I don’t like you, because…
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. It’s a problem with both sexes, but girls talk about it more. So I’ll use the ladies to illustrate first.
I hear a lot of girl talk. PMSing, crushes, roommate drama, even their experiences with “the pill.” I’ve also heard lots of after-date reports.
Let me explain to the dudes: After you take a girl home from a date, she sits down with her roommates and tells them everything. It’s rarely a retelling of events. Rather, they evaluate your desirability, using the date to illustrate. She’ll either speak with excitement or disdain, telling her friends why you’re great or terrible.
Ladies, it’s not your post-date talk that I find “disturbing,” but the content:
- “He likes Star Wars.”
- “He only opened my car door the first time, not the whole night.”
- “He was singing along with the radio.” (what a douchebag)
- “We went for Italian food. I hate Italian food.” (“Sure, we could go for Italian”)
- “He wears tennis shoes. Guys should wear dress shoes and button-down shirts.” (wait…didn’t your last boyfriend dress like that?)
- “There were pauses where it was like he didn’t have anything to say.” (he should fire his script writer)
- “He reminded me of my ex.” (or Mr. Bean or Napoleon Dynamite)
- “He wanted to meet there instead of picking me up.” (all your blind dates should know where you sleep at night)
- “He was just…dorky.”
Hey now, be nice to the boy. He likes you, and he’s trying his best. If you can’t be nice, don’t say yes.
Let’s turn it around. How would you feel, hearing that guy you have a crush on saying something like this about you:
- “Yeah, her rack is way too small.”
- “If I have to listen to her annoying laugh one more time, I’ll gouge my eardrums out.”
- “Her makeup made her look like Lady Gaga.”
- “She never said more than one line at a time. I can’t believe I wasted 12 bucks buying her dinner.”
- “She was great until she started talking. Dumbest girl I’ve ever gone out with, and she kept acting like we were both having a great time.”
- “If she were 30 pounds lighter she might be worth a second date.”
What does this kind of talk says about you? It says that you don’t accept people as people. To you, they’re commodities, and you’re shopping for an object to fit your needs.
Goodness, courage, character, happiness, dedication, fairness, faithfulness, kindness, charity, gentleness, hopefulness, compassion, work ethic, these are the things that matter in a person. Quirks are a happy price to pay for the goodness inside them. Is this what you’re looking for, or are you too hung up on your idea of outward perfection to see what matters?
If you don’t like someone, that’s fine. But don’t pretend they are broken because you don’t feel anything for them. Someone else will love them, even if you can’t.
The bottom line is, and always is, ‘do I like this person’. Those exact same foibles and ‘date mess ups’ might be considered cute or be easily over looked if a girl likes them. And if she doesn’t, then the negative is accentuated.
I don’t excuse the negative talk, but I would like to offer an additional reasons for it.
1) A lot of times if we are single and the guys we want dont ask us out, we secretly hope nothing is wrong with us. We don’t want to be picky. In order to be blameless for being ‘too picky’ when rejecting a man we are not interested we have to defend that decision, even to ourselves, as if to reassure ourselves that it’s ok to reject the person. We seek for tangible grounds for dismissal, even though, under circumstances of interest the same grounds do not seem to be a problem. it wasn’t really those grounds upon which we rejected them. It’s simply that we didn’t like them, but that sounds so nebulous. So we give ‘reasons’.
2) Also, it seems that every girl hides deep down a little girl wish that she grows up to be a disney princess: so beautiful and desirable that at least 10 guys are always after her and she can easily cast them off. And so, in some twisted way, saying mean things about a dude who asked us out makes us falsely feel like we are living the dream–men desire me and I can cast them off freely. The girls with low self esteem are often the meanest. Girls with a good self image will often be more generous.
Those are just opinions. Guys can be guilty too. But I have also witnessed the meanness of which you speak.
November 22, 2011 at 5:35 am
On occasion (and I’m not referring to a single person here….there are several examples) a girl I’ve dated will want to know why we broke up, what she needed to fix about herself. While I think this can be valuable (generally, people make judgements about each other but never say anything, so there’s no way to fix things if you don’t talk about them), often my answer to the question “what do I need to improve, that you observed?” is “nothing that I can think of.” It’s not that they’re perfect, necessarily. But the things that are important to me, the qualities I value or attributes I dislike, are not necessarily the formula for a perfect woman. Those things I value greatly may be the exact things that annoy another guy to death, and on the flip-side, those things I find intolerable may be the precise things that endear another guy and make him fall head over heals for a girl. A good example is the Italian food comment above. I can think of at least one dichotomy right now of two different girls–one that would not greatly appreciate Italian food, and one that would love me forever if I took her out to a good Italian place. The Llama is right–most of the qualities discussed in this context are subjective and likely shouldn’t be changed, or are judgements that are simply too harsh or unfair. If you’re going to judge another human being, the only proper way to do so is to look for every particle of good they possess and recognize those elements. That doesn’t mean you must date them, but evaluate them gently and fairly, as you hope you’ll be viewed.
