romantic interest, and when that doesn’t result in a date, hearts get broken.  Men likewise can get their hopes up when a girl flirts back at their overtures, then crushed when the girl says she just wants to be friends.  Not surprisingly, the church would rather have its young people avoid all of the emotional turmoil, and so we end up with exhortations to “man up” and “take the lead” (for men) and “be available” (for women).

This advice sounds solid, if a bit staid (I always imagine an unsmiling man somberly informing a woman, pre-selected for her pristine Christian character, that he would like to court her for the possibility of marriage, and the woman gravely agreeing.  Then they both wanly smile off in the distance, content in following God’s Will For Their Lives).  It’s a complete picture, just one stripped of color.  But how does this work in practice?

Consider the following scenario:  Regular guy Mario attends a hip, modern church called The Pillar.  (It used to be called Sandals until someone realized that that was the same name as a Caribbean vacation company.)  Mario starts noticing that an attractive young woman attends the same Sunday school group.  Mario finds out, through strategic eavesdropping, that the young woman is named Peach.  After a few weeks of observation and finding Peach to pass muster, Mario begins talking to Peach on Sundays.  Peach is friendly but doesn’t give any obvious IOIs.  Mario wants to date Peach.  What should he do?  If he shows “initiative and leadership,” he could be LJBFed.  If he waits around for clear IOIs, he will be accused of lacking initiative and leadership.  Mario decides that LJBFing is a fate worse than death, so he doesn’t ask Peach out.  Peach, meanwhile, has her own conundrum.  She likes Mario, but she wants to avoid a reputation for being a flirt, so she doesn’t overtly encourage his attentions.  She also thinks that Mario might just be friendly, and flirting with someone who is not interested back would be embarrassing.  She decides to wait for a more clear-cut signal.  Mario and Peach continue in their holding pattern, at least until bad-boy Wario shows up, flirts up a storm with Peach, swoops her away, and leaves Mario grumbling that Wario is stupid and ugly and Peach is a jerk-lover like every other girl.

But what if Peach had flirted with Mario, only to turn him down when he asked her out?  Why would Peach send such mixed signals?  Well, it’s possible that Peach saw Mario as someone “safe” who would never ask her out.  I don’t know what it is about the feminine psyche, but a lot of times it’s much easier to flirt with someone you have little interest in romantically than to flirt with someone you have a crush on.  Maybe it’s because you usually feel more self-conscious around a crush, and you also don’t want it to be too easy for the crush to get you, because otherwise, how do you know if he’s actually interested in you?  Plus, again, women don’t like feeling like they are chasing the guy, and Approaching + Flirting = Chasing.

So what is the answer?  I don’t know.  I think it’s wrong to deliberately dangle the carrot in front of someone you have no intention of feeding it to, but at the same time I don’t think it’s a good idea to be so unreadable that no one figure out what you’re thinking.  Alas, there is no foolproof way to avoid bumps and bruises on the road to love.

Like paper near a flame.

One consistent drum beat I’ve heard in the manosphere is that of a nearly obsessive fear of marrying a woman with a low or nonexistent sex drive.  This coincides with the idea that a man needs to “test drive” a woman before shackling himself to her with a ring, because what if she never puts out after the wedding night and horror of horrors you didn’t know this was going to happen because like a chivalrous white knight idiot you never had sex with her before the wedding?  Or – even worse – what if she only wants to have sex for a couple of years and then, after she gets her baby, she never wants to have sex again?  Sure, there’s a lot of derision of Carousel riders, but when push comes to shove, at least a Carousel rider is going to let you ride.  (Well, until she finds the next rider and takes half of your fortune with her, but at least you got your turn, which for most men seems to be better than no turn at all.)

In the Christian community, male fear of a sexless marriage seems to be as widespread as outside the church, but even more intense and much more underground.  It’s intense because devout Christian men know that they have one shot at marriage, which in turn is their one shot at finding a sex partner for life, and underground because Christians like to pretend that sex is a mystery that doesn’t exist don’t like to talk much about sex other than “Teens, don’t do it.”  For the Christian alpha male, there’s not much cause to worry – Christian alpha males almost always get snapped up right after college, or, if they delay marriage, whenever they feel like it’s finally time to leave and cleave…er, I mean, whenever the Holy Spirit speaks to them about the next season of life.  (As has been said here before, did anyone ever believe that Christian dating guru, pastor-to-be, megaflirt Joshua Harris was going to have genuine trouble finding a wife?)  It’s really the Christian beta males who must trek through Mordor to get to Mount Doom, only to possibly discover Gollum waiting to chomp off their finger.

