My friend, Trey, was sent an article and he responded to it and sent it to me. This guy has learned the value of basic respect for another human being and I am happy to know him. I won't spoil it by saying anything else. Read for yourself. Do, however, pay special attention to the second paragraph of his response to point #4. I even highlighted it for you!
And thank you, Trey, not only for sending this to me, but for being someone of character.
=============================
Recently a friend sent me the article below and asked my opinion. First, I will not express my opinion of the source (Cosmopolitan). Secondly, I am very curious why no credit was given to the writer. Was it really a man that penned this piece? It was obviously a man so why not take credit for informing the confused female masses!?
Why Guys Dump Girls They Dig
Nothing is more upsetting than when a guy you darn well know is into you pulls the plug.
Now that you know what we will be simmering on, below are the article and my personal experiences and opinions to supplement.
**Don’t be overwhelmed by the length of this post. I promise it is an easy and worth while read.**
My initial reaction was, ‘That kind of honesty must sting a little.” I am old enough to have completed this checklist myself. It is not a proud statement but since I started dating the combination inexperience and stubbornness has allowed me to make my fair share of mistakes.
As we get older, men either get set in our ways since we have spent most of our lives single or we have already been down that road of failed relationships and any signs of returning to that state are damn scary.
Chances are that you've had at least one breakup that left you wondering, "What the heck just happened?" The guy dug you, you dug him, and the whole thing felt destined for a fabulous future — at least the foreseeable one. Then, out of nowhere, he bailed on the relationship.
So what went wrong? The sad truth is, maybe nothing. Here are five completely ridiculous reasons guys kick you to the curb. Warning: For the most part, it ain't pretty.
1. The Timing Is Off
Women get serious when they meet the right man. Men get serious with whomever we happen to be dating when we're finally ready to settle down. That means after every other aspect of our life is in order — whether it's finishing grad school, finally pulling down a good-size paycheck, owning a car outright — or when our friends start dropping like flies (that's guyspeak for getting married).
But if you catch a guy before he hits that magical stage of his life, then he's liable to bolt — like Patrick,* 28, who dumped Bridgett after two years, then got engaged to the next girl he dated after only 10 months. "When I was with Bridgett, all of my friends were single and I was still an intern with nothing going on in my career. So every time she'd bring up our future together, it felt like she was jumping the gun," he says. "I didn't break up with her because she was wrong for me. I ended it because I didn't want to commit to anyone right then. But by the time I met Elizabeth, I was in a settling-down frame of mind."
Agreed. I have spent most of my life thinking that there is a specific order to completing the puzzle of life. Equation (in order): Career + respect + money + love = happiness. I have had little success with any of these variables and I am sure now that there is no perfect or specific formula to happiness when you seek it externally.
Anyway, it is our role as men to have a career and be able to provide the shelter financially, physically and emotionally to the women we care about. I killed a relationship by crawling into the hole of self-inadequacy. How and why would a woman stay with me when I had a low paying struggling artistic career that might not ever pay off with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Well, the answer was that I was with the wrong person. Women that truly love us understand and accept us as we are. You can spend the rest of your life attempting to mold a good man into the perfect one. If you succeed he will no longer be the man you fell in love with. Yes timing is huge but it is not everything. If you believe everything happens for a reason, in hindsight you will always be validated.
On another note but still timing related…We all know men mature later than women. I hate to remind you women but that biological clock doesn't help the timing issues. Don’t even try to deny it. You might disarm the bomb but you all harbor it from birth until your mission is fulfilled or the bomb squad dismantled the self-destruct mode. Men want children or they don’t. So we find women like-minded or date younger women that don’t yet have 'baby on the brain'. Since this is all unsettling information and you are already thinking the worst of men I will add this: younger women might be ‘hotter’ but nothing replaces experience and maturity. Men only date younger women for sex or to allow themselves to feel younger, not for their conversation skills. Sex is great but if you can't talk before or after you might as well get a hooker and pay her to leave.
2. We're Not Finished Playing the Field
Men are natural-born one-uppers. If there's a possibility of upgrading what we already have for something better (that'll make our friends drool), we say, bring it on! So we wind up always wondering if you're really as good as it gets. (I know, scumbag mentality.) "Whenever I meet a new hot chick, I consider what it would be like to date her, even if I have a girlfriend at the time," says Andy, 30. "The grass is always greener. No matter how great his current girl is, a guy doesn't want to feel like he's missing out."
