Under the Hill - Great Expectations

A friend of mine recently discovered that the man in her life has not only been seeing another woman, but had recently crowned the other woman his girlfriend. Making her mouth twitch, voice rise and eyes narrow in rage wasn’t the fact that she felt played, and boy did she feel played, but the fact that it was someone else, a mutual friend of theirs, that told her the news. Her "man" just stopped calling.

I agreed that he was a lying, cowardly worm, but when I told the story to a guy friend of mine he told me that said lying, cowardly worm had done nothing wrong. “They were just dating. He didn’t owe her a thing,” he said. “The problem is women expect too much. If you go out on more than one date they start calling you their boyfriend. Women need to start listening to men. If we say it’s just dating, it’s just dating.”

Now, I’m sure that it’s not just men who will tell you this. You’ll find a number of women, usually and coincidentally happily coupled up, who will tell you the same thing. Women lie to themselves and then want to blame the man when she is forced to face the truth. But it is really that simple?Let’s face it, women are still looking for princes. Men know this, in fact, on some level they count on this. They love that women are willing to give so much so quickly and feel that as long as they throw out a disclaimer (Warning: this is just sex) or (Warning: I’m not looking to get serious) their conscious is clear. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Especially when these disclaimers are rarely followed up with: “By the way, I’m also dating and sleeping with other women.”

Men, despite what some women like to think, know exactly what they want. The problem is, a majority of them don’t have the guts to say: “It isn’t you.” The guy that my friend was dating didn’t just wake up one morning and randomly chose which girl he wanted to see exclusively. He knew this for a while and just kept mum.

Women are guilty of this too. I’ve “forgotten “ to return calls and have lied about having a boyfriend because it was easier, but the difference between men and women is that women rarely pretend that they are into somebody, while courting somebody else. For the most part Women Serial Daters (WSDs) are usually up front with men. “I like you, but I like David too” and they go from there.It seems that somewhere along the line we have lost respect for ourselves and for each other. Women need to stop “dating” men who can’t be bothered to get to know just them. Women also need to walk away from men who don’t respect them enough to let them know where they really stand.

For their part, men need to stop feeling like they need to have the entire bakery before choosing a pastry puff. If you are not really feeling a girl DON’T DATE HER! If you are a Male Serial Dater (MSD) let a sister know. If it’s obvious that a woman is feeling you more than you are feeling her, please man up and tell her straight out, “It is never going to happen.” It may sting, but it’ll squash those pesky, unrealistic great expectations that can only lead to shattered dreams and broken hearts.

till next week…