The conundrum facing Christian beta males seems obvious:  Christian women don’t want beta males any more than non-Christian women do, Christian women have been trained not to give any signals of attraction, Christian women want to be “friends” for an unspecified amount of time first…yet Christian women expect men to “man up” and charge ahead, brandishing leadership skills in every facet of life, but not in too sexy a way, lest he be branded a sex-craved deviant or cause a sister (whom he should be treating with absolute purity) to stumble, but not so unsexy that the woman would rather wash her hair.  And a brother is somehow supposed to divine his future wife’s sex drive out of this?

While I empathize with Christian men facing the Leviathan of holy dating, I also think that the fear of marrying a low sex-drive woman is overblown.  I don’t know any single Christian women who are not confirmed spinsters who aren’t jonesing for sex.  As one of my single Christian female friends has said on a number of occasions, “I need to get married soon, because I’m ready to explode.”  It’s like shaking an unopened 2-liter bottle of soda and leaving the cap on.  You may not see a ton of bubbles, but the pressure is most definitely building up inside.  Men, please be encouraged that you won’t be buying a bottle of soda that is flat, but a bottle that is very agitated and waiting for the right time to unleash a torrent of passion.*

Interestingly, this subject came up in the comments of a recent Boundless post.  What began as comments to the female follow-up to “I’ll Go Out With You If…” (featuring the usual drivel) somehow morphed into some women admitting that yes, they did have sex drives that they were working to keep a lid on.  In one comment, a poster named Ashley summed it up thusly:

This is probably unrelated to the actual topic at hand, but I have never been able to explain this to a guy in a way that he can understand. There’s just no good way to tell someone, “I am so fantastically, unrestrainedly into you that I’m going to need us to work on the relational/emotional/intellectual connection here and I am going to need you to not. touch. me. until we talk about it — and I really have to warn you, I may need you to pull the breaks on me.”

Commenter Andrea-Elena responded:

Or how about…

I haven’t gotten to be physical much with guys in my life and I’m longing so much to touch and do all those things that even if I’m not over-the-moon into you, I might still pounce on you just ’cause I like you enough and I find you attractive enough and women get horny too!!!

I feel as if I ought to have a business-size card with that on it to give to a guy when we first start dating.

…

I was inexperienced until the age of 23. So I didn’t really know my own “strength” (heh, heh). I didn’t know I could be or would ever be the aggressor in making out. And there were times I was. Sure, that’ll be awesome when I’m someone’s wife. But it’s awfully dangerous during dating, especially at the beginning stages when it’s so easy for the physical bonding to escalate and go at a much more rapid pace than the “who we are as people” aspect of getting to know each other. And some guys don’t defend their own boundaries very well at times. Just as some of us gals don’t either at times.

So, men, take heart.  Chastity is not synonymous with a lack of sex drive.  Sometimes women may seem distant with affection because it’s the only way they can stop the snowball from accelerating down the mountain.  That said, I think it’s prudent for a couple who are getting serious to talk about sexual expectations in marriage.  If those expectations don’t line up and there doesn’t seem to be a way (or willingness) to make them line up, then the relationship really should be reconsidered.  Generally speaking, instead of spending a lot of time worrying about whether or not his future wife is going to want to have sex with him, a smart man would use that time to work on making himself so irresistible that his wife would have no choice but to jump him and have her way with him.

* Another way of putting it:  I DIDN’T WAIT THIS LONG SO I COULD HAVE FIVE MINUTES OF LAME, DUTIFUL SEX ONCE A MONTH.

Hypergamy and the stigma of being the back-up plan.

There is a pretty impassioned hash-out going on at Boundless on the topic of why men don’t ask women out.  (Yes, Boundless went to that well again.  As they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.)  As per usual, it’s a veritable cornucopia of insights into the modern evangelical female mind and young, evangelical relationships (or the lack thereof) in general.

One point that was brought up in the comments is that men risk their reputations when asking out women from a certain church.  If a man screws up his courage, asks out a woman, and she shoots him down, he is then socially obligated to wait an undefined period of time before asking the next woman out from the same group, lest he be pegged desperate, creepy, or undiscriminating (i.e., a wannabe player).  The risk factor is high, because one wrong move can decimate his chances with anyone for a long time.  No woman wants to be some man’s back-up plan when the most attractive option flames out.

When the topic has arisen on my blog, usually the proposed solution is just not to date women from your own church, thereby sidestepping the possibility of social ostracism.  (Of course, if you happen to find someone from another church, the single women at your own church will just despise you for not finding any of them up to your lofty standards.  Or, if they find the girl not up to snuff, they will decide that you like to slum.)

