Old Debt, New Surprises, and Cities “Literally Crawling” With Men

by A Dude

My boyfriend and I have been together for three years and have lived together for about a year and a half. I think our relationship is pretty awesome in almost every way except for one thing — I have gotten to the point where I feel that since we have been together for a while and put this much into each other, I’d like to know if there’s a future here. He, however, doesn’t seem to want to discuss it at all. I’d like to go back to school in the near-ish future, probably not where we live now, and the few times I’ve tried to talk about it with him (trying to feel out if he’d want to move or do long distance, etc.) he just kind of shuts me down, saying things like, “It depends where, and it’s not like you have plans to go now so why talk about it?”

I love him and don’t want to break up, but I don’t see how it’s possible for us to have been dating for this long without him having any clue if he could see a future with me. But maybe it IS possible? Neither of us has had many relationships — I’m his first long-term, he’s my second — so maybe he’s scared? I don’t want him to propose, I just want to know if this is going to go anywhere. Or if it could. Thanks!!

My sincerest congratulations on your pretty awesomeness. As a relative newcomer to this, you must be doing something right to get where you are today, so take a minute to enjoy it. The experiences of the last three years will serve you well no matter what decision you make immediately after reading this, which shcould be to dump him. No pressure, though. (I stole this from a MoveOn.org mailer. Sorry, it fits.)

Before we get to your relationship, let’s immediately separate the grad school issue from the much broader boyfriend doubts, because conflating the two will actually create a no-win situation for you. You’re already using it as leverage to get him talking, which is a harbinger of doom should you actually go back. Your education is about you, not your manchild-in-residence.

If you really want to get another degree, that decision is yours alone. Even if your boyfriend does come with you, and the choice is completely amicable, you will experience trials and tribulations in your studies, and the last thing either of you will want to do is create an implicit bond between those stresses and your feelings for each other. You’ll want your relationship to be the Fiji to grad school’s Detroit, so make sure there are just as many emotional miles between the two as there are actual miles between the South Pacific and industrial Michigan (7,486).

On the other hand, if he doesn’t join you and you break up, you’ll want a clean slate for all those nice graduate fellows to write their phone numbers on. Regardless, with the amount of mental and financial commitment you’ll be making to the endeavor, I can’t imagine why you’d place your shiftless bohunk’s opinion anywhere other than the bottom of your list of considerations.

So, good luck with grad school. Or no grad school.

Now, with that out of the way, whether you rematriculate or not, you and your young man are both exhibiting signs that things might not be as awesome as they once were. The uncertainty you’ve expressed has to be the most common symptom of growing apart, and your boyfriend’s reluctance to discuss it might as well come with a laugh track. As you suspect, he is scared, and scared men make awful, terrible decisions, like wearing cargo-capris, eating canned tuna every day, or just generally behaving like spoiled babies. If things have been pretty good the way they are, he fears any kind of change, because he’s comfortable. He senses a looming ultimatum. He’s stonewalling, hoping it will go away. Men are great at this. In fact, most of our decisions are made only under direct threat of violence or denial of internet service.

All of this is OK. Neither of you is obligated to stay in it just because you’ve been in it. And, as A Dude of maturing age and many happily cohabiting friends and relatives, I can tell you that none of these couples express the doubts that you have. Their shit is rock solid to the point that when they talk about looming problems it sounds more like a Navy Seal mission than two people in love. You should see them make dinner plans, it’s clinical and ruthless.

However, I’m all for young men and women proving themselves, so if you want to give him one last chance, here’s simple test. Bring home a stack of catalogues from your schools of choice (Is that how it works? If not, just tab them all on your browser), and put them on the coffee table. Don’t ask him what he thinks about you maybe going to school somewhere. Say, “Hey jellybelly, I’m gonna go back to school. I’ve researched some options, and I’m really excited about all of them. Come take a look!” If he filibusters, Google “man with a van” right in front of him. If he makes a noise like someone sitting on a punctured yoga ball, fire his ass. If he rolls his eyes, you have my permission to put an image of his face photoshopped onto an infant’s body in the comments of this post with contact info attached.

Just keep in mind that if he doesn’t support you now, he probably never will, and god forbid anything more trying than grad school ever comes up. Like BABIES.

