How long should I be a bitch for?

Ok, so for the "nothing ventured, nothing gained" crowd, this post isn't going to be very convincing, but I am going to attempt to rework my dating life for the better anyway.

So you know how life sends you those little messages over and over again. The first time you might have ignored it (for me when my mom said it). The second time you might have acknowledged it but didnt take it to heart (when I read it in a dating advice column). But the third time, you finally got it (when I heard it again on a radio show). What is this message that I'm currently taking to heart? "Be a hard as nails bitch up until the day you're married."

A week and a half after my second break up, I must say, while I haven't done much soul searching (we weren't together for THAT long), I have started re-evaluating my approach to dating. I know that the girl that plays hard to get eventually gets the guy she wants. But I always thought that it was at the point that two people started dating that each person should let down their walls and get to know the other person better and from time to time wear their hearts on their sleeves.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

I was talking to my mom once, a while back, and she relayed this story from a coworker of hers. Apparently the coworker's daughter was dating a particular guy who after several months of dating, decided to cheat on the daughter. The daughter took revenge by sleeping w/ her boyfriend's best friend. My mom's coworker and my mom both agreed, "why the hell did you think he was going to stay interested? You sold yourself so cheap! If he wants you so bad, tell him to go buy you a ring and then maybe you'll consider giving a crap."

I thought the story was humorous and left it at that. I also thought my mom and her coworker were a tad harsh given that most people today who enter relationships have sexual relationships. Its pretty much a given after the age of 21, I'd say.

A few weeks ago I was reading a dating advice column where the columnist wondered why it was that her ex-boyfriends came back to her. In telling her story she mentioned that upon first meeting her, men would quickly become infatuted and go to extremes to prove that they are THE man for her. She would be bitchy at first and keep them at bay, but eventually she would acquiesce to the guys advances and almost immediatly the guy would do a complete 180 and walk away. Then sometime in the future when the guy came back she would ask him why he left in the first place, and time and time again the response would be "you were too clingy back then." We're not talking about insane clingy here, from her description, the mere desire to have a committed relationship that could eventually lead to marriage was deemed "too clingy" by the men she dated. ??? Here final advice was that her experience has taught her that a woman should remain aloof and slightly bitchy forever.

THEN today, out of extreme boredom and lack of motivation to do anything productive, I started listening to radio shows broadcast from the internet (how extremely lame, i know, don't rub it in). One of the radio shows featured "Tom McKnight" the infamous creator of "Love tactics," a book of lessons on how to apply psychological principles to make someone fall in love with you.. um yeah.. Most of the stuff he said seemed mostly normal I guess.. to me anyway since I love psychology and manipulation.. go fig. But to get to the point, one of the hosts asked Mr. McKnight, "when can you stop being aloof and when can you finally drop down your walls?" His response was, "when you get married."

WOW! After hearing this advice for the third time, and coming out of yet another short lived relationship, I had to sit up and take notice. Personally, I'm not looking to get married today, or tomorrow, so I don't have the desperation to find Mr. Right, RIGHT NOW! But, it is starting to feel ridiculously silly for me to share my intimate self with someone only to have to renig on everything I did and said once the inevitable breakup occurs. The strangeness of "taking back everything you said" is even more heightened since I LIVE with the person I broke up with. While before we'd share our day, laugh about random things, and do things together.. now we behave as if we're strangers who couldn't give a crap if the other person lived or died (or at least thats how I act and feel). SO UTTERLY RIDICULOUS!

So for me, I think the "be a bitch until you're married" advice should be heeded. Why not just be friends with a guy when I know that the possiblity of a breakup is HIGHLY likely either b/c I'll give it up too fast and he'll lose interest or I'll stop being a bitch and he'll lose interest, or there will be some new skank at his job aaaand.. he'll lose interest.. the list goes on.

I know I've said this before, "BE FRIENDS FIRST." I even followed the advice this time seeing that I was friends with my roommate first. Which is a good thing I guess. But now an addendum to that advice is, hey be a bitch for as long as you can - men love it and you won't feel stupid for telling him that you love him only for him to turn around, kick up his heels, and high tail it out of the relationship so fast you won't even remember what he was wearing the day you said those three little words...

And here is where I try to convince others to heed the same advice - there is this new theory out there that we are all under a new social experiment. While our parents had to get married for financial reasons blah blah blah.. You know what I'm talking about - people have less incentive to get married these days. So you know what I'm starting to think? In order to be a woman who a great guy wants to be with for the rest of his life, you're going to have to work harder than before. And I don't mean working over time to make him like you, bake him cookies, etc. I mean, you're going to have to out bitch the competition. You're going to have to love your life to the fullest and include him in it - platonically. It'll be hard, given all the temptations to sleep w/ him and try to rock his world w/ new tricks from Cosmo! Not to mention women DO have needs.. But hey, that's what the guy you don't like that much is for :-X But for the guy you truly want, remember! Out-bitch the competition.