I will find myself in a serious relationship. The girl will be attractive, fun, nice, etc. But she won’t be “I don’t wanna ever have sex with another girl” attractive, nice, etc. At some point, usually about 6-8 months in, I will have to come to terms with the questions of where is this going, could I marry this girl, is she a “one.” And ultimately I will break things off, knowing I am not ready to get THAT serious. Then I will spend the next 6-8 months doing some variety of hitting on random girls, trying to hook up with girls I had been thinking about hooking up with while with said girlfriend, succeeding at times, being rejected at others, and generally living the single life.

Then at some point something clicks, and I will miss the whole splitting a bottle of wine (read: 3), watching a movie, nice dinner, fill in the blank fun thing that couples do together. Also, at this point I usually have remembered that random hook-ups with Anne Hathoway lookalikes are probably not gonna happen. This is basically how things have gone for the last four or so years of my life.

Second, and this goes more as to why I have become a bit more balsy (some may say sketchy) about pursuing women, is what Generic Me is.

Generic Me is how someone would describe me in one sentence to a girl. Four years ago, Generic John was pretty similar to the other 1,000 senior dudes at BC. I really had nothing particularly out of the ordinary going for me. That’s changed a bit now for two reasons.

First, the girls I pursue now are not in college and therefor don’t have tons of men all over them all the time. They are looking for the things mid twenty year olds are looking for, not 21 year olds.

Second, I’ve had a mildly successful four years. So I could imagine someone saying to a girl “I know this guy John who thinks you’re cute. He is gonna be a doctor soon, seems friendly and normal, and wants to get your number to take you out for a drink.” I think at least a decent number of girls would be receptive to that.

So Jessie, this brings us back to your question about if things had changed.

I don’t think anything out of the usual really has. I am not suddenly looking for a wife. A reader left a comment where she speculates that for guys its more about being ready than finding the one. I have always wondered this myself and I really don’t know the answer. But I certainly don’t look back at any past girlfriend and think “If I had met them now I would marry them.” So maybe it’s just a matter of keeping on lookin’.