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Welcome to the PGP Mailbag, wherein I will answer questions from you, our readers. Send your questions to dillon@grandex.co. All topics welcome.
okay dillon, first off huge fan. second off, i need help. apologies for length, i need to add some context. okay so this past weekend i messed up a little. i went to a wedding and reconnected with a really great guy i met a few years back. our families know each other and have been pulling for us to get together for some time now. we had an awesome weekend together, and ended up making out. Like 48 hours of flirting and talking and a real mutual respect for one another. the catch: he has a girlfriend. and has for like a couple of years. i tried to close the door and walk away from it, i don’t want to be “the other woman” and he lives states away, so an easy out. but he hasn’t closed the door yet. i told him the ball was in his court but i don’t want to wait around for the guy, but like what if it works out? is it true that if he cheats with me, he’ll cheat on me? we kept it pretty PG so is it even cheating? I’m just at a loss and would love any kind of guidance.
Thanks in advance, Pls Help Me
These type of situations don’t usually work out for the person in your shoes, and this applies for guys and girls. I’m not saying it never works for you, because it does, but that’s usually when the person has already been looking for an out before you came along.
It sounds like the guy does like you, but that doesn’t mean he’ll break it off with his girlfriend for you. If I were you, I’d explain to him that it’s in your best interest to distance yourself from him before you get too emotionally invested, then do exactly that. If he’s serious about being with you, he’ll become single and then pursue you, the right way. Plus it’s just not a good look for you if you continue talking to him leading up to his breakup. It would make you “the one he left _______ for.”
Yeah, what you two did was not okay. I’d call it base level cheating. Like a misdemeanor of cheating. It doesn’t always mean he’ll be open to cheating again in the future (on you), but you know he’s capable of it now.
Dillon,
I’m an undergrad at one of the larger state schools in the country, and I just started my junior year. My question for you and the PGP community as a whole is, I’m passing my classes, but I don’t feel like I’m learning anything. I know that this is probably not true, but I genuinely feel like I know no more about the subject in which I’m majoring in than when I started my freshman year. Is this just the paranoia that comes with being a dumb college kid, or should I be concerned?
I don’t recall learning anything in college. Surely I don’t only speak for myself on this one, either.
If you’re concerned about this affecting your hire-ability once you graduate, I wouldn’t. Employers only want to know you’re competent enough to actually finish school. This, of course, does not apply if you’re in a specialized field.
It’s also possible you’re just studying the wrong shit. Uninterested, bored, carefree, all that. And you’re not being challenged. It’s not too late to consider switching majors.
Dillon,
I’ve got a casino question and figured you should answer it because you seem like you know how to have a good time (and not because of your ancestry).
What’s the best sequence of games to play at a casino? I’m not try to show up, put it all one red, and leave with no money 5 minutes later, but I can’t just sit at the slots all day and say I had a good time. Should I start by fading the BDC picks at the sportsbook and then move along to traditional games?
First of all, don’t play roulette at all. TERRIBLE game. In roulette, you’re not able to manipulate the outcome of your bets once they’re placed. It’s just standard house odds against you on every spin. You place your bet then you’re totally at the mercy of the little white ball. What I mean by this: In a game like blackjack, you can still make plays that affect the outcome of your bet after you place it. You can hit, you can stay, you can double down, you can surrender your bet, etc. If you’re dealt a 16 and the dealer shows a 10, no, it’s not looking good for you, but you have a puncher’s chance, and you have OPTIONS.
Sorry for the soapbox, but fuck roulette. Awful game.
My games are blackjack, poker, craps, and a little sportsbook action. Yes, betting on sports violates the same theory I laid out for roulette, but watching the thrilling swings of a game you have money on exceedingly compensates for it.
Place a few bets in the sportsbook at the beginning of the day, at least one for each slot of games so that you have action going all day long. Blackjack for afternoon and evening, then craps for late night. In craps, you can win fast and lose even faster, so if it depletes your bankroll quickly, it’s time for bed anyway. Go to the room and try again tomorrow.
Poker in a casino can be an absolute blast, but it’s very time consuming and can be an intimidating environment for first timers.
Hey Dillon,
I feel like a lot of people struggle with this, so going to throw out the question for the team.
