More Dating Advice From an Expert

Remem­ber that movie Demo­li­tion Man?

It’s been a few years since I’ve seen it, but if my mem­ory serves me cor­rectly, Wes­ley Snipes played a dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal and Sylvester Stal­lone was a cop who has made it his goal to cap­ture him. Some­how, Wes­ley Snipes ends up being cap­tured and cryo­geni­cally frozen (I sup­pose I could look it up, but I’m gonna guess that the rea­son­ing was some­thing along the lines of “We need to study his brain for sci­ence”) and, for rea­sons I can’t recall, Stal­lone was frozen as well. Then, at some point in the dis­tant future (2011 or 2012, I believe), Snipes is mis­tak­enly unfrozen, busts out of cryo-jail and resumes his vio­lent crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. At which point Stal­lone is unfrozen as well, because he’s the only cop who can, once again, bring Snipes to justice.

Despite any glar­ing inac­cu­ra­cies in the above syn­op­sis, I do remem­ber that, while Stal­lone, Snipes and all other pris­on­ers in Demo­li­tion Man were in their frozen state, they were taught basic skills via osmo­sis so that, in the­ory, they could be pro­duc­tive mem­bers of soci­ety upon their release. Unfor­tu­nately, due to a glitch in the sys­tem, Snipes learned stuff like forgery, safe-cracking and com­puter hack­ing while he was in limbo, while super­cop Stal­lone only learned how to sew.

If, how­ever, Stal­lone had learned how to give impec­ca­ble dat­ing and rela­tion­ship advice rather than the abil­ity to hem a pair of khakis, his advice would prob­a­bly go some­thing like this…

Sub­ject: Get­ting Over My Boyfriends Past Lovers
From: Elle

Hey,

My boyfriend and I have been together for nearly seven months now, and he is great. He con­stantly tells me that I am the best girl­friend he has ever had and that no one has ever made his life so com­plete. I truly love him and I feel like we have an awe­some thing going for us. How­ever I have recently not been able to get his past sex­ual part­ners out of my mind. I was a vir­gin when I met him and he has a past with 7 other girls. All but two were one time things, but they still really bother me. I don’t know how to let the past be the past with this. I con­stantly feel com­pared or judged, even though he has never said any­thing but pos­i­tive feedback.

In a con­ver­sa­tion we were hav­ing about his (some­what crazy) ex girl­friend he said how I was so much bet­ter than her at sex, which I felt really good about because a com­ment he made ear­lier made it seem as though the best time he ever had with a girl was one of the girls he had dated for quite a while. How­ever this was not the case, as the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued I finally asked which one was the best, and he reluc­tantly told me that it was first girl A and then after her girl B would be the sec­ond best. So you can imag­ine my awk­ward­ness and heart­break. I mean what should I expect? He’s the only per­son I’ve ever had sex with and yet these girls could have count­less partners.

I don’t want to ruin this oth­er­wise near per­fect rela­tion­ship that I have with some­one so amaz­ing because of some­thing like this. I know a rela­tion­ship is built on so much more than sex but it really has me both­ered beyond belief right now.

Thank you!

Your boyfriend is kind of a dum­b­ass, Elle. It is com­mon knowl­edge amongst the male com­mu­nity that, when a new girl­friend inquires about your past sex­ual part­ners, you are sup­posed to dodge the ques­tion by any means nec­es­sary, because noth­ing good can come of any answer you may give (nor should a guy ever ask about a girlfriend’s past expe­ri­ences). I once had a girl­friend ask me how many women I’d slept with before her. I hemmed and hawed, but she kept press­ing. “How many?” she asked. I pre­tended to not hear her. “It won’t bother me,” she said, “I promise.” I tried to dis­tract her by telling her that I liked her shoes. It didn’t work. Like a heavy­weight prize­fighter work­ing the heavy­bag, she just kept pound­ing away. “How many? How many? How many?” Finally, I just had to fall to the floor and fake a stroke to get her to drop the subject.

Even if you asked him directly how many women he’s been with or how they ranked, he never should’ve given you a straight answer. The prob­lem is that many guys, espe­cially younger ones, think that they’ll sound much cooler if they exag­ger­ate their num­ber. Hence the widely-held belief that, in order to deter­mine any male’s true num­ber of sex­ual part­ners, one should take the num­ber that they claim and divide it by three (and to deter­mine a female’s num­ber, one should take the num­ber that they claim and mul­ti­ply it be three). Are we sure that that’s not the case here? Are you sure that he’s been with these seven women and not, say, two or three and that he thinks you’ll be impressed by his sex­ual prowess if he embell­ishes a bit?

