I was fortunate enough to have a few girlfriends, and although they were wrought with issues, they provided good experience for me at relationships as well as teaching me exactly what I DIDN’T want in a woman. I dated an alcoholic, a slut, a girl who was simply pitying me, and a single mom. In that order. I found out that those are four things that weren’t for me.

It didn’t help that three of the four were selfish users. I pretty much assumed all women were that way.

The reality was, I didn’t really date in the traditional sense very much, even when I had a girlfriend. The first girl, Ms. Right and I never “went out.” We just hung out at her apartment and watched movies and such. Never really went out to dinner or things like that. The slut and I would go shopping together and the occasional meal, but that relationship didn’t last long because she ultimately cheated on me, and then cheated on that guy, and the next guy, etc.

The closest I got to dating was the girl who was pitying me. She didn’t want to be with me, but she felt I needed a girlfriend (I didn’t know this till after the fact) so she took it upon herself. We went out a lot. We shopped, went to movies, went for drinks, went for dinner, went to the ice cream shop, etc. Even though we spent a lot of time at her apartment watching movies and stuff, we still went out at least once a week. Sadly, she led me to believe that she genuinely wanted to be with me, but was actually constantly looking for an upgrade. Ouch.

The single mom and I went to UMKC together. I met her after I bought my house, so the natural thing seemed to be that she would come over. We didn’t really go out anywhere. It seemed perfectly normal to me both because I never dated much and I’m really a homebody. She was a nice (albeit crazy) girl, but I didn’t feel I was ready to be a stepdad, especially since the baby’s biological dad was a jealous lunatic hell-bent on killing me.

Finally, I met the Jenna. Online. Dating someone you meet online who lives 1100 miles away is difficult to say the least. We went back and forth between cities for several months, but we didn’t go out on dates. We were both too jet lagged to do anything but hang out at each other’s homes. Once she moved here, we couldn’t afford to go out, so we got into the comfortable habit of spending all our time at home.

That meant Jenna and I never actually dated.

We have decided to remedy that situation but implementing a weekly date night. This week we went to see Star Trek at the AMC Cinema Suites. Jenna informed me that I’m “the man” so I have to decide what we’re doing on our dates. That plays to my strengths because I’m much more comfortable going out if I planned it.

So here’s to finally dating someone who’s not an alcoholic, slut, person pitying me, or single mom.

Oh yeah, and that I’m married to…

On my blog, I’ve always referred to her as Ms. Right, because that’s what she always called herself. Ms. Right and I had a very volatile relationship. We were that couple that would have knock-down-drag-out fights followed by mushy makeups. Rinse, repeat. There was no in between with her, we were either fighting or we were being sickly romantic and mushy. It’s probably a testament to how immature we both were at the time.

She was a CPA, I was a college student working nights (4:30 PM to 3:00 AM). She would frequently pick me up for my 8 PM lunch, we’d go somewhere and be mushy. When the weather was bad, she’s come down at 3:00 AM and start my car and scrape the windows. Then in the morning when it was time for her to work, I’d go out and scrape her windows. It made no sense at all, since she should have been sleeping at 3 AM and I should have been sleeping at 8 AM, but that’s just how it was.

Ms. Right lived with her younger sister, Ms. Hyperslut, who had a propensity for wandering around the apartment naked. It always struck me as odd that Ms. Right didn’t care her sister was acting like that in front of me. Apparently I wasn’t special, Ms. Hyperslut did that in front of EVERYONE.

Ms. Right also liked to drink. When I was working, she and Ms. Hyperslut would get hyper drunk at the apartment nearly every day. Ms. Hyperslut was VERY fun (combining a nudist with alcohol is always entertaining) when she drank. Ms. Right, on the other hand, became a raging psychopath.

One night, about 1 AM, I was at work and got a phone call from Ms. Right. She was obviously very very drunk, and almost unintelligible. But I could tell she was angry. She was screaming and slurring about what an awful jerk I was, and when I tried to respond, she hung up on me. I tried to call back and she ignored the call.

