There are rules to dating. Clearly they’re not posted anywhere convenient but when people don’t follow proper etiquette or protocol it doesn’t go unnoticed. Call them social mores or requisites but as unpredictable as dating can be single men and women still have certain expectations. We may not have a manual but once you’re of a particular age there are a few concepts that all adults mutually understand. When singles get frustrated by the dating game it’s because the most cardinal rules have been forgotten. I do believe dating has rules and most of my success is due to following them stringently. Now is the time to embrace the unchangeable facts about dating that everyone single should live by. No matter what, you should never forget the following.
I don’t care how many cute couples you know who love each other from the bottom of their hearts, dating is superficial.
No one can escape it and those who try quickly find their closet filled with the best Express has to offer, it attempts to “catch up.” What you look like matters. What you do for a living matters. What you wear and what you drive all make up the package you present when you date. Those who think they can skirt judgment or buck the system by choosing to ignore this principle are sadly mistaken and most likely lonely. No one can escape the fact that the better deal syndrome affects all single people. You may not care about what you look like, (trust me, we can tell) but your potential partner cares. But you wouldn’t know that because you don’t have one. My advice to you is to stop looking a hot ass mess and the got damn fool.
Human decency is a novel concept in dating because quite frankly, no one owes you anything.
Statements like, “You should at least…” “Have the courtesy to at least….” Do you know what is less than least? Nothing and that’s just what we owe each other in dating. It’s a benefit and a curse. If you have plans for dinner and you get blown off, guess what that’s life. In dating when single men and women interact with strangers, who owe each other no explanations, no common courtesies, no ‘at least’; not a damn thing. Singles are always searching for answers and we get upset when others don’t do what we want them too. Still, when someone we are dating, that we think we had a connection with blows us off many singles want to know why? Why didn’t he call me back? Why didn’t she tell me she had a boyfriend? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? The world may never know and neither will you, move on.
This brings me to my last principle of dating which is, everyone gets played.
It’s happened to me, you and Jessica Simpson. There is no immunity against a person’s ability to make you feel stupid because you believed they were something they weren’t. Every single man and woman will eventually feel the fool for having cared for, trusted and invested in someone who meant them absolutely no good. There is no defense against putting yourself out there. The belief that single people have intentional walls up is false. It’s just hard to date knowing the high risk of being played, made to look and feel like boo boo the fool over some knuckle head that you barely knew. And nothing is worse than being played by someone that you didn’t even like! Who you only went out with so you wouldn’t feel like an asshole; been there, done that.
These dating laws can definitely create an aversion to dating. It would be so much easier if everyone followed the same rules but we don’t.