Weekend Plans Post: On Giving Dating Advice

I had to drop my car off at the shop and the shop does this thing where they give you a “free” Lyft to and from your house if you have to leave the car there for more than an hour. On my return trip to get my car, Maribou called in the first few minutes to let me know that I should stop by the grocery store on the way home and pick up a handful of things. We finished up our conversation with the usual “love you”, “love you!” and, after hanging up, the 20-something taxi driver asked me how long I had been married and I said “almost 25 years… 25 years next month.”

And then he asked me “How do you find a good woman?”

And I immediately remembered this delightful tweet from last week:

When probed a lot of happily married men tell basically this story: “I decided to become a fisherman and the first time I went out in the boat a giant bluefin tuna jumped in the boat before I got my line out. So anyways I retired from that.” https://t.co/X2TwsfTswl

— Andrew Stratelates ⚓️(Traditional Anglican Church) (@AStratelates) September 5, 2023

Now, I wouldn’t say that one jumped into my boat the *FIRST* time I went out on the water. But it was definitely the case that I went out on the water (not even to fish! just to be out there) and everything worked out.

So I found myself in a situation where I was talking to this young man who wanted to know how to find a good woman.

I first told him that I was far from being an expert but I had a handful of bad ideas on how to go about doing it.

First off is the tried and true “what’s the most important thing to you?” question. Like, if you’ve never thought about it, the question isn’t meant to put you on the spot or anything but, like, if the most important thing that you’re looking for in a woman is, say, physical fitness, you should probably go down to City Rock and get a belay buddy bracelet. If you’re looking for a woman who reads a lot, go to one of the singles events at the Library (hey, Old Colorado City library is having a board game night for singles on Saturday!).

So, I told him, figure out what the most important thing you are looking for in a woman and go to where women like that are likely to hang out.

“Loyal!”, he told me. Okay. The guy has had a rough couple of years, I guess.

“Well, what church do you go to?”, I asked him. He named the biggest one in town. Okay. Well, I told him… church was a great place for singles to meet until people realized that church was a great place for singles to meet at which point it ceased to be a good place to meet people.

I told him to maybe switch churches to the Presbyterians downtown or the big one on Woodmen if he has spent a couple of years without meeting someone where he’s going but, quite honestly, I told him about that tweet above and said that the best thing he can do is just get out there, not worry about it, and let the fish jump in his boat. I avoided saying “Just be yourself”, somehow.

And that has been bugging me all week. It’ll probably continue to bug me all weekend.

So… what’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “Sisyphus”, photo taken by Maribou)