The Big Set-Up

Today at work, a girl from accounting told me she had a friend she wanted to set me up with. That makes the ninth time someone at work has offered to set me up with a girl—which is an astounding number considering we only have 14 people in our office and I’ve only been working here for seven months.

I don’t mind getting set up. Heaven knows I haven’t been meeting any girls that catch my fancy by my own efforts (and don’t think that I haven’t been trying), so why not trust the eyes and ears of those around me—after all, nearly every job I’ve ever had I was introduced to through a network of acquaintances, so why shouldn’t that work when it comes to meeting girls to date?

In the past year, I have been set up by best friends, arch nemeses, roommates, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, old girlfriends’ roommates, my great aunt, the wife of my second cousin, students from my missionary-teaching days, and strangers in the hall. I’m supposed to show up for traffic school in three weeks, and I’m sure I’ll manage an offer or two there as well.

The offer is usually proposed in this manner: The one offering will make an inquiry concerning my marital status. “…you’re not even dating anyone!” they often repeat (either for clarification or for justification of what they’re about to put me through). “Well, I’ve got someone who’d be just perfect for you, what’s your type?”

At this age, I’ve gone on enough mismatched set ups to recognize red-flags in the approach of the one offering to set me up. If she says, “someone perfect for you,” before she even investigates “what’s [my] type,” chances are that the girl she’s thinking of probably isn’t perfect for me. Chances are quite the opposite—I’m probably more perfect for her and that’s why she considers me a perfect match before she even knows what I’d like to be matched with.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I must say that in nearly every date I’ve been set up on, I’ve felt like the one doing the arranging was doing more of a favor for the girl, than for me. In fact, I’m often left a little confused and somewhat offended by the idea that the one who set us up ever imagined that I would be interested in the girl they lined me up with. In many cases it seems the only thing I have in common with these girls is that we’re both unmarried.

In nearly every case, the one offering their aphrodisiatic services is either happily married, or of some familiar relation to the female specimen. The trouble with those related to the girl is that they are often looking more for the girl’s gain than for a match that would be mutually beneficial. An example of this would be a friend who described her cousin as “a little heavy and not the cutest girl, but she’s really sweet and is looking for someone to date.”

The trouble with married people acting as intercessor is that the very nature of being married weakens a person’s ability to judge potential attraction—I’ll explain. Every couple has had to find each other, and they all have tell-able tales of how they met, but it’s also true that everyone will tell you that marriage isn’t easy. The difficulty of marriage is what disables a married person from successfully appraising the potential of any other, unmatched couple.

Why? Because married people’s focuses have moved from appraising potential to managing compatibility. Married people have already appraised and approved of their mate and their inter-gender efforts are now spent on tolerance and compatibility—as it should be. They no longer need to look for a potential mate, but work at maintaining the best relationship possible with the mate with whom they’re coupled.

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do—not that the nature of the thing is changed, but that our power to do is increased.”

Just as the practice of a skill will improve our ability therein, so does the neglect of a skill deteriorate one’s expertise. Married people have abandoned the skill of spouse seeking and therefore suck at it. They’ve forgotten what it’s like to not belong to anyone—to look for someone with whom things seem to click on so many levels—heck, they’ve even forgotten what the levels are, because according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, once a need is met (in this case physical, social, and/or spiritual attraction) it is abandoned as the individual(s) progress(es) on to the next unmet need.

This difference in paradigm between single and married life causes the married person to assess a girl as a good match for me, not be cause I would be attracted to her and she to me, but because (in the married person’s eyes) that girl and I would be domestically compatible. Instead of thinking, “you like brunettes and she’s a brunette,” their thought process is, “you like watching football and she likes watching football—so, there’s something you two wont fight over,” when really I could care less if my future wife likes to watch football—my love for football is something I’d gladly sacrifice if the reward for said sacrifice was to spend my life with a woman whom I sincerely cared for.

By this rationale, the only person who is truly qualified to assess the potential attraction between two people is a single person. But that’s not true either—a single person’s primary objective is to change their own single status as quickly and as satisfactorily as possible. The honest single person will be too engaged in their own efforts to take the time to sincerely help another. Those who try to contradict my last statement are either trying to deceive you or are themselves deceived.

If a guy came to me and said he had the perfect girl for me, I’d know by his very mentioning of her to me that she wasn’t truly perfect, for if she were, he’d want her for himself.

And if a girl told me that she wanted to line me up with someone who I was “simply made for” I wouldn’t trust her either, because she obviously doesn’t see my entire potential, for if she did, she’d want me for herself. The fact that she’s willing to pawn me off to another girl proves that she doesn’t think the world of me—so what kind of girl, may I ask, would she think I was “simply made for”? A girl who (by her reconning) has fallen just as far short of desirable as I have—that’s who.

Now, obviously, these are some pretty broad generalizations, and as we’ve all learned in third grade English class: there are exceptions to every rule, I still tolerate my being set up by a friend for a blind date—after all, you never know if you’d like a girl until you meet her. But experience has taught me that chances are good that I wont like her, so I’ve developed some rules of my own.

1.) I only accept blind dates on weekdays—weekends are far too fun and far too valuable to risk wasting on someone you’re not sure you’ll ever want to see again.

2.) A blind date should not be expected to last longer than an hour—suppose it ends up being obvious that things aren’t working right off the bat, you don’t want to be tied down to any formalities of extending the date to meet any standards of propriety.

3.) Never agree to meet a blind date for dinner—it is ungentlemanly to expect a girl to pay for a first date, but you don’t want to commit to blowing your dough on a dame that you don’t even know if you’ll like, so plan on meeting for ice cream or hot chocolate.

“You're pirates! Hang the code, and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway."

As you can see, these rules were designed with the worst case scenario in mind—that being a date with a girl to whom you are not attracted to in the least. But each rule is available for breaking, and the extent to which you break a rule is left to your discretion and often has a direct correlation to how attracted you are to the girl.

All my opinions on this matter may leave you thinking that I’m a little bitter toward dating—that’s not the case at all. I’m very optimistic about meeting a girl who makes me feel everything I long for and know that I’m capable of feeling. I can’t wait to meet her, and I expect she’s out there this very moment wondering why I don’t find her sooner.

I think about her a lot and I pray for her often. I pray that she’s enjoying life and dating and the long wait to find me. I pray that she’s saving herself for me in many of the same ways that I’m saving myself for her. I pray that she goes through enough hard times to keep her from being too emotionally slouchy, yet that she receives enough relief from those hard times that she never forgets that God is still looking out for her—that same God who is looking out for me—that same God that is giddy at the idea of how happy we’ll both be when He leads us to each other. I wonder if He loses sleep at night with the excitement of the thought of me and her being together, the same way my mom can’t sleep on Christmas Eve because she’s so excited to see how happy her kids will be the next morning.