Get Your Roommate A Date!

Back in my good ol'college days, we used to have a tradition called "Get Your Roommate A Date" or as it was affectionately short handed, "Roommate Date." Roommate Date was when your entire dorm wing would plan a group date event where the ladies treat and your roommate had to man up and ask a guy out for you! 

We did things like go out for pizza and bowling, dinner and a movie, or some other typical date activity. I usually had good roommates who were able to snag a guy I was crushing on. One year though, I didn't have my sights set on anyone in particular, but Roommate and I heard of a group of guys someone on the wing was willing to dole out to whomever was in need. They were fun loving guys who enjoyed roommate dates- Sold! I'll take one of each! 

Well, one girl on our floor for some reason had to back out of our roommate date night, but none of these guys wanted to cancel and be left out. So I, being the good sport that I am, took one for the team and I offered to have two dates that night! 

The evening started out great with me wedged between my two dates in the back of my RA's car! I can't remember their names at this point, so let's call them Disappointment 1 and Disappointment 2. 

Disappointment 1 and Disappointment 2 were both chivalrous men and early into the date they would both try to open my door, pull out my chair, beat the other one to the gallant punch. However, this dissipated even before the salads were served. They were duds who wanted a free meal. They couldn't even hold an interesting conversation through dinner. I mean with two dates I should have had double the odds of one of them being interesting, but they mostly ended up talking to each other and ignoring me and the rest of my friends at the table.

Despite my last roommate date being a double flop, I've been thinking that perhaps it's time to team up with my new, fun, single, gal-pal roommate. (Although, she insists that we should call ourselves "housemates"  since the term "roommate" sounds like we're still in college in a one room dorm. So to clarify, we do have separate rooms.)

So far this new endeavor has involved Housemate chatting on my behalf with gentlemen such as my new Beitish boyfriend on Christian Mingle and randomly texting boys in my phone while we sip cocktails like we're Carrie and Miranda...or Samantha and Charlotte, I'm not sure yet. But I anticipate future posts coming out of Project Get Your Housemate A Date!

Moral Of Today's Story:

The best part about being single is having fun with your girlfriends. Expand the fun! Share more than your favorite hair products and beauty tips. Bring your friend what she really wants, a hot date! 

It's like a sauna in here!

It's been over a decade since online dating became the new, modern way to date. These sites started out marketing themselves as experts using scientific methods of matching your personality with the ideal mate. This in depth personality study seemed to me that it basically matched people with the same religious values and height preferences. 

Actually, I had some friends and acquaintances who were told in some polite email form that their personalities had no matches. I don't know if they still tell people that, but that's got to be depressing news to hear that it's unlikely you can find a mate who can tolerate you and your difficult personality!

Internet dating has moved further from personality tests and more towards our basic attraction instincts where we just look at pics of hot or not so hot guys, but there's still a missing element of attraction:  Scent! 

More specifically pheromones. Now if you've been living under a rock and don't know about pheromones, they're the hormones you give off in your scent that trigger behavior. Basically, if someone smells good to you it means you're sexually compatible. The perfume industry has caught on to the pheromone craze and makes fragrances with added sex pheromones to amp up your scented attractiveness. Victoria's Secret and some of those naughty toy home party brands make great pheromone based fragrances...I mean I heard that. My friend mentioned it. Who said I was there?! 

Anyway, my point is that you need to look at people and smell them to really know if you're  attracted to them. I heard about a new company that for this reasoning started offering "smell dating." They would send you a white cotton t-shirt that you would wear for a few days until it absorbed your scent, then they would cut up the t-shirt into samples to send out to prospective mates. Meanwhile you sniff some other dirty shirts and see which one turns you on! I was willing to give this a try, mostly for you my readers, but it seems they've already gone out of business. 

Which brings me to my two new scent based suggestions: 1.  Speed hugging--speed dating with hugs long enough to sniff someone's hair. In theory it makes sense, but I think it might go out of business as quickly as the other smell-a-date service because when I say it out loud, it sounds totally creepy. 2. Saunas! I've recently been spending more time in the sauna based on Gwyneth Paltrow's recommended health habits. I go to the mixed gender sauna at the gym (because the one inside the women's locker room will serve me no purpose! Well except Gwyneth's touted detox regime, I suppose) In the gym sauna, not only do I have a pre-screened group of healthy men who workout, but we're all in close enough proximity to smell each other's pheromones as we sweat them out! 

The first couple times I tried to smell the attractive men in the sauna I learned a few things. 

1. I do not want to date anyone with a heavily curry based diet. 

2. If there are more than 3 men in the sauna, you can't smell them apart!

3. This is a perfect setting to try out some  Seinfeld humor. (The sauna episode, right?)

So I managed to sit in the sauna while there was just one attractive man in there. He struck up a conversation of small talk, and in a moment he said something about the heat and I was able to interject Kramer's classic Seinfeld line "it's like a sauna in here!" He clearly was not a sitcom aficionado. He thought I was an idiot who didn't realize I was in fact in a sauna. 

Moral of today's story:  Sauna dating will not be for the faint of heart --despite its cardiac health benefits. There may be sound science behind the pheromone dating connection, but perhaps it would be better to avoid sniffing strangers. They don't all like that! So I'll just stick to wearing the fragrances that my friend bought at that party.