WotWentWrong

I’m putting the challenge out to the blogosphere and wider community to give me your “shortest” date stories.  And before you start tapping away on your keyboard with stories of the 4 foot wonder that showed up one day, stop.  I’m not talking about your vertically challenged friends.  I’m talking about those dates that you didn’t deem worthy enough to last longer than an episode of Gossip Girl.  Was it 30 minutes; 20 minutes or even 5 minutes? 

They can be your stories or those of a friend’s, or even one of those urban legend dating stories.  Tell us how long they lasted; why; who ended it and how; was the ending truthful or was it an excuse?  I’ll start the ball rolling…

My friend, Leanne lived in New York.  As she was a recent transplant to the city and didn’t know many people, she signed up for online dating.  She’d been on the site for a while by now, but was becoming quite disillusioned with the quality of guys available therein.

She had heard and seen of this phenomenon in New York City called “multi-dating” where people would date multiple people at once (no not actually on the same date!).  These multi-daters would have multiple dating relationships going on in parallel, for any number of weeks, or even months.  In fact, on her first night in the city she went to a party where she met one guy who had two dates scheduled on the one night!  Apparently not such a rare occurrence in the city.  Eew.

Anyway, if this was the norm, and she was now a resident in the city, she was willing to give it a go.  When in Rome, and all.  And a lot of dating advice literature came out in support of this method – that way you aren’t putting all your eggs in one basket and pinning all your hopes on the one person (and other clichés like that).  There was one problem.  She couldn’t find enough guys she was interested in (and vice versa) at any one time to be in the multi-dating mode!  Quite a dilemma.

She thought that if she was going to try out this dating method, she would probably have to lower her standards a little, and maybe be a little more proactive.  OK.  So here’s what happened. She noticed that this kinda cute guy had looked at her profile, so she decided to get in contact.  For the purposes of anonymity we’ll call him kindacuteguyNYC.

So Leanne and kindacuteguyNYC had one or two message exchanges through the dating site.  So far so good. And then it came.  What came?  You ask.  Well, if you’re single in NYC and you meet a seemingly cute/normal/nice guy there’s always a little voice in the back of your head waiting for the other shoe to drop – “Why is he still single?”.  Sure, many people ask that.

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In celebration of today – (come on, you know what today is, right?), we have launched a new feature on our website – the Forum!  Now you can share all your horrible and hilarious date stories or commiserate about the loss of that loved one, as a community.  And if you have a burning question about your dating life that you just can’t get an answer to, ask the WotWentWrong community!

How about starting off with sharing your best/worst/funniest/most humiliating valentine’s day story?  Go on, it’ll be cathartic…

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With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, those of us that are unattached are faced with the dilemma of how to make the transition from February 13th to February 15th as quick and painless as possible.

It seems that everyone around us is coupled up and in a happy relationship.  For weeks in the lead up to Valentine’s day, we are bombarded with advertising for the “special” day from restaurants, florists, chocolatiers and various other vendors trying to cash in on the holiday.

And we start to reminisce about the last “attached” Valentine’s day we had, or perhaps reminisce isn’t the best word, if our feelings for that person aren’t the most positive!  Or perhaps we think of how we no longer need to feel disappointment with the lackluster gift our ex presented us with and how we needed to feign enthusiasm for it.  So maybe it’s not all bad, after all, being single on Valentine’s day.  In one sense, the pressure is off to find the perfect gift and have the perfectly romantic night.

In my experience, the single person on Valentine’s falls in to 4 different personalities:

1. The Embracer.
   This person will go to at least one, if not more Valentine’s day singles events in an effort to avoid being single on this day ever again.  Their level of desperation is probably heightened on this day and they will give their number to someone they might not normally be so interested in.
2. The Pretender.
   This person tells their friends they have a date with an amazing person, describing in detail their conjured date’s romantic devotion and the perfect date that they had. They may even go as far as delivering flowers to themselves at work from their phantom date!
3. The Collaborator.
   Believing there is strength in numbers and wanting to avoid the loneliness of the day this person will join with other friends of the same gender to see out the holiday and console each other as a team.  They may even partake in certain rituals to celebrate their singledom such as burning their ex’s photos.
4. The Avoider.
   This person denies the existence of the day entirely and treats it like any other day.  They’ll keep their existing sporting/gym/other commitments and act like they didn’t even realize  it was Valentine’s day.  And when asked what they are doing on Valentine’s day they’ll say “Oh, is it Valentine’s day?  I didn’t realize!”  We thinkest thou doth protest too much!

Which one do you fall into?

Still stuck for something to do on V-day?  if you have absolutely no other options, you can see what our friend Pete is up to!