Now, any friend of mine will tell you I’m slow to anger and abounding in love (that’s a God reference in case you’re wondering). I have almost boundless patience with the most awful people on Earth. I’ve only really lost my temper 3 or 4 times in my life (really)… and this was one of them. There’s something about being hung up on that sends me into a rage every single time. It’s such a cowardly, passive aggressive thing to do, it’s automatic. This time was no exception.

I tried calling another time, and she ignored it, so I left her a message about how nobody hangs up on me blah blah blah.

I literally grabbed my stuff and left work that second. I sped to the apartment. She had propped a chair behind the door because she got my message and knew I was ticked. (And because she was psycho and assumed I’d beat her up.) I tried opening the door a couple of times, and it wouldn’t budge. So naturally, I kicked it in. It broke the door jam and ripped the doorknob off, but that wasn’t the end of it.

When I got into the apartment, Ms. Hyperslut was sitting on the couch giggling, and Ms. Right had locked herself in her room.

I didn’t even bother to knock on the bedroom door, I went straight to kicking it in. Of course, the door jam splintered and the door (which was hollow) split open. I went into the bedroom and Ms. Right was cowering in the bed. In classic 19 year old form, I gave her the “naughty girl finger shake” and said “Don’t EVER hand up on me again.”

Then I left and went back to work.

The next day, Ms. Right started calling me, and I ignored her. She called me about 50 times a day for the next 2 weeks, and I continued to ignore her. After a couple weeks of punishment, I decided to get over it, and I went to her apartment. She’d paid to have the doors fixed so the apartment people wouldn’t find out. Ms. Hyperslut had egged it on my telling Ms. Right I’d told her I never wanted to see her again. Ms. Right had been too drunk to remember anything.

A few years later, another girl (she was a semi-girlfriend… we acted like we were dating but told everyone we weren’t) hung up on me. By that time, I’d learned that kicking in doors could get you arrested, so naturally I responded by throwing my phone off the pavement. That one was a little more expensive, but it lacked the dramatic flair of the door kicking incident.

Ms. Right and I didn’t ultimately work out, in part because she was a drunk raging psychopath (and is now a lesbian… go figure). However, the dramatic nature of the relationship taught me that I didn’t want to have a relationship with drama, which was a lesson well worth learning.

At work, failing to set realistic expectations can mean that people assume you can do any task in any amount of time they need. “I need you to build a new fully-integrated customer database. We’ll launch it tomorrow.” Things like that happen in the workplace all the time. Sometimes it’s caused by having a boss that is clueless about the difficulty of what he or she is asking. But more often than not, it’s because you always do what he or she asks and you always get it done by the deadline, regardless how arbitrary or extreme.

If the same employee had regularly missed deadlines, pushed back, and told the boss things were impossible, perhaps the expectations wouldn’t be so high. Maybe they could even have a dialogue about what was realistic…. a sort of give and take. There’s only so much to be said for being a good soldier.

I can achieve almost any deadline given one important rule – I get to do it 100% my way. You can’t make any deadline if you’re relying on input from others. The law of meetings applies (to calculate the IQ of a group, start with 100 and subtract 5 points for each person).

The same is true in relationships. In my relationships, I always made the mistake of setting the bar for myself too high right off the bat. I would lavish girlfriends with fancy gifts and far too much attention. The result was always the same. The moment I slowed down the pace of my giving or attention, they would be angry and ultimately dump me. I used to think it was because they were just selfish, superficial beeotches (which they were), but it’s more accurate to say that I set a certain level of expectation and when I slowed down, it appeared to them that I no longer cared.

I can fully understand why many men are cheap and jerky to the women they date. When they do something nice for their girlfriend, she is ecstatic and shocked. It’s all about setting the tone right from the start. You can’t ever LOWER expectations successfully. You can only raise them. And once they go up, they stay up.

The key to a happy life is for everyone to think you’re a barely competent, cheap bastard.

For many of you, congratulations – you’ve succeeded!

As you know, Jenna and I got married last September on the beach in Maine. Before that, we had dated for 3 1/2 years, and she’d lived here in Kansas City for 3 of those years. We were already pretty used to each other by the time we got married, so the little daily annoyances weren’t really an issue for us.