I always have a hard time dealing with the gray area of a relationship, which is that time between the first few dates and the point where things become “official”. I’d say it falls into the 8+ dates category where you stop counting. You’re balancing feelings for the person with not wanting to come off clingy. Even if everything seems to be going well, there’s just that sense of uncertainty about which way things are going to go. Maybe you’re even playing relationship chicken and seeing who has the balls to ask “what are we?” first. The anxiety just kills me and I feel like sometimes I just fuck things up because I can’t handle the uncertainty.
Do you have any insight into the male brain for this point in a relationship and how it should be handled by the ladies? At some point do I just bring up this conversation or is it better to just let things run their course, play it cool, and see where things go naturally?
Not sure if he isn’t into me or is just bad at discussing his feelings…
Help!
I just spent too many months in this “gray area” of a relationship. For a while, neither of us were wanting to be official but we stayed exclusive during it. Then one of us was ready but didn’t really know how to bring it up, so yeah I feel you. It’s a tough spot.
I’m doing back to the communication well with this one. If there’s something on your mind, you should always bring it up, even if it’s to the detriment of your relationship. If you’re ready to become official, you need to have that conversation. Where it goes from there will be up to you two, but at least you brought it up, stayed true to yourself, and it’s out there now. It’s the move. You’ll find out a lot about how he feels about you during that conversation, for better or worse. It’s necessary, though.
Dorn,
I write this question in the last hour of my workday, because my productivity has hit zero due to my current situation. For background, I moved to Grand Rapids, MI from a small college town in Tennessee about four months ago. Weeks before I moved, I found myself in a relationship with a girl that I met in the last month of my college career. We had been dating less than a week when I found out that I was moving. We decided to keep dating despite the long distance.
Fast forward to now, I am sitting at my desk with the task to call her after work to end our relationship. We started to break up over text earlier in the day before I stopped and told her I did not want to have this conversation over text. Was this the move?
I could have ended it earlier and saved myself all of this dread I’ve felt all day, but I felt like she deserved the decency of a phone call. Am I wrong for having her wait all day for this phone call?
The mailbag will be out after this has all went down, so hopefully your comment will give me affirmation that I did the right thing.
You’re a good dude. Given that you had been dating her less than a week, I don’t think a phone call was absolutely necessary, but it’s certainly a very thoughtful gesture. So if you chose that route, good on you. If not, don’t worry too much about it..
The more questions I receive, the better this series is going to be, so send me your Mailbag questions to dillon@grandex.co and please put “Mailbag” in the subject line.
Respond
Dillon Cheverere
Dillon Cheverere is the Vice President of Media for Grandex, Inc. Email: dillon@grandex.co
@dcheverere
@dcheverere
RogerJDorn
Cmon don’t be a side chick. It’s shitty and selfish and honestly don’t you think you deserve to be pursued the right way? Cheating/getting involved with someone already in a relationship is one thing I never have and never want to understand.
100% agree. Sure he may not cheat on you. However, what happens when he goes to a wedding without you? He did it once. It will be on your mind that whole weekend, not something I would want to entertain.
Open communication is never a detriment to your relationship, it’s the sole key to a successful one.
The outcome of her bringing up the issue could be something she doesn’t want. But it’s still the move.
I didn’t mean to nit pick your word choice, which is how my comment came across.
Again, well done on the weekly advice. I enjoy these and think a lot of the readers gain valuable insight from your responses and the comment sections.
How do we get more men to feel this way ^
I’m fine with more men not feeling this way, it makes me look better…but I guess from you’re perspective it limits options.
Sup?
Sup from the South
your* a damn edit button would be nice.
Most people don’t know how to be honest with themselves let alone other people. When you’re honest with yourself and what you want, being honest with someone else is easy.
Alcohol.
If he cheats with you he’ll cheat on you.
Sincerely,
A side chick, who became a main chick, who got cheated on
I have known people of both sexes that did and have been with the person for years now. It is certainly the exception but it’s not a blanket statement that’s guaranteed to happen.
To the “what are we” writer: Whoever made up all of the “rules” for relationships or dating is full of shit. Dive head first. If they feel the same way you do, they’ll be relieved and the elephant is out of the room. If they don’t, you saved yourself from a few more weeks/months of anxiety. Hope it works out.