In addition to our opportunistic tendencies, most guys feel compelled to put as many sexual conquests under their belts as possible. "I admit it — I know the exact number of girls I've slept with, no mental calculation required," says Dan, 29. "That's how aware I am of how many notches I have. And I'd never commit until I felt like I'd experienced enough different women."
Every guy's definition of enough is different, so there's a chance he wrote you off just because you didn't come late enough on his own personal hit list. The moral of the story: Until we grow up, mark everything off our sexual checklists or have too many friends convince us that we can't do better than you, the flight risk is real.
Yes, the grass is always greener when we are looking through a fence. But at the same time when we spend our time drooling over the next pasture we allow the current one to die from neglect. You can’t expect a perfect pasture without tending to the crop.
Now, in a contradictory statement all men know that no matter how beautiful, successful, wild, sweet, funny, sexy, loyal, etc a woman is, there is always a man (or woman) that is tired of her. Statistically speaking, most relationships fail. That means, women that we could not have then, maybe we can now or next week or next month and so on. If we stay single long enough we will find the perfect women and be with many 'not so perfect' ones along the way. I know it sounds horrible.
Secondly, I am a firm believer that numbers are irrelevant and that nothing can come of divulging or even keeping a mental or physical list of sexual partners. Again, nothing good can come of this. Who you were or who you were with means nothing now. Your experiences make you who you are. The present and the future mean more than the past because you can’t change the past.
3. We're Fixated on the Worst-Case Scenario
From the times you chastise us for leaving a wet towel on the bed to those nights you rip through a pint of fudge ripple without stopping to breathe, we file each incident in a mental folder labeled "Evidence She'll Change for the Worse." We flip through that file whenever we're trying to decide if we want to hang on to the relationship. Blame our married friends who took the plunge before us, but many single guys are hyperaware of what could go wrong down the road.
Even if we're crazy about you now, we panic that you'll pack on the pounds, want sex only once a month and nag us day and night. So we secretly flag certain things we're scared might be a harbinger of bad things to come. "I've seen it happen to too many of my friends," says Elliot, 29. "All they do is complain about how the sex takes a total nosedive after they get serious with a girl. So sometimes, even if the woman I'm dating is a saucy little minx, I freak out and bail."
Pick your battles. Most arguments are over miniscule things that only affect your life at that moment. We fight change more than women, especially the older we get and the longer we live our lives on our terms. So please go easy on us. Don’t tell us what to do. Request politely a few times before you get upset because we did not buy the expensive toilet paper or forgot to take out the trash. We are task oriented most of the time and sometimes our minds jump from task to task, ‘take out the trash to football to the deadline at work to the weather and back to what…what was I supposed to do?’ Remember if you can convince a man that your idea was his, he will do anything you want.
I call it the Seinfeld Syndrome. When you are looking for perfection you will never find it. Whether it is ‘Man Hands’, hairy arms, cankles, large nose, small ears, a cackle laugh, a lisp, etc…you can always talk yourself out of investing time in someone. Yes, we want to see a photo of your mother to predict your physical future. I know, ‘All men are assholes!’. Not true, we all have asshole tendencies. To be fair I think all men have the asshole gene and women have the bitch gene and at some point we all need to use them…in self preservation situations.
4. We’re in Like, Not in Love
It's harsh but true. In fact, it's probably the most common reason we bolt. Just because a guy likes you a lot isn't a guarantee that it will evolve into love. And we're surprisingly intuitive when it comes to figuring out a girl's potential on this front. "I stayed with one woman for two years because the sex was great and she never pushed the issue, but I knew the minute I met her that she wasn't The One," says David, 30.
So why do we invest any time in a relationship that we know will ultimately end? Because we're able to live in the moment for a while and chalk it up to a good experience. But once you show that you're way more into us than we are into you, we'll dump you out of guilt. "I dated this girl for about a year, but as soon as she started using the L word, I had to end it," recalls Jay, 29. "It was hard. I cared about her and didn't want to hurt her. But I knew that if I stuck around, she'd have been happier at first but miserable later on. After all, she deserved to be with someone who loved her as much as she loved me."
I have a friend that always says, “It’s always worth a story.” Sure we often jump before we think. But I think we choose right away what category of women we are jumping into a situation with. We know pretty quickly if it is for fun, sex or relationship. Come on, potential is great because if you don’t use it you still have it. Most often we fall out of love instead of from like to love. So to me, potential means nothing, ‘show me the money!’ Although, I am not saying it is impossible. My mother always said a relationship is like building a house. The foundation is friendship. You can build a beautiful, enormous, elaborate home but if the foundation is bad the house caves in.