After we got married, Jenna’s brother moved out, giving us our entire house for the first time in almost 3 years. Yay!

Anyhow, there are a lot of reasons why our relationship works so well. We couldn’t be more different in our personalities. She’s social, outgoing, energetic, and has a million things going on at all times. I’m a homebody, quiet, and try to spend as much time as possible away from social settings.

But for some reason, it still works great. The main reason is we both appreciate each others’ personalities. I like her outgoing, friendly personality. I’m not the jealous type, so I’m fine with her going out with friends, having all the social interaction she can handle. I don’t get mad at her for not being home with me all the time.

By the same token, she likes my stable, quiet personality. I’m sure she wishes she could get me out of the house more, but she understands that’s not who I am and she doesn’t get mad at me for being myself.

I think that’s really the secret. Any 2 people can have a good relationship if they appreciate the others’ personality and allow them to be themselves. It’s when one person tries to change the other person that things fall apart, because let’s face it – by the time you’re 30, you are who you are.

She knows that I’ll take care of things like the bills, maintaining the house and cars, etc. I know she’ll take care of making friends and keeping me meeting new people, even if that takes place at our house (the ultimate social event that makes both of us happy…). Her ease at making friendships is something I will probably never have, so I needed to marry someone who had that. And she will probably never have the focus or desire to handle bills, maintenance, etc. She needs someone in her life that is steady, and that’s me.

It wasn’t seamless from the start. We both had well established habits and single lifestyles when we met. But we knew we wanted to be together and learning to appreciate each others’ strengths instead of being unhappy about our differences was the key.

In addition to being a friendly, outgoing person, Jenna also constantly surprises me with her huge heart. She is not a superficial friend to people. She genuinely cares about their well being. And she supports me in what I want to do, whatever that may be.

A peaceful, stable, happy relationship does wonders for bringing balance to your life. But sorry, Jenna’s already taken.

Now on to today’s topic.

Before I opine about Jon and Kate Plus 8, let me first tell you that I have NEVER watched the show, and I never plan to. It’s not because I’m opposed to reality TV. It’s more that I’ve already watched 18 Kids and Counting (the Duggar family) and 8 kids just isn’t that impressive or interesting.

I have, however, seen many excerpts from the show on The Soup with Joel McHale – a hilarious clip show that pokes fun at all of the weekly TV shows.

Jon looks like a deer in the headlights in every single clip. Kate is a domineering battle ax. She talks non-stop in the interviews, and if he tries to say anything she snaps at him and gives him dirty looks. She’s constantly bossing him around like he’s a little kid. He looks extremely unhappy, like a man who’s given up on his dreams.

I blame Kate, because the kids seem relatively well behaved and nice.

So this week the big news story was that Jon was caught with another woman.

Ya think?!

Sure, he shouldn’t cheat on the mother of his 8 children, but if ever there was a case where he was driven into the arms of another woman, this is it. I wouldn’t have stayed with Kate for five minutes.

Needless to say, the show may have to be renamed if they end up divorcing. I’m suggesting Jon and Kate, Minus Kate. Because if I were the kids, I’d want to be in his custody…

OMG.

First of all, how did so many idiots become millionaires? Most of the candidates I saw on this show were barely able to form a sentence including a noun and a verb. Yet they were business executives, entrepreneurs, etc. Apparently that old saw about not what you know but who you know has some real teeth.

Anyhow, they do like a police lineup of potential “mates” where they have a one way mirror and they have these chicks parade in one at a time and “audition” to be this millionaire’s woman – and they’ve never seen a picture, read a bio… anything. All they know about these men is that they are millionaires.

Now I don’t want to over-simplify, but can’t we assume that every last one of these women is a pathetic gold-digger? The only reason this matchmaker woman is successful is she pairs up women who are willing to sell themselves for a BMW with a man who is willing to pay for a hot, dumb woman.

