Dating Acumen

by Richard

So I’ve got a friend who’s recently divorced (for the most part).

Okay, fine, dudes. Enough with the laughing. I mean, of course I have friends.

Anyway.

This friend, who I’m going to call Pitt, recently moved to Charlotte from the Pittsburgh (duh!) area and is enjoying life in North Carolina. He’s also enjoying, sort of, the life of the really really separated and just waiting for his wife to sign the papers so he’s almost divorced and is now back in the dating pool.

Pitt is the kind of guy who, upon meeting him, you instantly know is a salesman. He is open, outgoing and more friendly than a room full of well-fed dogs. Not that I’m suggesting he’s going to jump up on everyone and start licking their faces. No. He’s friendly is what I’m saying.

The thing is, he’s also having to date again, for the first time in a long time. And he’s running into a lot of women who are in a similar predicament, in that this is their first time dipping a toe in the dating pool in a long while.

So, I was out with Pitt and a guy who I’ll call Mike. Pitt and Mike met at one of those single-and-looking meet ups, and hit it off because they’re both basically the same people, it’s just one is a bit older than the other. It’s a good thing they became friends, because it certainly makes it easier going to those sorts of meet ups when you know there’s someone there who actually is interesting and wants to talk to you. Plus, now they’ve each got a wingman.

Anyway. We were talking and they were telling me about their dating experiences. Obviously the horrible ones, because those are inherently funny. And the thing that struck me was that the behavior they both were describing sounded really like how the girls in high school behaved.

When I brought up the similarity to Pitt and Mike, they both looked at me like I’d grown a second head. (I hadn’t.) I thought I’d stepped over some boundary, but, it turns out, they were simply gobsmacked because they hadn’t noticed it before and — by golly — I was right.

Well, you could have knocked me over with a very light thing of some kind. I was right.

That’s when I started thinking about dating acumen.

And, like the best of the serialized entertainments, I’m going to leave you with that thought for the weekend. We’ll resume our little one-way discussion on Monday.

Hah! A cliffhanger! I love it!

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