Speed Dating

Since I live my life one metaphor at a time, I thought I’d put together my thoughts on the state of dating. You may wonder why am I qualified to give such thoughts…well 1) I’ve dated before; 2) I can read; 3) You can convince yourself of anything at 12:30am; 4) I’m single and we all know single people give the best relationship advice.

Now for the metaphor, Dating is like driving a six speed. (Note to reader: I’ve never driven one but that doesn’t stop the comparisons.) I’ve come up with the stages/speeds of dating:

“6-Speed Dating”©
1 – Acquaintances – You know of each other and may even recognize each other with a head nod or eye lash movement.
2 – Friends – You hang out from time to time with groups. You have each others phone number if you ever need to borrow sugar.
3 – Good friends – You talk on the phone for no real reason except to complain about your boss.
4 – Dating – You have officially reached the romantic entry level. You are spending most of your time one on one but still go out with others but only if it is a iteration of a double date.
5 – Boo’d up – You stop getting phone numbers in the club. You have a pair of toothbrushes, one for her place and one for yours.
6 – Murried – You are ready to spend the rest of your life with this person and this person only. All that is left is to pick out kid names.

Ideally, a potential relationship would smoothly accelerate through the speeds as needed. Once the speed was maintained with no issues, you would shift up to the next speed unless you reach the point of needing an oil change. However, we all know things never happen as they are intended. We usually ruin the transmission of the relationship by starting in the 4th gear. Or we start in the 1st gear but accelerate through the speeds before we can properly leverage the speed level we are at. If we take our time and drive the relationship as a manual transmission vs. an automatic, we’ll be able to reach the 6th speed with no auto troubles.

All of that to say, make sure you rotate your tires regularly, check your windshield fluid, and spay/neuter your pets.

M.