My Views on Dating or How I Wish I Was A Eunuch!!!

Let me begin by telling you how I percieve dating. Through all my years of attempting to get a date(there haven't been that many), I've found that the sure way to disaster is to try and be smooth and romantic; a James Bond type. I've always had a fantasy that if I'm, let's say, at a party, I could use this approach.

Setting:a party. Music is playing softly in the background. By the punchbowl, a beautiful woman is standing, sipping some punch. She is sad because no guy has approached her all night. Then I come into the room. All eyes turn on me. I scan the crowd, looking for that special someone. Then I spot her. I casually stroll over to her.

"Hey now, I'm Tim. Tim Jousma. What's your name?"

She looks me in the eyes, says her name, and sighs.

"You look quite remarkable tonight. Could I ask you for a dance?" I hold out my hand.

"Yes, I'll dance with you," she says. We dance the night away.

The James Bond approach, at least for me, only works in my head. My actions are similar, when I finally get to act them out, to Jerry Lewis. It's the Jerry Lewis approach.

Setting:a party. The same girl is standing by the punchbowl. I come walking in the door. Everyone looks at me. I look around the room for that special someone and I spot her. So I walk to the other side of the room. I can't stop looking at her all night. Then, as everyone is about to leave, I make my approach.

"Uh, hi. I see that, uh, you've been standing by this punchbowl all night."

The girl lowers her face in sadness. "Yes, no one wished to dance with me tonight."

"How about I be a nice guy and pour you a glass of this great, bright red grape juice." I pick up a glass and start to pour.

"No, that's o.k. I've had enough juice tonight."

"Nonsense, here's the...Whoops!!!" As I hand the glass of punch to her, it flys out of my hand and lands all over her bright white dress.

"You stupid jerk, you ruined my dress." She runs out of the room crying.

"Hey pretty lady, I meant to cause you no harm in this here situation. Oy!" I leave, defeated yet again.

As you can see, those approaches don't work. I gave up trying to use those in high school, yet sometimes it pops in without my knowing it until it's too late. How do I approach dating now? Well, it's a tough mental process during which I go through tons of mental battles. And in the end, I make the call to set up a date. What I realized in high school was that I was approaching the actual date with a girl as THE BIG QUESTION! I actually thought that that person could be my wife. No wonder I was such a dork in high school. As I matured, common sense came to me.

"You're not popping the question, idiot, you just want to go to a coffee shop. You want to make a friend."

This was a stunning revelation to me, something I never thought of. I could make friends with girls. WOW! I guess I tended to think of dates in the sexual ense. And thinking of dates that way also pushed the notion out of my mind that, believe it or not, women are human. They have brains to think with. They have interests that differ from mine and which might be interesting. So I entered the field of dating a new man.

Yet, stupid little questions still come to mind. Does she have a boyfriend? Will she like me? Will she spray me with a can of mace and run around screaming rape? This is typical male anxiety. It affects more guys then it does others and in my case, I tend to be like Woody Allen. It takes me a long time to get over my anxiety. Typically, when I get the courage to call a girl, I spend the hour previous to that call calling friends for encouragement. I ask them what I should do during that call. I try to run down a mental checklist of everything that could occur during that call. Then, I make the call and usually it's over in five minutes with a date being set. All that worry over a five minute phone call that ended the way I wanted it to end. Go figure!

I was talking to some friends on this topic not long ago. Their names are Aaron and Jennifer Edwards. I went through my basic spiel which you just read. When I finished, Jennifer made a comment in her typical southern wisdom.

"It seems to me, Tim, that even though you say you want to be friends, you still have sexual ideas in your mind."

Even though I tried to think of something to prove her wrong, I couldn't. SHE'S RIGHT! Sex is still on my mind. If I see a beautiful girl, I become interested. It is very hard for me to become interested in a girl who doesn't have those "supermodel" looks, though there is no such girl alive with "supermodel" looks. I'm a typical male interested in T&A. There was one girl that I remember, though, that I became interested in in college. She didn't have "supermodel" looks. Some people even called her ugly. But as we became friendly, I began to get interested in her. She had one of the greatest personalities of anyone I've ever met. What made her good looking to me was her smile and her general attitude about life.

But unfortunatly, that is not a typical situation with me. I guess that old phrase "don't judge a book by it's cover" fits here. An attractive woman may have a bad personality. A good example of that is the story of Sampson in the Bible. That story is found in the 16th chapter of Judges.

I guess I can end this by saying that I have a lot more questions then answers when it comes to dating. Even though I read most of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray, I still don't understand female thinking to the dating situation at all. I have occassionally been given rare insights, but these are few and far between to actually get anything from. I'm just as clueless as the day that I first found out that girls don't have cooties. Even though dating has caused alot of hardships for e, I still think back a few months ago when I was at church. I was waiting to talk to the pastor. Off to the side, I noticed a little boy saying to a little girl that girls were stupid. I walked over with a smile on my face and said, "Give yourself a few years and I think you'll change your mind." I didn't get any response from him. He just looked at me like I was an idiot. Maybe I am. Why should I lead this kid astray after all the trouble I've had dealing with women. Sometimes, when I get real frustrated with women and dating, I just close my eyes and scream at the top of my lungs, "Whatever happened to mail order brides?"