Dear Justin: The Worst Dating Advice Column Ever

This morning as I was coming into work, I noticed someone as I was walking inside--all the hormones starting raging, and like a chimpanzee, I immediately pushed my chest out, raised my head a little bit, and fixed my posture. It was like an unconscious thing, but at the moment, everything seemed so promising and exciting that I wanted to put my best foot forward. DC is full of people that are attractive, intelligent, and well-put together, so I tend to spend a lot of time acting like a metrosexual chimpanzee. Dating is complicated. If you don't find the love of your life in college, you might as well buy a cat, sharpen up on your needlepoint, and buckle down for all the Roseanne marathons your heart can handle. But there are those of us who persist on. In a metro area of nearly 6 million people, I believe that two self-centered, entitled, policy-driven individuals can still find love because, well... Bill and Hillary.
So in pursuit of my own Billary, I held the elevator door this morning for my potential mate outside, and when I say that I held the elevator, I mean I held it for like fifteen seconds practically growling at anyone else who dared to enter the elevator. Eventually, we were both in the elevator: I had done it. So, in response, I got, "Thanks for holding the door for me. You didn't have to do that (audible smile)." And then like a trashy Seth McFarlane character, I said, "Heh, you're welcome." And then I got off the elevator. I had forgotten one major part of flirting and human attraction: proper communication... actually, any communication at all. A couple of weeks ago, I asked people to send me their questions on dating, and in response, I got really vague questions in addition to really, really specific situations. I feel like I've made enough dating errors at this point that I could give all kinds of neat advice, so here goes it.

Justin, where do you meet people?
Well, I think it depends on who you are. Find the place you feel most comfortable. For some people, that's college, and if you've missed your boat, then I'm sorry about the rest of your life. For others, it's church. For some, it's bathhouses; it's really up to you. I learned a long time ago that I'm not going to meet people in bars because I'm just not a bar person. I don't have pick up lines. I do best in smaller situations, and if it's a stranger, I'm more likely to drop my scalding hot coffee on someone and talk my way into a date at a Starbucks than I would be trying to buy someone a drink at a bar.

Justin, how do you feel about online dating?
Listen, Meg Ryan, things have gotten a whole lot more complicated since You've Got Mail. I think it speaks a lot to our generation because we've stopped knowing how to communicate with people face to face. Online dating allows you to practically stalk people before meeting them, and in short, you are really drying the well of things to talk about before you meet them. I know it works for some people, and that's great. I online date sometimes, and it's hilarious. One person I talked to asked to come over, and when I said no, threatened to kill themselves, so that's cool. If you're in a bigger place, don't take the online thing too seriously because no one else really is, and be aware of where you're doing your online dating. If you're on something you have to pay for, people are probably really gunning to seal the deal. You don't buy a shirt if you don't intend on wearing it. If you're on something free like OKCupid, you probably care enough, as long as it doesn't cost you. If you're on an app like Tinder, well... you're only looking at pictures then clicking a heart or an X. I know it sounds crazy, but if it's shallow enough to only give you 2 options following looking at someone's picture, the relationship will probably reflect the outlet.

Justin, if a guys says he is paying for your date in advance, and then you offer to pay to be nice while you're actually out and he agrees, does that make him a douchebag?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: I've always had a really bad habit of offering to do things that I didn't want to in hopes of trying to be nice, and then people actually wanted me to do it. I would complain and complain, but in reality, I asked if I could, unprompted. I think something you have to learn, in all aspects of life, is that you should not offer to do something for someone unless you really want to do it. I've learned that the hard way with additional projects at work, picking people up from the airport, and offering sexual favors. Also, in terms of the whole "guy pays" thing, that gets complicated in my world. I'm a full blown feminist who believes that people are just people, so there's no obligation here. Equality for all, so... women are just as capable of paying as guys are. Towanda, ya know?

Justin, I think a guy likes me, but I can't figure it out. I've tried talking to his friends to see where he stands, but I'm still not sure.
Well, stop that, because that's just annoying. You're not trying to find an answer to your question, you're looking for a green light. If you want an answer, ask him. Pulling others into situations like this never, ever helps.