Yes, sometimes we allow the roots of a relationship even knowing in end the plant may live but the flowers will always die. I was briefly married during the worst four years of my life. I tried to help three different people that couldn’t even help themselves. So I responded by spending a few years being incredibly selfish. The most selfish I have been in my entire life. I dated many women and it always ended when they wanted more. I justified my rude and inappropriate behavior by stating up front to each of them where I was and what I could offer and nothing more. After coming to my senses and taking a self-implemented sabbatical from dating, I went back and apologized to most of them. I am friends with most of my ex-girlfriends and many of my flings. I genuinely liked them and I still do. I truly believe we all deserve to be treated with respect. [bolding mine]
5. We're Too into You
Just when you thought it was all bad news, here's a hard-to-fess-up admission: Guys are protective of their emotions. Translation: We're scared spitless of being hurt. So, if we start to feel like we're getting into a situation where we'll be destroyed if you dump us, we might launch a preemptive strike and yank the plug first.
For Gary, 27, showing his girlfriend of two years the exit felt like the only choice. "She was the first girl I was serious with, and I didn't like letting someone have that much power over me. I was starting to feel emotionally needy, and that was uncomfortable for me," he recalls. "So I ditched her to save myself!"
Sounds crazy, but cut us some slack. Think about how vulnerable and paranoid you feel when you're nuts about a guy, and realize that we go through the same thing with girls we really like. But our friends aren't as good at helping us get over an ex as yours are, plus being openly heartbroken makes us look like wusses. Nope, it's better to act like a winner before you turn us into a loser, which is when our natural self-preservation may come into play. Before the real humiliation and pain assail us like a plague, ending the relationship seems like a good option.
No one likes rejection. Although I have done it, I call bullshit. We need to grow up and communicate. Why waste anyone’s time? Life is short. Be open. Be honest. Dating is a process. I think we all take it too personally. The best part of dating is getting to know someone. Respect yourself and others. You get back what you put out there. It is easier to recognize problems and issues early on and tackle them or move on. The longer we invest the longer the recovery and the worse the pain. I don’t know about you but I have had enough pain and heartbreak. I am not saying pull the rip cord as soon as she sees a hole in your armor or the little man behind the curtain. However, if you never let go you will never know.
by Trey Mitchell and Unknown
And thank you, Trey, not only for sending this to me, but for being someone of character.
=============================
Recently a friend sent me the article below and asked my opinion. First, I will not express my opinion of the source (Cosmopolitan). Secondly, I am very curious why no credit was given to the writer. Was it really a man that penned this piece? It was obviously a man so why not take credit for informing the confused female masses!?
Why Guys Dump Girls They Dig
Nothing is more upsetting than when a guy you darn well know is into you pulls the plug.
Now that you know what we will be simmering on, below are the article and my personal experiences and opinions to supplement.
**Don’t be overwhelmed by the length of this post. I promise it is an easy and worth while read.**
My initial reaction was, ‘That kind of honesty must sting a little.” I am old enough to have completed this checklist myself. It is not a proud statement but since I started dating the combination inexperience and stubbornness has allowed me to make my fair share of mistakes.
As we get older, men either get set in our ways since we have spent most of our lives single or we have already been down that road of failed relationships and any signs of returning to that state are damn scary.
Chances are that you've had at least one breakup that left you wondering, "What the heck just happened?" The guy dug you, you dug him, and the whole thing felt destined for a fabulous future — at least the foreseeable one. Then, out of nowhere, he bailed on the relationship.
So what went wrong? The sad truth is, maybe nothing. Here are five completely ridiculous reasons guys kick you to the curb. Warning: For the most part, it ain't pretty.
1. The Timing Is Off
Women get serious when they meet the right man. Men get serious with whomever we happen to be dating when we're finally ready to settle down. That means after every other aspect of our life is in order — whether it's finishing grad school, finally pulling down a good-size paycheck, owning a car outright — or when our friends start dropping like flies (that's guyspeak for getting married).
But if you catch a guy before he hits that magical stage of his life, then he's liable to bolt — like Patrick,* 28, who dumped Bridgett after two years, then got engaged to the next girl he dated after only 10 months. "When I was with Bridgett, all of my friends were single and I was still an intern with nothing going on in my career. So every time she'd bring up our future together, it felt like she was jumping the gun," he says. "I didn't break up with her because she was wrong for me. I ended it because I didn't want to commit to anyone right then. But by the time I met Elizabeth, I was in a settling-down frame of mind."
