They're out there. People who are in committed relationships, yet go trawling bars looking for single people--not to hook up with, oh no no, because that would be cheating. Just to flirt with. To lead on for 20 minutes or so, without mention of the significant other who is conveniently absent. Sometimes this flirting gets physical. Sometimes they will get your number and then throw it away. Sometimes they will finally reveal their status only to treat *you* like the crazy person and seductor/ress.
And they think this is okay.
That is this week's myth: that it is okay to jerk people around, get their hopes up, and waste their time. The people who do this are only concerned with the morality of it in terms of their S.O. They don't actually give a thought to the people with whose heads they are fucking.
First I say to these people: haha you wish you were single, I actually am single and have what you want and thus am better than you and you are lame and possibly going to Hell*. Secondly I say, just to clarify: this is really mean. It is selfish and weak, and I empathize with selfish and weak, but come on--if I can feel empathy, so can you. You may remember (unless you are one of those people who's always in a relationship, in which case bite me) that being single, while fun, is also very frustrating. A little flirting is fun, and you certainly shouldn't shout "I have a girlfriend!" if someone so much as talks to you, as though ze is a vampire and you are holding up a wooden cross. But you know what you're doing. You know where the line is. And you know that to a single person, who is probably going through the hard slog of finding someone to date or bed, serious flirting is just that--serious. The person you are flirting with could be spending that time with someone they could actually GET, but instead they are touching their hair and batting their lashes for you. So don't fool yourself. Stop making people cry.
MAKING PEOPLE CRY.
(Okay, not everyone will cry. But some will. Some of us, depending on timing and drink consumption, will end up despairing over the fact that no one likes us UNLESS they have a girlfriend, and would never want us if they were single, and what's wrong with us and how are we sending out these messages and oh my god, maybe we really are as fat as we think we are. This is unfair to the single person, and unfair to their friend who would probably rather be partying and not comforting them in the bathroom. Hi Michelle!)
*Not that I have ANY experience with this issue, or am in ANY WAY emotional and melodramatic on the subject. Oh no, perish the thought!
Friday, October 12, 2007
Mythbuster #4: The Harmless Flirtation
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6 comments:
I completely agree. It's immoral.
You know what else really sucks? When a guy approaches you and starts flirting and you immediately drop the "BF" bomb and he pretends like it doesn't matter and adopts this cocky "I'm better than your BF anyway" attitude. Those guys can suck my dick. No wait, they can't. Only my BF can suck my dick. Fuck, this comment is getting too weird...
<3
Kim
I completely agree. It's always the guys who flock to me when I'm dating someone and say "why do girls like you always have boyfriends?"
WHAT? I didn't have a boyfriend for 20 years and I never saw your dumb ass hitting on me then, did I?
And of course, the guys who have steady relationships who seem to want to talk HOURS ON END with us at bars. WTF? DON'T WASTE MY TIME!
Good for you for posting this!
Flirtation is NEVER harmless.
Rock on!
Ok, how about this? You have two tickets to go see Arcade Fire with your boyfriend, but he decides he can't deal with the relationship (or the concert) right now, goes off to mope in his cave, leaving you to your own craigslisting devices, only no one, NO ONE, no friends or strangers take the ticket. So, you go, by yourself, all the way to Randall's fucking Island and sit for 5 hours through barely-passing-for-music bands, wanting to slit your wrists with some plastic utensil obtained from the veggie corn dog stand, only there are no utensils with which to eat a corn dog, so you wait in some interminable psychic purgatory and FINALLY the Fire plays, and they ROCK the house (and incidentally mention that they will not be back in our fair city for several YEARS!), only every song they play reminds you of your boyfriend, who has left you to die on the matted grassy fields of RI.
You manage to collect yourself, leave without a commemorative t-shirt, and walk in the dark towards the bridge back to Manhattan. You befriend some wayward Icelandic people just so you don't have to walk past the psychiatric institute and other sketchville landmarks all alone, since your boyfriend chose to abandon you, and finally, FINALLY, you catch sight of a Manhattan-bound bus that doesn't contain 10,000 people as did the ones leaving from the front gates. You climb inside, puffy-eyed, feeling disgusting and not like speaking to another living soul, when this gaggle of hot men board the bus and one of them starts hitting on you. Hard. Charming, cute, funny, flirty, cerulean blue eyes....Of course, you spot the wedding band the INSTANT you sit down (believe me, once you are over 30, this skill is honed to CIA standards). Married guy (as you start to refer to him) proceeds to flirt with you for AGES, and to regale you with stories of how these two girls were hitting on him and his brother at the bar last night, and he actually REMOVED his wedding ring, because said early-20s-bimbos seemed not to notice, and by the time they might, it was going to get awkward. This charade lasted all night, including taking these girls to a party, at which one of the hosts said "Oh, hey, is that your wife?"
I confronted him on his blatant immorality and fondness for torture. How would your wife feel? How would you feel if your wife did the same thing? How do you think these poor bimbos felt?
These people deserve such a profound karmic kick in the ass it isn't even funny. It is immoral, irresponsible, hurtful, cruel, sick, and profoundly selfish behavior. I hope their wives/girlfriends leave them (I think the married guys who do this have a special place in hell reserved for them); I hope their dicks fall off; I hope they, too, have to make a solitary trek to some far-off, lesser known suburban floating land mass annex of Manhattan and be tortured through a heartbreaking concert only to have some married beeeatch cocktease them on the morbidly depressing brightly-lit M36. Only that would never happen. Because women. Don't. Do. This. Shit.
Wow. That sucks.
@new york city diary:
I feel I should go on the record as saying that I do in fact think flirting is SOMETIMES harmless. Perhaps even often. But I think we're all agreed that taking the behavior brainygirl describes and calling it flirting definitely does NOT make it harmless.
@brainygirl:
Yikes. Ouch. It is extremely rare that I actually wish harm upon a person (and usually when I do that person is a politician of some kind), but yeah. That guy deserves unspeakable torments. How did he respond to your calling him out?
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