A clarification and continuation of last week

11.13

Last week’s column sparked several angry responses to my email inbox from men around campus defending their gender and their motives. And, rest assured, I do know that there are great guys out there who respect women. The ones who were so up in arms are probably some of them.
However, men don’t understand that women deal with guys who are jerks all the time. How many of the messages I’ve received from random guys were downright insulting? How many men do I talk to that don’t realize I have a head on my shoulders? It’s difficult to see anyone’s motives as anything but transparent.
Many of them wanted to know why I didn’t just go out with the typing Casanovas. Why not, indeed? Maybe because I’m sick of trying; maybe because I’m sick of giving people chances they don’t deserve; maybe because many of my relationships have been born of random encounters that ended badly.
The rest said that if these guys tried to be romantic, that I would write them off as psychos or as just being full of it. This is probably true, and I have no rebuttal.
Women are full of paradoxes, and the sooner men understand this, the better. We want to be swept off our feet, but if someone actually tried, we’d probably get freaked out. We want romance, but we’d say you were trying too hard. We want a man who’s secure in his emotions, but we’ll make fun of you with our friends if you cry too much. Yes, this happens in the Chimes office—I’m not making it up.
As cynical and untrusting as I am, deep down I still believe that when I hear the right words, I’ll know. When I see the right face, I’ll know. When the right thing happens, I’ll know. It pains me to say I believe something so ridiculous, but I do. The right guy is going to buy me a book I’ve never heard of and make me fall in love with it, and in turn, him. He’s going to say the right words in the most unassuming way possible. He’s going to send me song lyrics because he can’t write them himself. He will appreciate qualities in me that no one else has bothered to see.
Most women feel this way, and most of us believe this sort of romance will not start with a Facebook message or drunken pickup line. Just like you don’t meet nice women in bars—you have to go to gardening classes or the library—you can’t just go around expecting nice women to want to go out with you after sending them a message that uses “u” instead of “you.”