Friends and Family

Since Thanksgiving and the Holiday gift giving season is upon us I'll talk about something super important especially at this time of the year, FRIENDS and FAMILY.

There is some debate to how important it is for the person you're dating to get along with your friends and family or for you to get along with theirs. Ideally, everyone would love everyone and things would run smoothly. Alas, this is not an ideal world and sometimes there are personality clashes. In those circumstances it's important to remember that it is in your best interest to play nice. So avoid controversial topics like religion and politics and if keep digging and want to get into it, try some of the tips here. It's for avoiding conversations about religion but it's pretty applicable to avoiding any topics! Basically it says, resist arguing, change the subject, telling them that you're not comfortable with discussing the topic etc. I also like the idea of agreeing to disagree. I do this with patrons at work too, I told a patron who wanted to get into politics with me, "I appreciate your viewpoint but I don't agree with it." He keeps trying to get me to debate him though...some people just like to argue and are bored so you have to be careful with those kinds of folks.

Also try to find common ground. Odds are they won't be gamers...so talk about more neutral subjects like food and movies and books if they read. Telling them all about your half-orc bard who has to struggle against racism and a shockingly low charisma score isn't going to win you any non-gamer friends, so save the geek talk for your buddies.

Don't insult them. Saying that football is the worst sport in the world at a Superbowl party is a pretty bad idea. Insulting the cooking at Thanksgiving also bad. Don't criticism their housekeeping, their dog, their children, their hobbies, anything that is just plain rude. It's not really your job to police their lives. If they want to live in squalor, that's their choice, just be discreet about using napkins to open doors and stuff. If the role was reversed it'd be really rude for someone to come to your house and refuse to use the bathroom b/c it's "too dirty". The only time I did that was at a wedding with over 100 people and only two portapotties...I think that was justifiable. But I also didn't tell the hosts that either and we were still there for like five hours.

Hopefully you'd all like each other. I mean the entire point of friendster is that people you like should all get along right? So if you do have things in common, awesome. But then you have to think about, how much do you want to share with them? I'm not saying don't make friends, but do you want to be sharing hilarious and wrong stories about your significant other? It's one of those things where I tend not to mind b/c I'm not a huge secret keeper, but some people like to keep their lives a little private so it's important to make sure your significant other is comfortable with you becoming like BFFS with their friends and family.

And heaven forbid you become super good friends with their friends and family and you end up breaking up? Do you have to divide up your friends? Set up visitation rights? It gets complicated. I'm not saying don't do it, but sometimes when people are friends with a couple, people take sides and you might not like which side they end up on...especially if it's family (ala She's Out of Your League which was really just an awkward movie all over, but when the guy broke up with the girl, she was really close with the family and she stayed living in the house.)

Probably one of the hardest things is when your significant other and your family/friends just don't get along...this can make for tense times especially around the holidays. The best thing to do is make sure that you still make time for everyone b/c the last thing you want to do is mess up your relationship with your friends and family over someone you're dating.

So have a Happy Turkey Day and I hope you're enjoying it with your friends and/or family! :)

It's Not You It's Me. No For Reals.

From an article on CNN.
Here's the article.

I think one of the themes that runs through this dating blog is self improvement. No one is perfect, there are always things we could working on to make ourselves better people. This article talks about what happens if you find the "one" but you aren't the "one" for them? The author says it's important to work on these four aspects to make sure you are as ready as possible to get out there and find your partner: self esteem, attitude, happiness and kindness/compassion.

You need self-esteem b/c it's hard to like someone who doesn't like themselves. If someone is always putting themself down, and not in a funny Conan O'Brien way, you just don't want to be around that. Or someone who doesn't respect themself enough to take care of their body, by using drugs or drinking to excess or can't shower regularly. Really, that's no good either. So work on taking care of yourself, and remembering you are a worthy person...and maybe you need to work on some stuff, but you can still like yourself, even if you're not perfect. Just don't too far over the other side and become a douche. Oh and showering is important.

