As I navigate through the muddled waters of U.Va. dating culture, I find that a lot of the guys here have the same sorts of awful afflictions. It seems as if they’ve all been infected with the same type of problems, none of which seem to have a cure. So I thought I’d take the time to break them down for you.
First of all, there’s the classic case of narcissism. Yes, we can tell that you work out seven days a week, and yes we can see your brand name clothing and your hair carefully styled into a casual mess under your backwards ball cap. But no, it doesn’t make us like you any more.
Then, there’s the pervasive problem of forgetfulness. Maybe they don’t remember that we wrote on their Facebook walls, gave them our numbers or had a class with them for an entire semester. Yeah, that’s it. They forgot, because they definitely didn’t blow us off on purpose.
The forgetfulness ties in with the next affliction: some sort of woman-induced attention deficit disorder. As an example, allow me to tell yet another embarrassing story to an all-too-large audience. A few weeks ago, I was at a party and thought I was hitting it off with some guy. We had been hanging out for a while, flirting and dancing — the usual. After one of the songs, I stepped outside to make a quick phone call. When I came back in, he was in another room sitting on a couch, chatting with another girl. I decided to sit down with the two of them and try to join the conversation. It didn’t work. The next thing I knew, they were going at it and I was the only other person in the room, sitting on the directly adjacent couch cushion. Some boys can’t seem to focus on one thing (i.e. a girl) for a decent amount of time before their attention is turned elsewhere (i.e. another girl).
On the other end of the spectrum, though, is something comparable to an obsessive disorder, where a guy just won’t get the hint that you’re not interested. It definitely turns into an obsession when guys continue to go after us once we’ve already turned them down. If we didn’t return your phone call, e-mail or text the first, second, third or fourth time, we probably won’t return the fifth. That makes you obsessive. The sad part is that if we liked you a little bit more, the persistence might be considered romantic.
It seems that romance is only romance if we like you. This includes surprising us with flowers, throwing pebbles at our windows in the middle of the night and whisking us off on a dream vacation. Putting these things in the context of us not liking you so much, however, makes them weird, creepy and — in the last case — illegal. So make sure your romantic gestures are being perceived as romantic gestures, or else you’re just another one of the boys on Grounds suffering from an unhealthy obsession.
Another awful problem is the Kissing Disease. No, I’m not talking about Mononucleosis, just the affliction of bad kissing. Subsets of this problem include the Novacaine (the useless flopping of a limp tongue), the Gecko (a little rapid darting tongue) and the Ice Cream Cone (this one’s almost self-explanatory). Those are all really, truly terrible. Honestly, I think I’d rather have the Mono type of kissing disease than be hit by another Gecko.
Jordan’s column runs biweekly Mondays. She can be reached at j.hart@cavalierdaily.com.
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