Back on the Market. Do's and dont's

From time to time I ask my blog readers for blog ideas. Today was one of those days. I realized that I hadn't blogged for some time and I thought it was time. I received a message today from a very old friend of mine. The contents of the message were rather surprising to me. It was for a blog idea and it was really personal. I know that the only reason why this was sent to me was because my opinion as a friend is valued and more than likely the person wanted to see my spin on things.

The message read that my friend would soon be divorced to their high school sweet heart. This was the only lover that my friend has known. 17 years, 3 kids, a house, cars and many responsibilities later my friend will be on the dating scene again soon. I am pretty sure that my friend has a valid reason for the divorce and I didn't want to pry too much. I know that if it were me and I was in a 17 year relationship that fell apart for whatever reason the last thing I would want would be a pity party filled with questions that would open the wounds of what I was going through.

So now that we have the background, I want to talk to you about dating after a long term relationship. What are some of the Do's and Don'ts to getting back on the dating scene. I am not an expert at this and anything that I blog at this point is based solely on opinion.

DO: find yourself. After a long term relationship that went sour you may not know who you are anymore. Maybe you decide that the things you liked during your relationship were only because your spouse or significant other liked them. Sample life and give new things a try.

DON'T: Sample life by sampling every single person of the opposite sex. That may find you in the free clinic trying to find a cure.

DO: Learn to love yourself. Maybe the relationship left you broken. Maybe it left you doubtful about your looks or your personality. As people, especially if we are hurt, there are times that we tend to blame ourselves. Learn to love you from the top of your head to the tips of your toes.

DON'T: Become a pompous selfish jerk who is obnoxious and only thinks about themselves. Just because you love yourself it doesn't mean that the world doesn't exist.

DO: Learn to let go and forgive. I was told once that the best way to heal is forgiveness. You have to forgive the other person for all the hurt and pain that they caused you. This may take a little time. It doesn't happen over night. When you decide to forgive the person you have to speak the words to them. "I wanted to let you know that I forgive you for all of the pain that you may have caused me and I want to apologize for anything wrong I may have done on my part to hurt you as well." Once this is done it will feel like an 1200 lb gorilla has been lifted from off your shoulders.

DON'T: Tell the person you forgive them and then curse them out and cause other dramas. This is uber counter productive. And it means that you really don't forgive that person.

DO: Something nice for yourself for once. I know that when you have been a relationship for some time you tend to forget about a very important person. YOURSELF. Book a spa day, buy yourself something nice, take a get away trip. Make it some thing special.

DON'T: Max out all of your credit cards and bury yourself in debt because the popcorn popper said to do something nice for yourself. I will not pay your bills and I will not let anyone move into my house cause you lost it all being irresponsible.

DO: Learn to trust again. If you don't trust anyone going out into the dating world will be useless. Because at every date you would wonder how many husbands, wives, baby mothers or fathers the person really has regardless of what they tell you.

DON'T: Blindly believe everything you are told. If the person says something that seems extremely far fetched, hell it probably is. For example: Your date says "I am a millionaire, I have money in off shore accounts." But you had to pick them up cause they have no car and you had to pay for half the meal because they "forgot their card". IF IT SMELLS LIKE SHIT AND IT LOOKS LIKE SHIT guess what? IT'S SHIT.

DO: Allow yourself to be set up on a blind date. Just for the fun of it. Take a chance. Maybe the person is a good match. If it turns out that they are not, you can at least try to have fun.

DON'T: Start off with heavy conversations on the first date by talking about your failed past and all 18 of your kids. Keep the conversation light and friendly. Try to allow them to get to know you without giving out all of the details all at once. You need to try to keep their interest.

Ok, at this point I have given out a lot of information. I want some of my readers to comment and give some additional DO's and DONT's. Seeing the perspective of my readers is always great. and GO

Say what you mean and mean what you say

Today I'm venting because I’m tired of the dating scene and the games that people play. In this day and age dating is so damned hard. What makes it even harder is that people always have ulterior motives. Why can't we be up front with each other about what we want? Why does it have to be a dating game?

If you meet someone and think they are good looking and are only interested in getting their box or pole just say so. Why pretend to be interested in that person? Why waste your time and theirs? I mean if initially you are interested in getting to know who they are and then decide you don't like them then say so. It would hurt their feelings less if you are upfront. Don't wait for them to catch feelings 6 months down the line to say "So um, I don’t really like you"

I respect a man more when he says "I'm not interested in your job, personality or what you did yesterday. I am just interested in sex." Would he probably get smacked if he is rude about it? Maybe but he will get honesty points. Honesty is big in my book. If you are honest then there is no room for lies...

With that being said please do not tell people things that are not true. "I love you; you mean the world to me." "I want you to be my girl". Things like this only get people into situations they are not ready for. If you love the person then fine, say it. But don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Nothing is accomplished by doing this. Someone’s feelings end up getting hurt and someone else ends up looking like a big dirt bag.

And stop asking people out on dates or accepting dates you really don't want to go on. That way people won't be let down or stood up. This is getting ridiculous. I'm done ranting.

Have a good night... I’m upset right now... in the words of my cousin... FTP.. FUCK Them PUTOS... lol

Black widow daters

The title basically speaks for itself. Just give me a minute to explain this one then if you don't like what I had to say then you can talk shit.

There are people in the world that are like the black widows of the dating world. A black widow dater is almost the exact same as the black widow spider. Everything is going great until they mate then they bite the heads off of their mate thus killing them. Well the black widow dater will have a great time with the potential victim then after sex they will begin to slowly kill that person. Not in the physical aspect but they would begin to treat the other person like trash. They may even put the other person in sex only (jumpoff) status although everything leading up to the sex never indicated that it would be just sex.

The black widow dater can be detrimental to a friendship. Friends don't have sex. Sex ruins friendships. I know there are a lot of you out there that believe in friends with benefits. Hey, if that's what you like it’s on you. I know what it does to real friendships and it isn't pretty. This is why I came to the conclusion that some friendships trump sex.

For example :( I will not say the opposite sex either because I have seen same sex friend’s ruined as well.) You guys know that there is chemistry there. You go out and have a great time. You have sex. You find out the person or maybe you are emotionally unavailable. The next time you see this person at friend X's house the encounter will uber AWKWARD!

There are some people in this world that mean more to me than a wild 30-45 minutes of hot animalistic sex. 
I was kind of a black widow dater at one point. I wasn't aware that I was a black widow dater because men never bothered to say anything. They would deal with me and take the abuse. A good friend of mine made a joke one day that opened my eyes. I think it’s because I highly mistreated a member of her family that I was dealing with for a good period of time. She made A LOT of jokes about how I treated him and like a sick puppy he followed me around anyway.

I can't say if I am still a black widow dater but I try to be weary of my actions. So if I ever treated you like trash after an encounter my apologies. Humans are creatures of habit. You don't know you have a problem until someone points it out sometimes. By the way please stop acting like little bitches and your feelings won't get hurt. What? I am a work in progress.

Do you know Black widow daters? Are you one? Have you encountered one? How do you handle them?