The Bitter Single Guy’s Relationship Advice

Another Ice Cream Saturday Night

Saturday night and the ice cream is flowing…

Dear Bitter Single Guy: It’s a Saturday night and pitifully I have stumbled onto your website after vowing to stay in my pj’s and to end all attempts at contact with the opposite sex forevermore.  Wish I had a good recent story of a breakup or crazy codependent shenanigans to share, but instead I write partially out of a sense of boredom and apathy, and partially… no wait… it’s almost totally out of boredom. Sorry. But wait… I just read your little bio that you have a Masters in Psychology, which has upped my interest and made me want to at least try to formulate something worthy of a Masters level psychological type response.

O.k., here is my attempt… I have never been a dater, and have only ever been in one serious long term relationship in my 33 years on this planet.  I have liked guys who didn’t like me, and I have been liked by guys who I thought were moderately psychotic or at least semi-geeky and not my type. Now I have joined an online dating site, simply because I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my existence, but I am finding that this experience is growing old very fast.  I find it exhausting trying to be some perky, chipper wifey type material- and I have interestingly found that a good chunk of the guys that I am supposed to be compatible with stop writing when they hear about my education (yup – Masters as well). And then I get exhausted trying to weed through the profiles of 40 something year olds who still live with their mothers which are frequently sent my way.

So here are my questions… do I give up and live in my pj’s for the rest of my life?  Do I pretend to be an un-intelligent simple girl just so I don’t scare guys off?  Do I just try to come to grips with the fact that if I don’t want to be alone I need to hook up with a mildly psychotic mama’s boy?

I’m going to go find some ice cream.  This is depressing. ~Investing in Ben & Jerry’s~

Dear IBJ: Wow, the Bitter Single Guy is impressed! Take note, teens and twenty-somethings: there is a level of bitterness accessible in your thirties and beyond that you can only imagine now.

Several things IBJ:

• You have to play the game, at least a little, if you expect to win. If you’re not a dater, then it’s going to take longer for you to find a useful relationship than it would for someone who’s in the game.
• The BSG will delicately say that your interpretation of guys bolting when they hear about your education is much more likely to be your baggage than theirs. But if it’s not, then the BSG suggests meeting more guys whose experiences (including education) are more like yours.
• Online dating is not what people want it to be. Don’t sign up for one of these services and then sit back and wait for the offers to roll in. Online dating is a process of you responding to profiles in order to have way more conversations than you want in order to find one that fits.
• Finally, why don’t you find other things to do on a Saturday night? Hang with friends, join a social group, take up music lessons or some such thing. There are all sorts of ways to spend rewarding time (the BSG means NO disrespect to ice cream here) than just going on dates.

Patience, IBJ. Believe it or not, there are some folks for whom relationships come infrequently. Your time will come; do what you can now to be ready when it comes.

~BSG~