(Side note: I'm nearing the more recent date stories, which puts me in kind of a conundrum. Many of my really good(bad) dates have happened with men who are still my friends(at least on facebook...) and some of them are actually my best friends. So my problem is this: do I publish the stories anyway and hope the bad daters will learn from a blunt, possibly harsh, review of their dates while simultaneously understanding that it is in no way a review of them as a human being, simply of their dating prowess? Or, do I keep these stories locked in my memory until a more appropriate time has passed and an imagined statute of limitations may kick in? Thoughts would be appreciated.)
Back to the point.
I'm going to tell you a secret. I have been on a lot of awkward dates. I have had a lot of uncomfortable experiences with boys misinterpreting my smile as a love song written just for them. I have spent a lot of time talking to boys about their frustrations with dating and how "getting a girl" is seemingly impossible. I also had pet parakeets from 6th grade through my senior year, so I spent about six years training birds. None of those things are the secret. The secret is this: to the typical insecure, inexperienced male, girls (myself included) are just like parakeets. Sounds dumb, right? It is, but hear me out.
Now would be a good point to acknowledge that this comparison, of course, does not apply to many males. Most guys, in this comparison, would know pretty well how to train a parakeet. They've grown up around them. They can sense how the bird is feeling and respond accordingly. They're good (or at least passable) at it, and they don't need training. I have, unfortunately, had a higher than average number of dates and experiences with guys who are woefully inept at everything dealing with girls. It is out of these experiences that I draw this comparison.
With that said, let's continue. When I got my parakeets my first instinct was to grab them. To wrap my hands around them and hold them like you would a hamster. Unfortunately, to birds (and girls), this feels like an attack. They feel scared and nervous and they fly away after getting in a hard bite. What you have to do, with parakeets, it slowly approach it with one finger. You have to put your finger a little higher than the branch they're on, so that their natural instinct will be to hop onto the higher branch, because parakeets, like girls, have a constant desire to be higher than all the other birds. They want to feel prettier, sing louder, and get noticed more than the others. If you provide them with the means to feel that way, they will love you forever.
You have to trick the bird into doing what you want by using it's natural instincts to your advantage, therefore making it think that that you want is actually what it wanted all along. You have to show no fear but also show respect. If you try to approach the bird too fast, it flies away in terror. If you try to grab it with your hand it feels trapped and will bite. It's a delicate balance, trying to train a bird.
So this type of guy -- the unsure, insecure, unused to females guy, is the one who is driven by his hormones and instincts to approach the parakeet and try to make friends with it. Some of them are overwhelmed by a fear of getting bitten, so they satisfy themselves with just looking through the cage and making small advances towards it, but never actually training it. These are the guys you see watching you from a distance, occasionally talking to you with shy smiles and secretly overwhelmed with the desire to ask you out, but they never get up the guts.
Others are the over-zealous type of trainer. They want the bird (or the girl/relationship) so they reach in the cage and wrap their hands around the bird and try to force it to be trained -- terrifying the bird and damaging any chance of a healthy relationship. These are guys who are still over-flowing with uncertainty and self-consciousness, but they see other guys who approach girls easily, who ask the girls out and get a yes, who can make moves and have them actually work. They see these other guys and think "I can do that." So they try. They do all the right things -- they ask the girl out, they try to hold her hand, they text her. The problem is not that they're doing something wrong, it's that how they're doing it is wrong. It's like trying to sing when you're hopelessly tone-deaf. You may get all the words right, but in the end, it's the tune that matters. So they ask the girl out a little too needily, they let their insecurities and nervousness translate into desperate need. They say something because they think you want to hear it, rather than meaning it. They constantly check your reaction to everything they say or do, to see if it is right. They change to fit what they think you want. They awkwardly and unexpectedly make spaghetti and bring it to your apartment, where they drop it off and leave. They drop by randomly with nothing to say or accomplish then leave and call you on Skype the second they get to their apartment. They suffocate you just like a hand wrapped around a bird's wings.
The ones who get it right, the trainers who succeed, are confident in their ability to develop a relationship with the bird. They recognize that it's not so much what they do, but how they do it that matters. A good trainer can wrap it's hand around the birds wings and the bird feels totally cool with it. The trainer recognizes that they will get bit and accepts it, not letting the fear of pain keep it from trying to get what he wants.
Now unfortunately, I have had a ridiculous amount of experience with the second type of guy. The comparison isn't perfect. Mostly the impression I get from this type of guy is the overwhelming impression that he is scared and intimidated, but he feels like my friendliness is clearly an invitation for him to make a move, so he awkwardly fumbles around and tried to do the right things, but mostly gives me the impression that he's desperate. And if there's anything unattractive, it's desperation.
