a load of crap

Forgive me readers but I'm not my usual self at the moment. However, I wanted to take this opportunity to express myself about a topic that is current and relevant to me, and maybe for others out there.

About a month ago, I celebrated my 38th birthday, marking a point of roughly 20 years worth of dating. Yes indeed, I don't know quite how I've managed to make it this far without finding the right woman for me (it must be a talent). I've also come to the conclusion that 20 years of any experience makes me an expert in the area and I've decided to put up a post about the load of crap that is put out by certain magazines and advice columnists.

"A solid romantic relationship should be built upon a solid friendship." Or something along those lines... The myth that is published over and over by gossip magazines or people who write for papers that have been married for a ba-zillon years. The people who write this crap are full of what they write. After 20 years of dating in different styles, I can assure you that this method does not work. Women do want their lover to be their friend but not vice versa. A tip to all the single boys out there who might read this - do not follow this advice of doing the friendship thing first.

Yes I am writing this because of a recently failed attempt at a relationship, one where I laid the ground work of friendship (to make her more comfortable) and then attempted to move this on to the next stage. What happened in this case, as has happened in the past, is that the woman knows she has a friend in waiting and can break glass in case of need of penis.

Being a friend first is the wrong tactic to take if you are interested in someone. The relationship that develops is one that puts the wrong ideas into each person's head. The interested party believes that being a friend first means gaining trust and becoming a significant part of the others life. To the person who is being befriended, they believe that they have made a friend of the opposite sex and that this opposite gendered friend will always be there but they also know they can take advantage of this friendship when needed (being horny does amazing things to people).

So since this last failure came to be, it got me to thinking about my tactics used when it comes to dating. I surveyed my memories of the last 20 years and thought of my successful (2+ years) romantic relationships and those that have flopped. Of all my successful relationships, precisely zero started off as friendships and progressed from there. To put that into perspective, that includes 3 significant others in 6 years of relationships (over 30% of my dating time) and a fiancee in the mix. While none of those relationships resulted in a long, lasting commitment (hence why I'm still single), I can relate back to those relationships and note the following. My long term relationships were not built on friendship but romantic intentions.

I then looked at my data for relationships that started off as friendships and the attempt to develop it into something more. I stopped counting when I got to 10 because I was starting to make myself depressed to think of the time that I wasted. The time that it takes to lay the foundation for a friendship and develop it further is many fold greater than if the woman knows where you stand up front. The relationships I counted spanned the time of almost 12 years (!) and not one has produced a single, viable, long term, romantic relationship (although I did get laid once by one of them; she was desperate I guess).

The last category is "women who know your intentions and still don't want to date you" and while there are plenty of women in that classification, at least the failed relationships took less time to fail than the friendship route. When a Dutch woman said she didn't want to see me again after the second date because I reminded her too much of her ex, at least it was quick and relatively painless. Another woman, this one from the States, decided she didn't want to continue our relationship of two months because she had found another man; it was over quickly again. In both of those cases (any many more), the romantic side was quashed and I was able to move on to the next person who could be a better match for me.

With time not exactly on my side, I've realized too late this fundamental flaw in the Cinderella media - friendship does not make good romance. The movies show it this way and the good guy/girl friend ends up being the best companion but that's just Hollywood. In my real world experience, this isn't the case and you shouldn't waste your time. So if you're in the dating world, take this advice: Be clear from the start what your intentions are and save yourself the hassle, heartache, and wasted time.