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The past couple of months, I have listened to the unsolicited laments and theories of countless male friends. Notwithstanding their diversity of backgrounds and personalities, they share a remarkable consensus of opinion shaped by parallel prior experiences. To summarize it simply, most women, for reasons unbeknownst to us, seem to respond favorably to guys who exhibit general indifference towards them. Now I know that sounds juvenile, but it’s difficult to deny that there must be truth in the common collective experience.

I recall that some time ago I read a post on the “Best of Craigslist” called ”What Happened to All the Nice Guys?”
I see this question posted with some regularity in the personals section, so I thought I’d take a minute to explain things to the ladies out there that haven’t figured it out.

What happened to all the nice guys?

The answer is simple: you did.

See, if you think back, really hard, you might vaguely remember a Platonic guy pal who always seemed to want to spend time with you. He’d tag along with you when you went shopping, stop by your place for a movie when you were lonely but didn’t feel like going out, or even sit there and hold you while you sobbed and told him about how horribly the (other) guy that you were seeing treated you.

At the time, you probably joked with your girlfriends about how he was a little puppy dog, always following you around, trying to do things to get you to pay attention to him. They probably teased you because they thought he had a crush on you. Given that his behavior was, admittedly, a little pathetic, you vehemently denied having any romantic feelings for him, and buttressed your position by claiming that you were “just friends.” Besides, he totally wasn’t your type. I mean, he was a little too short, or too bald, or too fat, or too poor, or didn’t know how to dress himself, or basically be or do any of the things that your tall, good-looking, fit, rich, stylish boyfriend at the time pulled off with such ease.

Eventually, your Platonic buddy drifted away, as your relationship with the boyfriend got more serious and spending time with this other guy was, admittedly, a little weird, if you weren’t dating him. More time passed, and the boyfriend eventually cheated on you, or became boring, or you realized that the things that attracted you to him weren’t the kinds of things that make for a good, long-term relationship. So, now, you’re single again, and after having tried the bar scene for several months having only encountered players and douche bags, you wonder, “What happened to all the nice guys?”

Well, once again, you did.

You ignored the nice guy. You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy. You laughed at his consideration and resented his devotion. You valued the aloof boyfriend more than the attentive “just-a-” friend. Eventually, he took the hint and moved on with his life. He probably came to realize, one day, that women aren’t really attracted to guys who hold doors open; or make dinners just because; or buy you a Christmas gift that you mentioned, in passing, that you really wanted five months ago; or listen when you’re upset; or hold you when you cry. He came to realize that, if he wanted a woman like you, he’d have to act more like the boyfriend that you had. He probably cleaned up his look, started making some money, and generally acted like more of an asshole than he ever wanted to be.

Fact is, now, he’s probably getting laid, and in a way, your ultimate rejection of him is to thank for that. And I’m sorry that it took the complete absence of “nice guys” in your life for you to realize that you missed them and wanted them. Most women will only have a handful of nice guys stumble into their lives, if that.

Of course, it’s possible that you STILL don’t really want a nice guy, but you feel the social pressure to at least appear to have matured beyond your infantile taste in men. In which case, you might be in luck, because the nice guy you claim to want has, in reality, shed his nice guy mantle and is out there looking to unleash his cynicism and resentment onto someone just like you.

If you were five years younger.

Sincerely,

A Recovering Nice Guy

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In creating WotWentWrong, I wanted to develop an informative and constructive, yet upbeat way to address a problem that affects people universally.  And in this blog, while I am addressing real-life situations that have caused some pain for the protagonists, I’ve tried to do it in a thoughtful yet entertaining way.   Having said that, I’m going to get a little serious now because I think that this situation calls for it.

As thankful and awestruck as I am that WotWentWrong is getting such extensive coverage and is a hot topic in the twitterverse, I must admit I am quite surprised about the backlash that it’s attracting.  My first response is that the voices of detractors are always the loudest.  The people that think it’s a worthwhile concept are likely to be a lot quieter than the haters.

But I can’t bury my head in the sand that way.  After all, I have just created a feedback-focused website, and to discard all this feedback in this way would probably be a little hypocritical.  So, I should consider the WotWentWrong tag line and take it to heart: “Find Out. Learn. Move On.”  Let’s break it down.

Find Out

I have now found out that this is not only a contentious issue that people love to debate, but it has touched a nerve in many people.  Some have suggested it’s a great way to destroy your self-esteem; others have said that in using WotWentWrong, you are defining yourself as a stalker or desperate.  There are those have said they would rather not know what went wrong.  OK, I hear you.

