You Can't Go Back

During his Emmy-award win­ning per­for­mance, Kill the Messenger, Chris Rock had a hilar­i­ous bit on the dif­fer­ences between men and women. He sums it up suc­cinct­ly:

Women can­not go back­wards in lifestyle. Men can­not go back­wards sex­u­al­ly.

An exam­ple he uses for women is the first time they get into a nice, warm car after club­bing, wav­ing bye to their friends who are wait­ing for the bus in the cold. After that, they can’t be with a man who does­n’t have a car, or as Rock puts it, “That’s how the fuck you roll for the rest of your life”. This extends to guys with their own places, then guys who take them on vaca­tion.

On men, he says, “Once we get the sex we like, that’s how the fuck we roll. I like my cof­fee like this, I like my steak like this, and I like to fuck like this…Ladies, don’t get mad at us. Get mad at our ex-girl­friends. She’s the one that [sic] spoiled it for every­body” because if your ex-girl­friend licks your ass, you expect your cur­rent girl­friend to do the same.

For me, the same is true for girls in gen­er­al, but not just in these aspects. I can’t be with a girl who refus­es to try exot­ic foods or refus­es to give uncon­ven­tion­al music a chance, who would­n’t rec­og­nize the effort I put into my presents, who would­n’t cher­ish the love and affec­tion I give, who would­n’t under­stand me, or would­n’t laugh at my stu­pid jokes, because I’ve been with girls who are a com­bi­na­tion of open-mind­ed, appre­cia­tive, roman­tic, on the same wave­length as me, and actu­al­ly find me fun­ny (when not com­plete­ly awk­ward).

That's why this entire idea scares me.

I know most peo­ple get more flex­i­ble on things about their mates as they head towards (or beyond) the mar­ry­ing age but I seem to be mov­ing the oppo­site direc­tion. Each girl I’ve been with has been an improve­ment over the last. Now the bar has been raised so damn high I don’t think I’ll ever get there again, and I’d rather be alone than com­pro­mise or set­tle.

My stan­dards are get­ting high­er, and I can’t go back.

16 comments

  1. ok, I’m dis­tract­ed by lan­guage. what’s this about girls? do you answer to boy?

    • Hah, I still answer to “guy”, which I believe can also be the oppo­site of girl.

      I prob­a­bly still refer to girls as girls because my last girl­friends have been quite younger than me, and still in uni­ver­si­ty. I did­n’t think of any of them as “women” yet. On the same hand, I still don’t think of myself as man, prob­a­bly because I still feel like a child in many ways.

      It would also be so creepy to think of myself as a man, if at the same time I thought of the peo­ple I date as girls.

  2. It’s good to be picky, just don’t be com­plain­ing that you’re sin­gle and you can’t find any­one BECAUSE you are picky ;)

    • I know I have no right to com­plain if I end up being sin­gle for the rest of my life. :) Probably because I think it’d be much eas­i­er to be with some­one if it was just any­one, but I know what those girls are like and I real­ly don’t want that, so I make the con­scious deci­sion to remain sin­gle and grace­ful­ly accept the con­se­quences of that deci­sion.

  3. Raising the bar in stan­dards is a good thing, but it does­n’t mean that each new girl­friend has to be the same as the pre­vi­ous one, but bet­ter. You might find your­self per­fect­ly hap­py with a girl who needs to work on her will­ing­ness to try new foods if she can teach you a lot about sex. Absolutes and deal­break­ers are some­times eas­i­er to accept when they are pack­aged along with unex­pect­ed joys.

    You will def­i­nite­ly find one bet­ter than the last.

    • I com­plete­ly agree, because bet­ter is exact­ly what I’m say­ing. I’m get­ting pick­i­er, and that’s some­what scary because there are few­er and few­er girls who are able to match that stan­dard now.