Despite what that dimwit­ted goof­ball said, I’m sure that you’re just fine at sex. It’s really not dif­fi­cult, espe­cially if you’re a girl. Most of the time, all you really need to do is lay back, spread your legs and let him go to town. Every now and then, hop on top and take charge. Work in a few blowjobs and/or hand­jobs here and there (if you’re in need of a tuto­r­ial for those, visit Youporn.com), and tell him to shut up about his dumb ex-girlfriend sex rankings.

Sex is sex, and no guy who’s get­ting laid reg­u­larly has any right to com­plain. Even if what he said hurt your feel­ings, I can assure you that he’s quite happy with you. He’s just too dopey to express it prop­erly. A lot of guys are dumb. If you haven’t real­ized that yet, you even­tu­ally will. On the other hand, a lot of girls are inse­cure, and you need to stop quizzing him about his pre­vi­ous girl­friends, wor­ry­ing whether or not you mea­sure up and rec­og­nize that he’s with you because he wants to be with you.

Sub­ject: torn
From: a

i have been going out with my boyfriend for over 2 years. and has never ver­bally abused me… ever. how­ever, just recently, he has has mean things to say to me. and it just started about the time he moved in with me. one time he told me, “i like bash­ing you in the f*ing teeth.” i let it go. i didn’t say any­thing. he has also said to me at times to “shut the f***-up.” another time he poured water on my knees. and as he walked off he said, “i could f*ing punch you right now if i could get away with it.” i let him go. but now he is wear­ing me down with apolo­gies. and i find myself miss­ing him… the nice part of him. please help. these are red flags… cor­rect? or should i trust him when he said he will never do it again. but even after he has said that… he has sent me “not so nice” text mes­sages. he was upset. i’m not sure why i love him still. i know i sound like this dumb girl. but i really am torn. my friends do not like him. his friends say i over reacted by let­ting him go and kick­ing him out. i would deeply appre­ci­ate your input. thank you!

Ditch him.

Maybe he’s bipo­lar or per­haps he’s merely an ass­hole, but either way, you need to stop mak­ing excuses for him. When you were a lit­tle girl, I’m pretty sure you didn’t dream about one day end­ing up with some­one who con­sis­tently threat­ened to knock your teeth out, so stop try­ing to con­vince your­self that it’s nor­mal or accept­able. In this case, your friends are absolutely cor­rect. Lis­ten to them and cut him loose before he actu­ally fol­lows through on one of his threats.

You’ll find some­one bet­ter as soon as you’re free and clear of this weirdo.

Sub­ject: Did I strike a Nerve?
From: Janine

I was see­ing a guy, every­thing was going great between us, the attrac­tion couldn’t be more clear. I believe that because I devel­oped feel­ings for him, he began to dis­tance him­self from me, but wanted to keep me around as one of his options. Prior he almost seemed ter­ri­to­r­ial over me, but sud­denly he no longer was inter­ested in inti­macy with me. I was told by his own friends that he was see­ing other girls. I kept ask­ing him to be upfront with me, but his responses were always vague, always some­thing like if you don’t hear it from me, don’t believe it.

To make a long story short, when­ever I tried to get clo­sure for myself to find out what really went wrong, it just made him angry or annoyed with me. We’ve got­ten into heated argu­ments, I said things I didn’t mean, but I feel as if I’ve struck a nerve with some­thing I’ve said because his recent lan­guage towards me has become really aggres­sive and he’s hos­tile towards me. I’m the only girl who it seems ticks him off and I don’t know why.

He told me there is no emo­tion between us so I start see­ing some­one else and he starts act­ing like a jeal­ous ex and gets into a war of words with the new guy. Every­thing he does and says are like mixed sig­nals to me. I asked him if he hated me and he never answered me back. Thing is, I have no idea why we are argu­ing or why there is so much neg­a­tive ten­sion. When I tried to get to the bot­tom of it, he flips out or tells me to leave him alone. What did I miss?

Thanks for the ques­tion, Janine. And here’s my answer…

I don’t know.

With­out know­ing this guy or being in his head, it’s impos­si­ble to know for sure what he’s think­ing or what you’re miss­ing. Sadly, I sim­ply have no idea. But the most likely sce­nario I can come up with is this: He’s weird.

Lots of peo­ple in this world, both men and women, are just plain weird. Some­times their weird­ness stems from an aber­ra­tion in their genetic makeup. Some­times it’s based in child­hood trauma, like the time their drunk uncle fin­gered them at the fam­ily pic­nic. What­ever the case may be, they’re emo­tion­ally dam­aged for life. Thus, not only are they unable to main­tain healthy rela­tion­ships with mem­bers of the oppo­site sex, but they often let their own deep inse­cu­ri­ties get in the way of reg­u­lar social interaction.