Attitude is another important aspect. We geeks can be pretty cynical and sarcastic, it's part of our charm, but a lot of people might not understand our sense of humor and think we're emo. Emo is ok if you're like 15. Emo is not ok when you're in your 30s. It's supposed to be emo-kid, not emo-man. So if you're still super emo, think about why and what you can do to not be emo. Is your job dragging you down? Start looking for things that do make you happy including looking for another job! Love life got you down? Well that's just circular, you are emo b/c you can't find someone but your emo-ness is keeping good people away!

It's important to be able to be happy. Not like Pollyanna where you are happy all the time. I'm talking about being able to feel joy when good things do happen. It's really annoying being around people and you tell them good news and they're like 'meh'. Dude, it's great news! I'm enthused, why can't you be enthused too? People like to be around happy people. If you saw two crowds of people and one was full of smiling, laughing people and the other was full of mopey people, MOST people would go to the happy crowd. Some nerds might go the mopey crowd to avoid having to talk to people but generally we gravitate towards people with positive energy. Try to be one of those people with positive energy and people will come to you more.

And very importantly, it's important to be a kind person. I think this is something that sounds very cliche, "oh I want a nice guy." But it's really not too much to ask for. You want someone who genuinely cares about others b/c they will be a good person. Do you care about others? If your whole life only revolves around you, then what do you have to offer someone else in the long term? Kindness means you can empathize. Even if you're not working in a food bank every weekend, at least be polite to your waitstaff at restaurants. I think true kindness and compassion are about the little things like saying please and thank you and packing a lunch rather than buying someone jewelry. Moral of this story? Don't be a self absorbed douche and think about how you and your actions affect others.

I think if you work on improving yourself, even little by little, I think that more people will be able to see how great our geeky qualities are and that we're great people.

The Preemptive Strike

This is dedicated to a friend of mine. You know who you are! :)

Somethings are great to do early: homework, your taxes, Christmas shopping. Somethings not so much, like dumping a someone b/c they might become crazy in the future. I think that it's fairly common to freak about about starting a relationship esp if your past history involved some not so great people. But don't let your past dictate your future.

If you see actual signs of craziness then be wary. If you're worried b/c they aren't crazy, then you probably just worry too much. So if you're having fun and the person seems like a nice guy, just go with the flow. Don't freak out b/c nothing has gone wrong yet. Sometimes if you're lucky, they won't!

We can't predict what will happen in the future. I mean, you could be with perfect* person and later they have a brain thing that changes their personality. You can't know what will happen. So if you like them for who they are now, that's all you can really ask for. We geeks like to plan but you can't plan for everything...unless you're Batman, in which case, go ahead.


So in conclusion, don't break up with someone b/c you might see the crazy eyes in the future. Only dump someone for something they actually did. I heard some story about girls who got mad at their boyfriends b/c of something they did in a dream. That's nuts, don't be that person.

Last thought, remember how crappy it was in Minority Report? That's all I have to say.

*There is no such thing as the perfect person. Don't delude yourself.

Non-Negotiable Social Requirements

Otherwise known as social skills. The classic geek will lack even basic social skills and although we tend to be smart, not having social skills can severely hamper our work, school, and personal lives.

Let's talk about the "classic geek". This is the person who can't look people in the eye, won't say hello, doesn't answer or only mumbles answers, can't make small talk, and has issues dealing with "normal" people. Most geeks aren't this bad (hopefully) but I think social geeks end up like Neil Patrick Harris and doing theater or magic and not playing video games in a basement.