I’m a young 20-something woman who moved to NYC a year ago. As an attractive single lady, I’ve found it extraordinarily easy to find dates in a city literally crawling with dudes. Bars, OKCupid, Trader Joe’s, the 6 train, kickball (don’t judge) — I’ve picked up guys everywhere. My problem is that dating in New York seems to be plagued by too many fish in the sea. The men I encounter tend to fall into three categories:

1. Good-lookers who I reel in at bars only to find out later are unbearably dull, dumb, and/or despicable without the help of alcohol. (I can have a fun time talking to a wall after a few drinks.)

2. Sweet, brainy types on OKCupid who I don’t find physically attractive in real life. (Feeling like a jerk for weeding through smart, charming, earnest messages from such guys led me to delete my profile.)

3. Witty bartenders/baristas/grocery store clerks whose night jobs make scheduling dates too difficult (or “a chore,” as one repeat date called it when he dumped me).

In college, it was like the process of choosing class schedules/extracurriculars combined with limited nightlife venues and complex but incestuous webs of mutual friends served up a selection of age-appropriate men with common interests and known dating backgrounds. Now it’s like reaching into a mystery grab bag full of icky feeling things. I’m only 22 so I’m not anxious about getting in a relationship, but I find myself growing tired of trying. After a year of dinner dates with nary a spark, I’m reconsidering the wisdom of spending so much valuable free time making small talk with strangers. So I’m writing to you to see if you can help me more efficiently find what I’m looking for. I typically like funny, nerdy, down-to-earth intellectual types. A guy who is well-read and/or generally cultured but doesn’t care about proving that he is. He more or less has a real job but can hang for the length of a tequila-fueled all-night dance party once in a while. Someone who wants to go read the Sunday Times in a park with me.

Hold up, hold up, hold uuuupppp. Before we go any further, I’d like to request that everyone in the room please refrain from hurling their shoes at this young woman. It is never constructive, nor do you want to get your Proenza Schouler Zip-Front Laser Cut Sandals mixed up. Try to remember when you too were in this position: first year in the city and so overwhelmed by seemingly limitless eligibility that you stared at inanimate objects rather than talk to another handsome barista.

OK, letter writer, you are experiencing what American psychologist Barry Schwartz termed the “paradox of choice,” wherein anxiety is caused by an overabundance of possibilities (watch the TED talk in which Schwartz delivers his speech wearing what can only be described as early-90s Land’s End meets your dad lawnmowing). The fewer the choices, the less the stress. So yeah, when you were in college, your talent pool was smaller and possibly of lower quality, which allowed for efficient winnowing by a trusted filter. You got the creme of your little de la creme, and you were psyched. This is how 99.99999% of the world meets the person they end up with (it is also, possibly coincidentally, how San Marino’s soccer team is chosen and they’ve never won a game, despite essentially being Italian). And according to studies that I have not checked before writing this, 99.99999% of the world’s citizens are much happier than New Yorkers. But, if you moved to New York to be happy, you have bigger problems than your rate of mansumption.

Honestly, I think you should stop worrying about earthbound, Times-reading nerds, your heart’s not in settling down anyway. Continue meeting as many people as possible. Maybe start rebuilding your filter network before going on anymore dates, but make sure its size is proportionate to the size of the city compared to your college. So if you went to, say, Columbia and had four friends filtering potential candidates, you will need to roll about 200 deep in Manhattan. That’s nothing. You have Facebook for chrissakes. Can you imagine how difficult this was in olden times? You can assemble a crack army of hot-smart-nerd-finding mercenaries in about an hour. And when you do, remember that you moved here because it is still the most diverse city in the world, and if you really want it, somewhere (probably nowhere near where you’ve been going) there is bar/bookstore/coffee shop/prison filled with just your type. If you don’t, there’s always Asheville, the New York of the South!

I’ve pondered this for a while and it recently came up in the comments section right here on The Hairpin so it’s clearly time to find out. I’m in my early 30s and have never been, shall we say, fiscally responsible. As in, I am still actively paying down not only student loans but also drinks, dresses, and Blonde Redhead tickets from 2001. It’s … oh … not quite equal to my age in thousands but maybe not that far off? I’m a little more responsible now, as in I’m just paying off credit cards but don’t use them anymore. Anyway, I’m also single and quite certain that The One is going to walk right up to me shortly to sweep me off my feet (please, A God/dess?) and I need to know: If I’m gettin’ serious with a potential life partner, will my pre-relationship debt scare him out of any long term ideas he may have when it’s time to have that conversation? How important is financial solvency to you Dudes?