Learn

What can I learn from this experience?  I think I can learn that not everyone will understand where I’m coming from without a more detailed explanation of what I’m trying to achieve with this website.  I haven’t been so forthcoming with it, so it’s understandable.

So let me explain my thinking.

10 years ago there was no Facebook, no Twitter, people still used landlines and fax machines, and online dating was considered the exclusive domain of the desperate single.  Today, many of us consult Facebook and Twitter daily for our social interactions, everybody’s got a smartphone, and online dating has become the norm, with 1 in 5 couples in America meeting through online dating.  What do all of these have in common?  They have all caused major disruptions in one way or another.  Our lives are changed (for better or worse – according to your opinion) because of them.

So, you’re probably wondering where I’m going with this.  Perhaps it’s a little audacious, even arrogant, but I really wanted to see if I could change the way people operate with regards to relationship breakups.  I imagined a world where women were no longer left wondering whether a guy was going to call her after the date or whether he had decided to fadeaway without giving her a “thanks but no thanks”.  It was a nice thought, but I realized it was probably not going to come to fruition.  So what was the next best thing?  Providing a way for her to get clarity on what went wrong so that she isn’t left wondering and taking those issues and insecurities into her next dating situation.

I imagined in this new, disrupted world, instead of analyzing these dates, picking over every little thing that she could have done wrong, she employs the much more efficient and (hopefully) accurate method of asking him what went wrong.  (Scandalous, I know.)  For the woman who would rather not know, that is her prerogative.  But for the person who is open to hearing constructive feedback with the idea it will help her for the next time – or if the relationship’s demise had nothing to do with her, but was due to another reason entirely – why shouldn’t she benefit from being relieved of endless doubt?  Kind of liberating, no? And in this new, disrupted world, people would change their perception of this request – from being stalkery to coming from a more evolved person, able to review their missteps and take action to improve for next time.  Remember, 10 years ago online dating wasn’t so socially acceptable, either.

Move on

I’m really hoping that after you have read this blog post, you’ll understand where I’m coming from and what I’m trying to achieve.  And if you still decide that WotWentWrong isn’t for you, that’s your choice.  It was never meant to be the solution for 100% of the population.  But if you do think the website has some merit, please comment on this post, tweet about it or send me feedback through the feedback tab on the homepage.  I’d like to know if you like the site and you would use it.  And what additional features you think would be useful.  Thanks!

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Recently I was at a party and I bumped into an old friend of mine, Belinda, who I hadn’t seen in a while.  As I walked up to her, Belinda was in the midst of talking about something that perplexed her.  A few days back, Belinda had bumped into a guy that she had been on one date with 2 years ago.  Now, Belinda is currently happily engaged to a great guy, but her recent encounter with this guy, Luke, took her back to the bafflement she experienced 2 years ago.  So what caused this bafflement?

Well, it was a scenario that I am sure is experienced countless times over all over the world.  Belinda went on a first date with Luke.  They met for dinner.  They had some great conversation; they shared some stories and some laughter.  She thought the date was a success.  She expected to receive a follow-up call from him within the next week.  She waited, but that call never came.  She never heard from him again.  To this day, she still wonders what she did wrong.

Of course, this is the exact type of situation that WotWentWrong.com caters to.  But as it hadn’t launched quite yet, I sought to do the next best thing.  I spoke to Luke directly.  As it happens, Luke is also a friend of mine and was also at this party.  So I approached him and asked him why Belinda didn’t get a follow-up phone call from him.

Let me interrupt this story with a pertinent clip that I found.  I’m pretty sure this kind of thing didn’t happen on Belinda and Luke’s date, but it may have happened on someone else’s date!

OK, back to our original programming!  So what did Luke tell me about why he didn’t attempt to contact Belinda again?  Here’s what he said to me.

“About half way through the date, I decided that I wasn’t interested in pursuing anything with Belinda.  But I had at least another hour left of the date, so I decided to relax and enjoy the remainder of the evening.”

Hmm.  Interesting.  So from this I can surmise that Luke had determined half way through this date that he either lacked attraction or a connection to Belinda.  But as it’s not always acceptable to end a date at the very moment that you realize you don’t want further involvement with someone, Luke continued the evening and decided to make the most of the situation.

That’s fair enough.  I think Luke did the right thing.  You can’t always find a connection or attraction with everyone you go out with.  There will be people who will be more of a miss than a hit.  But the flip side of this is that it does tend to give a false impression that you are interested in the other party.  And Belinda thought Luke was interested.

What should Luke have done differently?

