Society: Running “puppy love” projects

The disappointment surely showed on my face the other day as I sat behind a teenager and his date at a basketball game. Unaware of his surroundings, he was completely focused on her, while she was obviously taking joy in the fact that he was so eager to eat out of the palm of her hand. “Stop all that giggling, man”. I cringed as I thought to myself. “Why are you all up on her like that? Dude, will you please let go of her hand? Do it for me. Do it for the guys on the court. Do it for the men all over the world trying to represent. Play it cool. Look bored. Look hard. Look around, man. Look at that other girl over there checking you out. ”Don’t get me wrong, the girl he was with was cute and seemed to have a good personality, but this boy’s attachment to her was so wide open that he had no idea how bad it looked. I watched intently as he lost one cool point after another. He obviously didn’t know that he wasn’t supposed to show too much emotion too soon. He obviously didn’t know when to be too compassionate, too understanding, too good-hearted, too much of a gentleman in a relationship. He obviously didn’t know that it was a wrong move to seem like he was too into her. Didn’t he know that a relationship is no fun to a girl if the boy already got his act together, if he’s already acting right? Didn’t his daddy (or at least his buddies) school him?I initially thought he would redeem himself. Maybe he would act a fool at halftime, or leave her alone during a timeout. But as the game’s final buzzer sounded, he tripped all over himself getting her coat for her, and I realized the dude was too far gone. Watching them walk away, I wished I could talk to him. I wished I could pull him aside and give him a piece of advice. “Hey listen to this,” I would say as I advised him on how to use a dating manual so as not to lose next time he takes a lady out on a date. That’s right-the next girl. Although he didn’t know it, and perhaps she didn’t know it, his relationship with this lady was pretty much over. He had done too much, revealed too much, opened up too much for a relationship with her to ever work out. You see, I have been down the road this young man is travelling enough times to know what many ladies want and what they don’t want. I had been there enough to know what entices ladies and what doesn’t. I’ve learned from my past triumphs and heartbreaks, conquers and defeats. I’ve learned the hard way. And through my tears came wisdom. My years of experience with ladies have taught me what to do and what not to do, and-perhaps most importantly-when to do it. I couldn’t even enjoy the game because I was thinking about how, in about a month or so, this sweet, innocent looking young beauty was going to give him a swift kick to the bin in favour of a bad boy, a boy she can work on, like a “laboratory project”. And there he’ll sit, with all the other guys who either didn’t know, didn’t show or didn’t care about the rules of the new dating game. But the more I thought about the boy’s behaviour at the basketball game, the more I realized that maybe I had been driven into the popular notion that men are supposed to act a certain way towards girls. Many boys looking back on their teenage years will often say they wish they knew then what they know now when it comes to relationships. But if we know so much now, then why do we continue to have so many problems in our relationships? If older men know as much as they think they do about the opposite sex, then why do we have so much trouble pleasing ladies? Maybe we would come out better if we wished that we didn’t know anymore now than when we did other than claiming that we know yet we are running “puppy love” relationships. Maybe when it comes to relationships, ignorance is bliss. Maybe if more of us were fools in love, wide-eyed dudes who enter relationships without preconceived notions, a list of dos and don’ts, we’d be much better off. Instead of listening to a little voice in our heads that tells us not to be too accommodating, too loving, not to make her too happy, maybe we would be better off if we were just nice, considerate, caring and concerned. This is when we understand that the confused girl was looking for a “laboratory project” to work on more than a relationship to enjoy. But indeed, there are worse things than opening yourself up to a woman. Not the least of which is being so distant, so much of a man that we never allow ourselves to truly fall in love. When we think we know it all, we come into relationships with so much baggage that it prevents us from ever becoming close to a lady. We smoother our true feelings with unfounded concerns and far-out fears, with paralyzing anxiety about what our buddies are going to think if we reveal our “soft” side. More of us need to realize that with every step forward we take in a relationship, some type of dating rule is probably going to be broken, there’s going to be something we’re going to do that, if our buddies found out, we would never live down. But it’s only when you break those rules, break out of the stereotypes that bind us into acting a certain way toward ladies that we give our relationships the unencumbered freedom they need to grow. Knowing what I know now-if I could turn back the hands of time, and be that dude at the basketball game-I would be just as soft as he was and represent all the men across the world. jeav202@yahoo.com