Ahh, you must be referring to “Young People Jaunty FOR NOW,” in which the esteemed Edith Zimmerman linked to a New York Times story about a study of the correlation of personal debt and self-esteem in recent college graduates. Well, one aspect of the study — which I didn’t even purchase, because I couldn’t afford it, but read in its abstract — that the Times did not include was that lower income students with high debt feel like shit. Which is funny, because what the study seems to actually prove is that it just takes a little longer for non-poor people to realize that being poor feels bad. So just don’t date a poor dude who comes from a poor family, and the two of you should be happy and can read dubious Times articles on your tethered iPads paid for on his Barclaycard with iTunes Rewards Visa Card.2

But you’re not going to do that, are you? You’re better than that, I can tell, because you read this site and liked Blonde Redhead when they were on Touch and Go. You’re a romantic. And the curse of the romantic is to fall in love with people because they’re intelligent, or funny, or compassionate, or one-half of peculiarly handsome French twins. When you meet The One, just employ the same good humor in your message in telling your stories of dark credit past, let him know that you’ve got it under control, and he’ll be fine. Think of it as squirting a bunch of Sriracha on bad Thai takeout.

Anyway, your overall sense of responsibility seems to be pretty solid, and debt, even when it leads to atrocious credit, can be overcome and reversed. It’s not like you have a secret penis or anything.

Hi. I’m curious as to your take on this is, as a presumably liberal open-minded indie sort of guy: If a girl you were making out with / flirting with turned out to have a penis, would you still have sex with her? And not a model like person, more an average sort of girl. And besides your own take — how do you think other (well-read, NPR-listening) guys would react?

I’m going to answer this for myself and other well-read, NPR-listening guys separately, because I’m not sure I necessarily represent that group and don’t want to encourage/discourage any girls with penises out there.

The unfortunate truth is that most liberal, indie (assuming you mean indie rock-ish) guys I know are less liberal or independent in practice than in theory. They’re fine with other people doing whatever they want, but are mostly a similar type of middle- to upper-class heterosexual male and just as dull and stiff as your average No. 2 pencil or moderate conservative. I don’t think a girl with a penis is any more likely to have success dating in the liberal pool than the conservative one. In fact, anecdotal evidence might suggest the opposite. But, if liberal NPR listeners are this girl’s type, then it’s simply a matter of putting herself out there like anyone else.

Even though we’re talking about something a little further outside the usual, there’s not a person in the world who isn’t self-conscious about something when they meet someone new. Sometimes it’s a terrible cackle, sometimes it’s odd body odor. The guy this girl is flirting with probably has a hairy butt or stubby tongue that gives him hives when the first hint of a potential makeout presents itself. This girl has a penis, and she should think of it as no more of an obstacle to wild sex or innocent petting than anyone else’s unique features.

On a positive note, if this girl is willing to have sex after a little flirting that will likely shift the odds in her favor.

Yes, I realize that’s an optimistic way to think about the one thing that will force almost any guy this girl is flirting/making out with to reconsider his entire sexual orientation, but the easier this girl is with it, the easier it will be for the guy she’s breaking the news to.

Which brings me to my personal answer. Your presumptions about me being partially founded, I do listen to NPR most days, but I don’t recall this topic ever being discussed (Robert Siegel, consider this thing, please), and I’ve never really seriously thought about what I’d do. Mostly, when I hear about a similar situation, it’s a celebrity and a prostitute, and that is not at all what you’re asking. What I think you’re asking is that if I met a girl that I really liked, and everything was going really well, and she told me, with the aforementioned confidence, that she had a penis, my response would depend on whether the penis came with a vagina, as well. I really do have a fondness for vaginas. If yes, is the penis bigger than mine? I’m really competitive. If no, I’d be willing to discuss.

(2) Offer subject to credit approval. Not everyone will qualify. But he will. And you should spend it all as soon as possible.

Previously: Bad Friends, Bad Communication, and “Yeah, But You’re Adorable-er.”

A Dude is one of several rotating dudes who know everything. Do you have any questions for A Dude?

Photo via Flickr