Shane the Cheating Manwhore and Others!

I can honestly say that in all my dating mishaps, I have not knowingly dated a married guy. Now, most of my dating life has consisted of going on one date with a guy and never talking to him again, or making out with a guy on the first date and still never talking to him again, so I very well could have gone out with a married guy, but if I did it was unbeknownst to me. My poor sweet friend B however is not so lucky. She dated a guy named Shane for several months, and as is typical of the over 25 crowd in the LDS church, she began hinting at and talking about her desire to get married, and he as typical over 30 bachelor fashion, acted all kinds of skiddish about it. Over the next month or so, she shared her desires to get married and he kept backing off. Then one day, he appeared extremely grouchy and when B asked him what was going on, he told her she couldn't handle his problems because she was useless. Wow! Absolutely charming on his part. B was hurt by his comment but wanted to know what was wrong, but Shane only clammed up. Until the next day...when he decided to dump her because he just had too much stuff to deal with and she wouldn't be able to handle them. She was shocked and angry but because so many of her boyfriends turn out to be everything opposite of what they say they are, she wasn't entirely unexpectant of this turn of events. She took it in stride and merely told him to not contact her anymore. And being the gallant gentleman that he is, he waited a mere 4 hours before calling her to ask her to talk. Shane then tells her that she desreves to know why he broke up with her. He had a dark history- he was into porn, and even though he was legally seperated he was in fact currently married. And that did it for her. Now, there are fe times that I'm all for cussing, but this is one of those times, and cuss at him she did. I asked her if she b@#$%-slapped him when he told her and she said no. This scenario is also one of the few times that I'm also all for some semblance of of violence- slapping a man's face when he has treated you with disrespect is very satisfying, although punching him in the gut is even better if you can land a solid throw!

Poor B! One of the last guys that she dated, she met online. At the time my sister had to do background checks on new employees so I came up with the brilliant idea to do background checks on the two guys B and I had met online. My guy had traffic violations and his divorce stuff; her guy had a grand theft auto conviction on his record. She asked him what she'd find on him if she did a background check and he said it'd be clean. She asked him if he owned any guns, and he said he had no use for guns. She asked him if he'd buy her a gun, and he told her no. She asked him if he ever stole anything, and he said no. She asked him to explain the felony on his record, and he said good-bye.

Here's the thing, B tends to catch all sorts of cheats and liars. B and I used to be housemates. When she first moved in, she was very excited for me to meet two of her friends in particular- some guy named Austin and his friend whose name I forget. She and Austin talked frequently; he gave her a housewarming gift; he told her he would be happy to meet one of her friends. Then, he became less responsive and more distant to her. He was always busy, or on the other line, heading into a meeting, or heading off to the gym, and then his schedule was just so hectic that he really couldn't say when he'd be able to meet B's friend, much less get together with B again. I asked B to tell me about her Austin friend. According to her he's a regular Adonis- tall, buff, blonde, good looking, intelligent, wealthy, successful business man, active in church, loved to go dancing and clubbing, spoils his friends with things like expensive dinners, suites at hotels in Vegas, limo ride to the red carpet night at the Sundance Film Festival, things like that. I was intrigued, but also skeptical- it's in my nature to be skeptical of everyone, but especially of guys that are over the age of 21 and are actively LDS but big into clubbing. In my mind something just wasn't right about him. Then B started telling me about his friend, the nameless wonder- she wanted us to meet and hit it off, but from her descriptions he was either a total momma's boy and not worth my while, or he was gay. (Turned out he was gay!) At this point, Austin was no longer responding to B at all. I asked her to tell me more about him. She told me he spoiled her- that he bought her expensive things, paid some of her bills, told her he loved her and would wait for her to break up with her then boyfriend, and although they had kissed once they had never dated. I told her flat out that guys don't spend money on girls they're not interested in, and when they spend lots of money on a girl it's because he's either paying her for services rendered or trying to convince her that she should show him some gratitude in return. She didn't believe me. And he still wasn't responding to her calls, texts, or emails. By this time she was very frustrated since they went from daily calls to not talking for a few months. Honestly, I kind of thought she was making up Austin since she was always ending conversations with him when she came home and they never talked while she was at the house. I finally asked her for his number or email- surprisingly she gave me his email. I sent him an email written in classic Meamea style. I figured I was taking a big risk in what I was saying since I thought there was a good possibility that it was going to be read by B. The response I got was I'm crazy, I was partly right about him, I was judgemental, I wasn't to share with B what he told me, and he would contact her soon. Turns out he's another raging manwhore and had been excommunicated from the church, he was hoping to get B to have sex with him, and he didn't want to meet me because B had told him I could read people well and he didn't want B to find out he was something other than what he showed her to be. Well, of course I showed her his email. Over the past few years since then, the guy has called her a few times from a blocked phone number to tell her he loves her and misses her and will see her soon. And of course, because she takes everyone at face value, she believes him and then gets upset for a few weeks before putting him back in the back of her mind till his next ill-timed phone call from a blocked number.

For her, for me, for all the girls out there that can't seem to find a decent guy, I hope that things change for us all soon and that the decent guys out there start crawling out from under the rocks and leave the caves they're hiding in, because I'll tell you what- pickings are slim and it's hard to stay positive schmuck after schlepp after loser after jerk!