All the Single Ladies - By Annie McFarland

Now, put your hands up!

Some say marriage is tough and you must work at it every day. Having been married, I agree. . .there are days that I wanted to poke his eye out with a pencil. I didn’t. . .but boy did I really want to. But marriage is so fucking easy compared to dating. Of course, you are welcome to disagree with me but this blog is literally all about my opinions so just go with me for a sec.

Losing a spouse through death or divorce is brutal and you come out the other side as a different person. A far more cautious and careful person. 

Dating in our 20’s was so much easier, simply because we didn’t know better. We didn’t have enough life experience to teach us to put our guard up in certain situations. 

And the rules of dating were TOTALLY different back then too! No kids to worry about, no blending families, no previous hurts to try to navigate, no huge walls that need to be broken down! No. . .it was just meet, date, fall in love! Ha. . please don’t call me on that because I know I am romanticizing it!The rules now are murky with over emotion, fear and inappropriate sexpectations!

Do you know, I had a guy friend tell me that he had chatted up a girl on Tinder, he asked her out and she asked him to pick her up at her house for the date.

For me. .  that right there was super weird but wait that’s not even the weird part. He gets to her house and she is waiting for him, at the door with not a stitch on and a glass of scotch. She hands over the glass of scotch to him, drops to her knees and gives him a blow job. Uh. . .if this is the kind of competition that is out there in the dating world, every nice girl is screwed!

But the rules that I mentioned are not only the sexy rules, like meet at the door naked and give an immediate blow job. Yes, I know. . .every guy would love this moment but that just can’t be realistic, can it? So here is a sampling of the post-hurt dating and relationship rules that you must follow otherwise it WILL be over. This list has been compiled from my experiences and the experiences of my girlfriends. Feel free to add to it as you see fit! 

1)    Apparently, you can never have any emotion, like ever. . .channel your inner Stepford Wife.
2)    Don’t get too sloppy drunk or you might have a flash of emotion. . . and that will not be tolerated, see above. 
3)    Always praise everything they do, even if it is not praise worthy. . yes, everyone gets a trophy in this dating-scape.
4)    Don’t disappoint, this goes hand in hand with Rule 3. . .we certainly do not want any disappointed man-children out there.
5)    Be available. . .ya know. . just on the off chance that they want to spend time with you. . .clearly your time is not valuable. . .but if you don’t make yourself available, see above.

Look. . .I get it. . .I too have my expectations and I don’t want to waste my time on someone that is not going to work but sometimes you have to give it a chance to actually find out. . which I have not always been so good at!

I’m going to share something that I haven’t shared with you yet. . .one of the main reasons I stopped dating Hallmark was because of one reaction. . .one night. We had just gotten back to his house from dinner and it was LIVE time for Meghan. I had to support my girl, so I told him that I was going to hop on, really quickly and he agreed. Perhaps, it was rude but I didn’t plant myself there for the whole thing and he had agreed so in my mind. . .we were good to go. Clearly. . . we were not good to go because after a minute or so, he came up to me and said that his time was very valuable and I was wasting it by watching the LIVE, we should be spending that time together.

Ahhhhh. . . . hell no! This felt eerily similar to the shittiest relationship I’ve ever had with the most insecure man ever. So. . I bolted, from his house that night and from his life. I wasn’t willing to wait around to find out if it was a blip on our dating history or if he was going to turn out exactly like that other guy. To be honest, he didn’t show that much emotion or have that big of a reaction but honestly it struck a cord WAY too close to such a shitty experience that it set me off. In retrospect, I probably over-reacted but I don’t regret the decision that I made.

Fast forward to today. . .and The Hammer. . . we have grown closer and we are now letting our walls down. By seeing past those walls, I am beginning to see some hiccups and bumps that surprise me. I am still committed to him so obviously they are not striking a cord but definitely something that I am going to be acutely aware of moving forward. As he puts it, he is. . .BROKEN.

Dude. . .aren’t we all?!?!? We all have our shit but at the end of the day it comes down to, do your broken parts work with my broken parts so that we become one busted looking whole? Maybe?!?!? maybe not?!?!?Ultimately, we all just want to feel special and important to someone that is special and important to us.

-Annie

Oh, and if you’re married. . .and he’s a good guy but he pisses you off sometimes. . .hold on to him and remind yourself that this too shall pass because you don’t ever want to find yourself out in the broken world of dating!