I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before – my memory is good for shit.  I’d say it’s early senility, because I am getting old and that’s almost a legit excuse, but my friends and family know better,  My memory is actually severely affected by some medicine I have to take.  It’s not something I’m happy about, or comfortable saying more about here, but it’s a pretty big issue in my life so I figured I’d put it out there.

Anyway, there was something I wanted to write about ages ago, but I guess I forgot to write it down and then I forgot about it.  You should see my apartment.  Stickies everywhere.  But no sticky for this.  Luckily, Lostplum write about last week and jostled my memory.

Back when she and I went to Dating Bootcamp, Matt said men look back at their past relationships and think of all the negatives whereas women look back at their past relationships and think of all of the positives.  Here’s Lostplum’s take on this.  Which is very similar to mine – um, no.  Not for me, anyway.

When I look back at my past relationships, I’m thinking of the negatives (the only positive I think of, and this is a constant, is the lots of sex on a regular basis).   In fact, that’s why I’m so cautious and picky (yeah, I said it, I’m picky and I should be picky, goddamnit) when it comes to men and potential future boyfriends.  I’m not looking back fondly on how great it was to be in a relationship.  I’m looking back and thinking, lord that was a freaking nightmare.

So here’s my list of the week.  The stuff of my nightmares.  My 5 Least Favorite Things About Relationships:

1. Compromise means me giving up what I want/need and him getting what he wants/needs
2. Over the course of the relationship my self-esteem will go down, as I start to doubt myself and my self worth
3. I will enthusiastically support his every whim and project and will probably reorganize my life and schedule around him.  He might remember to ask me about my work a couple times a month.
4. He will lie to me.
5. He will take me for granted.

Ah, good times.

Yesterday, I got to go to something kind of cool.  Lifetime/Sony had a bloggers meet and greet with the stars of their new show Drop Dead Diva, Margaret Cho and Brooke Elliott.

I was excited to go because I’ve always thought Margaret Cho was hysterical and amazing (and she is).  Beyond that, I was a bit wary.  I’d read the description of the show quickly on Lifetime’s homepage and thought, “oh, no”.  It’s a show about a skinny, shallow woman who dies and is sent back to earth to inhabit the body of a smart, cool fat chick (I’m so sure the people at Lifetime wouldn’t approve of that description – check out my link to read the ‘more appropriate’ one).  Brooke Elliott is the fat chick in question and Margaret Cho is her assistant.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised (Not that I’ve seen the show yet – and probably won’t for a while. As my regular readers and twitter followers know, I don’t watch much regular TV but instead am addicted to hulu for when I can’t sleep – I’m always a few years behind everyone else on TV.).  But I liked the way they talked about the show.  Rather than being about fat jokes (which I feared it might be, because in TV and movies fat usually equals funny and self-mockery) the show is more about self-acceptance and different images of beauty.  Which, of course, makes me think it won’t last past a season and will land on everyone’s shows that were awesome but cancelled list.

Two themes came up in the discussion that really hit home for me (yeah, I know, I’m one of those skinny bitches who eats fried foods and cookies all day – so how dare I relate?).  At one point one of the other bloggers mentioned the fact that it was kind of a shame that the only way Lifetime could/would do a show with a plus-sized heroine was to do it around the gimmick that she has a skinny girl trapped inside of her.  And that wasn’t it funny/odd/sad how this was exactly what so many overweight people say, that they have a skinny person trapped inside of them just dying to get out.

Brooke Elliott replied that she doesn’t think that’s what all overweight people really mean when they say that.  The “skinny” person trapped inside of them is really shorthand for the beauty that they know is within them and it may be related to losing some weight (My addition. She did not mention losing weight.  Everyone there very specifically did not ever mention losing weight, which honestly I think was unrealistic.  I know very few people are naturally my size.  I am small boned and right now have a speedy metabolism and so I am tiny.  But my mom was overweight and I know that one day my metabolism could slow down and I might put on weight.  I doubt I’d work hard to stay my current size.  That seems unrealistic.  But IMHO, everyone has a size that they can feel comfortable and beautiful and happy at and for some people that’s a 6 and for others that’s a 12 and for others that 16 and for others… I think, just as it’s unrealistic for everyone to aspire to be a size 0, it’s unrealistic to think that someone who is overweight might not want to lose some weight as a way to feel physically better and better about themselves) or just investing more time in their appearance.

Anyway, this skinny person trapped inside concept and how it just represented the beauty trapped inside a person sent my mind back to The Top 3 Things I Learned in Dating Boot Camp.  Number 2 on that list was that men are attracted to confidence.  I can think of a lot of women I know who are in the size 12 plus range who have no trouble attracting men.  And it’s because they know they’re beautiful.  They’re not stuck on the idea that they have skinny women trapped inside of them.  They’re happy with the bodies they have.

OK, I’m pretty sure those last two paragraphs were incoherent.  Sorry, need more coffee.

The other thing that really stood out for me is that Brooke’s love interest on the show will be a total hottie.  And that we pretty much never see in-shape/hot guys with overweight women on TV or in films (whereas we see plenty of the reverse).  This is something we’ve talked about on this blog, several times, in the comments.  I think it’s pretty damn awesome.

Lostplum and I were lucky enough to chat with most of the guys from the Man Panel during the little cocktail hours they had after each night of Dating Bootcamp. We decided to reconvene the Man Panel in a less formal setting so that we could continue to pick their brains about some important dating issues. In other words, we invited the guys out for beer and wings.

