Missoula News

Column: Making it in Missoula

Hooks in the Water of Missoula’s Murky Dating Pool

By Big Sis, 12-12-07

It’s been a while, Missoula.  I haven’t been writing columns because...well, because all the best topics are off-limits unless I want to alienate my friends, lose my job, and move far outside the city limits.  The thing about Missoula is that even with a pseudonym as clever as mine, I’m about as anonymous as a pink elephant sitting at the Old Post bar.  So I have to be careful, thoughtful, strategic about the column’s content.  Also, I’ve just been lazy with my daily 12 minutes of free time.

But here’s the short update: dating is just as exhausting and entertaining as ever.  They don’t tell you in all those romance novels and Hollywood flicks that integrating new, unknown single males into your life takes a helluva lot of time and energy.  Luckily, I’ve started taking Vitamin B to up my energy supply during these dark, dark days before winter solstice.  (I’m considering switching to high-grade cocaine to power through the holiday party season, though.)

The longer dating update involves a recent discovery that most of us single Missoulians seem to have several “hooks in the water,” as my friend Newbie pointed out when we had lunch last weekend.  Newbie moved here this summer to start grad school, and she’s still slightly stupefied by the incestuous and convoluted web of dating interactions in our fair Garden City.

Take, for instance, Mr. X.  I dated Mr. X a few months ago.  A dinner party here, a festival there, a night out on the town. I shortly realized we weren’t very compatible. 

Of course, even after just a handful of dates I still expended considerable mental anguish over how, exactly, to break it off with Mr. X so that I didn’t “hurt his feelings.” In retrospect, this anguish was a ridiculous waste of energy, because:
1) There was nothing really to break off,
2) It’s arrogant to assume he even had any “feelings” related to me, much less that they would be “hurt,” and
3) Turns out Mr. X was also working on his “feelings” for Newbie.

Yup.  Newbie and I eventually put two and two together, and realized Mr. X had more than one fishing line cast in the pool of Missoula blondes. But here’s the kicker—Newbie and I both had other lines cast, too. 

Newbie’s been hanging some with Mr. Y, and I recently went out for a beer with Mr. Z.  The most ironic part?  Misters X, Y, and Z were all on the same Co-Rec team with me this spring. (I won’t mention which sport, as that might blow everyone’s cover—and fishing hooks right out of the water.)

This discovery has shed a new light on my perception of dating.  I used to think the name of the game was “monogamy.” I know, call me old-fashioned.  Or naive.  But the fact that the game can also involve playing the field (at least on my Co-Rec team) elicits dual feelings of relief and despair. 

On one hand, I’m relieved to know other folks are also checking out the teammates before choosing the recipient of their next dating pass.  I’ve always felt like the only one on the field, since most of my friends are “serial monogamists” who immediately retreat to the sideline with the first snazzy dude.  On the other hand, the fact that my dating partners are also casting about for better female options could be trouble when I actually find the guy who makes me want to exit the dating game completely.  What if my special someone wants to keep lobbing balls into left field in hopes of a better score?

Okay.  Enough with the cheesy metaphors.  The take-home lesson for me is this: it’s time to start communicating better (and by better I mean some) about everyone’s game rules early on.  This should save unnecessary anguish later, right? 

What this means on the ground: the last two single male friends who invited me to do something innocuous (with no romantic intentions whatsoever) got an instant regurgitation of my recent dating history and big caution flags hurled at them with a “No Boyfriend” zing.  In other words, I probably won’t have another date--or any male friends--for a long, long time if I keep up this communication bit.

What about all the rest of you in Missoula’s murky dating pool?  Have you come across stray hooks set by unexpected sources?  Or set any sly ones of your own while holding steady to another promising line?  Do tell.  And feel free to use a pseudonym for the really juicy stuff--no one will notice the pink elephant, I promise.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH:

“So, how do you choose which guy’s deer to help butcher?  Is it the guy with the bigger, badass, multi-point buck?  Or the guy with the more sensitive, caring deer in touch with its doe side?”

- my dad (a vegetarian for 30+ years) asked me when visiting for Thanksgiving after observing my friends immersed in peak hunting frenzy.

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