November 22, 2011 at 7:48 am
i like this comment.
Something felt missing as I read what the llama wrote, but after reading this comment I see that the judgments in the example girl comments are subjective, not objective. If the girl wants to judge a guy as “unfit” for her, she needs to recognize that those judgments are not about him, but about HER, about what she’s seeking in a partner. So maybe he doesn’t have a preferable collection, but like you said, that doesn’t mean his unique character won’t be great for someone else.
I suppose a guy isn’t going to ask a girl out if he doesn’t have some sort of attraction, but he’s simply trying to get a better idea if he will be sincerely interested, the same way the girl is accepting the date, to see if she’s interested. I think a LOT of times the girl forgets that and automatically things the guy must like her and she has to decide right away what she thinks of everything she knows so far, gleaning clues from his behavior, choice of activity, conversation, looks/apparent hygiene, clothing, etc. so she can evaluate whether another date should be offered. As if she’s some sort of sought-after princess, indeed!
I’m siding with the llama here in saying that there’s not enough to go off of after one or a couple outings to make the kinds of judgments of his character she’s purporting to make. That is to say, her superficial judgments can NOT, in actuality, apply to his character: his choice of dinner does not reflect his kindness; his choice of shoes does not reflect his commitment patterns in a relationship; his liking Star Wars is not necessarily a reflection of anything much deeper inside him. If the girl makes judgments like these and sincerely uses them to determine his “worthiness for her”, she is mad–or she is looking for a surface-relationship that she thinks will work the way fairy tales have demonstrated. She is in fact covering for the real reason she makes judgments like that: she doesn’t see who he is and yet feels like she needs to make an immediate evaluation. The guy on the other hand is possibly reflecting on how the whole event went, recollecting her body language (perhaps the language they best understand…), and deciding whether he wants more or is satisfied, simply put. He doesn’t have to list any reasons why “she’s fat/short/squeaky laugh/ditzy” he just acknowledges that there’s nothing more he has to evaluate.
Poor girls get a princess complex and suddenly have to visualize the guy in the place of a prince. Who could ever measure up? Does she realize even she doesn’t really measure up to the position she’s put herself in? Does she even really know what she wants? She doesn’t if she makes those subjective judgments. If she knew herself, she would just have fun on a date, keep those character judgments to herself and relate events and how she felt during it, because that’s really all she knows for sure. If she didn’t enjoy herself on a date, she doesn’t have to blame the guy or anything about his appearance or behavior (unless he was clearly inappropriate or something), but she should recognize that not having a good time on a date does not define the guy, it just defines that the two of them together are not a great match.
Making a habit of saying nice things should begin early, and last forever. Because when a guy or girl finds a great match, and that match reciprocates the opinion of greatness, then a marriage commitment should never open a mind to unkindness. It should do the contrary, open it to constant kindness. That’s what I’d like to hear about next, dear Llama. Why do a lot of people (mainly girls) become so rigid or wicked or unpleasing after the deal is sealed? If she got what she wanted (marriage) how can he simultaneously be ruining her life when he fulfilled her dreams? How confusing for the guy, that the princess turns to a witch after marriage. (of course, this isn’t specifically gender based either, and lots goes on behind the scenes in marriage that singles like us don’t see, but what are your thoughts?)
November 23, 2011 at 5:28 pm
I’ve noticed some differences between living in an apartment complex setting and in a house where I may or may not see my neighbors every week. Among these are a nice mattress, peace and quiet, and real food just about every night. The unexpected one, though, is how my thoughts and impressions of others have changed since my only constant girl contact is my sister. I don’t think of people (usually of the male persuasion) as creepy, or feel it necessary to point out the oddities of others… I might postulate that the reason some females say unkind things about their dates is they have an audience, and where there’s an audience there’s a sense of power, and power is all too easy to use unwisely. Just an idea.
November 22, 2011 at 10:58 am
That, my friends, is a very good reason I rarely ask out roommates. I have to have a really good reason.
On the flip side, I’m truly a coward when it comes to girls and I freely admit it. When I lose confidence in myself I get quiet, which people interpret all kinds of ways. Often, after something like that they other person doesn’t know if I just wasn’t interested or what. For my side, I’m not sure it I turned them off. It is for this reason that I talk to people that know them to see if they got any vibes from them. Sometimes it works, but not usually. It’s just nice to know how open/closed a door is before you make a real push.
It’s hard to be upset with people though. People need to be able to talk with others. It’s how we learn. However, I’ve seen a lot of wonderful guys get rejected by a great girl who liked the guy, but then got talked out of that interest by well-intentioned roommates/BFF’s.
Solid note, it’s always bad when girls get together to talk about why they are going to be the perfect wife and what their husband needs to be like. Guys do it in jest, but that’s all it ever is. Oddly, for girls it rarely seems to go without effect.
January 11, 2012 at 3:23 am