Justin, if she says she likes me, but she wants to take it slow, how slow should I take it?
Well, this is a two part question, really. According to Robin Thicke, everybody hates these blurred lines, so in essence the answer is: as slow as she says to take it. I just recently watched an episode of Parenthood (aka, the most underrated show on television), and this 17 year old guy was all, "Let's make sex!" and the girl was like, "I thought this was a picnic!?" and then they didn't have sex, and she broke up with him. I stood up and high-fived that imaginary 15 year old girl in my room and went on about my day. If you don't let time run its course, you risk a very real possibility of being a douchebag. On the other side of that, if you're someone who likes to keep a Dale Earnhardt pace in a Jeff Gordon kind of world (you're so very welcome for the heavily-biased NASCAR reference), then maybe you should reevaluate the person you're with. Just like you shouldn't expect anything too fast out of her, she should understand if you're looking for a faster pace. Neither way is the wrong way--just two equally effective ways that don't work together.

How fast is too fast to get married?
Always. Always is too fast to get married.

Justin, I met the perfect guy at a bar. He's from England and will be traveling around the US for the next three weeks. We flirt via text every day, but he's not stopping in DC again before heading back home. Should we keep in touch?
Anecdote: My roommate from college came to visit me this year. He's from Scotland. We went out to the bar, and I had five drinks, and I didn't have to pay for any of them because they were his surplus from all the drinks girls were buying him. It was a magnificent evening. Unless you're headed over to visit the royal baby, Bridget Jones, I would give him an additional three weeks and see if he contacts you... AMIRITE?

Justin, how should I treat a girl's friends that I've never met before?
Nicely.

Justin, I went to my boyfriend's (now ex-boyfriend's) house for the first time. He showed me a "poker room" with girl's bras everywhere and porn on the wall. What would you have done in the situation?
First and foremost, I would have set a reminder in my phone to put in a prayer request for him because gambling, pornography, and fornication are three of the devil's strongest tools in luring sinners to Hell. Secondly, I would have giggled because I didn't know people like that actually existed in real life. Third, I would have broken up with him, which seems to be a non-issue at this point. Lastly, I would have taken the bras back upstairs to his mom; I'm assuming that they probably belonged to her because I stand by the fact that someone who would commingle bras and porn for home decor probably did not come upon the bras in an organic way.

Justin, I just broke up with someone, but some of my stuff is still over at their place... what should I do?
A simple cost benefit analysis will answer this question pretty easily. If it were me, I would figure out in a concrete way how much I don't want to be around this person. If the items in question are important enough, you'll deal with it, no matter the issue. All it takes is going over to that place and asking for your business back. If you don't get an answer, then... that's really weird and that person has some growing up to do. In extreme cases, like if the stuff I left over there was the second or seventh seasons of Grey's Anatomy, I would bust the door down, go in spinning around with a brick in my hand to take out whomever I needed to, get my DVDs, and leave. But, I'm also a very passionate person.

Looking to stay single for a while? Send your dating and life questions to Justin at justinkirkland4@gmail.com!

One Year Out

Last night, I went on a date that I, honestly, had invested way too much in before it even happened. We had been talking via text for about three days, and--if I can be candid--I thought this was going to be one that I took home to the parents. Essentially, I was Ginnifer Goodwin in He's Just Not That Into You, and it played out exactly how the movie title reads: not. that. into. you. After the date, we had a brief discussion about how I wasn't relationship material, and then I came home and drank a bottle of wine... because that's how you handle rejection. I had never done this on a date before... putting that much pressure on a first meeting. I blame my recent trip home, where I met all my friends from home who are either married, engaged, or about to be engaged: going to Tennessee is essentially the equivalent of visiting a group of 16 year old traditional Indian girls... everyone is getting married off. But, as I was consuming my entire bottle of 3.99 wine on a Saturday night, I thought to myself, What is your life? Look at your decisions. And then I was hungover for work, and that's never cool.