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My friend, Ivy, is now in a a healthy, loving relationship with Justin.   But that wasn’t always the  case.  In fact, there was a time that their relationship was in a rather precarious position.  I’ve known Ivy for a while now and I can tell you that she is a perfectly sane, rational person that doesn’t get too swept away in her relationships; in fact, if anything she is quite cautious with her heart.

She has certain rules that she follows when in a new relationship.  A faithful disciple of Patti Stanger of The Millionaire Matchmaker, Ivy will hold off on sex until she is sure of being in a monogamous relationship, for fear of the oxytocin effect.  She will never plan further ahead with a guy than the period of time that she has been seeing him.  And she would never introduce him to her parents until she was first introduced to his.  All quite cautious behaviour.

But one day, in a moment of overwhelming emotion, Ivy threw all caution out the door when she took this gamble on her relationship.  She called up her boyfriend, who was at work, sitting in an open-plan office and gushed her true feelings to him for the first time.  You guessed it, the three little words were now out there.  Actually, it was multiple sets of 3 little words as she explained her feelings to Justin in several different ways.  You can guess what happened next (or did not happen, for that matter).  Justin’s response might have happened in a similar way to Penny’s in this video here.

Of course, even if Justin was ready to reciprocate at this stage in their relationship, there was no way he would have done so in an open plan office!  So Ivy waited, and waited and waited a little more.  But after a number of weeks, she was wondering whether he would ever reciprocate her feelings.  She had placed herself and her relationship in jeopardy by admitting her feelings too soon.

Mimi Tanner, author of “Man Mistake Eraser” has a viewpoint on this:

“As we all know, saying “I love you” is a major milestone in any romantic relationship. To a woman, it is a time for rejoicing. However, if a man is not ready for this, all he will be feeling is pressure when he hears you say those words, EVEN IF HE IS FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOU.

“Unfortunately, even if he IS in that delicious “falling in love” process, your saying “I love you” first can be like a huge “wake up call” for him. It may cause him to suddenly realize that things are getting VERY serious.”

Interesting theory.  So according to Mimi, if my friend Ivy had held off and waited for Justin to admit his love, free of obligation, they would have bypassed this road-bump that they experienced.

It’s clear that the early stages of relationships are fraught with all sorts of obstacles and detours that can cause friction, and if not, can cause one or both parties to question the seriousness of the other party.  Sometimes, and in the case of my friend, Ivy, they were able to successfully navigate this obstacle and get back on track.  Other times, we might need to find out where we faltered and use wotwentwrong.com!

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Last night, over a few drinks, my friend Caroline admitted to me that while on dates with guys, she purposely makes herself a little less capable than she actually is.  She will make it out that she has a hard time opening a bottle of soda and seek help from her date.  He’s usually quite proud of himself for having the strength to open something that she is too weak to open herself.  She’ll pretend that she needs directions to get to the restaurant, when she knows this city like the back of her hand.  He happily obliges her with his thorough knowledge of the streets of the city, even giving her suggestions on where she can park.  And she’ll play down her job like she’s not the high-flying professional that I know she is.  All in the aim of creating a non-threatening and “feminine” perception of herself to the guy that she’s dating.

I consider Caroline’s admission and it makes me think;  I wonder if this is what accomplished, capable, professional women need to do in order to attract a guy these days.  Are guys that insecure and threatened by today’s woman that they need this kind of placation?  Has sexual equality progressed to such a level that men no longer feel like they are the stronger, more capable sex, and in order for a man to feel masculine, women must resort to these tactics?  Or is this just all part and parcel of the courtship process where neither male nor female are truly themselves and we are all just playing roles until we feel more comfortable revealing our true natures?

My problem with this kind of deception is that once you start, where do you stop?  Sure, it’s bottle caps and street directions now, but then you’re asking them to explain global warming (even though you’re a card carrying member of Greenpeace) and to put together an Ikea bookshelf (even though you have your own hand drill).  OK, you say, these things are pretty harmless too. (I must admit, I’m struggling to come up with the types of things you could be deceptive about because it’s just not my nature!)

It does remind of this scene from the movie, Failure to Launch, where Sarah Jessica Parker’s character concocts an emotional crisis to get closer to her man:

Hopefully most women don’t feel the need to go these lengths!

However, it seems to be common enough that it has acquired a name: Silly Me Syndrome (SMS).  Due to the apparent lack of quality men out there, smart women are dumbing themselves down in order to increase their chances of finding a quality guy.  And then there are those women that aren’t proactively dropping a few IQ points with their date, but instead, are refraining from discussing anything that would make them appear too intelligent or worldly.  Have I done that?  Probably.

But I’d like to think that the right guy for me is someone that not only, wouldn’t be threatened by my intelligence, but would actually be attracted to that.  Am I deluding myself?

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