We weren’t sure if any of them would show, but figured that if they didn’t we’d hang out all night and eat wings and drink beer (sounds like fun to me).  But almost all of the guys showed: Tom from YourTango; Max from the NYPost and also the author From Schlub to Stud; Ted, the co-creator of Sexy Slang; Michael from Glamour and Ron, the author of The Bachelor Chronicles (you should totally check out these links, btw).  I had a blast AND came away with at least a half dozen topics for future posts.  Maybe more.  I need to find some time later this afternoon to just sit and brainstorm without electronic interruptions.

Anyway, as we were leaving Max and I started to talk about matchmaking.  It seems he’s a bit of an amateur matchmaker.  We didn’t get into the details of how this came to be, but he asked me if I wanted to be matched and I said hell yeah.  I don’t really expect anything to come of it, but it’s nice to think there’s someone out there looking on my behalf.

Which got me to thinking.  Maybe this is something more of us should be doing.  I mean, maybe more of us who have single friends and/or who are single should take a more active role in finding appropriate matches for them.  Not in a meddling way.  And only if they want to be matched (there are single people who are perfectly happy being single).

But if each of us sat and wrote down the names of all of the people we knew who are single and looking and really thought about it, would there be any potential matches there?  What if we compared our list to the list of a close friend?

I know I’m being a little crazy and idealistic here.  I just think it’s an interesting concept to play with.  The idea that everyday people can be matchmakers for the people in their lives.  Hmmm.

Last night was the fourth and last night of Dating Bootcamp for me and Lostplum.   We’ve had a lot of fun over the last four weeks, sometimes at our hosts’ expense. Serves them right – they invited ME to an event where they were trying to sell the idea of waiting 90 days before having sex with a new guy.

Last night’s theme was built around the premise that you’ve met someone you like and are going out on a date with him.  So kind of, “How to Not Screw Up A 1st Date.”  Some of the advice was helpful enough, “don’t mention therapy” but other things just seemed weird to me, “don’t order sushi”.

The one big thing that I took issue with was their advice in regards to communications with guys.  According to their rules a women should pretty much never call or text a guy, unless it’s to return his call or text, during the first couple of months of a relationship.  They call this man management.  They feel that initiating communication is showing yourself to be too eager and therefore giving up control.

I really don’t like this.  Really.  It just sounds like old-fashioned game playing to me.  Girls don’t call boys.  Boys need to be the ones who do the chasing.  Ugh.

But maybe old-fashioned game playing is what works?

What do you think?  Do you think women should call guys during those first couple of months?

• No. Men should be allowed to do the chasing. It makes guys happy. (27 votes)
• Are you kidding? If a woman wants to call she should pick up the phone and call. Or text. Whatever. Rules are stupid. (103 votes)
• No opinion (6 votes)

Last night was the third, and as far as I’m concerned, the most useful night of Dating Bootcamp thus far.  Officially the theme for the night was “How to Get a Guy”, but a better name for it would have been, “It’s Time to Get Over Yourself and Face Facts – Women In NYC Need to Be More Aggressive”.

And for the first time, I was in complete agreement with them.  Really, I don’t think there was any major thing the hosts said all night that I could quibble with.

Here’s the deal – there are approx 200K more single women than men in Manhattan (210K according to the author of Who’s Your City, Richard Florida).  And as I’ve written about, way too much, men in NYC tend to date women who are a bit younger than they are.  So any women over the age of 30 is pretty much screwed if she expects some great guy to just come up to her in a bar (or a book store, supermarket, cafe, etc) and start a conversation.  It might happen a few times a year, but it’s not going to happen on a regular basis. Sorry.

OK, well it might happen if you look 10 years younger than you are, because then guys in their twenties will hit on you (this still happens to me sometimes).  But the guys in their 30s, or god forbid the ones in their 40s, forget about it.  I’m not even going to bother getting into the hundred and one reasons why it’s not going to happen.  It’s just not.

So smart women, the ones who are willing and able to take control of their own destinies need to be willing to initiate contact with those guys.  It’s not about being pushy or overly aggressive.  It’s certainly not about throwing yourself at every cute guy that crosses your path.  But if a woman isn’t willing to stick her neck out and say hello to a guy who catches her eye, then she’s gonna get awfully lonely.

Anyway, I was SHOCKED at how many women at the session last night said (by a show of hands) that they’d never approached a man.  It was a diverse group, but it trended kind of post 30+ if you catch my drift.  Lots of designer clothes and make up and clearly no clue.  Less of a clue than me.  Which is saying something.

There were women who said, during the Q&A, that they were under the impression that it was against “the rules” to approach men,  That guys were completely turned off by women who initiated contact.  I was horrified and saddened, really, that there were grown women who still believed that nonsense.  But then, maybe I’m in the minority.  Maybe lots of women still do believe that.  Maybe I’m an outlier here.  And maybe there are still men who think it’s a major turn-off to be approached by a women.

So here’s this week’s poll question:  What do you think about women approaching men?  Do you think it’s a smart idea, or something that shouldn’t happen?

• I like it. I think more women should do it. (80 votes)
• I don’t like it. Men should be the ones who initiate first contact. It’s their role. (23 votes)
• I don’t have an opinion. (10 votes)