Scandalous pre-affairs and a novel scoring system for dating

These are friends of mine who will kick my a_ _ when they see that I posted this pic.

"Peter what is that look in your face?" was the beginning of the end of a growing attraction for a friend of mine who studied Journalism in Stuttgart. The first time in 27 years that I had been pre-rejected. Before this I didn't even know it was possible. She read me before I read myself and knew that at some point in the future I would make a move. So what did she do? Shut me down! I could blame it on the fact that my thoughts were distracted by writing my thesis or trying to function with the German culture and language, but at the end of the day I have to admit I took it hard. It is like she didn't even taste the goods before saying "no thanks". Take that any way you want. Now I know that anything is possible in this crazy universe!

Fast forward 2 months to Christmas, 2005

While sitting in a bar in Swinging London's West End with Philip and Eloise, we devised a scoring system for dating. The idea started with Philip's observation on human nature "you know, you always feel better about yourself when you break up with someone than when you are broken up with". If you get one point for breaking up with someone but minus one for getting broken up with then you can figure out if you are in the positives or negatives and get some insight into how you should be feeling or your dating ego if you will. I still remember racking my brain over the last 15 years of my dating life counting the rejections that I had handed out and received. For a while I was in the negatives, but after the evening wore on I kept remembering occasions where I had done the rejecting. I actually stood up and yelled "I'm a plus two!" when I got there. Philip congratulated me by buying a round of beers.

We also decided that there must be some people are at the extremes. This came from the familiar high school experience of that girl that seems to break the heart of every guy that came within a 10 m radius of her. It is a fact, some girls are in the positive 3 digits. It follows logically that some guys receive more than their fair share of rejections, and are down in the basement. Does the distribution of this ration follow a normal distribution, such that for example, 66 % of the population lies between +/- 10. Or is it assymetric, with the average centred on -5, made so by the few girls out there breaking hearts their entire lives.

From my experience, although I have dated at least two or three of those super-heartbreakers (> +50), I have never met anyone with - 50, that has admitted it that is.

So go ahead and calculated your dating quotient. And don't forget that if you are in the negatives you can always go find someone to break up with that will make you feel better about yourself. And don't worry about them, this gives them valuable experience so they can start winning at some point in the future.