Frosty with No Man
Christmas is that time of year when you get together with your entire family, have a wonderful meal, and catch up on whatever is going on in everyone’s lives, or in some cases, is not going on in your life. Unfortunately for some people, Christmas is also the time of year when you not only have to explain to your mom why there is still no man sitting next to you at the table but also to all your other relatives. In my case coming from a Polish family where it’s normal to be married at my age and definitely already planning on having your first child this is not a subject that is dropped easily. Now having to explain to my mom every single time I see her that I’m certainly not a lesbian is one thing, having to explain why I don’t have a boyfriend every evening to a new group of relatives asking me the same question over and over again is another. The conclusion that they come up with every year, however, is as followed: “since you’re such a pretty girl, but you’re still all alone there must be something wrong with you”.
While this might seem a bit harsh, and believe me, it is. Reflecting back on my dating history, they might have a point. Back in 2012, after my boyfriend at the time and I broke up, I was a mess,. Because of my anxiety, I had to over-analyze every single detail and conversation that I had with my ex to find out “where it went wrong.” After driving myself crazy for months, I moved to Italy in January 2013, and I came across this book at the bookstore. Now please don’t laugh at me. I know most people already do when I tell them I watch Dr. Phil, but I was never really into all of those “self-help books,” but I figured, why not give it a go? It must work for some people, so maybe this can tell me what I did wrong because, until that point, the only reasonable explanation I had for my situation was “I’m just bonkers,” and since it was on sale, I bought the book “Mars and Venus on a Date: A guide for navigating the five stages of Dating to Create a Loving and Lasting Relationship.”
Most of you probably already died of laughter, but the ones that for some reason are still alive and reading, may I add, this book is not an “I do believe that I deserve love” type of book. No, this book tells you in 370 pages why men and women are such a mystery to each other. Now, this post will not be a summary of all of these pages, but I will highlight some interesting facts that I have learned.
I told myself after finishing it for the first time two years ago that when I meet a guy that I really do like, I will reread it to see if what is in this book is actually true. Well, my friends, that time has come. I have re-read this book and applied some of these techniques, and even though I am not telling you the ending just yet, I believe that the title of this post is a spoiler to how this story ends.
The first thing that was interesting in this book is how important being receptive is on a date. Somewhere in the first couple of chapters, there is an example of a man taking a woman out on a date. While they walk to the car, the man opens the door for his date. Now the logical thing to do here is to get in the car and say thank you. There is no need because he opened up your door that you actually have to lean over to his side of the door from the inside of the car to open his door because he opened the door for you. Of course, this is meant as a metaphor. Sometimes it’s enough to appreciate what someone does for you and just be happy about it and say thank you without actually having to think of something to do in return.
While there were a lot of things that I actually learned from this book, there were also times that I actually threw it against the wall. Being raised in Amsterdam, the independent person that we all are brought up to be just can’t really let this particular little passage go.
“In the beginning, when Earl was late, Dawn would think, Well, he is just getting used to where I live. A few months later, when Earl did it again, she got more upset with him. Instead of focusing on the fact that he got there and was happy to see him, she became upset. Earl felt Dawn was too demanding.”
The dude is late yet again. He has been coming to your house for months, so he is bright enough to calculate the distance and the amount of time that it will take him to get there on time. Now mister John Gray, writer of this book, I am not allowed to get upset over this; why? I realized the guy I’ve been dating for months is not able to calculate distance or read the time or, of course, the first thought in a woman’s mind: he doesn’t really care that I might be waiting for him, which is in any case disrespectful. I’m not sure which one of these explanations is more upsetting to tell you the truth. I would also get upset if any of my friends showed up late every single time. May I also add that if there were a sports game on, he probably would’ve been there an hour early.
My apologies. I got a bit carried away there. This little particular example feels a little close to home. I’ll try not to do it again.
Let’s try another chapter: “Why men don’t call.” Yes, most people don’t call anymore, so we can’t blame that all on men. Let’s rename this chapter and call it “Why men don’t text.” After carefully re-reading this chapter multiple times because I do believe this is one of the aspects where it mostly goes wrong, especially after the creation of Whatsapp and its lovely Last Seen feature. The explanation is apparently as follows: The Elastic effect. If you’ve gone on a date with a guy, you expect him to text you. Maybe not the same day, but definitely somewhere that week. In my opinion, it would be nice to get a text that same evening saying, “I had a good time. Let’s do it again”, but maybe that’s just me. To be honest, at this point, I’m already happy when I get a “Suuppp” a week later. Now that I think of it, I do have to re-evaluate my choice in men. anyway….
A man, on the other hand, according to mister Gray thinks, “well, I had a great time, and I hope she had too, but I have a big project at work coming up, so I’ll just call her whenever I’m done with that because I won’t be able to see her in the meantime anyway.” According to the elastic effect, a man can really like a girl, but because he’s busy doing other things, he can actually forget about her. A week or even months can pass, and she can randomly appear in his mind and be like, “oh yeah, that girl, I really do like her. Let’s see how she’s doing.”
This would explain why guys randomly message you on Facebook months or even years later... Let me remind you; this chapter made me want to burn my book because it doesn’t matter what kind of explanation you give it. To me, it’s still disrespectful. I guess I’ll probably end up writing a book titled: “Noah wrote Ally 365 letters, so I think you can text me back”
In my opinion, one thing that contradicts the elastic effect is a scene from a movie that will always reappear in my mind every time a guy doesn’t reply or cancels. In this scene, a girl is talking to her guy best friend about her date with a guy and how he cancelled on her because he’s too busy with work. Justin Long, who plays the best friend in this movie, answers her and says, “a guy is never too busy to see the girl he likes. If he gives you an excuse like that, it just means one thing and one thing only: He is just not that into you.
Damn you, Justin Long…..
The thing about this book is that it also made me realize that I do choose the wrong men. A while back, I was talking to a friend who lives in New York about a guy I like. Let’s call the guy Bob from now on. I told my friend Bob hasn’t been texting me much since I visited him in another country. My explanation for it (yes, Justin Long’s words did appear in my head, but I was still in denial) is that maybe he’s just busy and not a phone person anyway. To which my friend replied: I’m not a phone person either, and I downloaded WhatsApp to stay in touch with you, and for some reason, I call you and text you even though I have no clue how my phone works half of the time so if I can do it, so can Bob. That burned a little.
He did have a point, though, and after that conversation, I thought back to a Carrie Bradshaw quote “the only thing my exes have in common is me.” When I continued on reading the Mars Venus book, I realized my problem:
“If a woman has a history of being turned on by the wrong guys, then when she enters a room with thirty men and one man turns her on like a blowtorch, she should run the other way.”
I can go on for hours about this book, but for one post, this is enough. One thing I can tell you for sure, this story is far from over.