Agreed. I have spent most of my life thinking that there is a specific order to completing the puzzle of life. Equation (in order): Career + respect + money + love = happiness. I have had little success with any of these variables and I am sure now that there is no perfect or specific formula to happiness when you seek it externally.
Anyway, it is our role as men to have a career and be able to provide the shelter financially, physically and emotionally to the women we care about. I killed a relationship by crawling into the hole of self-inadequacy. How and why would a woman stay with me when I had a low paying struggling artistic career that might not ever pay off with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Well, the answer was that I was with the wrong person. Women that truly love us understand and accept us as we are. You can spend the rest of your life attempting to mold a good man into the perfect one. If you succeed he will no longer be the man you fell in love with. Yes timing is huge but it is not everything. If you believe everything happens for a reason, in hindsight you will always be validated.
On another note but still timing related…We all know men mature later than women. I hate to remind you women but that biological clock doesn't help the timing issues. Don’t even try to deny it. You might disarm the bomb but you all harbor it from birth until your mission is fulfilled or the bomb squad dismantled the self-destruct mode. Men want children or they don’t. So we find women like-minded or date younger women that don’t yet have 'baby on the brain'. Since this is all unsettling information and you are already thinking the worst of men I will add this: younger women might be ‘hotter’ but nothing replaces experience and maturity. Men only date younger women for sex or to allow themselves to feel younger, not for their conversation skills. Sex is great but if you can't talk before or after you might as well get a hooker and pay her to leave.
2. We're Not Finished Playing the Field
Men are natural-born one-uppers. If there's a possibility of upgrading what we already have for something better (that'll make our friends drool), we say, bring it on! So we wind up always wondering if you're really as good as it gets. (I know, scumbag mentality.) "Whenever I meet a new hot chick, I consider what it would be like to date her, even if I have a girlfriend at the time," says Andy, 30. "The grass is always greener. No matter how great his current girl is, a guy doesn't want to feel like he's missing out."
In addition to our opportunistic tendencies, most guys feel compelled to put as many sexual conquests under their belts as possible. "I admit it — I know the exact number of girls I've slept with, no mental calculation required," says Dan, 29. "That's how aware I am of how many notches I have. And I'd never commit until I felt like I'd experienced enough different women."
Every guy's definition of enough is different, so there's a chance he wrote you off just because you didn't come late enough on his own personal hit list. The moral of the story: Until we grow up, mark everything off our sexual checklists or have too many friends convince us that we can't do better than you, the flight risk is real.
Yes, the grass is always greener when we are looking through a fence. But at the same time when we spend our time drooling over the next pasture we allow the current one to die from neglect. You can’t expect a perfect pasture without tending to the crop.
Now, in a contradictory statement all men know that no matter how beautiful, successful, wild, sweet, funny, sexy, loyal, etc a woman is, there is always a man (or woman) that is tired of her. Statistically speaking, most relationships fail. That means, women that we could not have then, maybe we can now or next week or next month and so on. If we stay single long enough we will find the perfect women and be with many 'not so perfect' ones along the way. I know it sounds horrible.
Secondly, I am a firm believer that numbers are irrelevant and that nothing can come of divulging or even keeping a mental or physical list of sexual partners. Again, nothing good can come of this. Who you were or who you were with means nothing now. Your experiences make you who you are. The present and the future mean more than the past because you can’t change the past.
3. We're Fixated on the Worst-Case Scenario
From the times you chastise us for leaving a wet towel on the bed to those nights you rip through a pint of fudge ripple without stopping to breathe, we file each incident in a mental folder labeled "Evidence She'll Change for the Worse." We flip through that file whenever we're trying to decide if we want to hang on to the relationship. Blame our married friends who took the plunge before us, but many single guys are hyperaware of what could go wrong down the road.
Even if we're crazy about you now, we panic that you'll pack on the pounds, want sex only once a month and nag us day and night. So we secretly flag certain things we're scared might be a harbinger of bad things to come. "I've seen it happen to too many of my friends," says Elliot, 29. "All they do is complain about how the sex takes a total nosedive after they get serious with a girl. So sometimes, even if the woman I'm dating is a saucy little minx, I freak out and bail."