      I try nev­er to write any­one off com­plete­ly, espe­cial­ly when it comes to roman­tic rela­tion­ships. There’s no such thing as a deal-break­er for me, because I find that con­cept to be so com­plete­ly closed-mind­ed and super­fi­cial. I may be get­ting pick­i­er, but I can eas­i­ly see past a qual­i­ty (or qual­i­ties) I don’t like if the com­plete­ly pack­age is bet­ter on the whole. After all, miss­ing out on the most won­der­ful per­son due to one thing seems rather sil­ly. Of course, I prob­a­bly feel this way because so many women I meet have height as a deal-break­er (i.e. won’t date any­one short­er than them), so I’m nev­er giv­en a chance because I get writ­ten off as a 5′4″ male.

      • Are you real­ly get­ting pick­i­er? At 20 you might have dat­ed girls whose qual­i­ties are now on the “don’t date that” list, but that was prob­a­bly because you had­n’t yet real­ized you did­n’t want that. Dating and break­ing up is the same as not dat­ing if we’re only con­sid­er­ing the end. Now that you have the expe­ri­ence and the matu­ri­ty to be open to girls you are more com­pat­i­ble with over­all, your chances of a suc­cess­ful match should go up!

        5′4″ is a deal-break­er? I find that weird because the aver­age woman is 5′5″, so that’s pret­ty much like being the same height. I dat­ed a 5′4″ guy for years.

      • Hmmm…it’s prob­a­bly a bit of both get­ting pick­i­er and being able to nar­row down what I’m look­ing for. I nev­er real­ized that before.

        I dat­ed a girl who was only 1″ taller than me, and she stooped down for her prom pho­tos so she would look short­er. Maybe they want to wear heels with­out hav­ing to do that.

  4. I don’t see it as much as you demand­ing bet­ter and bet­ter (every­one’s opin­ion of bet­ter is dif­fer­ent) but that you know what it is you want in a rela­tion­ship and that’s a good thing.

    • To me, not know­ing what you want in a rela­tion­ship is like not know­ing whether or not you like ice cream; pret­ty sim­ple. I don’t under­stand how some peo­ple have no idea what they’re look­ing for. I guess I take that for grant­ed.

  5. I’ve nev­er under­stood how peo­ple could not know what they want either.

    However the oppo­site, real­ly know­ing, can back­fire on you when you find the one you feel knows EXACTly how to be as par­tic­u­lar as you are, and then THEY decide you’re not part of their list of per­fect points.

    But the good news (for me) was: Even the per­son that I once thought had every­thing I need­ed showed in time that they actu­al­ly did­n’t — and as time passed, I saw them evolve into some­one com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. Time changes peo­ple. So I would say my advice is: don’t be too over-con­cen­trat­ed on the idea. Pick some­one you know loves you and is going your direc­tion. Hopefully for good.

    • That’s a real­ly inter­est­ing way of approach­ing rela­tion­ships. One would hope that love is enough to buoy all oth­er evo­lu­tions and changes, for bet­ter or worse. But as I grow old­er, I’m start­ing to believe that com­pat­i­bil­i­ty is just as impor­tant as just know­ing some­one loves you and is going your direc­tion. I feel real­ly cyn­i­cal for believ­ing this.

  6. I can’t be with a girl who refus­es to try exot­ic foods…

    I total­ly hear you there. Especially com­ing from a Chinese-Canadian back­ground, that is a MUST.

    • You under­stand exact­ly where I’m com­ing from! We love the food of our cul­ture, and not being able to share that with some­one is pure heart­break.

  7. we were first think­ing, gosh what a douche’
    then you men­tioned, “prom”
    .….….…way to go playboy—lets think maybe you did­n’t breakup with these ‘girls’ per­haps they got rid of you because you were below their stan­dards.….…. I CANT THIS .….… or I CANT THAT.….…..some peo­ple cant feed their fam­i­lies. You Better take love when you find it. But life will teach you that

  8. I don’t know how I got here but excuse my while I barf.

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