The Surprising Power of a Simple Word in Dating
Oh No Booboo, You Did Not Just Call Me That!
My buddy! Where ever I go!
Sponsored Ads
Looking For Love Online ? Try Loveawake free dating site:
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
You may have heard that somewhere. It’s popular on schoolyards everywhere as future millionaires fend off the numerous taunts of usually bigger, cooler, or more assholish kids who make fun of each other during Act One of the omnipresent stage play, Life.
I know I’ve said it before to somebody. Probably to some girl who called me a name when I was six or seven. I’m guessing it was my best rebuttal. Either that or the similarly popular, “I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.” It’s funny how ridiculously ridiculous these statements are but how clear they are to children. I swear, there isn’t a kid alive who doesn’t know how to turn that statement around on another kid.
The main notion behind these statements is that words are just that, words. That they don’t necessarily hold much Oprah sometimes, and that short of being bludgeoned with a Louisville Slugger, for the most part, you can just get up and move on past something someone has just said that you don’t necessarily agree with.
Well, me…I’m calling bullsh*t, especially the older you get. I don’t know which is a bigger lie: actions speak louder than words or Kim Kardashian loved Kris Humphries.
And for the record, I do think actions speak loud. But I think that words carry just as much weight.
Now, I won’t be focusing on that “actions speak louder than words” segment, but more on how certain words really can get you in an assblender of trouble.
[Another aside: This post has nothing to do with the posts from last week. While I still have a lot to say about the fallout from my vantage, today I’m not going to address it.]
One specific word actually.
Question, question: what’s the worst word you can call a woman who’s got any sort of interest in you?
Or a man for that matter?
Buddy.
Yes. It’s buddy.
(You thought it was going to be b*tch didn’t you?)
Oh, you don’t believe me? You can case study this sh*t if you want to. Allow me to offer a situation from my own life as fodder for discussion.
Once upon a blue moon, I was a lovestruck idiot in college. I’d managed to find a woman who for whatever reason got me all in a tizzy. Now, despite my constant attempts to woo this woman, she managed to fend off my advances like she was practicing for the National DisANinja Time Trials. But she didn’t exactly want me to not continue to woo her since my woo-age was neither stalkerish nor annoying. My woo-age included flowers, poetry, and trips to cheap dinners. Basically, I had your all around being a nice guy who really likes a girl thing going on. I’d do dumb sh*t hoping she’d take notice despite the fact that she’d made it clear she wasn’t really trying to be with me, though clearly she was interested but it might have just been in the way I treated her.
Figure out if she’s worth it, then treat her like a Queen. I had that little equation backwards.
But one fine day, as we were on the phone, me in my nonchalant manner innocently said to her, “hey buddy…”
STOP.
Have you seen I’m Gonna Get You Sucka? Do you remember the part where the mother who is on her period turns into the monsterish thing who is doing back flips and sh*t when folks come into her house looking for Jack Spade? Yeah, that was this chick.
I felt like I had just shot her grandmother with a rusty barnacle. She went off on me. Now remember, this was a chick who didn’t want to be with me, but apparently she for damn sure didn’t like the connotation that comes along with being called a buddy.
“I am NOT your buddy.”
Sheesh.
I left that alone after that and had learned my lesson.
That was until the next time I used that term and the exact same thing occurred.
And you know what, I didn’t get it at first. Why would these women who seemingly don’t want to be with me get so offended at the use of the term “buddy”. Then it dawned on me.
Women f*cking HATE that word because it makes them feel less special. “No he didn’t call me his buddy. What I look like? His boy Jim that he plays ball with!!! Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit…he better had get right in his mind!”
And in some ways I can kind of understand. Maybe its unintentionally intentional, but words like “buddy” tend to pop up when people are dating and they’re in that limbo, where-are-we-going stage. Maybe we’re all just playing mind games with one another.
The dude is thinking that if he calls her buddy and he gets a reaction then he knows she’s feeling him definitely. Kind of like forcing the green light. On that stupid a** Love Jones sh*t.
I need to say this here…I f*ckin’ HATE when people try to passively aggressively bait me into stuff. I know some folks who go out of their way to force an issue by total beat-around-the bushage. I want those people to get hit by lightning.
Most people I know hate passive-agressive bastards too. It’s one thing if two dating people are passive-aggressively feeling each other out in hopes of, you know, feeling each other out later. It’s something altogether different when people say this:
“We might need to talk about something later on.”
Umm…the f*ck does that mean? What do you mean might? If we might need to talk about it later on then we probably DO need to talk about it now.
What was I talking about?
Ah yes, women hate feeling less than special. Especially if they like you. Even more especially than the past especially if questions are lingering about the direction two people are heading.
Which is why a term like “buddy” is so loaded.
In some ways I don’t even think its deeper than that. An interested woman wants to know that you feel that she’s more special than other random folks in your life, whether its true or not. Even if she’s not interested.
Which makes total sense to at least 90 percent of the women reading this right now.
Got it, buddy?
Good.
Ladies, how do you feel about being called his “buddy”? And what words send men over the edge? Fellas, what say you? You ever referred to a woman in a friendship manner only to get your head chopped off?