Pick your battles. Most arguments are over miniscule things that only affect your life at that moment. We fight change more than women, especially the older we get and the longer we live our lives on our terms. So please go easy on us. Don’t tell us what to do. Request politely a few times before you get upset because we did not buy the expensive toilet paper or forgot to take out the trash. We are task oriented most of the time and sometimes our minds jump from task to task, ‘take out the trash to football to the deadline at work to the weather and back to what…what was I supposed to do?’ Remember if you can convince a man that your idea was his, he will do anything you want.
I call it the Seinfeld Syndrome. When you are looking for perfection you will never find it. Whether it is ‘Man Hands’, hairy arms, cankles, large nose, small ears, a cackle laugh, a lisp, etc…you can always talk yourself out of investing time in someone. Yes, we want to see a photo of your mother to predict your physical future. I know, ‘All men are assholes!’. Not true, we all have asshole tendencies. To be fair I think all men have the asshole gene and women have the bitch gene and at some point we all need to use them…in self preservation situations.
4. We’re in Like, Not in Love
It's harsh but true. In fact, it's probably the most common reason we bolt. Just because a guy likes you a lot isn't a guarantee that it will evolve into love. And we're surprisingly intuitive when it comes to figuring out a girl's potential on this front. "I stayed with one woman for two years because the sex was great and she never pushed the issue, but I knew the minute I met her that she wasn't The One," says David, 30.
So why do we invest any time in a relationship that we know will ultimately end? Because we're able to live in the moment for a while and chalk it up to a good experience. But once you show that you're way more into us than we are into you, we'll dump you out of guilt. "I dated this girl for about a year, but as soon as she started using the L word, I had to end it," recalls Jay, 29. "It was hard. I cared about her and didn't want to hurt her. But I knew that if I stuck around, she'd have been happier at first but miserable later on. After all, she deserved to be with someone who loved her as much as she loved me."
I have a friend that always says, “It’s always worth a story.” Sure we often jump before we think. But I think we choose right away what category of women we are jumping into a situation with. We know pretty quickly if it is for fun, sex or relationship. Come on, potential is great because if you don’t use it you still have it. Most often we fall out of love instead of from like to love. So to me, potential means nothing, ‘show me the money!’ Although, I am not saying it is impossible. My mother always said a relationship is like building a house. The foundation is friendship. You can build a beautiful, enormous, elaborate home but if the foundation is bad the house caves in.
Yes, sometimes we allow the roots of a relationship even knowing in end the plant may live but the flowers will always die. I was briefly married during the worst four years of my life. I tried to help three different people that couldn’t even help themselves. So I responded by spending a few years being incredibly selfish. The most selfish I have been in my entire life. I dated many women and it always ended when they wanted more. I justified my rude and inappropriate behavior by stating up front to each of them where I was and what I could offer and nothing more. After coming to my senses and taking a self-implemented sabbatical from dating, I went back and apologized to most of them. I am friends with most of my ex-girlfriends and many of my flings. I genuinely liked them and I still do. I truly believe we all deserve to be treated with respect. [bolding mine]
5. We're Too into You
Just when you thought it was all bad news, here's a hard-to-fess-up admission: Guys are protective of their emotions. Translation: We're scared spitless of being hurt. So, if we start to feel like we're getting into a situation where we'll be destroyed if you dump us, we might launch a preemptive strike and yank the plug first.
For Gary, 27, showing his girlfriend of two years the exit felt like the only choice. "She was the first girl I was serious with, and I didn't like letting someone have that much power over me. I was starting to feel emotionally needy, and that was uncomfortable for me," he recalls. "So I ditched her to save myself!"
Sounds crazy, but cut us some slack. Think about how vulnerable and paranoid you feel when you're nuts about a guy, and realize that we go through the same thing with girls we really like. But our friends aren't as good at helping us get over an ex as yours are, plus being openly heartbroken makes us look like wusses. Nope, it's better to act like a winner before you turn us into a loser, which is when our natural self-preservation may come into play. Before the real humiliation and pain assail us like a plague, ending the relationship seems like a good option.
No one likes rejection. Although I have done it, I call bullshit. We need to grow up and communicate. Why waste anyone’s time? Life is short. Be open. Be honest. Dating is a process. I think we all take it too personally. The best part of dating is getting to know someone. Respect yourself and others. You get back what you put out there. It is easier to recognize problems and issues early on and tackle them or move on. The longer we invest the longer the recovery and the worse the pain. I don’t know about you but I have had enough pain and heartbreak. I am not saying pull the rip cord as soon as she sees a hole in your armor or the little man behind the curtain. However, if you never let go you will never know.
by Trey Mitchell and Unknown
No comments:
Post a Comment