I’ve decided to pitch a new show to Bravo called “Broke-Ass Deadbeat Matchmaker.” I would have implied I’d pitch it to BET, but then you’d all call me a racist.

In my show, I take deadbeat men and find them women who are willing to work, take care of the kids, clean the trailer, cook dinner, and buy him beer and drugs. Let’s face it, there’s a real hole in the programming for deadbeat guys looking for love.

In Millionaire Matchmaker, one of her rules is “no sex till monogamy” which none of the participants actually follow. In my show, the rule will be “no sex unless he’s an alcoholic convicted felon out on parole.”

When I say “value” I really mean the “desirability characteristics” that each person (hopefully) posses. Each person has a mixture of these characteristics, and the mixes vary greatly. We’re usually confused by how some relationships seem to work long-term. We expect them to fail because the two people seem like they couldn’t be more different.

The fact is, it’s irrelevant WHAT desirability characteristics each party has, so long as both parties have roughly the same amount of them.

Sounds simple? It is.

It’s even more simple than that… perceived equality is all that is necessary for a relationship to work. If either party feels better or worse than the other person, the relationship will fail. If you think you’re better than your partner, you’ll look for an upgrade. If you think you’re worse, you’ll subconsciously sabotage the relationship and your partner will look for an upgrade.

My Dating Classification Matrix is much more accurate in predicting long-term relationship success than any other method I’ve seen. That’s because it’s a self-assessment. In a sense, it almost creates a placebo effect. Ideally this is a tool you will use with your partner, but it’s ok to fill out both your own and your partner’s profile. You start by rating yourself on a variety of subjective characteristics. After that, you rate yourself on some objective criteria. This gives you a score.

Once you and your partner (again, you can fill out both yourself) have completed the matrix (one on each tab of the spreadsheet), you can click on the RESULTS tab to see what you can expect for your relationship.

You’ll be pleased to know, this is an equal opportunity matrix. It works for gay couples or straight couples equally well.

Download the spreadsheet here: Dating Classification Matrix – Version 4

I’m finding the daily updating to be refreshing and fun. I’m enjoying writing again, like I did when I first started. I’m enjoying a nice spike in readership as well, which is just gravy on the satisfaction potatoes.

Thus, my new goal. For the rest of 2009, I am going to update every single day. Just so I give myself a little bit of room to breathe, I will say that I might miss up to one day per remaining month. So if I miss more than 8 days during the remainder of the year, I have failed my goal. Counting today, there are 291 days left in 2009. So you can plan on seeing at least 283 more posts this year.

It’s actually more of a threat than a promise, eh?

Now – on to the the topic of the day.

I want to prep you for tomorrow’s topic. I did some discussion with Dusty a couple of weeks ago regarding the Dating Classification Matrix. We realized that it was seriously deficient in one important area: gender.

It made no variation for gender differences. This was a serious flaw and required immediate attention. The phenomenon I didn’t manage to put into the original worksheet was the “sluts” vs “studs” component. As you all know, a man who is promiscuous is a stud… he becomes more and more valued by society as he racks up conquests. Women, on the other hand, who are promiscuous are sluts…. they become less and less valued by society as they rack up partners.

Never fear, the new matrix takes this into account. The sound theory has been bolstered by input from another very smart guy (in addition to myself), so the results are that much more accurate. Some elements haven’t changed. For example, if you earn more than $500,000 a year, all other factors become irrelavent and you get a perfect score. I’ve also fixed the problem some of you (nasty ho’s) were having of getting a negative score due to your propensity to sleep with everyone you meet.

In the new matrix, the worst score you can get is a zero, where with the old spreadsheet you could get up to a negative 100.

We also updated the weighting for some of the categories, like religion, political affiliation, etc.

Remember, most importantly…. if you get a low score on the matrix, that’s ok. You can still date and have a fulfilling relationship. It just has to be with someone else who has a low score.

I’ll get into more detail tomorrow about the subtle differences from version 3.

So many people in the world harbor the notion that love just happens, it’s amazing anything productive ever happens. “Love at first sight” is one of the silliest concepts ever dreamed up, undoubtedly by a hormonal 13 year old girl.

