Ryan ChartrandFor the last year and a half and – I don’t know – two days, I was a single man. I lived my life without the responsibility of having a girlfriend. But just recently, I am back off the market, and am now in a relationship. It is a new time for me, as I must adjust to life with this new girl by my side. And there are certain things that I must share with you, my loyal reader, as I go through them in my relationship.
Before I really jump into this “Guide to Life,” I must point out the great love column that is in the Mustang Daily every Thursday, “Love in the Time of College,” written by Sarah Carbonel. While she seemingly knows her stuff in each of her columns, I must say that it is time to get a man’s perspective on this whole dating thing. I’ll try not to cross any lines here or step on her toes though1, as I’ll let you in on my experiences of the early stages of a relationship. To help me do so, and to aid me in this, instead of referring to my girlfriend by her real name, I’ll just use the word “Woman” as a proper noun to describe her2.
First things first, and probably the most defining part of any relationship – make sure to quickly change your relationship status on both facebook and MySpace. Everybody knows that there is no faster way in the world to spread the news of a relationship than the facebook news feed. We went through the national progression of having our status say “single,” then having it blank, and then, of course, finally having it say, “in a relationship with Woman.” With the status change, “congratulations” quickly came to me from all around3. If it isn’t right on facebook, it isn’t right in reality.
With MySpace, the Top 8 has already gotten me in trouble. At first I put her in the number one spot, but then a few minutes later I put my best guy friends and sister before her. In those few minutes, Woman saw the change, and quickly asked why she was moved down in the Top 8. We worked it out though, as I told her the importance of each person, and she got over it4. So, my advice to you, is to talk about the Top 8 position, because apparently that is one of the most important status things there is.
With our MySpace problem, we worked it out by going over some ground rules. This proved to be extremely important, and will be for you too. Think about what is important to you, and do what I did by talking about these important ground rules. One of the rules that I had to go over with Woman, had to do with my street cred. If you know me, I’m one of the whitest guys around5, but sometimes I feel like I need some street cred6.
One way for me to do this is to refer to her as “my bitch.” Hold on, before you start flooding the Daily with letters about how chauvinistic I am, just hear me out. In no way am I calling Woman a “bitch” but rather I am using it as a term of endearment as I really can’t call anyone else that7.
So, well, she still didn’t really like that idea, but, we compromised, which is ever so important in that I can refer to her as “my bitch” if she is not anywhere near me. Badda bing, badda boom and the give and take in the relationship is oh so strong.
Fashion is another thing we talked about, and it should be something you talk about with your new girlfriend too. I noticed the other night that she was wearing Uggs. While I pretty much hate them unless they are properly worn by say, Eskimos, I just don’t understand them. Instead of me telling her to never ever wear them again though, I looked for compromise, and just told her to never ever wear them with her pants tucked into the top. Communication really is the key.
On the same subject of fashion, I told Woman that with hoop earrings, great philosopher and longtime friend Ben Kim once said, “The bigger the O, the bigger the Ho.” Just think about it.
Well, I really truly hope you learned something from this article. Truthfully, I won’t admit there is a subject I am clueless about, but this might be close to it. So far so good though, so take the advice and you too will be on your way to the start of a great relationship8.
1 Mostly because stepping on toes might be considered cheating in some cultures.
2 I promise that is in the most undemeaning way that I can think of. Also, I know that I just made up a word.
3 And so I would say, “Thank you, it’s really like better than winning the lottery.” (I will need to suck up as much as I can to avoid her totally getting pissed at me for this article.)
4 Took like a full day though.
5 Just slightly more white than Will Smith.
6 You should know that from “Mike’s Guide to Life: How to be a gangsta rapper” found on mikeheimowitz.com. Shameless plug alert.
7 Except for my roommate Dan, but that is in a much different way.
8 And hopefully after she reads this, next week’s article won’t be “Mike’s Guide to getting over being dumped.”
Mike Heimowitz is a journalism senior and Mustang Daily humor columnist. Go beyond his facebook status and check out www.mikeheimowitz.com