And I think, essen­tially, inse­cu­rity is what we’re deal­ing with here. When a girl pays atten­tion to a nor­mal guy, that nor­mal guy is thrilled. The inse­cure guy, on the other hand, looks in the mir­ror, is dis­gusted by what he sees and decides that he’s not good enough for the girl in ques­tion and does what­ever it takes to sub­con­sciously sab­o­tage it. While the nor­mal guy would love to find one sweet girl to spend his time with, the inse­cure guy needs to sleep with as many women as pos­si­ble in a vain attempt to con­quer his own feel­ings of inad­e­quacy. When the nor­mal guy’s ex-girlfriend starts see­ing some­one else, he shrugs his shoul­ders and qui­etly says, “Good for her,” even if he doesn’t really mean it. The inse­cure guy, on the other hand, causes a scene and yells at the new guy because he thinks it’ll estab­lish him as the dom­i­nant alpha male, even though he knows deep down that he’s not.

More than any­thing else, the inse­cure guy wants you to notice him, and he wants to be in the posi­tion where he has the power to push you away. He wants to tug at your emo­tional strings just so he can prove to him­self that he has the abil­ity. Above all, he wants atten­tion, and either neg­a­tive or pos­i­tive atten­tion will work. My advice is to stop giv­ing it to him. For­get about the clo­sure you’re seek­ing. You’re not gonna get it, so stop send­ing him text mes­sages, stop call­ing him, stop acknowl­edg­ing his pres­ence in social set­tings. He might not like it at first, but he’ll even­tu­ally get bored and move on to some­one else.

From what you’ve told me, you’ve done noth­ing wrong, so stop let­ting him try to con­vince you that you did.

Sub­ject: Dat­ing for 2 weeks
From: Kara

Hi Jeff,

I may just be over­re­act­ing, but have a ques­tion about a guy I just started dat­ing. We met online and our first date was amaz­ing. We had an instant con­nec­tion and laughed all night long. Our sec­ond date was a few days later and we had din­ner and then went back to his place. We didn’t have sex, but just made out for hours and we both admit­ted to feel­ing incred­i­bly com­fort­able with each other after just talk­ing for a few days. Date three we went out for drinks with his friend. Date 4 was din­ner again, we came back to my place and he asked me to have sex and I said no. Date 5 was a few days later and he called me when he got back from his three day busi­ness trip to meet him and his friend for drinks. That night we had sex and it was great (morn­ing was a lit­tle awk­ward though). We are hav­ing a really great time together, and he seems like he’s really into me. How­ever, with the online dat­ing I can see that he still goes on and just even updated his pro­file. We’ve only been see­ing each other for 2 weeks, so should I assume he’s dat­ing other peo­ple? I’m not com­fort­able with the idea of dat­ing more than one per­son at a time, but all my friends and fam­ily keep telling me I should be dat­ing other peo­ple as well. They also keep telling me it is way to soon to bring up the exclu­siv­ity talk with him. I think he could be a really good fit for me, but don’t want to screw it up by com­ing off too strongly too soon. How do I deal with the fact hat he might be dat­ing other peo­ple and when is it ok to talk to him about it?

Thank you so much for your advice.

Per­haps you are already aware of this, Kara, or per­haps you’re not, but it’s extremely hard for most guys to get laid. Regard­less of whether a guy is good-looking, or wealthy, or incred­i­bly charm­ing, he’ll find him­self going home alone, tak­ing off the clothes he put on solely in hopes of impress­ing women, curl­ing up in bed and curs­ing his mis­er­able luck far more often than not. Which is why, out of the mil­lions of het­ero­sex­ual men between the ages of 18 and dead who are not cur­rently in a com­mit­ted rela­tion­ship, I would esti­mate that 97% would absolutely, pos­i­tively love to find one girl that they cared about and could date/marry/whatever. That leaves a scant 3% who actu­ally want to, for one rea­son or another, date and/or sleep with as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. Maybe they’re young enough that they have not yet grown weary of “the game.” Maybe they just got out of a bad rela­tion­ship and they can’t bring them­selves to trust any women quite yet. Or maybe their mother never loved them and, for them, sleep­ing with women and then ditch­ing them is a twisted form of futile ret­ri­bu­tion. If this guy in ques­tion doesn’t sound like any of those peo­ple, than you can prob­a­bly rest assured that he’s in the 97% who would be more than happy with just one person.

My advice is to sim­ply give it some time. Maybe another two weeks or three sex­ual encoun­ters (whichever comes first). If he’s still active on that web­site at that point, then you may wanna ask him about it and be pre­pared to move on if you don’t get an answer you like. But in the mean­time, there’s a very good chance that he’s merely keep­ing his options open. Don’t judge too harshly quite yet.

Best of luck to you, Kara. Keep me posted on how things turn out.

Sub­ject: help! I need info on my b/f Jack Far­rel
From: Lindsy Bitellicelo

I have a prob­lem, my name is Lindsy and I’m a super­model from Dubai UAE. I’m infat­u­ated by my boyfriend, he’s the love of my life and my dream man and he’s every­thing to me, but I’m really wor­ried because I think he’s a spook!

