Not Your Mother's Rules: The New Secrets for Dating (18 page)

If you have been dating exclusively for a long time, you can pay for little things here and there. For example, if your boyfriend is taking you to dinner and a show, you can buy him
drinks or take him somewhere nice for dessert. If he is sick, you can bring him chicken soup in bed and bring him a variety of cold medicines. But for regular Saturday night dinner dates, he should be picking up the tab.

If a guy insists that you go away with him but expects you to split the cost of the trip, say, “Thanks, but I don’t think I can take the time off” and skip it. Buyer beware: he may not be in love with you and may just be looking for a travel companion to have fun with. What if you have been dating for a while and he invites you to go away and is really excited about it? Sometimes dating and traveling require firm negotiation! Once he agrees to a time frame that is good for you—no longer than four days—let him plan the trip, make all the arrangements, and put it on
his
credit card. If he asks you to pay for something or you feel it’s right to contribute, pick one thing, like your airfare, and pay for that only. For example, if he asks you to go on a four-day cruise, you can pay for the off-boat excursions. Never put the whole trip (airfare, hotel, restaurants) on your credit card with the idea that he will reimburse you, as sometimes it will be awkward or impossible to get your money back. Sometimes a guy will have sudden business problems or bills right after a trip and you will feel heartless asking for your money, especially if you make more than he does or he has student loans and you don’t. (Money aside, the other reason not to go away for a week or two is that familiarity breeds contempt. Save
that
trip for your honeymoon.)

Money and material items are not the only ways women try to woo a guy and worm their way into his life. They e-mail him poetry, make collages of all the places they’ve been to, and become groupies at his sporting events. They try to patch up the fight he had with his father. They play therapist when he
has a bad day or when he wants to talk about his ex-girlfriend. Do you recognize yourself here?

If you are a generous person, then help your friends or find a charity and do volunteer work. But don’t use your positive quality as an excuse to do or buy things for a guy you are dating, because you will be putting yourself in a position to be used or hurt. Whether you’re giving him money for a car tune-up, cleaning his apartment for him, or getting him an interview at your law firm—it’s too much. You should not have to work that hard to get a guy’s interest. A
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Girl doesn’t have to buy a guy’s love or attention. If you are doing more than going on dates and being a CUAO, then you are doing too much!

T
HERE ARE MANY
factors that go into picking the right college, career, or city for yourself. Deciding where you’ll go to school or work or live solely based on your boyfriend or crush can be a big and costly mistake. Women of all ages can succumb to this temptation.

Isabella, a thirty-five-year-old lawyer, met Mark, thirty-eight, a senior lawyer at the same firm, when he flew in from San Francisco to the company’s headquarters in Chicago to work on a special case. Mark, who had a reputation for getting whatever he wanted, was smitten from the moment he met the tall brunette beauty. He made it his business to travel to Chicago twice a month for four-day weekends just to see her. They had a whirlwind courtship: daily textfests, e-mails, Skype sessions, fancy dinners, and jewelry! After six months, Mark asked Isabella to move to San Francisco so he could get to know her even better and hinted about a ring and a proposal. Isabella fell for her legal knight in shining armor.

Without much thought, she sold her condo, left her family and friends, accepted a transfer to the San Francisco office for a job with less seniority, and moved in with Mark. Because of all the concessions she had made, she figured Mark would propose within a month or two. But after six months of living
together and no ring or proposal, Isabella started feeling depressed and angry. She had few friends and no wedding to plan. Mark started working late because he was up for partner. Every time she brought up getting engaged, Mark became irritated and said, “What’s the rush? Let’s take our time. Besides, you don’t seem much like the girl I met anymore.” The argument would incense Isabella even more. She told him, “I’m this way because you still haven’t proposed.” It became a chicken-and-egg situation between them. It kept going back and forth.

