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Jared Freid (@jtrain56) is a comedian and one of the “Bros” at HeTexted.com. HeTexted is a site where girls can get advice on the texts they receive from guys. Every Thursday on PostGradProblems Jared will answer one of the questions from his HeTexted mailbag. These are real questions from real girls visiting the site each day. If you have any of your own dating questions go to www.HeTexted.com and ask Jared or any of the other Bros that fit your particular situation.
Q. Hi Jared! Just read the book last week! Nicely done… Met this guy on Tinder, (I know it can be a hook-up site) altho, I’ve stated that’s not what I’m looking for in my profile. He lives out of state but will be moving to my city in a month. We’ve been texting about a week. Great conversation & engaging. During a question session, I decide to ask what he was looking for (since his profile didn’t say) so we are on the same page, I don’t want to get invested if we don’t want the same things (the interaction is below).
ME: What made you move in the first place?
HIM: Met the manager when I was traveling through here, got recruited and here I am 🙂
ME: There ya go! That worked out well!!
ME: Another random but bit more serious question: What’re you looking for relationship wise? Yes, I realize the basis of the site we met on, just seeing where you’re at. You know, for same page logistics and whatnot 🙂
After I sent the question, he didn’t respond & that’s after he’d been rapid firing answers with me. My inclination is to wait to hear from him… Do you think I scared him away?
Implicit in the question, “What are you looking for?” is the real question, “Are you ready for a relationship?” I was hanging out with some friends after a breakup and one of my girlfriends just kept repeating, “You’re not ready” over and over again. It made me feel bad. It made me feel like I was being selfish for going on first dates. Like I was going in with much lower stakes than the girl across the table. But to me, this is how you meet someone. You go out there and go on dates and a lot of them will fail but hopefully one is the connection you want. That girl telling me I wasn’t ready wasn’t being fair. If I listened to her then I’d sit at home, not hurting any girls in my dating wake, and hoping for this magical “I’m ready” light bulb to go off. That’s honestly not how life works for the people doing it right. You got to go out and play in traffic hoping to get hit. Dating is selfish. You are looking for the best person for YOU and making a guy face a question so early on like “What are you looking for?” is like putting on armor for a war that may never happen.
“Are you ready?” is unfair to men, but mostly to women. It makes dating sound like it’s a transaction on a one-way contract. Like if he says he’s ready to be in a relationship then you just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride till marriage. It doesn’t matter if he’s the right one, the wrong one, he just has a penis and the ability to be trotted around at a family function. If it ends, then the girl wasn’t good enough. She didn’t fit the mold. SHE didn’t fulfill that contract. This is so backwards from the equality women want. It’s so old. It’s so anti-feminist. It’s so damsel in distress. Asking “Are you ready?” before even going on a date is like saying, “Choose me so I never have to worry about mean men tricking me into sex again!”
Part of this is our fault as guys. We generally use “I’m not ready for a relationship” as a reason to end things. Let me tell every girl that “not being ready” is a lie. It’s an easier way of saying, “You’re cool, but I could find someone cooler and bang you until then.” I do agree that timing can be off but the thing about “timing” and being “busy” is that we are all busy until we don’t want to be. Show me a busy person and I’ll show you a picture of them shitfaced on Sunday Funday. “Busy” people generally cannot be hungover on Mondays. I refuse to accept that “being ready” is something that can be flipped on like a switch. That’s an insult to relationships that were based off of a real connection.
My advice to this girl is that I know Tinder has this reputation for being a hookup application, but lets agree on something. If it were up to guys every measure of meeting a girl would be for “hooking up.” You could walk in on a guy in a Starbucks bathroom and he’d point at his crotch if you smiled at him (every gay guy nods). All we know from matching Tinder is that there’s a physical attraction. Then you message and you see if there’s any good back and forth (which you have), and then you go on a date. You’re not a baby. You know when a guy is just looking for sex. If he says “meet me out tonight” and you go and have fun and he tries to hook up, you can say no. You can let him know that you’re looking for dates and something that can lead to a relationship. But asking this question before you’ve gone on a date tells me you’re too afraid to even trust yourself and your own decisions. It shows that you lack confidence. It shows that you’re looking to meet any guy and not the right one.
Jared Freid is a comedian and HeTexted “Bro” based in NYC. You can ask him dating questions at HeTexted.com or find him on Twitter (@JTrain56) for weekly columns, podcasts, and videos.
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JTrain
Jared Freid is a NYC based comedian. He has been featured on Tru TV's "NFL Full Contact" and more recently on MTV's "Failosophy." He is also a writer for The Huffington Post, The Fan Hub, Weekly World News, TotalFratMove, BroBible, and HeTexted. If you're not the reading type, Jared created the "Frat Dude Goes To" series where he travels the country interviewing "Bros" at wild events like the Carolina Cup and the AVN Awards. Follow him on twitter @JTrain56 for all of his weekly content.
@JTrain56