It's been 14 months since I graduated undergrad, 13 months since I started this blog, 11 months since I moved to Washington D.C., and 12 minutes since I last ate an entire sleeve of Oreos. Not to be cliche, but time goes by incredibly fast. I'm not saying that I feel like the past year has aged me immensely, but I will say that I saw a guy in front of me at 7-11 the other day with a pint of Ben and Jerry's "Strawberry Shortcake" and a Coke Zero and thought to myself, "Damn. That looks like a good night. I wonder if he'd want to be friends." The past year has been exhausting, and I had a ton of people tell me that it would be the hardest year of my life that I've faced thus far, and it was.
But there's a caveat to that--it absolutely was the most trying 365 days I've faced in my life, and in the same breath, it was also the most amazing days that I've ever seen. I suppose in comparison to a lot of people I went to school with, the journey that I've taken has been a little bit different. I decided to move to a new place with new people, and with all of that being said--it hasn't gone half bad. On the outside, it looks pretty good, and by most standards, I'm doing okay for a 23 year old: good job, decent friends, solid school record... but below the surface, there's all these questions and issues that you can't know about--the things that we just don't talk about.
But this is not a place where we keep secrets: we established that a year ago. This is a place I come to share with the rest of the world all the things that make us nervous and scared and a little embarrassed. In public relations, we're told about the value of the infographic: a way of conveying data to people that makes them more receptive to actually taking it in. So after I found out that I would be alone at home tonight because my roommates had actual dates, I started an infographic at work. Even I need a picture to describe what's going on in my life. So I jumped in and reflected on 2013, because tackling the entire past year was just too hard for my heart to handle. This is what I found.

And what we can learn from this graph, other than the fact that I turn to pizza when I'm lonely, and that I am a raging chain smoker/wino, is that we shouldn't be ashamed of the things that make us a little less than perfect. The dates and the pizza and the singing and the wine: well, it makes us human. I once thought that I knew exactly what my life would look like once I was at this age, and it doesn't look like that at all. Life is a little bit of a complexity: it can be a tragedy or a comedy, all depending on the way that you look at it. A year ago, if you asked me how I would feel about living with three sports buffs, remaining single, and ordering approximately two Dominos pizzas a week... I probably would have been pretty sad about it. But when you put it in perspective, it's a pretty funny life--mostly because it's the last thing I would have planned.

I think we all try and prepare for things so that we can do our best at outsmarting life. We follow an unspoken syllabus because we think that's what will make us happy. I see it done every day: by people back home, by people in DC, by people everywhere really. But it's pointless because your life is yours, and if you want to go and get a pint of Ben and Jerry's with a Diet Coke... well then damn it, you should. And it shouldn't matter that it makes you feel old or lame or socially awkward because that's your life, and honestly... no one else has any more idea of what's going on than you do. So, for 

you seven year olds that read my blog, my advice is to plan your future very loosely. Know where you're going, but don't Google Maps the directions or anything... because inevitably, you're going to miss a turn or take the exit two before the one you were supposed to take. And for everyone else, myself included, we know the big secret to life: there's absolutely no controlling it, and even more than that, there's absolutely no stopping it. Because very similarly to my car, when you have it figured it out and fixed, something else is inevitably going to break down. And that's okay because we're a resilient species. We do what it takes to make things work.

So, since I've started this blog tonight, I'm about four beers deep, a couple cigarettes in, and about to pee on myself because I haven't taken a bathroom break. It's been almost a month since I submitted my last entry, and even though it's almost 3:00am, and I'm about to pee on myself--there's a satisfaction that comes with writing another post. It's an idea that's sat in my head for weeks, and originally, I anticipated that it would be filled with wisdom and insight, when in reality--it was more of a display of the embarrassing things I do on a daily and/or monthly basis. But that's the point: no one is wise. This world isn't particularly about being smart--it's partially about luck and partially about determination. You have to be at the right place at the right time, but most of all, you have to be determined enough to keep going so that you eventually hit that string of luck. And in the mean time, you can always run down to 7-11 for a bottle of wine.