When Isabella contacted us crying, we were not surprised to hear that things had soured. We explained that when you relocate to a guy’s city without a formal commitment (a ring and a wedding date), the guy gets complacent about marriage (surely your grandmother has said, “Why buy the cow when you have the milk for free?”), while you get ballistic that you uprooted your life for nothing. We told Isabella to tell Mark that she could no longer live with him without a ring and a wedding date and to start packing her bags if he didn’t propose. He got angry and said he refused to have a gun put to his head. Isabella moved out as quickly as possible and returned to Chicago—and never heard from Mark again. She lost a year of her life to a guy who didn’t want to marry her. So no matter how exciting relocating seems, don’t be impulsive.

Of course, Isabella is not the first working woman to waste time by relocating to be with her boyfriend. But it’s mostly college girls who don’t think twice about changing schools or moving to be with their boyfriends without any commitment. Aside from compromising your education or future career, transferring to a college to be closer to your boyfriend makes you the pursuer and sometimes even a stalker. Most college
guys want to have their freedom. They are not ready to settle down; they want to experiment and have fun, not be glued to your hip. If you follow a guy to college, he might get claustrophobic and dump you.

We have spoken to young women who made the dreadful decision to follow their boyfriends or crushes to college and lived to regret it. They gave up their academic dreams and self-esteem to schlep hundreds of miles away, only to have the guys break up with them during spring break or finals. There is nothing more awkward and embarrassing than bumping into your college boyfriend on campus with his new squeeze!

Ashley and Dylan had been together since their junior year of high school. Dylan had spoken to her first and asked if she wanted to study together. When it came time to pick colleges, Ashley wanted to stay local, but Dylan set his sights on a college two thousand miles away that specialized in sports medicine, despite her interest in nutrition. Ashley talked her parents into letting her apply to Dylan’s school, but Dylan’s response was hardly enthusiastic: “Are you sure you want to do this? Aren’t you going to miss your parents? You’re so close.” That was guy code for “Don’t follow me, I’m young and I still want to date other girls.” But Ashley thought he was just being polite and decided to ignore this red flag. She was so afraid that she would lose Dylan to another girl if their relationship became long distance that she was determined to make it work: “Don’t worry, I’ll text them every day,” she told him.

At college, Ashley never let Dylan out of her sight. She was always hanging out in his room, trying to figure out ways to get rid of his roommate. She tracked Dylan down at the cafeteria for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For Dylan’s birthday, she gave him a Hallmark card and a $100 gift certificate to a
sporting goods store. For her birthday a month later, Dylan scrawled “Happy Birthday” with a Sharpie on the back of his math homework and promised to give her “something special soon.”

Three months later, Ashley invited Dylan to Thanksgiving dinner at her parents’ house, but he told her he was buying a bus ticket to visit a friend at a nearby college. Ashley felt rejected and told him maybe they should break up, hoping he would talk her out of it. Instead he said, “I think so, too.” Shocked, Ashley started studying Dylan’s Facebook page for clues and figured out that his “friend” was his ex-girlfriend and that they were back together. Ashley flew home for Thanksgiving sobbing. Her parents convinced her to transfer to a local college to study nutrition—as originally planned.

Nothing ever good comes from following a guy to college. In fact, we have spoken to guys and they all said, “Don’t do it!” One guy said he had to break up with a girl just to keep her from transferring to be with him. He was only twenty-one and not looking to settle down—he didn’t want her to change her life for him. If you don’t want to suffer pain and humiliation and come across as a stalker, don’t follow a guy anywhere! The only way it works is if the guy follows you! Let him pursue you through the medium of location, as well as every other way we’ve discussed in this book.

Here is another true story, but with a different ending:

Emily and her boyfriend, Jake, were high school sweet hearts for three years. He was a year older and opted to go to a college nearby. Emily wanted to do the same, but her parents wouldn’t hear of it. They wanted her to go away to get some life experience and expand her social life.

Emily was so upset after saying good-bye to Jake in August that she didn’t even speak to her parents on the four-hour car
drive to freshman move-in day. As it turned out, her parents were right. She had a wonderful roommate, joined a sorority, made new friends, and loved being away. Jake missed her so much that he posted on her Facebook wall and sent her e-mails every day. He also suggested Skype sessions every night at 9 p.m. to make sure she was in her room and not out with other guys! He visited her every other week and was with her every holiday. Eventually, he got so sick and tired of commuting and being apart that
he
transferred to
her
school. Shortly after college graduation, he proposed. They are now happily married.

