Back in July I was talking and dancing with a girl for a while, away from her large group of friends. If you can get a girl away from her group, you’re more than halfway there.

Towards the end of the night, one of her friends found her. “We thought you were dead!” The friend started crying and gave one of those hugs where tears would be left on the person’s shoulder. There was nothing I could do. My girl got dragged away by a group of girls who one hour ago were too busy shaking their ass to even realize their friend existed.

The “friends” are the only people in the universe whose mission is to prevent me from getting what I want. If I’m nice to your friends it’s not because I like them but because I need their lame stamp of approval since you are too insecure to make decisions on your own. In fact, I hate them and hope they die.

Okay, not die, but I curse them to at least becoming subway bag ladies.

For years I had a clean-shaven face and short hair greased with pomade. I did fine with that look but my generic appearance attracted generic girls: the vanilla white girl who graduated from a four year university to push papers in a cubicle. I got bored with them, and they probably got bored with me.

When I grew my hair out, I noticed that I would attract a different type of girl. The quantity didn’t change, but now I was spending time with art snobs, hippies, international girls, and emotional crazies. They are the type that tend to eat foods I can’t pronounce and hate either capitalism or American foreign policy. Conversation flows a little better now.

Looking like you just came out of the woods works because not every girl likes clean-shaven guys with short hair. Some girls like medium length hair, and some like long hair. The farther your look is from the mainstream, the less girls there will be to like it, but the ones that do like your look will like it with passion. And passion is important when it comes to sex.

Therefore, I’ve decided to lock up the bear-hunter look with long hair and a dangerous beard. If a girl likes this look then she doesn’t have a whole lot of options in the area: at my height there are only five guys in DC that look like bear-hunters but none of them have any game. So really I’m the only option. That means easy sex for me without ever having to wear a buttoned shirt with blue horizontal stripes.

I’m going to go buy a few boxes of condoms now to prepare for the winter.

There is an interesting article in the November issue of Details magazine that addresses the problem of women deceiving men to get pregnant. Quotes:

It’s not about trapping the guy. That’s kind of old-fashioned. Yeah, you want him to be into it, but there are other ways to get a guy to commit. If you’re smart and in a good relationship, it’s just about the fact that you want a kid. I see and hear people talk about it, and I understand. I get it and I don’t even think it’s that manipulative. It’s more like, ‘Hey, the timing is right for me. I got pregnant–oops! Well, it’s here, let’s have it.’ I think that’s more the way it is now than it was back in the day when you had to marry someone before you got pregnant. Marriage doesn’t matter now. (emphasis added)

Jody
got pregnant without telling her boyfriend

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Any guy with a heart and soul, and preferably with a job, once he sees the baby on the sonogram or hears the heartbeat, will melt.

Vicky Iovine
author of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy

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She was like, ‘You know what? You gotta be a man. You’re gonna have to have a job 40 hours a week, and you need to support this child — this is your responsibility and your obligation.’ And I’m thinking to myself, like, ‘How is all of this my responsibility and my obligation when none of this was my choice?’

Jeremy
new father after girlfriend went off birth control without telling him

A few years ago I remember making fun of a friend for being so paranoid about this very same thing. He was dating an older woman he didn’t trust and would take home used condoms wrapped in toilet paper after spending time at her place. My experience since then suggests that he was more smart than crazy.

Guys, it’s simple: do not allow your sperm inside a vagina unless you are ready to have a child with the woman attached to it. Birth control or not, there is no amount of pleasure worth giving up reproductive control over.

If I got a girl pregnant right now, and she insisted on keeping it, I’d skip out of the country without hesitation. Since I’m very careful with my seed, any girl who gets pregnant by me is 100% using nefarious means and deserves no support or money for her deception. Send me pictures every five years.

I’ll be a father when I’m ready, not because a reformed whore is bored with her life.

I thought I would make some history in my first official DCB post: I will write about relationships. Who ever thought they would see a post about *that* around here?

I used to love playing the game. I loved the anticipation of adventure each night out brought. I enjoyed the personal challenge of risking my ego on each approach. I found satisfaction in gaining the interest of attractive women who had been strangers to me just minutes before. And then there are those moments of triumph when everything fell into place and neither one of you wanted the night to end. Man, me and my wings thought this was the life and those guys in the dating world were chumps for buying dinners and presents for their girlfriends who would then spend “girls nights out” in Adams Morgan grinding (and sometimes plenty more) with player dudes on the dance floor.

But funny how time changes things. After what seemed an endless blur of nights out, I started to grow increasingly frustrated with the costs of the game. Mindless conversations with drunk girls who can’t focus on anything for more than 30 seconds. Smoky bars that seem like certain lung cancer incubators. Feeling like I wanted to sleep on the floor of my office due to too many nights out past 2:00 AM per week. And the bane of every player’s existence: the flakes. There were times when I got a phone number from a girl who seemed so interested when she gave it to me that I wanted to notch my belt in advance, only to have her never return my phone call.

Right in the midst of my growing frustration, it happened: I met a girl I really liked. No, not my current girl, but the girl who made everything that happened with my current girlfriend possible. She was fun, shared many of my interests, and treated me very well. Though I kept on going out to bars and clubs for part of the time we dated (she and I had “an understanding” about our lives apart from each other), pretty soon, the drunk girls in bars seemed far less tolerable. Why should I be out in these smoky bars until 2:00 or 3:00 AM talking to girls who I didn’t have any feeling for or any real possibility of forming a connection with? Why wouldn’t I rather being spending my time with a sweet girl who would treat me well and assure me a good time?