Unmaking Plans

I'd finally had enough of chasing after a ghost who did not want to be seen.- Looking for Alaska

As a freshman in high school, I told my college counselor that I wanted to go to seminary at Duke University. My plans, because I was so entangled in the web of Evangelicism and after-church dinners, was to join the ranks of the religious right and eventually become a youth pastor in a local church in Knoxville. But as I was sitting on my couch in Arlington last night as a graduate student in PR at Georgetown University, it hit me for the first time in my life that seminary at Duke was never going to happen. At some point in my life, those plans had changed, and no matter the age, I don't think that's something we're ever really prepared for... the changing of plans, that is.
But even though the Baptist church beat the desire to bring the message of Christ to pre-pubsecent children, the core of my plan remained the same: I loved the idea of communicating good news to people, and it's ultimately what prevailed when I chose public relations--but everything else, well... that didn't happen. It didn't change what I said to people up until my senior year of high school though. I continued to tell people that I would become a youth minister because that's what I had set out to do, and similarly, I told people in college that I would be a lawyer up until my senior year, when I affirmed for once that I was actually going into public relations instead. There's something commendable about sticking to your plan, even if your plan isn't what you originally intended. I have a habit of choosing a goal and refusing to back away from it, no matter how bad of an idea it ends up being.
But I recently had a friend tell me, If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, which I'm sure comes from another source before that. And as I was sitting on my couch, considering how painfully obvious that it was that I had not gone to Duke for seminary, I found myself talking to Rebecca Neely on Facebook chat; for those of you unfamiliar with our background, Rebecca is a girl who took out a restraining order on me my sophomore year. The details are too long to explain in a paragraph, so I'll promise it as a blog, as I have before. But the important part of the story is that the restraining order did not go through, and Rebecca and I silently vowed never to talk to each other again. It was our plan, because that's what you do when you take out a restraining order/have a restraining order taken out against you. However, there she was asking me about how to overcome the fact that the guy she was talking to a guy liked Nickelback... and three years later, I was talking to her as if it had all never happened.
All of these seemingly unrelated anecdotes all dial back to one common denominator: at one point, I had a plan for my life, and even though I love my life and most of the details that help make it mine, very little of what I had planned out for myself ten years, or even five years, ago ever came close to being true. In having to realize that, I've also tried to become a little more relaxed in how life goes. I like to tell people I'm spontaneous, but at the end of the day, I'm not. It's similar to the way that I tell people that I really like hummus, then leave it in the fridge for three months or like when I tell people that I love to go out to the club, and then I stand near the bar taking visual inventory on who is going to eventually end their night with their head in the trash can. I'm a planner, and it's painful because life is not something that you plan. People and events and goals: they're not plan-able things, and when you attempt to put them in a box, I feel like the results are similar to putting my cat in a car carrier for an 9 hour car ride. You hear a lot of weird noises, and eventually, you just have to let the cat out.
And of that list of things, the most difficult part of life is making life work with other people. We are not a species that is easy to get along with, and we do not happen to come together that often. That's why I've always been so fascinated, and yes, jealous, of people my age who have managed to get married and possibly even reproduced by now. Somehow, in this crazy world, they've managed to come together, at least for the time being, and plan their lives together. They've agreed to this insane compromise of "we're going to make our lives work with each other." How could you ever know? We're constantly changing and becoming new people, and you're taking this giant risk investing in someone who could readily become a new person in the course of your lifetime or even a couple of years. But still, we choose to do it because the only thing we fear more than the chaos of life is having to face that chaos alone.
It wasn't until just this past year that I had to actually consider the idea of what it would mean to plan my life with someone, and when I was forced to choose between a relationship or the plans I had made for graduate school, I chose my plans. And I had to let it go, and when you really have to let something go, I think it kind of startles you.  You find yourself in a position when you've had to choose and you've had to change plans and you go down a road that you never thought you'd be going down, and after a while, you begin to change a little, too. And in such a big place with plans changing all of the time, I've considered what it would be like to take the power away from life--if you eliminate the variables out of life... the people, the places, the decisions that ultimately affect you the most, it could be easier. The details out of my control make me more frustrated than my own errors because I never had a chance to control them.
