honey, i shrunk your opinion of me

two date diva, i'm listening to your music while i write. :)

so this great quality men have of wanting to please us also makes them not want to tell us anything we might not want to hear. so they just don't!

they also try to pass off decisions that we won't like to us, so we'll have to make them. (aka the i'll be a jerk so she'll break up with me action.)

trying to navigate this behavior is really tricky. sometimes you just don't know what's BS & what's just him being a guy. to compound it, smart & experienced guys are pros at this, & they also know how most women will react.

so, overall, it appears that coaxing bad news out of a guy - or getting him to make decisions that HE should make - is an art form. i just realized how hard this is, even though i've struggled with it for years. but...this week i found a formula that SEEMED to work, we'll see.

what you'll need: a conversation with him, ability to read between the lines, and a fix-o-meter, sold by successful dating experts everywhere

Step 1: ask what's going on. whatever it is will not be volunteered.

Step 2: let him know you like it that he is much better than other guys (who are BSers) because he is straightforward with you. this does three things - says you see BS & won't put up with it, shows you are discriminating & he has to meet your standards, and let's him know you think he's a great guy.

Step 3: watch him show off that quality you just pointed out. bite your tongue while he uses that great quality to vociferously defend his position. while he's talking, turn on your fix-o-meter, which will help you gauge his interest in fixing this. enter the level of defensiveness into your fix-o-meter. no explanation/no guilt = 0, lengthy explanation/high guilt = 10.

Step 4: see how much he wants to fix things by whether or not he plans to do something that you WILL like. enter this into the fix-o-meter too, under the heading of intent. no plans = 0, definite plans with a time period = 10.

Step 5: see if he DOES what he's planned. no action = 0, follow-through = 10.

when it's all said & done (with the two being clearly different!) look back at your fix-o-meter ratings to see what level of indicators you saw that actually got you to this point.

this will help you determine at which point straightforwardness intersects with BS for this particular guy...write that number down where you can look at it every day & see...

if you really want to deal with it. ;)