Enthused x3

It is extraordinarily rare for a girl to approach me. Although I'd be bashful around me too. When girls approach guys I find there are two methods they use. There's the casual flirt type approach to let the guy know you're interested and then there's the flat out ask him route. The former is how all girls should work. If you see a stud you like then let him know by batting your eyes or whatever it is you girls do. But leave it to the guy to actually ask you out. This isn't the Sadie Hawkins dance. Which I might add I still had to ask out the girls too.

Now, online meetings are a little different but not much. Girls, online it's totally fine to favorite start up a conversation with a 'Hi' or use whatever tools these messengers or services have to grab someones attention. But let the guy send out that first e-mail or start the first conversation. That's just the way these things work from a natural level. Males are initiative (need a better word) creatures and girls are receptive creatures. This goes from the physcological level down to the gamete level.

Yesterday, a girl did not follow the nature order. I got an e-mail from a girl who wanted to talk to me through one of those online instant messengers. The e-mail was very nice, and was not spam, it was genuine. Here's my favorite part from it:

I absolutely think you are soooo cute!!!:):):) Sorry, but just being honest!!:):) You look like either a model or someone famous, like some actor off of tv or the movies!!:):) "

This is definitely the way to get my attention. Flattery will take you very far. Especially when it's spot on. Actually, I keep getting told that I look like the guy from "Shakespeare in Love" from all sorts of people, but I have neither seen this movie nor intend to so I don't know for sure. In any event, the e-mail I got was very nice. But there were some problems.

First and foremost, I hate all forms of texting. If you get a text from me, cherish it, because I hate it. The only thing I hate more is voice messaging people (see Flap in Front or Back). And this girl sent me two e-mails asking if I'd like to converse with her through texting. That's no fault of hers, but it automatically deducted 5000 points from her score. So right off the bat she's at -5000. Next up, I'm not a fan of extra punctuation or emoticons. Clearly, from that little clip of e-mail, shes a very excited, happy person. But at 28 years, we should know better ways to express our enthusiasm. It's a little confusing too. Two of those three sentences end with a '!!:):)' Maybe I should treat those as a regular sentence. I guess that would make the triple !!!:):):) equivalent to a regular '!' But I do not mean this as a critique. I cannot blame a girl for getting so worked up over my stellar bod. It happens.

So I got this nice e-mail. And honestly, despite those problems with it, this girl seemed genuine, clearly interested, and very sweet. But I was not interested. And since it makes me sad when people don't respond to my e-mails or calls, I felt a need to respond to this one. That whole do unto others mentality. This was extremely difficult to do though. I'm working on being honest but in a charitable way. A few years ago I worked on just being charitable. "No, you don't look fat in that dress." That got me in a heap of trouble. So then I went straight to honesty, "Yes, you look like a lardo in that dress." But that too got me in trouble. Which now has me on the nice honesty route. "I do not feel that dress is doing you any favors."

In the case of this e-mail I brought up two main points. First she wasn't nearby so I could play the long distance card. It's not that I'm against long distance - I've tried very hard to make long distance friendships work after all (and all have failed miserably) - but I've got to be mighty interested in the person to be motivated to put forth the effort. Had both the profile been better, and she had been around an upper 8 then I would have tried it out. But they weren't so I'm not. Second I tried to say that while her profile and e-mails make her sound very nice, I did not personally feel we would make a good match. Just different personalities. And that's true too. There were little things here and there that put me a bit off. The problem with the charitable honesty route is that it is really just a 'wishy-washy' sounding no. There's too much room for the person to write back. For example, a firm, 'you type like a middle-school girl at a Jonas Brothers concert', would definitely make my feelings clear. So the trick becomes making that nicer route just as firm. Hopefully my own e-mail accomplished this.

I'm reading St. Augustine's Trinity, and am having a ball with it, because back then the writers took the firm honesty approach. They couldn't have cared less about feelings. All they had any concern for was the truth. In fact, in Photios' Mystagogy, the publisher has a note at the beginning asking the reader to keep in mind that this book was written in a much different time when this type of writing and conversing was how everyone behaved and that we musn't think it mean or offensive. Augstine uses language like "I cannot fathom how anyone could be so radically insanse as to take that position." Photios will say things like "They have not reached the understanding of even a small child." And both of these are saints! I'm not necessarily saying we should go back to that way of expressing ourselves, as much as I am saying today's world is very different.