what is the point of dating advice?

harry asks randa for help getting un-ghosted

harry

and

randa

Jun 09, 2023

From: Harry

Dear Randa

Ur in Spain. Thats crazy. What are the vibes like? New York is literally one giant cigarette right now. I also saw some kids in lower manhattan smoking cigs outside as the entire city was engulfed in smoke. The City Is Alive.

I wanted to write about rap music for this installment of our award-winning neo-conservative newsletter (Elon dm us) because I had the bizarre pleasure of seeing the jewish rapper BLP Kosher perform in bushwick this weekend. Alas, I don’t think I have much to say. I love when music sounds like music from when I was in college. Stuff like that. Perhaps a story for another time.

On the music front, I’ll leave you with this –

instead, I want to talk about something that is very brave of me to talk about – an active short-term problem with my dating life. I am in the process of being Soft Ghosted. I can feel it in my bones.

I’ll lay out the situation in a way that I hope doesn’t have any identifying information. Her name is Sarah, she has short hair and blue eyes and lives in Carroll Gardens and works at Square (jk none of that is true). I will call her Sarah though.

I went on a date with Sarah and we had a good time I thought! I’m talking 3 drinks, couple hours, approaching but not performatively engaging in the Real Shit.

We went our separate ways and when I got home blah blah blah I sent her my phone number and made a joke about her texting me and moving from hinge to texting (could be a whole newsletter installment tbh). She jokingly responded and then never texted me!!!!!! Nooooo!!!! Nooo!!!!!!! It’s been 5 days!! no!!

Now here is my q for ya– I’m typically a defeatist about whether some kind of follow-up could work. My general knee-jerk thought is a total no-way-Jose. It’s not like she just didn't see it lol. What is bumping gonna do?

BUT…maybe im wrong? There's a half-formed idea about taking initiative, and a chivalrous yet active courting process that maybe I’m missing out on? You always hear about stories of grandpa asking grandma out like 8 times before she said yes…I don’t have that in my bag but do I call it quits after one unreturned message?

And before you ask here’s how I feel about her: I had a good time. I’d like to go on another date with her if she was interested. Am I boombox outside her window levels obsessed? No. But dates that I leave wanting to go on a second feel few and far between. So like yea…I had a good time!

Wednesday, 8:23 AM

From: Randa

everybody is asleep and i’m awake, toes in the artificial turf, hunched over my laptop on the terrace of our renovated and sterilized-for-airbnb villa. we were supposed to surf on this trip but there has been literally zero swell, completely unsurfable, so instead we have spent our days on sailboats eating tinned fish and pickled peppers and trying not to hurl. i’m embarrassed by how much of a picky eater i am here. we have been memorizing the lyrics to gasolina by daddy yankee. i’m getting lisp-y whatsapp voice notes from spanish guys…

i have a simple response to your question - just follow-up and make it funny. it’s pretty low stakes and you have nothing to lose. and then you won’t sit around wondering what would have happened if you hadn’t followed-up.

i could give you a longer response but i won’t. i’m approaching a new dating anti-philosophy that’s like, do whatever you want within reason. i think we generally know what we want–in this case, you liked this girl and would like to see her again–so you should try to see her again. nobody ever got a girlfriend by fearing rejection.

i have reached this point of dating strategy nihilism because despite consuming tons of dating advice, i haven’t found the relationship i’m looking for. that’s ostensibly the point, right? you read a book and then you respawn in a perfect relationship. seems too good to be true.

maybe dating advice isn’t about finding the perfect relationship, it’s actually about the substacks we launch and the friends we make along the way…

and besides, even if the advice doesn’t necessarily work, i still enjoy turning it into a logic game. i like to say things like, ok, if you double-text her, here is the range of possible outcomes and what we could do in each scenario. i like to visualize a decision-tree with lines and shapes that gives the illusion of control over an uncontrollable situation. i like to lay out all the potential outcomes as i see them and then shrug my shoulders and say “but idk, anything could happen.”

sometimes people don’t want to travel down every branch of the decision tree. i was talking to a friend on the phone the other day and after i validated her decision, i started giving her the opposite side when she stopped me – “no, don’t tell me that, i just want you to make me feel good about what i already decided.”

so i guess you could also not double-message her. maybe she’s busy and planning to get back to you eventually and if you double-message her she’ll be like, wow, what a loser! i was going to text him, but his follow-up gave me the ick. idk, anything could happen!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thursday, 4:20PM

From: Harry

Ok, see I might be actually be coming around to the other side of this issue. I used to be the Team Captain of not taking other people's advice with dating and love and shit. I always just sort of felt like freaking it was the right move. But as I perhaps maybe grow up a bit…I do find myself thinking like…ok following my own advice is what got me here. And not that here is so bad…but if I do want a different outcome I maybe need to act differently?

Not to go back to back guy talking about his therapist mode but my guy Danny Wordcel somewhat recently challenged me on the idea that you should always “go with your gut”. He was like, “sometimes your gut is wrong.” And i was like, “you are a moron.”

But as I thought about it I was kinda like…maybe my gut is wrong sometimes. It’s almost like 2 out of every 10 times, your gut is wrong. But those two times really matter.

So this is all to say that I actually am kind of into taking other people’s advice these days. Outsourcing my gut, as it were. (that sounds like the catchphrase of a dtc probiotic yogurt start up).

Ok speaking of decision trees, there are a few scenarios that scare me…but I bet they aren’t the ones you think.

1- I text her, and she dubs me, definitely not ideal…but c'est la vie

2- I text her, she wants to go on a date but like got too busy or something, we’re so money.

3- (scariest) I text her, she feels sort of vague and ambivalent about our date. Maybe loosely pressured by the whole social contract of it all and like decides to give me a second chance because maybe she didn’t have the fortitude at that moment to bang the girls chat and craft a nice text saying no. Then we go on the date and it actually legitimately matters how interesting or thoughtful or funny I am on that second date, I’m walking into a job interview. THEN in the middle of the second date we both suddenly realize how doomed it is. But we’re 3/4ths through the first pilsner..what are we gonna do just dump it out? So we spend the next 20 minutes making up half-hearted interest in like…AQI discourse…I’m honestly sweating thinking about this.

I’m not sure I’m prepared to imagine just how uncertain most people feel about most people. It's like thinking about death…and not in a hot way!

4- same as three but she also reads this after (hey sarah)

Thursday, 10:31AM

From: Randa

sure, i don’t disagree with danny wordcel but i wanna get a little more nuanced with it…

i think we actually have two guts - the anxious gut and the rational gut. or maybe i’m talking about the classic love or fear dichotomy. the question you need to ask yourself is probably - is this fear i’m having really big? am i protecting myself from something seriously dangerous? or am i just hedging against the outcome of being at doris for a couple hrs? that’s the place for advice and thoughtfulness.

if my gut is holding me back beyond that one fear-check, i’m doing whatever feels right… u can tell danny wordcel i said that. does he read this?

Thursday, 11:00 am

From: Harry

No Danny isn’t up on this newsletter, but I think he’d probably like what we’re doing here. Now if sarah reads this on the other hand…you’ll have to find a new person to email next week.

P.S. - you mentioned a weak surfing swell earlier and it got me thinking…

Are there surf memes? Gotta be right? Are there like totally irony collapse surfer memes? Like a meme of a wave and it says like “i need to get pussy from a wave that can shoot me with a gun”