Final Dating Advice from a Guy (Inspired by Another Guy)

Dear Dears,

In a state of fuzzy delirium yet again, darn these spring colds! This one caused me to lose my voice completely for two days, and has left me gravelly. I'm hoping very soon to stop sounding like Ms. Kathleen Turner in its current manifestation and start sounding like her sexy growl of Body Heat/Romancing the Stone.

Considering the cold has coincided with my monthly bloody mess and I've had to take a few days off exercising, I'm surprisingly chipper. Usually I get crankypants when forced to rest, but having to shut up completely for a few days has mellowed me.

At any rate, being a blognerd I did my homework in order to better present the final installment of Dating Advice from a Guy. It entailed watching the excellent 2009 documentary 'Tyson'. It was recommended by Guyfriend (new official title for friend turned lover turned back to friend), and forms the basis for another one of his dating tips.

Let's recap first, shall we?

1) Eye-fucking (or if you prefer, eye-stroking or eye-grinding or eye-chastely kissing on the cheek, whatever suits your M.O. Eye contact, for a G-rating.)

2) Allow the other to bring their A-Game/give them space to be a-MA-zing (and for god's sake, quit being Funny Girl all the time, it's too much).

This leads to the final piece of his advice:

3) Tyson It Up

"Tyson's already won the fight before he steps in the ring." enthused Guyfriend. "He's won it in his head three days before he actually gets there. All he has to do is show up. That's what you need to do, Rutte. You need to visualize getting what you want, and then just show up and get it. Confidence. You need to watch this movie. You'll learn a lot."

Hmm, I thought. Makes sense. Isn't that the Shhh...ecret, after all, the power of positive thinking to manifest positive reality? So okay. Take it as a given that the physical conditioning is there, both in boxing and dating. Take it that the norms are established, and there are clear expectations of win-lose-draw. That you're both there knowing what's expected of you.

So I watch the documentary to learn, and I do, and come to an interesting conclusion. What I get from the film and what Guyfriend has taken away highlights our emotional incompatibility, which has recently neutered our relationship. (A turn of events I'm learning to appreciate after a few weeks of being sore as hell, by the way.)

Guyfriend saw Tyson very clearly as winning the fight through visualization. Here's what Tyson actually says:

"Most guys lost the fight before they got hit. I knew the art of skulduggery, I knew how to beat them psychologically before I even got into the ring...As I approach the ring, I'm supremely confident. I'm scared to death at the same time, but the closer I get to the ring the more confident I get. Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god. No one can beat me."

Tyson searches for weakness in his opponent, and at the height of his powers found it again and again. "It could be just a tenth of a second, his eyes slip...when I see the chink in his armour, boom! I know I got him. He may fight hard for two-three rounds, but I got him beat. I already broke his spirit."

Guyfriend interpreted this as Tyson seeing himself as winning. I interpret it as him seeing the other guy losing, the other guy getting beat. This may smack of semantics, but I think it's a telling distinction.

I partly disagree with Guyfriend on this advice. I don't want to take this attitude into my personal relationships. I don't want to conquer men (my sexually reticent ex-Date aside, but really, he was just ridiculous. He needed to go down. Sadly, it's ended before he had much of a chance to, but I'm glad I had him anyway as he was bugging the shit out of me).

Back to the nicey doughnut side of me: I want to trust myself and the other person enough to believe one side doesn't have to prevail over the other or resort to skulduggery, however charming. That we can find mutual benefit from knowing each other. Maybe only for two-three rounds, maybe longer, but at the end of it we can both walk away feeling like neither of us lost. Hopefully, we've each gained something from knowing one another. This is naive, but I like it. There are worse things than aspiring for some nobility in modern relationships.

So I'll take the advice to "Tyson It Up" with a large chunk of rock-salt. Confidence, yes. Arrogance and delusion, no. After all, this worked for Tyson only for a few years, and then he got cocky (another form of laziness), and got whupped by Buster Douglas in Tokyo in 1990 and never was the same. After losing his last fight in 2005, he stated he'd lost the passion for boxing and was only there to pay his bills, and was going to retire out of respect for the sport.

All in all, he cuts a sad figure. A talented fighter who hated himself to the point of being hateful. Alternately jailed, bankrupt, dissolute, ridiculed, violent, trusting of no one, he's not exactly an inspirational figure if seen purely through the lens of his past.

What is admirable about him, though, is how direct and humbled he is in looking back. He openly rejects a lot of earlier beliefs. For me, the most striking moment in the film was his observation on what he'd once thought made a man great.

"The thing that they (great men) have in common is conquest over great women, and famous women, whatever they may be. So I always thought that in order to be a great figure you had to have these women in your life. And the more women you conquer, the greater figure you may be. I never knew that conquering so many women takes so much from you, more than it gives to you, more than it adds to you."

Yes. This is what I'll tell Guyfriend the next time we talk, as this may be advice he could use. In the meantime, I'm adapting "Tyson It Up" to better suit my own temperament. Be confident, yes, but have enough respect for myself and others to be humble as well.

It'll be interesting to see how this works for me. In my last post I outed myself as an old-fashioned doughnut and ever-so-bravely accepted an absence of romance for the time being.

One day later (ha!) I met an interesting man. At an afternoon beer garden, of course, that's where all we old-fashioneds go looking for love. He walked up to me and complimented my eyes (and I hadn't even been eye-fucking, honest!) and said he'd watched me talking to some shared acquaintances and wanted to meet me. We proceeded to make a ten hour date of the day that was quite sweet.

Despite living a couple of hours apart, we are meeting tomorrow for dinner. Awwww cute, eh? I'm pleased at the prospect of spending time with an attractive guy one year older than myself, who doesn't drink to excess or swim in a protective school of bros or mentally curl into fetal position at mention of serious topics. It'll be refreshing. And hopefully I'll sound less like the Godfather by then.

Arrivederci (cough, cough)
G