Deal Breakers, or, Why They Had a One Night Stand

If I had a diary, I would think you were reading it!

One thing that strikes me as odd when I look back on my dating history is that there was a period of time -- I was in graduate school at Wayne State in Detroit, which offers graduate degrees but doesn't have a graduate school in the sense that the Ivies do -- when I just didn't meet any men I found interesting enough for one date.

During that period, I had a great many male friends who were married (or had committed girl friends) who truly liked me. Whenever they had a former college room-mate or relative come to town, they would ask me to go out with these guys because I was the only woman they knew who was literate, liked jazz and psychedelic rock and folk, went to movies and the theatre.

I had some great dates this way, but there never was any physical chemistry on my part. I tend to think there usually isn't with blind dates. What people need is to see each other. If there is physical fizz, there is! Of course, that may be the reason for the high divorce rate: too much fizz and not enough substance.

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Recently met a man at a singles event sponsored by my one of my alumni associations. I swear the guy hadn't been to the dentist in 30 years. Deal breaker!

Are you married? And do you like ex-punk rock construction workers?

Taking more than a month to reply to a post might be a dealbreaker.

I didn't ever have many blind dates. All failed, miserably.

I'll say the first couple were my fault... some folks of wit who people thought I might enjoy if I knew them, even spark with... and I was grossed out for the usual physical reasons. Makes me want to slap my own self now, re the guy who came to the door with a rose to take me to the Renaissance Fair. Let's say that now, all these years later, I hope he had a satisfying life.

A batch of dates arrived sometime later, when one of my cousins fell in love with and married a mechanical engineer, john birch society guy though I didn't know that then. They set me up with four fellows. I in the meantime had my own involvements, but nothing serious, so I said ok. Thus the guy with the red porsche who cut the mountain too close, show off..
but how could I expect my cousin, a math genius herself, to understand me, back then? Anyway, those few were all icky dates.

or so I thought at the time. Who knows, eh?

Still, I suppose a blind date can work....

Well, I am forewarned. I always go to our Renaissance Fair in October, though mostly for the Clan Tynker performance and the roast corn.

for me it's cell phone ettiquette(sp). i hate girls who don't know when not to pick up the phone. Total disrespectfull at times.

I never had a blind date. I guess I am too much of a

...rubber chicken???

i think that the real dealbreaker was a guy who asks about your financial stuff, like how many credit cards you have, how many cars you have, are you living alone..stuff like that..sadly i experienced it!

I thought that "choking the chicken" was something which only men could do on their own?

Not like polishing the peanut!

kitchenpete -- That was a groaner . . . but funny just the same.

osso -- I sort of enjoyed the blind dates that men set up for me, including a date with the then 26 y/o Norman Pearlstine when he was just a writer (maybe Detroit bureau chief?) for the Wall Street Journal and not the publisher of Time Life.

I have to say that I can not imagine falling in love -- frankly, I can't imagine accepting a date -- at this time in my life!

I take things on a case by case basis so I don't have a lot of strict deal-breakers, per say...although I can be pretty picky. There are, however, at least two consistent universal deal-breakers:

1) When they mess up, they must fess up -- that means apologizing and explaining without being squeezed for it.

2) They must be able to listen and understand. There is nothing that infuriates me more than a person replying in such a way that indicates they completely did not understand what I just said, even though I stated it in a clear and unambiguous way.

stuh -- In other words, you like people who accept the blame for what they do, like an adult. Gee! We could all use a few more people like that in our rounds of fellowship.