Project True Love Diaries Part 2 - Date Quest

Phase One of Project True Love is duty dating. It has also been nicknamed Date Quest, by my friend Jonathan, who runs a geek website. "That's what the geeks would call it," he said.

As I said, there are a lot of good books out there, and Katie and I decided we really liked Patricia Allen's book, Getting to I Do. Her wisdom on the masculine and feminine energies and how they need to communicate with each other resonated deeply with both of us. (It think this would be valuable for so many married couples to reveiw). She also breaks the dating process into 4 clean phases. But before you can even get to phase one, you have to do what she calls duty dating. The thing about duty dating is that it doesn't sound fun. You just have to go out with people, even if you don't want to. Who wants to do that?

So we decided to make it more fun and awesome. The person who brought the fun back into duty dating is another writer named Tamara Duricka Johnson. Tamara and I met online years ago and then fell out of touch and then one day earlier this year she ended up in my Writer's Mind class when she was finishing 31 Dates in 31 Days, which just came out in October. It is fabulous by the way. I think I am going to make it required reading for PTL. 

Leading up to the release of her book, she challenged a bunch of people to do their own version of 31 in 31. I decided to take her up on her challenge. Since I’m a mom and a business owner, I decided to try 21 dates in 42 days. In reality, this has turned out to be about one to two dates/week so I stay sane and can still work and be a good mom.

Tamara had her own reasons for the project and so did I, so I set my own rules. Here there are:

Rule #1: I like being the feminine energy in my relationships so I require that the man asks me out on the first date and that he pays. I feel like most men love to be the giving masculine energy and so why not let them? You might ask how I got these dates if I wasn’t asking? I put my rules online and sent out an email to friends and then hounded them till they set me up or had their friends call me. I am still bugging some of them.

Rule #2: I made a no kissing rule. This was my a personal rule I didn’t tell the guys. My reasons: a) If I kiss one, he will think I kiss everyone. b) Kissing messes with my clarity. I wanted to think and see clearly.  

Rule #3: No second dates till the end.

Rule #4: No alcohol. Obvi none for me, but none for them either on the date. (I told friends to set me up with anyone, but they had know I was LDS and be okay with that.)

Rule # 2 and 3 got broken pretty early. But let’s begin earlier. Before I even started.

 

Pre Date-Quest: A man I had been flirting with for six months--we’ll call him Joe (because he doesn't know he is being blogged about)--decided to make a move. Joe is more than a few years younger than me and I had decided he was a just a friend that I flirted with. I figured it would never become anything. However, as soon as I told him I’d be going out with 21 dudes in the coming months, he decided it was time to lay one on me. After all those months of shamelessly flirting and trying not to think about what it would be like to kiss him, it was nice to diffuse some of that tension. But then immediately afterward my mind started to think of why it was not a good idea and how to call it off. My mind was literally doing acrobatics until I mentally shouted, Sheesh! Can’t you just enjoy the moment?!

So I did. I realized it was just a kiss and it was fun and it didn’t change my mind about anything. I did ask myself why I magnetized this right before I started a dating project. My analysis: I think part of me was afraid of what PTL might bring into my life and I wanted one last fling.

PTL Date #1: Date number one ended up being a married guy. Ok not really. I think Date #1 couldn’t handle the pressure of going first, so he bailed. We had met online and I get the feeling a lot of people online are not really ready. They just put up a profile to prove to someone or themselves that they are ready. So the day I was supposed to begin PTL I ended up at breakfast with my workout buddy Jonathan, who happens to be married. We talked about comic books and other geeky stuff. Jonathan runs a website called Geekscape.net. It is pretty awesome. He was supposed to be one of my pimps for this project, but he told me that he wouldn’t want to set me up with any of his geek fans. I didn’t understand his logic, because he is one of them. In fact he is their king, but oh well. Jonathan is not Mormon or from Utah, but for some reason he is a crazy about the Utah Jazz (basketball team). He keeps hoping I’ll date someone who is also a Jazz fan so that we can all hang out and he can have a basketball man friend. I will see what I can do, Jonathan. 

This blog post is now super long and so you will have to wait till the next one to hear about the real dates. I promise it's good.