Ladies: Please, Do Not Pay Any Attention to MSN's Dating Advice!
Back: Home / Musings

Now, I can't speak for all men, but if you were using the tips from today's MSN column to interpret my responses, then if I liked you at all, you would end up thinking I never wanted to see you again. But that would really suck! So that you may avoid this, I will reproduce here the MSN tips, and my response to them:

Tip 1: "Call me!" Translation: I am not being coy or shy; I'm just not interested enough to call you.
Analysis: If I wasn't interested, I wouldn't have said anything. Then again, even if I was interested, I might have been feeling too shy to say anything. But in any case, if I said to call me, chances are, I would really love to hear from you, but I'm not entirely sure if you want to hear from me, and if you don't, I really don't want to bother you by calling you up when you don't want to talk to me.
Conclusion: If I say to call, call! Even if I don't say to call, consider calling anyway.

Tip 2: "Let's get together some time." Translation: Wow, I am so not excited to make a plan with you that if you press me for a specific date, I will lie and say I left my Palm Pilot at the office.
Analysis: If I suggest that we "hang out sometime" or "get together some time", then you can be 100% sure that I wish to do so. If I don't mention a specific date, I'm probably unsure as to whether you want to get together at all, and don't want to make you feel uncomfortable by pressing for a specific time and place.
Conclusion: If I mention, even off-hand or casually, that I would like to 'hang out sometime', then I would like to. Period.

Tip 3: "You're Sweet" Translation: You are so not my type, but you are sweet. And I feel a tinge of regret that I have to dump you.
Analysis: If you do something that makes me say something like, "You're sweet" right out of the blue, then believe me, you must be really damn sweet.
Conclusion: 'Nough Said.

Tip 4: "I'm totally swamped for the next couple of weeks, but after that, I'd love to see you." Translation: I am too busy to be involved with anyone else but myself. Plus, I'm seeing eight other women.
Analysis: Alright, yeah, that is a pretty strange thing to say. However, it honestly has been the case with me at different times. I never got asked out by anyone at these times though, and even had I been, I probably would've just made time to see her, no matter what was going on.
Conclusion: Ok, on this one, it's hard to tell. But, if you call in a couple of weeks, I give it an 80% chance he'll be delighted to hear from you, and will want to go out.

Well, that isn't actually all of the tips from the story, but they're the relevant ones. The saddest part is that "MP Dunleavy from Lifetimetv.com" (the author of the article) sounds so sure of the validity of her advice. She says that it "has received high-level male clearance (from her guy friends)", and that the biggest mistake most women make is not getting it when men give them signals that they're not interested. Well - her "not interested" signals are my "I'm interested" ones. For my sake, I hope that it really is her signals that are crossed, and not mine. Either way ladies, the next time a guy says one of these phrases, don't assume he's not interested -- if he's anything like me, he may well be!