Those should have been the real lyrics to Janet Jackson's "Escapade" by the way. I claim copyright now.I think we're all guilty of making horribly elementary mistakes when it comes to dating, but isn't it truly the cardinal rule on dates, especially first dates that you try to avoid bringing up the dreaded ex's convo?
There are many faux pas conversation topics that can arise when you first meet someone. To me, discussing religion or politics on a first date is actually not a bad idea, though I'm sure Martha Stewart's etiquette would say otherwise. I mean how else will you find out if the person you are with is a closeted bigot or the Antichrist? Or maybe that's your type...
I'm not sure where these sort of unwritten dating codes came about, particularly regarding conversation. When you think about it, why not bring up brash and irreverent conversation pieces simply so you can figure out who you're dealing sooner... rather than later. It may save you some awkwardness later down the line right? I mean why go through the trouble of really getting to know someone if there's a giant moral roadblock in your line of vision?
Maybe bringing up ex's in conversation has it's place in first date conversation. Possibly it gives us some sort of weird commiserating ally in the battle of dating wounds. Or, in some cases it will send up red flags of what a douchebag of a man is sitting right across from you. Either way though, I have found that the people who drag on and on and on about their ex's during date conversation have either 1) been scorned so harshly by their ex's that they therapeutically need to divulge all of their ex history simply so someone can rationalize to them that they were the ones that were wronged (though there's always two sides to those stories) or 2) they still aren't over it.
All right, we're all guilty of saying snide things when it comes to our ex's in conversation with someone new we're dating. I believe we all do this, or at least I know I do this intentionally as to say "Hey, listen up buddy, if you do what this asshole of an ex did to me, I'm cutting your nuts off." Ok, not that drastic, but there's a veiled threat of castration emotionally if we let someone wrong us the same exact way an ex previously did.
But as my date the other night blabbed through not one, not two, not three, but four hours of his ex-capades I could not believe I was still sitting there. Granted, I was thinking "Hey this is a great blog topic. I hope he keeps saying more dumb shit that won't get him a second date" but, that's besides the point. This was a different breed of dude. Most men will maybe wallow over their last love that wrong them, but no joke here, this guy ran through alllll of his ex's, their detailed love story and subsequent breakup and now I know all of them on a first name basis. Yes, talk about a TMI conversation if there ever was one.
I mean I was even one upped in this conversation. It's been awhile since I've had one of those one-upper dates. You know what I'm talking about, it's like that that Pharrell and Clipse song "Mr. Me Too" when you tell a really horrible story about your dating past, or even just a story in general and then he looks at you with a twinkle in his eye and goes "Oh yeah? I got an even BETTER story than that." Really? Is this the bad dating Olympics? What's the WR split time on the amount of time one must listen to these stories?
In reality most ex stories are at its barebones basically the same. Boy meets girl, girl meets boy, they fall in love, they get together, one does the other wrong, other one copes with situation with their arsenal of defense mechanisms while the other rebounds like a champ. Right? So why do we all think that our history, our past, our ex history is more pertinent or relevant than someone else's?
A lot of us cling to excuses to avoid situations in life (me included!). It's like a human pathology to blame circumstance, environment, other people, global warming or fate for the reason things happen to us. Instead though, maybe its a karmic cycle, whereas if you put positive energy out there, positive people and things will come back to you. The opposite occurs as well. I mean how many times have you had one crappy thing happen to you and you let it affect your day and all of a sudden a mountain of other crappy things come tumbling down on top of the one crappy thing? Negativity is like a reverse magnet where instead of a negative charge pulling in a positive charge, the negative push only sends in more negative situations.
So, let's all STOP talking about our negative ex-periences and instead focus on the positives...which of course is yourself. I mean who's more awesome than you? Well, besides me of course.
Posts
