manslations

Our blogger pal, Heather Hindle, over at Just a Moment, wrote in a while back about what’s appealing to men (see my response here.) Now she’s got a question about speed dating. Let’s see what we can come up with.

I have to admit I am an online dating site lurker. I like to look at the profiles and pictures but can’t bring myself to enter my digits. However, I have signed up for a speed dating event next month. So, with the knowledge that all men (well, the healthy ones) think about sex first and it’s not really their fault, do you have any tips on what to say or do during our first six minutes together?

By the way, I think about sex a lot too, so I think it’s a human not just a man-related phenomenon. My trouble is, once I’ve pictured someone naked, I immediately become very shy, as if they can tell what I’m thinking or something. Does that happen to guys too?

Or is speed dating desperate?

Dear Heather,

First of all, your question about “once you picture someone naked you become shy, etc.” Yeah, that doesn’t happen to guys per se. Why? Because we are constantly picturing everyone naked. We barely even notice we did it sometimes. It doesn’t really rise to the level of “considering” most of the time. It’s just our brain’s way of saying “hi.” If men got shy every time we pictured that, you’d have never heard a male voice in your lifetime.

But onto your specific situation:

SPEED DATING

Full disclosure — I’ve never personally done speed dating. Lucky for you I don’t mind giving advice even when I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Plus, I do audition for TV and Radio commercials and voiceovers, which sounds like almost the exact same thing. As in, a shotgun blast of 2-minute opportunities, the overwhelming majority of which will NOT work out. Here’s what I know about these situations:

• NO TIME PRESSURE: There really isn’t any. I swear. Why? If you’re a good fit, 2 minutes will be plenty to at least think, “Well, it’s worth a second look.” Hell, 2 seconds might be. And if you’re NOT a good fit, well, it wouldn’t matter HOW long you had.
• NO REJECTION: There’s no such thing as “rejection” in a situation like this because, well, 99.99% of the time it’s not going to be a fit in the first place. It would be like going fishing, and every time you reel your line in without a fish on the hook, you get depressed. You’re not going into each one of these thinking that you must not get rejected because you KNOW that you will most of the time. So that can’t be the point, or you won’t have any fun. The point is…
• BRING YOUR “A” GAME EVERY TIME: Look, you can’t make any of these things into a relationship if it isn’t one. And thank god for that. I mean, you do NOT want to arm-wrestle some moron into dating you when you aren’t right together (and if you don’t believe me, I’ve got personal examples with a filmstrip and ditto handouts to sniff.) But that doesn’t mean you phone it in. The opposite. You bring the best part of you every time because you never know when it’s going to happen. The odds of any single situation being right are just about nil. HOWEVER, the other part of that reality is that the right situation will start in EXACTLY the same way as all the wrong ones. You won’t know ahead of time. So make sure you bring your best self to each one.
• MAKE SURE THAT AT LEAST YOU’RE HAVING FUN: I know, I know. This sounds like one of those barfy “Hey, just have fun with it,” pieces of advice. So let’s all throw up for a second, and then hear me out. Look, at an audition OR a date, nobody wants to see you take a trip to the dentist. They want to see you having a great time, enthusiastic, giving it your best shot. If you’re having fun, it goes back to your “A” game. Plus, it has the added benefit of, you know, being fun. And it lets him know that you know how to have fun. Which…sigh…you’d be surprised at how rare and refreshing that is. And if you’re NOT having fun, well, what does that tell this guy about what you’re going to be like later?

I don’t think that speed dating is desperate — no more desperate than auditioning for commercials, anyway. Ok, bad example. Seriously though, the only way either one is desperate is if you treat each chance you get as a “must win.” That will make you absolutely nuts. No, you’re WAY better off just giving the game away, making your own fun, being your best self, and going in with the expectation that an actual “love connection” is a wild longshot. (And therefore not really worth sweating.)

Another similarity between dating and auditioning for commercials is this: If you’re right for the job, it almost doesn’t matter WHAT you do in the audition. And if you’re not right for the job, well, it STILL doesn’t matter what you do. Either you will book the job, or you will not — it’s got nothing to do with what you DO. So, all you can do is be YOU, and hope you stumble into a situation in which that’s the right thing. And remember — a 1% success rate is not sad or unfortunate — in this situation it’s just REAL.

Good luck, Heather, and have fun at Speed Dating. Are you going to have to wade through a sea of douchebaggery? Probably. But that’s going to be true anywhere. (Sorry, I’m really sorry.) Honestly, I think it could be fun if you just let go of any hope of it working out, in favor of having a good time and seeing what happens.

So, ladies — any speed daters out there? Any advice/words of wisdom/warnings for our speedy compatriot?