I think he’s CIA because one time I seen a CIA badge in his gym bag and a folder with some weird gov­ern­ment look­ing stamps on it and it had some type of seal on it so I didnt want to open it. I’m a pretty snoopy per­son and I’m usu­ally care­full about it, so I don’t think he knows that I seen that ID or any­thing, he also see him dis­ap­pear ran­domly at var­i­ous times and I don’t know if he’s cheat­ing on me or doing some­thing with CIA?! He left me because I did some­thing to upset him a few years back and he com­pletely dis­ap­peared, but then out of the blue almost like from the sky, he appeared again, and I accepted him of course because I love him for­ever, but I’m wor­ried now, and even though he tells me his name and shows me an ID it’s not the name that was on his CIA badge that I seen, I’m afraid to talk to him about it because he says he was in the army and hon­or­ably dis­charged, and works now at some IT com­pany doing com­puter stuff.

I don’t know what to do, and I’m a lit­tle wor­ried. He’s always busy with work and when I see him on the com­puter he’s always doing stuff that I never under­stand, also one time I seen some­thing that said CIA on it in his com­puter but I couldn’t open it! What should I do? How do I know if he’s cheat­ing on me. I try ask­ing him about his past and I know he goes to Africa and lived in Africa allot in the past because he showed me pic­tures and things of him in Africa. Every­thing seems like he’s a “spook” because he kind of just entered my life when I was in Dubai, and he has some really insane dri­ving skills, one time I was rid­ing with him after he had taken some alco­hol and he spun the car around on the open high­way and started dri­ving back­wards, then rotated back, he said that he learned how to drive in Africa, but now I’m not so sure!!!

His name is “Jack Far­rel” or Jack­Far­rel He has said Jack Andrew Far­rel but he never lets me look at his dri­vers license long enough to see it, and I can’t find any­thing with his mid­dle name.

Oh ya, and another thing that is really weird, is that he has grown his hair out really long which is really sexy, but he used to have short hair, and no beard… maybe he’s try­ing to use a dis­guise??? Oh and he’s also very patri­otic and loves his coun­try, he always solutes when he hears of a sol­dier or sol­diers dying. Please help me because I don’t know if he could be dan­ger­ous or if he really loves me, maybe he’s pre­tend­ing or maybe he doesn’t even know? I’m so upset by this and I don’t know how to con­front him about it or if it’s even a good ideal to con­front him about it.

Let me ask you a ques­tion, Lindsy… Does the thought of dat­ing a CIA agent turn you on? When you think of this Jack Far­rel zip­ping around Africa, inter­ro­gat­ing evil­do­ers and engi­neer­ing rev­o­lu­tions, do you feel a lit­tle tingly in your girly parts? If so, I highly sug­gest that you stop read­ing right here and con­tinue liv­ing your life.

Oth­er­wise, read on…

Still here?

Good.

Lyn­dsy, are you fuck­ing retarded? Do you seri­ously think you might be dat­ing a CIA agent because you saw a CIA badge in his gym bag and some­thing on his com­puter said CIA? Trust me, if this guy is indeed a CIA agent, he’s the dumb­est CIA agent around, because appar­ently a super­model was able to deci­pher his secret.

Here’s my guess… the guy you’re dat­ing is a geeky com­puter pro­gram­mer who, a year ago or so, had the idea that it might be fun to print out a fake CIA badge for him­self so that he could maybe trick dumb girls into sleep­ing with him because he’s a mys­te­ri­ous oper­a­tive deeply involved in the world of inter­na­tional intrigue. But instead of liv­ing the James Bond life that he’s always found so fas­ci­nat­ing, he spends his dull days on the com­puter cod­ing Javascript and PHP for stu­pid web­sites. Luck­ily, the code looks like gib­ber­ish to you, so when you ask him what he’s work­ing on, he can say with a sly grin, “It’s clas­si­fied.” Oh, and he hap­pens to be an excel­lent drunk driver.

Trust me, Lyn­dsy, you’re not dat­ing a CIA agent. If he was, I’m guess­ing that you wouldn’t know it. The guy you’re dat­ing is a nor­mal, bor­ing loser who, like pretty much every other guy on the planet, wishes that he was cooler and more impor­tant than he actu­ally is. Luck­ily, as long as there are simple-minded girls will­ing to ful­fill the sul­try Bond Girl por­tion of his secret agent fan­tasy, then he can live with being a reg­u­lar schlub.

Do you a ques­tion that only an expert in the field of dating/relationships can answer? Ask it here. Don’t worry… any­thing marked “pri­vate” won’t be reprinted here. Actual pic­tures of your pri­vates, how­ever, will be shown to all of my friends and any num­ber of ran­dom peo­ple at the local bar.

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