Not-Dating, Part Two

In the days since my last post, I have been approached by a couple of my friends asking for some definitions for some terms specifically.

It’s understandable. Having a not-relationship can be a complicated thing.

And it’s not the same thing as having a “non-relationship”, a term that might imply the lack of a relationship.

So, in the interest of clarifying, here’s a few terms as I define them:

Not-Dating– We covered this last time, but it might be important to make this more concise. Not-Dating is the process of going on “not-dates” or date-like activity with someone whom you have a romantic attraction to. A “not-date” then is a date, much like a regular date, except that it is only overtly romantic to one of the persons involved. Thus, a not-date or not-dating can be defined by someone asking you two the question “Are you dating?” with the reply “No, we’re not-dating”, a statement which exemplifies not-dating in the way it can be easily mistaken and/or ignored.

Some good signs of knowing you’re on a not-date (as often, you tragically don’t) is that a girl might talk to you about:

a. her boyfriend.

b. her gay friends.

c. her gay boyfriend.

d. your friend who she’s trying to fuck.

e. her gay boyfriend who’s straight sometimes and is sleeping with her.

f. her gay boyfriend who’s not straight but she still wants to sleep with

or finally,

g. her gay boyfriend who she is trying to set you up with.

Such things often signal a not-dating situation.

Not-Relationship– Similar to the aforementioned not-dating, a not-relationship is a longer-term endeavor in which you enter in to with someone with varying degrees of willingness on either party’s sake. It can involve hanging out on a regular basis, being “buds”, hanging out with her friends and going to parties or seeing movies/shows/art in some semi-regular arrangement. While not-dating is something that might happen occasionally, as might regular dating, a not-relationship involves two people liking each other and wanting to see each other often, with a little twist on either side.

Not-Girlfriend (Not-Boyfriend)– I’m trying to be gender-neutral here, but I can really only speak to the male experience (or my particular jewy hipster-ish experience). A not-girlfriend is something more intense than either one of the previous items. If this was cancer, a not-girlfriend would be stage three or seven or whichever one means you’re fucking dead. A not-girlfriend means that there’s so much obvious sexual tension and time together that everyone just assumes she’s your girlfriend and that you’re together. Thus you might introduce her as “not-your-girlfriend“. The good news I suppose about this situation is there usually has to be something there between you two if it gets to this point and the bad is that at this point it’ll never happen.

This is because, in my experience, not-dating, having a not-relationship or a not-girlfriend never leads to anywhere good. It can lead drunken hookups, naked grope-fests, even the occasional opportunistic sleepover but once you’ve already started not-dating someone, the more time you spend with them, the more they think of you as that guy that they’re not dating. Conversely, it’s harder for them to think of you otherwise as your genitals slowly wither away in their mind’s eye.

So yeah, if you’re going to ask me about not-dating, I’m an expert.

It’s not not-dating that might be a problem.