Dating Dilemmas By Melanie M.

Remember that movie where one of the characters repeatedly says, “This one time in band camp…?” Okay, well I don’t have any band camp stories (sorry), but what I do have is “This one time, I went on a date….” stories. I don’t know how or why I got to thinking of this topic, but suddenly the images of all of the dates I had ever been on just kept flooding my brain. So I sat there and I said “Melanie, what can you do with these God forsaken memories?” And then I thought about how all the wacky dates I’ve been on have helped me hone my dating radar.

That’s the thing with dating, although it can be a circus, it can teach you a lot about what you do not want and it can show you signs that you missed before. So you ready to read some of my wacky dates and what I learned from them? Okay, here goes…..

So this one time I went on a date with a co-worker (never doing that again for other obvious reasons) and he had on the clothes he wore from the day before. Yes, you read that right. So what I should have done was take my ass home and go tell all my girlfriends, but because I live for the story-- I proceeded with the nights events. Okay fine, we get to the venue and we order appetizers and blah blah blah. He receives his food and I watch him eat his buffalo wings. Now this is when I learned a crucial lesson about dates and table manners. Normally I dislike going on first dates that involve eating. I only sit down to eat with those that I truly like, and I think dinner is too heavy for a first date. But let us continue. So after eating the meat off of the bone, homeboy decided to start chewing bones like he was a mangy dog. So now not only does he repeat outfits the very next day, but he also has NO table etiquette. Well you can guess how that co-worker relationship worked out. Moral of this story: you can learn a lot about someone by having dinner/lunch or whatever with them. No I will not address the outfit repeat.

So this other time I was preparing to go on a third or fourth date with this guy. We had known each other for a while and things were looking up. So I waited upstairs and watched five o clock turn into six o clock, and before you know it---it was the end of the night. He stood me up for reasons I will never know. But I should have known that he wasn’t a man of his word, because he did this to other people. He would make plans and then say “Nah, I can’t” or “Can I take a rain check?” The sad part is that it was my 23rd birthday. Yea, so I learned that the way someone treats other people is the same way they will treat you.

This other time I was on a date and he kept asking me if that was my hair. He only dated women who had their real hair. This one was more my problem than his. I kept lying and saying that the weave was mine, but I should have put him in his place and said “Yea, I bought it. So what?” But that was a loooooonnnnggg time ago and I should have stayed true to me. Ladies and Gents this message is pretty simple: stay true to who you are.

This other time I was on a date, okay fine it wasn’t a date---I was hanging with my mom and this guy wanted to take her out to eat; I just happened to be with her. So we get to the diner and everything is all good. I am still tipsy from liming (trini equivalent of hanging out) with my Mommy and friends. So he hands Dionne (one of my favorite waitresses at the Floridian) his card and she comes back minutes later. She told him his card was declined. My mother’s face went serious in zero seconds. So I looked at the card and it was a damn debit card y’all. Mommy told him not to play with her and he pulled out some other card which ended up going through. What’s my point with this story: That if your funds are not secure, then you should not be going on dates, much less offering to take the daughter too.

This one time I went on a date and some random object, that I cannot remember, fell out of my bag, my date did not attempt to pick it up. He pointed to it, said “You dropped something,” and continued eating his curds and whey. That was it; he didn’t even offer to try to help. Did I mention that the object fell closer to him, than to me? Strangers on the street try to help you pick up your coins when it falls out of your bag and here I was on a first date with a guy who wasn’t trying to help me. This showed me that some people are selfish and only care about themselves. This one may sound petty on my part, but if you really think about it--it isn’t. This is the same guy that will not share his food with you and a laundry list of other things.

A long time ago (so long ago), I went to a baby shower with a potential boyfriend who decided that he was holding the gift bag. The baby shower was for a mutual friend of ours and a lot of our friends were there. All night long he bragged about how much he spent (I bought it) and how he has good taste (again, I bought it). I learned that you should see someone interact with their friends to better judge their character. He was just a plain old liar and a show-off, but when it was just me and him—he was the “best” guy in the entire world. The setting plays a major role in shedding the light on someone.

Sadly, I have more bad date stories than I have good ones, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve never had a great date, because I have. It just means that my BS detector is finely tuned and I’m actually thankful for those experiences. I share these memories freely, because I want to pass it on to you out there. I want you to be able to learn from my mistakes. Hopefully I’ve been able to do just that. Now if we can just get me to go on dates again…….I’m kidding, I’m kidding.

#dating #dilemmas #single #taken #relationship #advice