DEAR PLAYBOY AUTHOR BOY

Dear Playboy Author Boy,

 

 

 

You are a romantic aren't you? Did you read The Fountainhead? 

 

I do find dating to be frustrating, but what else can a girl do but just keep plugging along.  I want to be myself, but are we ever truly ourselves?  I feel a bit lost at times, but I'm guessing that's part of the game.  I sometimes wonder if I'm meant to only date.  It sometimes seems so much easier instead of getting to know someone.  Crossing that line becomes more difficult as one gets older, or maybe it's just I haven't met the right person.

 

comment?

 

Signed, Sad in NYC

 

Dear Sad,

 

I tried an experiment.  Very eye opening.  I made a list of what I wanted my female to be.  The list was deeply disturbing to me.  I doubted women existed who did what I wanted or who were like what I wanted.  It went to kinkiness.  I was convinced no woman would be the girl I wanted.  I was married twice and no way would those females would ever be anything like what I wanted and needed.  I would listen to my friends describe their wives.  I had a total model of humanity, at least the female spectrum of it, and it was missing what I needed.  I figured I was settling down to a long period of being alone and going on first dates.

 

So the first thing I did was decide that all those first dates were going to be fun.  That was what my blog was about.  The hundred first dates came down to just being myself, reinventing myself over and over, a "Groundhog Day" movie, one after the other.  Next.  But since I was connecting with numbers of women, I assumed that somewhere in all those numbers there would be females who approached what I wanted and needed.

 

In a hundred women (100 very carefully selected women), there were 8 with whom I was compatible completely.  That's one in 12.  Non-mutuality made 6 of them fade into friendship or leave my life.  Two became intense girlfriends and were everything I wanted.

 

Everything I put on that Impossible List existed -- that was a miracle!!!  And not only did they exist, but 2% of the time I was able to make them as frantically in love with me as I was with them.

 

Naturally I blew it with both of them.

 

But in the seven months since the relationship with the second woman ended, I realized something.  I became good at both detecting women who had what I wanted (and what I wanted was not something you could come right out and ask for, trust me) or would delightedly learn to do or be what I wanted.

 

It went from one in 12 to one in two.  From 8% to 50%.

 

The experiment was, to be absolutely honest, first with myself.  What did I truly want?  To hell with what anyone else thought, what did I want?  To write it down honestly must have taken me months.  I would have to write my list at 4 am when I was too asleep to lie to myself.  The read it later, my face red from embarrassment.

 

Then I had to be honest with the women.  At first that was really difficult.  I botched it all over the place, but I learned to make fun of myself, make it a funny process, and not take it too seriously.  Since I expected failure, and since I was dedicated to the idea of even first-dates-no-second-date encounters should be fun, things evolved.  I got better at asking for what I wanted.  I got better at listening to the things women who were what I wanted said.  Eventually I realized that sometimes I detected things in females that even they didn't know were there.  I didn't change them -- I gave them permission to be the woman they truly wanted to be.

 

What I'm saying to you is there are only three requirements.  Absolute brutal honesty with yourself and the people you communicate with.  The courage to have that honesty and communicate it.  And the ability to withstand rejection coupled with the energy to keep going in the face of it.

 

An admiral I knew in the Navy once said, "gentlemen, learn to play hurt.  That's what life is about."  Just like on the playing field, nothing is ever optimal.  You learn to win even when you're limping.

 

And yes, I read the Fountainhead.  I kind of like the idea of a triangle relationship, one woman, two men, but not with the men competing with each other but both enjoying and loving the female.  My next experiment is constructing such a relationship for myself.  Probably way further out than you even want to hear about, but that is why I thought I was impossible to match, and yet there have been a dozen women with whom I was perfectly matched.

 

It is out there, it exists, it is real, and when you get it and can hold onto it, it makes life so much fun that you may want to get by on three hours of sleep a night -- you'll be that excited to live it.

 

What do you think?

 

Playboy Author Boy