--- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote: > > It boils down to compatibility for me too. There are signs. > I'm a fan of the waiter test. See how she deals with the > waiter on your first dates. Obviously if she gets angry at > a person in a position of service that is a bad sign.
Absolutely. One of the big "reveals," and where people of either sex often lose my interest, is how they treat people in the service professions. If they don't consider these people their equals, they don't consider me their equal. > I pretty much know if I don't see any books at her place > that this is not going to be a match. She doesn't have to > be into the same music I am, but it is an alert if she has > no musical opinions or preferences. Another big "reveal" is when she comes over to your place for the first time. Does she *look* at the books on the bookcases, or browse through your CDs and movies? If not, it's not going to last, because either she is not interested in those things, or she's not interested in you. > And now the deal killer list. My kinda thread. :-) > She can't be the kind of person who will escalate unpleasantness > to get what she wants when she knows it is not what I choose. Absolutely. But I would have left off the part after "unpleasantness." While this is less true in cyberspace because of the "flaming" phenom- enon, if a person feels the need to escalate issues with other people into shouting matches or power battles in real life, she's outa there. > If she attempts to bully me into doing something I don't want > to do, it is over. I extend this to trying to bully her way into my attention. One of my big "tests" of whether the relationship is going to go anywhere is to take the woman on a Road Trip with me. Many women are probably aware that this is a kind of "test" for me, and are thinking that it has to do with whether she'll share my bed when we get to the destination. It's not. The "test" is whether she feels the need to fill every moment of the auto journey with words. If she is unable to STFU and just listen to music for long periods of the drive, or just groove on the silence, we're not going to get along long-term. > I don't treat people in my life that way and it is non-negotiable. Again, agreed. Petty tyrants need not apply, and it does NOT have to do with them only trying to bully me. It's whether they bully *anyone*. Especially the waiter. :-) More tests: * Movies -- I invite her over, fix her a good meal, and show her one of my favorite movies of all time, one that she's not likely to have heard of before. Something like "Don Juan de Marco," which you either get or you don't. If she doesn't -- warning flag goes up. And even better test for me, if the woman has long-term potential, is to break her "Firefly" and "Serenity" cherry. Most people haven't heard of this TV series and movie, so it's an interesting test to see how they react. If she can't "get" Captain Tight Pants and his crew of misfits, she's never going to get me. * Mix CDs -- I admit it. I am the most guy of guys in this respect. Music, and especially my relationship with great songwriters and their lyrics, is a Big One for me. She need not like what I like, but if she can't see what *I* like in it, that's another warning flag. * Manners -- Especially in regard to "phone sex." By that I mean, when we're out together in the early days of dating, does she take incoming phone calls at the dinner table? Unless she's a surgeon or it's the baby- sitter calling about her seriously ill child, taking five phone calls before dinner is over in an attempt to show me how popular she is is probably going to result in me allowing her to be popular with the callers, not me. * Flirting -- OK, this is a tough one to admit. But I'm enough of a "rehabilitated lecher" to know that spending half of one's date checkin' out or flirting with other women is rude. I notice when it's done to me. * Guinneviere Syndrome -- A subset of the Flirting cate- gory above. If the woman attempts to arouse my interest by flirting with other guys on *our* date, or worse, tries to get me to "compete" with them for her favors, I'm likely to give her cab fare and leave her there and go home alone. I've done exactly that more than once. I *understand* the sometimes primal need to know that your man cares about you enough to fight for you, but I really prefer women who wait for that to be proved in a mugging, not at every cocktail party. :-)