The fact is, if there is such a thing as love, it certainly has NOTHING to do with sight. If you merely utter the words “love at first sight” I automatically assume you are a superficial twit. Justifiably so, I might add.

The only possible phrase you can use that might be accurate is “lust at first sight,” which is at least honest, albeit still superficial and dimwitted. At least lust has its grounding in hormones and body chemistry.

Love, on the other hand, has nothing to do with chemistry, contrary to popular belief. Love is not an emotion, it’s not even fun most of the time. There’s no such thing as some fairytale romance that lasts forever. The best you can hope for is a fairytale romance that lasts till shortly after you get married, which dissipates quickly once you realize that living with ANYONE is annoying at best.

Hollywood further perpetuates this silly notion of love when what they’re really talking about is lust, as played out by guys acting romantic so they can get sex, which inevitably works because both parties are just selfishly trying to get what they want. It’s merely a transaction – romance for sex.

Of course that sounds cynical, but it isn’t. It’s a very logical observation.

How do you explain how more than half of all couples who GET MARRIED end up hating each other’s guts? They “loved’ each other enough to actually walk down the aisle and exchange vows. That’s some pretty serious stuff. How can they go from that feeling to utter hatred within a few short years?

The answer is simple. Those relationships are based on chemistry rather than on being a grown-up who makes good decisions. If people waited until AFTER the chemistry wore off to get married, no one would ever get divorced. That’s because the only form of love that works long-term is the kind of love that isn’t an emotion at all. It’s a decision that, no matter how miserable you are, you’ll stick with that person because it’s the right thing to do.

I would submit that if you are miserable and stick with the person anyhow, that’s a much stronger example of love than someone who only hangs around as long as they have a gushy feeling. Supporting someone who drives you nuts or bores you to tears… that’s love…. or is it?

As it turns out, love isn’t love at all. It’s following the Golden Rule with someone even when there’s no shine left on the apple. It’s sticking it out even when it’s not fun. It’s treating someone well who doesn’t deserve it, and hopefully having them treat you well back, even though you don’t deserve it. It’s honoring your commitments.

Real love is simply maturity.

You know the one I’m talking about.

The “List.”

After extensive research (I did a single Google search) on the Internet, I concluded that no one has ever written anything on the topic, so I decided to be the first.

If you are old, uninformed, or have your head in the sand, allow me to enlighten you.

The “List” is something done as a couple. You each list the celebrities/famous people etc. that would “NOT count” as “cheating” should said celebrity/famous person meet you and beg you to *ahem* kiss them.

Each person in the relationship makes up their own list of famous people, and that becomes the approved list. The list can be modified with proper notice, but cannot be modified “on-the-spot.” In other words, if I decide I want Pamela Anderson on my list (ewww), I could change it and let Jenna know. However, if I MEET Pamela Anderson and she indicates a desire to “kiss” me, I cannot change my list at that time.

I first became aware of the “List” in my first dating relationship. I assumed it was just something bizarre that Ms. Right had cooked up for whatever reason, and that it was an isolated phenomenon.

Then, in each successive relationship, the “List” has once again come up. Apparently it’s commonplace and is a tradition passed on word-of-mouth.

In the interest of keeping this post semi-interesting, and in order to get to the point of the post, I will now give you my list:

• Mandy Moore
• Dina Meyer
• Lindsey Brien (from Real World Seattle)
• Eva Mendes
• Jessica Biel

Jenna also has a list, and although I couldn’t swear to the current makeup and order of the list, some notable members are Bruce Willis, Gordon Ramsey, and Michael Rosenbaum.

Anyhow, recently Jenna had a dream that I met Mandy Moore, the top of my list, and I invoked “List” rules if you get my drift. Of course, Jenna was furious and in her dream was like “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU ACTUALLY FOLLOWED THROUGH WITH IT!!!”

So I guess my question is this.

Is the list just an exercise in futility, or do you intend to go through with it if you get the chance?

And, if you don’t have a list, please indicate whether you are 1) Old, 2) Uninformed, or 3) Have your head in the sand.