After a year it didn’t work out with that particular girl, but I had changed. I wanted a serious girlfriend now. I wanted someone who could make me happy on every level. When I met my current girl and everything between us was perfect in every way, the game didn’t stand a chance. I had found a super smart girl who has her act together, never plays games, and treats me like a king (and she is damn cute too). I stopped going out to bars, committed myself to perfect exclusivity, and never regretted the decision. The symbolic end of my personal player era came one night at club with my girlfriend. We were ordering drinks and I saw two guys approaching two girls just as I and my wings might have in the past. I pointed it out to her and perhaps I seemed wistful, because she asked “Do you miss it?” I thought for a moment and said truthfully, “No, this is better.”

I have heard some say that guys settle down with the first girl they date once they become ready for marriage. I am not so sure that is true, at least not always. I think some guys grow up assuming they will marry the first great girl they meet and never play the game. Other guys have to go through this ‘playing the field’ process until they grow fed up with it. In my case, it was a combination of becoming ready emotionally after playing the field and, through luck and good karma, meeting someone who was ideal for me. If I had not met someone as great as my girlfriend, who knows, I might still be out there searching for that special one.

If you girls out there are searching for Mr. Right, don’t give up on a guy who has a player past, even a recent one. Check first to see how he feels about the game and give him a chance to see you as a better alternative. Giving that type of guy a chance might be the best move you ever made.

If I was a girl, I wouldn’t sleep with guys so soon. This advice cockblocks me, but the best defense — to a man whose main goal is to sleep with girls as fast as possible — is to wait, especially since most guys are only willing to have sex with you once and never again. You don’t want to put out until a guy shows time investment.

But how much time investment?

Enough so that if the sex is bad, his first instinct is not to dump you. While I don’t believe in time invested, almost all other guys do. If he spent a lot of time getting you in bed, he will be less willing to “throw it all away” just because you didn’t give enthusiastic oral sex.

Waiting will only work if you are a quality woman. The amount of quality you need to have depends on the kind of guy you are going after: the higher status male, the more you must have your shit together. If you want to land him, and you think he wants to be landed by you, then you need a better strategy than answering the phone on the third ring and relying on advice from girlfriends who have watched too many movies.

I asked myself, “What would work on me?” What could a girl say to me on date two, three, or — doubtfully — four that would still keep me hanging on even though we weren’t having sex? I embraced my feminine side and came up with something that, if said to me by a girl I liked, may keep me in the game:

I want to be intimate as much as you do, but sex is something that is very important to me. It takes a lot of trust and time for me to do that. I don’t date multiple guys and I don’t care about where you take me out, but sex is one thing that we should wait for. I don’t know how long it will take and I can’t promise that anything that will happen, but you are the only guy that I’m seeing right now. If you can be patient and we can spend some time together, I want to see where this goes.

There are five things that were communicated there:

1. She is not a whore.
2. She is not a spinster or serial dater.
3. She is not trying to spend my money.
4. She is probably not playing games.
5. She is not needy.

If I was a girl, I would maybe say that to guys. Most would walk away, but I’m sure some wouldn’t. It doesn’t completely solve the problem of getting pumped and dumped, but is sure does a good job screening out guys like me, who find it unnecessary to wait for sex past date two.

On the face of it Craigslist “Missed Connections” seem like a really good idea and I’ll admit to a passing fascination with reading them. But if you think about the darker side of missed connections, it’s actually just a dating tool for wimps. It’s the adult equivalent of middle-school dating where you ask your friend to ask his friend if he likes you.

Every human being on this planet fears rejection and has a certain amount of shyness. But SO WHAT if they shoot you down? Life is full of rejection - jobs, friends, credit cards. So someone ignores you and you feel like a dummy. But I feel like a complete idiot on a regular basis and it hasn’t ruined my life yet. In fact, I’m basically awesome all the time.

What’s not acceptable is when you so much fear just TALKING to another person to the point that you later obsess about the interaction enough to actually post on an online forum about it.

I get to say this because I actually was the recipient of a missed connection about a month after I moved to DC. I had gone to the still-cool Tapatini’s and started talking to a cute guy who could have been my brother (I love looking in mirrors, so I’m attracted to people who look like me). Having taken advantage of the gratuitous martini special, I went to the bathroom and when I came back he was gone. I chalked it up to “not interested” and left a few minutes later to go to dinner with my friends.

Monday morning, a friend of mine forwarded me a missed connection that was definitely me. So I e-mailed the guy back, and we went out for two months. Unfortunately in the end he was exactly what a missed connection poster is: a whiny titty baby.

Until recently, I’d never gone out with a man who didn’t trust me (or who lived in a different city). Sure, I have a million friends and a hundred parties, but just because said friends/parties are usually at a bar doesn’t mean I’m tarted up and out trying to get with other dudes. If Europe has cafe society, the U.S. - and especially DC - has bar society where the primary goal is to unwind and meet your friends. I mean, the people on “Cheers” weren’t there to get laid.

There are some women who are okay with possessive and jealous guys, and there are some women who are equally if not more possessive and jealous. But I’m not either of those women. And I don’t like being pushed around and told how to act in a “serious relationship”, especially when I’m not doing anything to warrant it. I can be a really shitty person, but I’m loyal through and through - I’ve never cheated on a boyfriend or anything close to it.

If you have a problem trusting someone - like for example you ever call back a number on their “received calls” list or read their texts when they’re not around - and you have no legitimate reason not to trust that person, then you have a problem. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a personal issue, but maybe representative of a lack of confidence in the nature of the relationship. But not trusting someone isn’t a thing that can be easily reversed, if at all. Like V said, if you don’t have trust, you don’t have anything.