Social skills are important. You'll need them to get through school less bullied (too late for most of us), for job interviews and getting along with coworkers and customers, for meeting and dating people, for joining new gaming groups, etc. I think a lot of geeks think that the basic social lubricants like saying hi to people is just a waste of time and technically that's true. The world would not explode if everyone didn't say hi to each other...but I've discovered (since my mom told me) that people will think you're mean if you don't say hi and make small talk occasionally, even if you're not mean but just busy or distracted or shy or hyper rational. Your coworkers and customers don't care if you think saying hi, how are you doing is a waste of time since there's no actual meaning to the words, it's an expected social behavior...like showering. Even if you don't think it's necessary, it is if you want to live among people.

This is a true story, when I first started working at Bank of America I worked in the file facility. I saw the same people everyday and it was not with customers. My mom who also worked for the bank told me that she said that people thought I was not nice and I said why? B/c to me, I didn't do anything wrong, I got to work, I sat at my desk and did my job. She said it was b/c I didn't smile at people in the hallway and say hi to people. I responded, it doesn't matter!! There's no meaning to it! We're just here to do a job! and she said, yeah but you have to work with these people, so just do it. And so I did and even though technically I was no better or worse of an employee, the perception of me was better at work, and that would have been useful if I had wanted to transfer departments or get a job recommendation (instead I got laid out when the entire department was outsourced a couple of years later but that's beside the point).

My fiance has a similar story from when he worked doing IT, a client talked to him and told him basically the same thing...that you have to at least pretend to care about other people and what they think. I will agree that it is a lot more efficient if you could just relate facts about work project instead of having to make small talk, but not all of people are task oriented and some people are people oriented. Here's an article on task versus people oriented-ness. I would hazard a guess that most geeks are task oriented, I know I tend to lean towards task oriented and that used to get me into trouble a lot at work b/c I just want to get shit done and sometimes I forgot that sometimes just throwing jobs at people hurts their feelings.

So totally stealing from that article, here's some tips for how to work with people oriented people.

• 1) Acknowledge their feelings
  While you may “think” your way through problems, recognize that they often “feel” their way through them. They may even “feel” about things that you see as purely factual (money or time for example).
  
  
• 2) Soften your voice tones
  Task oriented people often speak in direct and factual tones. Lighten up. Smile. Relax. Your effort to come across “nicer” will probably help them receive your message more clearly.
  
  
• 3) Exercise patience with them
  If they are heavily slanted towards the people oriented perspective, they may struggle with reaching a decision that impacts other people. Remember that they are probably not trying to irritate you. Most likely, they just don’t want anyone to be offended or hurt by their actions.
  

So far I've covered how social skills are important at work and you could apply that basically to anywhere you have to be, like school. Now let's talk about social skills among personal relationships: dating and friendships.

When you're with friends and let's assume your friends are also geeks, then there is some flexibility in your behavior. They'll probably be used to heated discussions of which Green Lantern is the best (yay Kyle Raynor!) so that's not an issue. But just b/c they're your friends, doesn't mean you can be a total dick to them either. If you're going to get into debates, it's ok to disagree, what kind of debate would it be if you all agreed? Anyhow, the key is to keep it civil and leave personal things out of it. If you debate ends up with personal statements like, "you're stupid," it's gone too far, and it's best to just end the debate/argument before a fist fight starts.

Aside from work (which is very important b/c we all need money except for those independently wealthy types and you guys need to talk to me!) social skills for dating is very important. Again unless you're lucky enough to date another geek, you'll probably need to be able to "pass" for normal long enough to sucker them into thinking that your geeky traits are quirky and cute.

So for dating, make sure to check in on them periodically but don't stalk them by texting every 10 minutes. Ask how their day was, even if you don't care, although really you should. Be empathetic or fake empathy. Don't always try to solve the problem, just listening is good too. Do little things so they know you're thinking of them and that this isn't just some booty call type relationship and that you appreciate them.

Here's the thing to take away from all this, we love geeks--I am a geek, but having the inability to interact with other people can be a huge liability for your social life, friendships and career (trust me on this). Retain your geeky awesomeness but make sure that you at least work your basic social skills in public.