Given women’s hypergamous natures, however, I started wondering if more church women would say yes to a date with a man who had just been out on a date with another woman from the same church group.  Getting rejected by a girl in the group serves as a pretty unavoidable and obvious DLV.  If Jim Bob asks out Sue on Sunday for a date on Tuesday, and she rejects him, there is a very tiny probability that Wendy will say yes if Jim Bob asks her out on Wednesday after singles group.*  Wendy would likely cite the abovementioned reasons for rejecting him, but isn’t her hypergamous hamster the real reason?  Conversely, getting accepted for a date would be a big DHV and make a man more attractive to the other women in his social circle.  If Jim Bob asks out Sue on Sunday for a date on Tuesday, and she accepts, wouldn’t Wendy be more likely to accept a date from Jim Bob as well when he asked on Wednesday?  Someone needs to do a study on this.

* Exception:  Wendy has a pre-existing crush on Jim Bob and is doing the happy dance on the inside that she’s finally getting a shot at her dream guy.

Mike, Molly, and missed signals of attraction.

Last night the new Chuck Lorre sitcom Mike and Molly premiered.  In the episode, Mike, a cop, and Molly, a fourth grade teacher, individually attend an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.  Molly is charmed by Mike’s sense of humor and introduces herself to Mike after the meeting ends.  What happens next is right out of the Matt Savage playbook of missing signals (I kid with love, Matt):

Molly tells Mike that she’s a fourth grade teacher and would love to have a police officer come and speak to her class, HINT HINT HINT.

Mike responds that she should contact the police department and they’ll send someone over.  (Level of obliviousness:  10.)

Molly’s face immediately falls at his not taking the bait.  (Her inner monologue:  OH NO HE DOESN’T LIKE ME I WANT THE EARTH TO SWALLOW ME WHAT DO I SAY NOW????)

Fortunately for Molly (and for the premise of the sitcom), Mike’s cop friend suggests that Molly give Mike her number and Mike can talk to her class himself.

Molly happily gives Mike her number and tells him to call her.  Mike says he will.  Molly lingers, hoping that Mike will ask her out.  He doesn’t.

Molly leaves with her sister, and Mike’s friend chastises him for not making a move.  Mike defends himself, saying he didn’t want to look desperate.

Scene ends on a button.

Watch it here:

Sometimes art really does imitate life!

Dating recon and some ideas.

Yesterday I hung out at a friend’s house.  It was a perfect day for being outside:  not too warm, not too cool, a pleasant breeze, mostly insect-free.  Later, after I had advised my friend on her eHarmony matches (they suckered her back in), her brother Fernando and cousin Billy Bob joined us for a game of Mexican dominoes.

Anyone who has played Mexican dominoes before knows that it is not a fast game, so I knew that I had the perfect opportunity to pick Fernando’s brain about dating and women.

Fernando’s main complaint about women and dating was that too many women are “not fun” and only want to “go to restaurants and drink wine.”  He wanted to find women who were more interested in outdoor activities like sports, hiking, and camping.  Finding non-butch church girls who like to do these things has not been an easy task.  Fernando also said that too many women only talk about themselves on dates.  When I asked what he meant, he said that they talk too much about their goals in life.  He would like to find a funny girl who can make him laugh.  When it comes to dressing, Fernando said he loves stilettos and hates pants tucked into boots, unless the pants are leggings.  (Where Fernando is going to find a funny, sporty, Christian girl who wears stilettos and doesn’t like to go to restaurants and drink wine and talk about herself the whole time is a good question.)

Fernando didn’t let the guys off too easily, either.  He said that at his church, the guys spend all their time messaging girls on Facebook and Twitter and that they have a Sunday face and a rest-of-the-week face.  Burn!

Fernando’s comments about boring dates got me brainstorming about date ideas.  Here’s a short list of activities that popped into my head:

• See how many grapes you can stuff into your mouth
• Staring contest – whoever laughs first loses
• Print out lyrics to dirty rap songs and give dramatic poetic readings of them
• Go to a store that sells hats and try on all the hats
• Go to a Halloween store and try on clown outfits
• Buy a Lego set and assemble it
• Buy a coloring book and crayons and make art for each other
• Sit on a bench and people watch and make up stories about the people (I recently rented Date Night, and Tina Fey and Steve Carell’s characters do this at restaurants as part of their date night ritual)
• Buy a foreign language beginner book with a CD, learn a few phrases, and then try them out in public
• Go to an arcade and play Dance Dance Revolution (if a group date, Guitar Hero for the Wii)

There really isn’t anything wrong with just going to a restaurant.  If you’re a foodie, trying new places can be a lot of fun.  I think the main point, especially early on, is to do something creative and interactive where you can build rapport and learn more about the other person in a way that doesn’t come off like a job interview.  (Of course, if one or both of you are dull as dirt, the tried-and-true blueprint is a blueprint for a reason….)