Has it been a week already?
It’s not every day a player dubbed “rising star” by Brian David-Marshall comes by your house for a little chat, unless you are a member of the guild creatively named TheCoreWithin on the Turalyon World of Warcraft-server. That’s why I immediately jumped at the opportunity of interviewing Team Punishers latest addition, Simon Carlsson.
T: So, your starting page is www.thottbot.com?
S: Yeah.
T: Why’s that?
S: It used to be a site with what’s on TV, but I don’t have a TV any more.
T: When’s Pro Tour LA?
S: Don’t know, really. It’s on Wizards homepage, I guess. Why?
T: Who are you testing with for Pro Tour LA?
S: Anton and Johan have tested, I think.
T: You teamed up with brothers Joe and Terry Soh for Pro Tour: Atlanta. Are you guys playing together for the Team Constructed season as well?
S: I don’t know anything about that, I guess I would like to. I haven’t talked to Terry in a while.
But let’s turn to the section that, for the past week, has given representatives of the moral majority everywhere a good reason to register for the StarCityGames.com message boards.
By now, you should have asked the girl you’ve chosen previously in the week on a date. Some of you will have to try another woman next week, and some will already have been on their dates. As that was covered in yesterday’s installment, we will today look at date two and beyond. Making it work in the long run.
Date two will be more of date one, except that you will need new clothes, a new place to go, and new topics of conversation. It won’t kill you to have some ideas already thought out before the date. True players get to improvise, not you. Consider topics that you can both disagree and agree with, so that the discussion won’t just be that you agree on something.
After dating the same girl two to four times, you will probably be in a situation where you can make a move physically. What you are aiming for here is to let a girl say no the maximum number of times possible. The first step is hugging, which is something that you should be doing at the very latest the end of your second date or she’s not interested. Next comes touching, but not holding, each other’s hands. This is kind of hard to do, because the situations where you would touch each other’s hand don’t arise that often. My best advice would to be to reach for something she’s reaching for, or ask to look at a ring she wears. If she doesn’t mind you touching her hand, you may now touch her hand freely. You then, over numerous equally awkward situations where you have to think of a way to touch her, move your way up to the shoulders. If you reach her neck, and she still doesn’t mind, you are probably around 90% safe to kiss her. Congratulations!
Despite the myths, kissing is pretty much as easy as it looks. You can be “good” at it, but women will appreciate it as long as you don’t drool, bite or use your tongue too much. After a long stop at the face, your hands should be heading south again.
Unless you are extremely old, losing your virginity at your age is not a big deal and you will be able to lie to your friends about it anyway. If you have happened to come across any educational or pornographic material you will, despite what you may think, know most of the things there are to know. It’s obviously not the same as what you see in the movies, but it’s pretty easy to realize what parts you should be skipping. If at all unsure about this, bring it up with your best friend. After all, family site etc.
Fewer girls than you think will demand that you are a good lover, but it is rarely hard to achieve with some practice. It is, of course entirely impossible to improve without proper communication. Depending on the mood, you can ask one question every two to five minutes, so these need to be well planned ahead.
After some period of dating, you will feel the need to move towards a relationship. You may not believe this now, and even less so once you start dating, but you will know I was right eventually. Don’t fight this too much, because it’s going to win. You can bring monogamy up at any point after you’ve had sex with her, but if you introduce it to conversation before third base you are putting yourself at a very big risk you will never make it there. It is generally advisable to wait a couple of times, depending on how well you know each other.
Try not to be the one to bring it up, and if you do make sure it doesn’t seem like you’re forcing something onto her but rather trying to find out where you are. If she tells you she wants it, you are in a relationship and should probably have a couple of basic discussions right away. One of them is whether you should refer to each other as boyfriend/girlfriend, and another is how far ahead you are seeing yourself together. If questioned on this, answer somewhere around two years. Any more and you seem desperate, and too low you come off as someone unable to commit.
Making it work in the long run is going to require some adjustments, but they will most likely be worth it. Talk a lot about what you want and expect from each other, but don’t seem like a guy who can’t make up his mind. The times it doesn’t work out like you thought, you are going to have to break up with her. Sometimes, girls will cheat on you. That’s gonna hurt, and you are probably going to look to your natural source of comfort: Her. If at all possible, it should be avoided. I think we’ve all heard a couple of cases where a relationship has survived an affair, but these are rare exceptions. There are of course a million other reasons a relationship could end, but when it does this is what you should try to communicate.
Tell her exactly what you don’t want any more, and why. Don’t be arrogant or emotional. Try to keep the parts that worked, unless it means keeping the parts that didn’t. Breaking up usually takes 30 minutes, but can take up to four hours, so don’t make any arrangements. If she starts to cry, don’t comfort her too much. If you have sex afterwards (which happens a lot), you didn’t actually break up with her, so watch out for that.
As a final disclaimer, before I am off: Please note that I’m no psychologist or anything like that, I’m just a guy who writes satire on a site. I could never do the same thing Dr. Phil, Ricki, Oprah and all the other professionals out there do. The only real advice I can give you is to not take anything written in this series too seriously. Women are individuals and should be treated as such. There are some easily abusable knacks that work on a lot of women (+EV). In the end, no piece of advice is applicable to all women (Variance).
Good luck with your love life.
/Thomas