welcome to elaney!

Good morning, elaney readers!  Today is the day.  Elaney has handed the reigns of her media empire to me, a ridiculously opinionated married man.  It’s unclear why she has chosen to bestow this honor on me, but I’ve happily accepted.

Our format today is simple: Q&A.  You Q, and I A.  Before we begin, however, a caveat: mine are just one man’s opinions.  If you think I’ve got it wrong, well… call me out in the comments.

And so, on to our first question:

What does it normally mean if you go on a first date and everything seems to go well enough and he doesn’t call?

This is a great, tough question.  I wish an easy answer existed, but it depends on the guy.  Maybe he got crushed at work, maybe he experienced a personal tragedy.  Perhaps he met somebody else last week.  Worse still: he might have talked to his friends about you and heard something he didn’t like.

You could worry—and probably have worried—yourself to death with these permutations.  But the scary truth is that you’ll never know… Which leads to the more important (and substantially more controversial) point: girls inadvertently reward a guy’s under-communication in this situation.

Personally, I believe it’s incumbent on the guy to provide an explanation for ending things if you’ve been on more than two dates.  BUT, and this is a very strong but, you aren’t allowed to get mad at him if he tells you a painful truth.

I’ve seen this too often: girl and guy go out.  All is well.  Guy decides he doesn’t like girl and tells her so.  She asks why, he says, “You make a weird clicking sound when you chew and it’s driving me crazy.”  Or, “I thought you were pretty, but it turns out that you’re annoying.”  Our ladyfriend gets hurt feelings, her friends hate him, and everyone in a five mile radius is forbidden from dating him.

If you were the guy in the this situation, and if you knew the scorched-earth outcome of your honesty, would you call her up and tell her why you’re ending it?  Absolutely not.  You’re not an idiot.  You know you’ll be punished for your honesty, so you keep silent.

I, however, think the girl and her friends should applaud this guy’s unkind candor, and under no circumstances should he be black-balled.  Why?  Because it took integrity for him to own his feelings and guts to communicate those feelings to the girl.

Consider the alternative scenario, where the guy remains silent: the girl and her friends don’t get mad because they’re hoping he’ll call tomorrow.  Perversely, the guy is rewarded for the very silence that gave rise to this reader’s question.  Our lonely lady and her friends should be irate at his cowardice.

Moral of the story: Guys owe it to girls to tell them why they’re not interested after two dates.  Girls owe it to themselves and to guys to stay calm and be grateful for his tough love.

Guys, is this about right?  Or am I too dry after years out of the dating pool?  Girls, what do you think about all this?  Have you fallen prey to the temptation described above?  As always, feel free to ask any follow-up questions in the comments; if you’ve got unrelated questions you want answered, put ‘em in the comments, too!

Male Reader requested this post, and since we try to give our Male Readers what they want (because we appreciate their participation…), here we go!

Scenario:  Male Reader (who wishes to remain anonymous) was recently dumped, and he feels that the reason she gave (not ready for a relationships) was different than reality (thought he was weird).

We think we ALL know by now that the ultimate reason for whenever things don’t work out is that he (or she) is just not that into you.  But let’s take it a step further, if you’re not that into someone, why? Any what did you say to explain it?

“I like your blog, but I’m more into girls that wear Umbros.” – Male Reader (unprovoked)

We always think it’s interesting when men describe these “natural girls” they love, because wearing Umbros for most girls does not the natural look make.  Sure, you may think Jessica Alba looks good in Umbros, but the average girl walking around does not need to be Granola-Girl-of-the-80s’d out in Umbros and Tevas.  Does Jennifer Anniston look gorgeous in her white button downs and khakis, sure…but she also has a stylist, millions of dollars, and Botox.  We get that no one wants to see drawn on eyebrows and women that can’t leave the house without a 2 hour overhaul, but careful what you wish for, because we haven’t seen a woman that should be wearing Umbros since gym class in the 90s.  However, here’s your chance, fellas.  It’s been well documented that elaney’s eparents have STRONGLY encouraged her to avoid black nail polish and certainly clothing items that “men don’t understand,” but we wanna know…what is it that you Umbro loving folks feel pushes the high maintenance women over the line?  In other words, what are the clothes that “men don’t understand?”

Maybe it’s the sounds of Nelly running through our head after rediscovering all the high school CDs.  Maybe it’s memories of elaney’s Dating Week in ’09 and its overwhelming success.  Or maybe it’s just the reality of what we observed again yesterday (with the 1,300+ hits), you people out there looooove to hear about loooove.  So we think it’s time to humor Mz Pimp with her request from yesterday…

You heard it – ladies, help Mz Pimp out and help her pick up a fella.  What are your tips of the trade?

Reader EmEmli requested a lil Blind Date advice, and we had to agree that that’s a great idea.  Personally, have been on three blind dates (is that a nursery rhyme?) and batting 0.  So, while we can’t promise results, we can share what we’ve learned:

The breakdown:

Date 1: very evident it was a mutual disaster for both parties
Date 2: elaney thought it was a love connection and 5 days later facebook suggested he was “In a Relationship” with someone else
Date 3:  the blind date thought it was a love connection and elaney thought it was better fodder for a blog post

Tips:

1.  Do NOT have too much wine (re:  see Date 1 above)
2.  Do NOT have no wine
3.  Wear something cute, but not polarizing.  You don’t want to wear your preppiest / hippiest / most revealing / least revealing outfit, just wear the kind of thing men understand.
4.  Don’t talk a lot and try to be kind of mysterious.  Make eyes and ask lots of questions.
5.  Order meat, but nothing too expensive.
6.  Don’t ask too much about his job – apparently men hate this (who knew?).
7.  Smile a lot and laugh at his jokes.  Unless you’re really funny, don’t even try.
8.  And of course, be yourself!!  (but…just the good parts of you).

That’s all we’ve got, and apparently we need help too.  Love to hear your suggestions!!

Well, this week has really been an eye opener.  Not only are the stats off the charts, the honesty has been interesting and much appreciated.  Hope we all learned a little.  However, we have to be honest with you.  We are about loooooved out.  Too.  Much.  Mush.  So it’s Friday fun day!  And let’s put Dating Week to rest with this final thought:

“I don’t need no lovin, all I need is a DJ.” – new song playing at spin class

Thanks for the fun week!  Get excited about elaney’s 12 days of Christmas!