To the person not learning anything in college person: This is very common. College in this country technically isnt designed to teach you valid knowledge that will be used in the “real world” unless you major in something like engineering, computer science, or finance. Most of the other avenues of study are filler for the rest of the population who dont want to or cant fall into those 3 desired skill sets above. One of the only other avenues of value is studying advertising because advertising literally runs the culture of this country and shapes political opinions as well as drives consumerism whihc is how this economy operates. This is by design. The majority of degrees are there so that they can collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from you in exchange for a piece of paper that says you are now allowed to sit in a cubicle for the next 45 years and earn near poverty level income all while paying them back plus compounded interest. This is a pyramid scheme of epic proportions that simply adds debt to debtors which leads to profits for them and their constituents. Don’t listen to your ultra liberal professors who motivate you to question everything because they too are profiting off your attendance. Don’t look to the conservative professors either because of the same obvious reasons. You should however listen to me because I literally have no monetary benefit from writing this to you on a blog that doesn’t pay me to write such fire advice within their comments section even though I’m failry sure that my comments bring clicks to their articles lol…All jokes aside, they made you feel like you had to go to college when you were young because it was the only way to get a job but times are changing. With the internet of things (IoT) evolving, information is already being freely distributed with near limitless access. Our institutions have been failing us and are already becoming more irrelevant day by day. The one piece of advice I can leave you with is to take whatever little money you may have and invest it. “buy low, sell high” is the name of the game and if you can surpass the near 8% annual increase of cost of living and inflation, your money will be making you money. This is an odd take right now but Sallie Mae and their hoard of debt collectors cant garnish your wages or freeze your accounts if you set up a secure block chain wallet and transfer your assets into digital currencies. They have done a good job of watering down the value of degrees by making them accessible to everyone with ease (it’s like when the Fed prints money to lower interest rates to prevent a collapse which in turn lowers the value of every dollar in circulation but raises stock values and the cost of food and energy to consumers). It was all to syphon money out of an entire generation and make them financially dependent under the guise of education and intelligence. Read lots of books and network. Those 2 things will get your further than a degree in most cases.
One could also consider going into one of the trades. there’s a deficit of nurses and multiple types of skilled labor and there’s about to be a huge opportunity for truckers cause automated trucking is still 15-20 years out from being a factor provided people’s phobia of Skynet/BigBrother doesn’t kill it in the womb. Hence why plumbers are clearing 100k a year in some places while the college diplomaed folks are trapped in the cubicle maze
Most jobs will be replaced by AI. What internet did to information, blockchain will do to transactions making most basic office roles transparent and automated.
Thanks for the shout to Ad majors
Preach!
I disagree. If you aren’t learning anything, and you want to learn (which is precisely why those ‘filler’ classes exist), then search out something that you actually will learn something from. You didn’t mention your major, but I would suggest searching out whatever is considered the most difficult professor at your college. What I mean by difficult is not that they are unreasonable or mean. Instead, a professor who truly expects something from you. I would begin this quest by asking other students what professor they learned the most from and go from there.
College certainly doesn’t teach you about paragraph breaks.
No it certainly didn’t because they didn’t have the knowledge of mobile smartphones at the time
To the college kid, Mark Twain said it best: “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” I have learned infinitely more practical and interesting things since I’ve graduated from podcasts and books and audiobooks from the library.
To the dude who just moved to GR; I also just moved to GR from Tennessee haha. Need more friends…
I know I’m way late with this comment but I’m floored to see some fellow Grand Rapids postgrads on this site. To the guy who wrote Dillon…it’s tough man but you did the right thing man. If I cross paths with you at some point first round is on me at Founders.
Love roulette, lots of fun to play. But the game has some of the worst odds in the house so unfortunately it’s pure luck
Lame roulette story: Senior year at prom was a casino theme. I got tired of carrying my chips around so I placed them all on a single number at the roulette table…the number fucking hit. Haven’t won a roulette spin since.
Middle ground chick, in my experience, if it’s not something you can tell in around 7 ish dates, he’s probably not that into you and is fine living on the relationship plateau. It should be pretty obvious, if it’s not, it is usually bad news. This is coming from a dude who was in your shoes and let it eat away at my psyche too long. I knew it in my heart, and kept thinking I could “turn her”. Just flat out ask toward the end of your next date and accept the answer either way.
I learned a ton in college. None of it was from the actual courses I took