In Emily’s case, her parents did
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for her by not letting her follow Jake to college. If they hadn’t, would Jake have fought so hard to be with her? Would he have felt suffocated or confused if she followed him to his school? Would they be married today if Emily had made it so easy for him? Probably not!

If you are thinking about following your boyfriend to college or relocating to be with him for any reason, don’t do it. You can screw up your academic life or career and waste a lot of time, money, and energy, and lose the guy anyway. Until you are married or about to get married, you are the most important person in your life, and
your
dreams and goals should be the factors in choosing your location.

W
E HATE TO
say it, but we know that drinking is a rite of passage. At many colleges, especially those with frat houses and football teams, pre-game and tailgating parties are all the rage. Drinking is also a great social lubricant after college at networking and professional events. Alcohol takes away inhibitions and gets a conversation going. We get it. We think it’s great if you can have a drink or two and act
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-y. But if you can’t drink without embarrassing yourself and/or starting a fight with a guy, then drinking may not be for you.

Heavy drinking and dating do not mix. When you are under the influence of alcohol, you end up making bad decisions you wouldn’t make otherwise, like saying yes to booty calls, ex-boyfriends, and even married men. You might sleep with a guy you just met because the part of your brain that says, “This is not a good idea” doesn’t work when you have had too much to drink. We have spoken to dozens of women who have said that alcohol has ruined their dating lives, both in and out of college. Obviously, it is almost impossible to do
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when your boundaries become blurry or nonexistent. Instead of keeping the date light and breezy, you are spilling your guts because you are intoxicated. Instead of
talking about school or work or movies on the first date, you are leaning over to kiss a guy and telling him you really like him. When you are drinking too much, you definitely forget to look at your watch and nonchalantly end the date first after two hours. After too many glasses of wine on your first or second date, you may have told him your whole life story, including why your ex-boyfriend dumped you. There’s nothing worse than the feeling when you sober up hours later and can’t believe what you said—or did! Girls who get embarrassingly drunk don’t usually hear from guys again, except for 2 a.m. booty calls, even if it was their first time acting that way. A guy will assume that what you do with him, you do with everyone else. Having a reputation of being drunk and hooking up is not good. We polled guys in and out of college and they all said that girls who get drunk are a big turnoff.

We think one drink on a date is enough. We have heard from clients who had just two drinks at a dinner “to calm their nerves” and ended up saying or doing things they regret. Like it or not, alcohol changes the way you act. Alana, who is in her thirties, told us that every time she has more than one glass of wine, she ends up picking fights with her boyfriend of nine months, accusing him of having feelings for his secretary. She says things like “Are you sure you’re not working late to be with her?” She once even hit him, despite the fact that he has said “I love you” and talks about the future. But when Alana is sober, she is sweet and this side of her doesn’t come out. Alcohol can be like truth serum, making you say things that are better left in a diary or a
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consultation! If drinking makes you go from being shy to dancing on tables or starting silly, jealous fights with a guy, you probably can’t drink on dates.

Gabby, twenty-nine, told us that her four years in college
were a dating disaster because of her out-of-control drugging. She said she snorted anything she could get because it took away her inhibitions and gave her a real buzz. She would get horribly wasted, throw up, pass out, or end up in a guy’s bed. Many mornings she couldn’t remember what had happened, or she would remember and be appalled at her behavior. With each new guy she met, Gabby thought, “This time will be different,” but it never was. Her drugging and hooking up went on through her early twenties because being young made her think she was invincible. But a few more blackouts, humiliating hookups, and a bad car crash after college were a serious reality check. While she was getting sober, Gabby found
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, did them, and met the man who became her husband. She knows now that drugs definitely impaired her decision-making with guys. Gabby was happy to share her story with us, hoping that other women might learn from her foolishness.