Are Real Boyfriends Becoming Extinct?

I am an old-school romantic, and lately, I started wondering if modern hookup culture has made the art of dating become extinct. Well... Have you dated before?! Dating nowadays is a full-time JOB: to find a date, to get ready for a date, to go on an actual date, and then to sift through the various debris before and after the date! Hurricane Katrina was probably easier to maintain than to deal with a dating situation! Why? The more we like a guy, the more he wants to run away from us, and he does it fast! But we girls are always determined! Once we like him, we treat him as prey, don’t we?! Why? Good ones aren’t that easy to find!

What happens if we meet a new guy and think that he might be our very own next Brad Pitt? Once this Guy has triggered the radar of our attention, then all our senses, sensors, and mindset are gearing up and tuning in to a high tactical alert. All bets are off! We are getting ourselves ready to prowl and pounce. We want to know everything; we need to feed the hunger of the excitement! “He better be really cute, I hope he is not fake. Is he really in the military? Is he working on the oil rig, ‘cause it totally looks fake? Does he still live with his Mama, and will he be ghosting me too?…” Then we try to find him on Facebook and compare his Bio on various dating apps he possibly was surfing through for the last ten years, even though those dating sites are all the same because our Ex is dominating them all anyway! If, after hours of searching, there is still nothing damaging to find on this new guy, then we're definitely going to say, “Hmmm, nothing is there? He is a pervert!” Thank God, there are ways to keep snooping even deeper through his dirty laundry! Just sign up for a membership on the SocialCatfish-dot-com website and save yourself from being bored or having unprovoked panic attacks over the emptiness of random weekends when there is absolutely nothing else to do! That website keeps the information on all eligible guys, so when you need to dig up some dirt, that’s where you go!

I’m not yet even talking about preparing ourselves for the actual first coffee date, which we attempt to pass off as a casual hangout at Starbucks. By the way, when we go on such a first “assessment” meetup masked as just a “grab-a-coffee-and-chit-chat-hangout”, we get prepared! We get ready! I don’t mean just buying new makeup, perfume, and sexy lingerie just in case; that’s a given! We plan, strategize, and role-play! First, casual coffee hanging out quickly evolves to the strategic planning of the next possible “nukillar” attack to fetch those rare, unsuspecting species. blindfold him before he will be able to escape, and then bring him home to Mama! That is, if we like him! Now, once we like him, we proceed to the next step. We will be checking references through mutual friends on Facebook and secretly bombarding them with questions. “Michael, I see you are friends with this guy. Do you have any dirt on him? You don't know him?! Oops!” To top it all off, we create reference lists to simplify and compare our research, observations, and notes, and make it easier for our chosen confidants not to get lost in descriptions or even crisscrossing our possible hookups! These lists are like a Master File of all keynotes the music conductor refers to during the orchestra's play. The list is usually comprised of commonly known disaster types and then some potentially rare and usually unattainable gems. 

Last weekend, after our fourth or fifth round of margaritas, Cindy urged me to finally create for all three of us this joint list of guys we all dated or are interested in, and Mindy was eagerly contributing her fair share of incredulous dates, too. Easy-squeezy-peasy! Instead of saying the name, descriptions, and all important details about the guy we are gossiping about, now we say Number 3 or Number 7, and so on to each other, and then just refer to the description saved on our iPhones to see all the important details and make sure all notes collectively match! Quite handy, right?

This list-building started shaping up into a Dummies Roster of Disastrous Dating 101! The Mint Edition!  Now we have a roster of players in the dating pool, and when we would discuss our dates or what happened to them, we would just look at the list and check the damn number, edit it, or add notes. If the date is a sourpuss, we still won’t delete him from the list, no-no-no! We will archive him! I’m telling you, we got each other's backs! 

Dating is a very serious business! Try to date in LA, and the number of calories you will burn and energy you will spend will easily beat the results of the Weight Watchers and Keto diets combined! And then you will need to destress, decompress, debrief, and drive nuts your psychiatrist, frantically texting him past midnight: ” Was I too much?!!!” Leave your psychiatrist ALONE. After listening to your crap, he will go to his own psychiatrist to get help too! What were you hoping to accomplish in the first place? To get a special pill to solve your problems? Good luck with that, because if I were your psychiatrist, I would give you that pill, and I would inject you myself with a mixture of Zenex, cough syrup, heartburn, and gas relief meds combined all in one. Try not to sneeze too hard, and maybe, just maybe, you will get by! 

Ladies, let’s get serious! Jokes aside! If goody-good boyfriends are truly becoming extinct, then let’s combine our knowledge and efforts to preserve those rare and good ones from extinction, or we won’t have anything else to do in the rare times when we aren’t surfing on Instagram. In the next story, I’m going to share with you all the Roster of Disastrous Dating! 

Are we truly sure there was a life before Social Media? Hmmm!.... Not too convinced myself about that! …