My friend is convinced she’s a living, breathing Guy Repellant.
“Men are running away from me so fast they’re leaving skid marks,” she broods.
I’m no relationship expert, but it seems to me like she’s got a case of “Hungry Girl Dating Syndrome” and needs to back away from the cell phone and the “send” button on her computer.
Case in point: she recently had a Saturday night date with a man she met on the Internet. On Wednesday, he had yet to call to confirm their plans. “Should I email him?” she asked.
Absolutely not, I responded. “Let him call YOU, email YOU, Creature Unlike Any Other,” I said, using a Rules term. Yes, some of the advice in those Rules books is really silly, but my suggestion to my friend was to play hard to get, not wear mascara while jogging.
She didn’t listen to me.
Instead, she contacted him and asked if they were still on for Saturday night. His short response was “yes we are.” Then she emailed him again, asking “when and where” and he never got back in touch with her.
My view is, he should have taken the lead and confirmed the date with her. If he couldn’t drag himself to do that, then guess what—he just wasn’t that into her.
I’ve noticed that in the past few months, my friend has been doing all the chasing. Recently, she had a chance encounter when she got lost and stopped to ask for directions at a restaurant. The cute owner of the establishment flirted with her and begged her to “come by again sometime and see me.”
Buoyed by this attention, she found his name on Facebook, and immediately sent a note and a request to friend him. She also tried to contact him via the email address that was posted on his restaurant’s website. Several weeks have gone by, and nary a word from the restaurant owner.
Needless to say, she’s bummed. And to be honest, I know how she feels. Many times throughout my life I’ve suffered from a case of the “hungries” and I know how crappy it is.
This syndrome, if I could call it that, usually arises when a girl’s been single for a while. You’re past that “I’m happy and content and don’t need a man in my life” phase, and have moved on to the more rocky and difficult “I’m ready, ready, ready for a relationship (and sex) and nothing’s happening to me” phase.
“If you have that hungry look in your eye, men are going to be turned off,” my mother used to warn me. Unfortunately, she’s right.
Just like any person in starving mode, a “hungry girl” interprets every little wink, nod and bit of attention as a chance to leap, bite and devour. That restaurant guy who flirted with my friend was probably attracted to her (after all, she is a beautiful woman). However, in the few minutes he had her in his parking lot, he had ample time to ask for her card, her phone number, her email address. And he didn’t.
It’s possible that he flirts with every cute girl that patronizes his establishment. In these recessionary times, people use whatever tactics they can to attract business. But that’s not what the hungry girl sees. If a man pays attention to her—any attention, then a relationship can’t be that far behind.
Right? Wrong. I learned this lesson myself several years ago when I got a bad case of the “hungries” with a man I was completely obsessed with. Seriously, I was so into him I used to feel physically ill around him.
I was doing a pretty good job of playing hard to get until one pivotal day, when he called me on a weekend afternoon just to say hi. Just before he hung up, I realized that we hadn’t made any plans for the coming week. The “hungries” started rumbling noisily in my stomach.
