Greg Behrendt - It’s Just a Date - A Guide to a Sane Dating Life

Women always have and always will continue to date a man’s potential instead of his reality. We can’t help ourselves. It’s in a woman’s nature to be hopeful and to see the possibilities, the greatness that people possess. Hooray for us, aren’t we lovely? We are, but dating someone’s potential is probably the biggest mistake women make in relationships and certainly the one that leads to our romantic downfall. That’s because there are three types of men: the ones that find our faith in their potential to be appealing, the ones that find our faith in their potential to be a burden … and the ones that find it appealing at first then are crushed by the burden of their un-reached potential and resentful of the woman they once adored for that very faith.

The problem is that we don’t know which of the three the man of our dreams is going to be until it’s often too late. Once you’ve unintentionally crushed a man’s ego (read: once he decides that he doesn’t want to reach the potential you have for him) it’s hard for him to be excited about you anymore. Then it’s just a matter of time before the sex starts diminishing, there’s bickering where there wasn’t any before and the distance between you begins an expansion that is unwieldy.

More often than not, dating a man’s potential is the long road to disaster—so listen to who he says he is and take him at his word. If you can love who he is now and not have your attraction be based on who he might become then you’re in good shape. If you’re not, well then you best keep looking because most people have different aspirations than you might have for them.

Love isn’t swimming upstream.

Part One

You are now entering a new way of dating and living. Old habits are not welcome and failure is not an option. Those not willing to make some serious changes should turn back now and get a few cats to keep you company .

1

The 8 Super Extraordinary Principles For Ultra-Successful Winner Dating™

You probably were skulking around the bookstore mumbling to yourself, “My dating life’s a mess—I sure wish I had some guidelines for dating more successfully.” Well today’s your lucky day, so buck up Sugarpot because that’s exactly what we have for you! Super Extraordinary Strategies for Ultra-Successful Winner Dating™. We know that dating has become a confusing mess for most single folks out in the world, and quite honestly it shouldn’t be that way. Dating was one of the most well structured, well thought out things that our generation inherited. How we managed to f*#k that one up is a mystery. Or is it? In fact it’s not a mystery at all. In our natural evolution as humans and as we’ve become a more liberal society we’ve rid ourselves of ideas or thought processes that don’t work. Certainly there are formalities and expected behaviors that do need updating and revising to keep up with the contemporary times, but dating, as it turns out, may not have been one that needed much. The radical revision of dating that followed the sexual revolution and its continual morphing that has come with the advances in communication technology (like emails, texting, etc. …) has turned dating into a blur of booty calls and ambiguous hanging out. And the result is a lot of unhappy and unclear people that are in complete disharmony with their romantic universe.

What women are craving is the formality of dating because of the clarity that it would provide for them. Think about the collective sigh of relief from just the knowledge alone that when you’re asked out that you’re actually on a date. Instead of spending the time trying to figure out if you’re on a date, just hanging out as friends or being sized up as a candidate for casual sex. Dating is something that YOU have control over so if you want it to change, if you want to take control of your dating life you have to take it upon yourself to be very serious about and completely committed to HOW you date. You have to have a set of standards that you live and date by without exception. Which means formulating a dating strategy and instituting dating policy for yourself, then sticking to it. It sounds ridiculous but it’s not. In fact, had you done it earlier you might be in a very different place with your love life and been able to save that $19.95 (or whatever this book costs) you spent on this fantastic piece of literature, put it into a high yielding mutual fund and turned it into at least $1,047 billion dollars by the time you retire. (These numbers are guess-timations made by two book writers that have no experience or financial expertise and cannot be held accountable for the way you spend your money.)

We know the word strategy in relation to dating can sound like an underhanded manipulation of another person and that is NOT at all what we’re talking about. Strategy, in the dictionary, is defined as: 1.The science or art of planning or conducting a war or military campaign. (Nope!) 2.Carefully devised plan of action to achieve a goal or the art of developing or carrying out such a plan. (Wrong again!) 3. An evolutionary theory, a behavior structure, or other adaptation that improves viability. AHA! Bingo! Now we’re talking!

There’s an element of strategy in everything that we do in life and there’s nothing wrong with that. There are choices, actions and consequences. That’s what everything in life is and dating is no exception. Like the time you agreed to let the drummer for “Mighty Lemon Phillipshead” come up for a nightcap—that’s a choice. Then woke up the next morning to find him in your room-mate’s bed—that’s a consequence. To be fair, it was dark in your apartment but still … No, no, no that’s just another excuse you make to cover for making bad choices. The truth is you actually liked him and hoped to go out on a second date and had you said goodnight at the front door you might’ve had a chance . So let’s embrace the idea of creating a strategy for dating and your life so that the choices you make are better. As they say in that popular book that features that guy Jesus, “Faith without works is dead.” Meaning you can believe you want a better dating life but unless you’re willing to do the work, nothing will change. “Wow you got all serious on me. I didn’t think Jesus went on dates.” Well now you know why people got so mad about The DaVinci Code . But let’s get back to you …

If your experiences are anything like the throngs of emails and letters we get complaining about the state of dating then you know that for most men you encounter, dating is something they only have to do if they can’t get away with hanging out under less formal circumstances (or they can’t get you to fool around with them at the bar). It’s probably the single most frustrating thing we hear about in all of our varied “What’s the deal with men?” conversations. The deal is that THEY FOLLOW YOUR LEAD . That means if you give them the easy way out, that’s what they’ll take.

It’s important to recognize that while you can change the way a man dresses, you can’t change the way he approaches dating. You can only inspire him to want to change that for himself so that he gets to spend time with you. The thing you determine is the value of your time, the value of your company and how you date . Those are the only things you are in complete control of, but that’s enough to turn the tide. Think about it … it’s only when you set the value of your time low and you agree to non-dates that they can exist for you. However, if you maintain a high standard for how you date and you don’t accept the premise of quasi-dating, non-dating and hanging out then you leave him with only two choices: to ask you out on a proper date or to do without your company. And if he chooses the latter then you’re better off anyway because getting to spend time with you is a gigantic prize.