Survey Says....

Back in high school I was convinced that my lack of sex appeal was directly connected to my lack of mid-digital hair. It was this little tidbit of biological information that helped soothe my tortured male ego as I braved the turbulent world of teenage mating rituals. It never occurred to me that it might be a character flaw of some sort. My dearth of dates in high school must certainly be genetic.
Or maybe it's simply because I never learned the rules. You know that part about waiting three days to call a girl back? Or was it two? Then there's that whole "hard-to-get" thing. I never got that either. I never wanted to appear as anything but available. Or was that desperate?
A recent poll of single women rated the top five things that kept them from going on a second date with a guy. Number one: The Puppy Dog Syndrome. As one woman put it, "The early stage of dating is just one big game, whether we like it or not. It's a cat and mouse game; puppy dogs don't win."
Being eager to please, flattering, and the dreaded "too nice" are all Turn-offs with a capital "T." Women who are dating don't want nice. They want a guy who will mistreat them. Or at least that's what they tell the folks who run these surveys. Perhaps being too eager is something that most people can modulate. I never could. I can still remember the silence on the other end of the line when I told the woman who would become my wife that I was thinking about moving out to California. And into her apartment. And just maybe that's the moment when we stopped dating, because according to most polls, women really like a husband who is available. But not too nice.