Never Walked In High Heels

So I’m at a bar in London. It’s one of those weird meetings where it might be considered a first date or it might be just a friend get together. I’m watching for signs very carefully. We sit down. We order. Then he immediately rips into my country, starts shredding issues of the day, utterly destroying certain individuals, and I disagree with him 100%. Within exactly 7 minutes of taking our seats he is permanently off my list of potential partners.

It’s a massive open female pitfall that women everywhere are facing—well, women with open minds. The problem is not that he disagrees with my opinions; my best friends and I disagree all the time—that keeps the relationship interesting. No, the problem is that I have now sat here for some time and he doesn’t even ask my opinion. He just assumes that I agree with him, and with that given, he can make the boldest, most blatant statements without any encouragement from me.

It’s now 20 minutes and I think I’ve spoken a total of 15 seconds. This is not a good way to start an evening, let alone a potential romantic relationship.

Here’s something that guys need to understand. Perhaps it is only this way in my little mind, but it is important nonetheless. When you offer to go out on a date with me, you have centuries full of chauvinist pigs dragging your tail backwards. I just think of all the women over the centuries and generations who got married only to discover that her opinion didn’t matter to their spouses. The polite disagreements eventually turned to sirens when she learned after 15 or 20 years that what she thought didn’t matter. I’m not saying that every long-term relationship ends up like this, but several of them did and still do, and I don’t want to fall victim to that. So I am going to watch you on first dates, and on subsequent outings to see if you do care about my opinion and if you can tolerate disagreements. I know that in any long-term relationship people change, but each person must feel like they married the better individual. Without even asking if I have an opinion, you’ve proven to me that I don’t matter.

Sadly, I think it’s becoming more and more common on the dating field. Especially with the political expectations being what they are, everyone suddenly has an opinion, and the dinner table has become and appropriate place to spout it out. Maybe it’s because I’m often slow to speak, but in the past 2 months I’ve ruled out 5 guys that I could have liked because they never asked me what I thought. Are you interested in yourself or me? I can handle disagreement—that actually means more to me than you agreeing with me all the time. I can’t be comfortable though, in a relationship where there needs to be 100% assumed agreement—where I’m always walking on eggshells, and where I’m not free to be myself. I actually feel more paralyzed when I regularly agree with you than I do when we go our separate ways and can each then turn to the other at the end of the evening and say, you’re nuts but I love you for it.

The evening admittedly lasted longer than I should have let it. He is a good friend, and I wanted to catch up with his life, not on the British opinion of Washington politics. I kept the conversation going hoping to get the former, but all I got was the latter. At the end of the night, we pushed in our chairs and agreed to meet with a group of friends in the following week. He is a great companion, followed by dear inspiration and creative spirit, when he isn’t spouting off politically, and I keep him around for those qualities. Not because I agree with him, or he agrees with me. All I could tell is that for a long-term romantic relationship, this wasn’t going to work. As we came to the door we noted that it was raining outside. He offered me his coat, and I told him “No thank you, I always carry and umbrella in my handbag.”