But it's selfish. Yes, people like me like to believe that life is something concrete and constructible. If I could know the exact date I would die, I would want to. But, that's a selfish thing to do because with all the time that you're spending on planning and hoping and getting things correct, you're taking away from the most valuable asset you have in the world. We define ourselves by what we've painted in our future and not how we've reacted to the moments of the past. And as I was riding the escalator up from the metro today, I was considering this topic and this blog, and I thought about two people. I bitch and complain about the people I've invested in who have disappointed me, and the plans of my past that have gone awry, and the simple everyday losses that I face... when in reality, I haven't had too much to complain about.
The first person I thought about was the man I pulled out of a river a couple years ago. By the time we pulled him out, he had drowned; in the course of five minutes, he had changed at least two people's plans: his and mine. Because of how unpredictable the world is, his life was over. As for me, I was presented with the chance to save a life, and ultimately I couldn't. No change-of-plan has ever hurt more. And when you see something like that: the life literally drained from someone's face--someone your age lying in front of you, not breathing... well, it kind of makes you wonder what's the point? These people and places are all fleeting. You can't depend on anyone, and even when you can, everyone eventually dies. Obviously, I was not too happy halfway up the escalator.
But I had enough time to think of someone else because escalators in DC are long. The second person I thought of was my mom. Over the course of two years, she became pregnant twice. She carried both babies, little girls, to seven and eight months, respectively, before she miscarried. And when I talked to her about it, she told me that she never asked God why it happened because that's not fair.  She told me to never question God because I didn't have the authority to do so. And then there's me: going around barely invoking the presence of God because I still feel like I have some kind of say-so in how my life goes, when in reality, the role I play in how the world works is minute. I can't control the people around me, how they treat me, and the extraneous circumstances that may change my route in life.
But as the escalator neared the top, I realized that I had something that a lot of people don't. Yes, my plan has changed quite a lot and in turn, I've changed a lot as a person. But I was moving toward this light, as overcast and dim as it may be, and at the crest of that escalator, I could continue to live. I would live amongst the mess and the assholes and the roadblocks, but the operative word is: live. And as I neared the top and quickly reflected on all that I had contemplated on a morning metro ride, it seemed apparent to me that maybe I didn't need to go to seminary after all.
People go and change and grow away from one another. Circumstances cause us to have to head in a different direction than we ever anticipated, but I like to believe that maybe the plans we are forced to take are better than the ones we had in mind for ourselves to begin with.

Eight Reasons That I Don't Want To Get Married Right Now

I love marriage. It's precious and beautiful and all those other really sweet words that people like to put in their vows. I look forward to the day that I find someone to spend the rest of my life with because isn't that all what we're looking for in the long run? We want that person that will stick with us through everything because the idea itself is a marvel, and I don't mean that sarcastically. There are days that I wake up and don't like myself, so to know that there could be someone out there that wakes up beside me and regularly sees something inside of me that I don't even see myself... that's amazing.
But, for now, I'd just like that in the "living in sin" sense. Give me someone to wake up with, sure, but I'm not interested in making it official quite yet. This past summer was full of marriages, and let me tell you... the horse is dead. You all killed it; you beat it with a stick, stuck it in a photo booth with a fedora, fake mustache, and glasses with no lenses, pulled it out, made it do the cha cha slide for an unprecedented four times, shoved red velvet cake in its face, then turned it to glue so that you could finish your latest Pinterest project. That poor, poor horse.

8. None of my friends can afford to get me the wedding presents I want.
I've seen you people. Everybody wants to go out, but no one wants to drive because we don't have any gas. And I can see it... I'll be asking for a flatscreen TV or something equally awesome, and your ass is going to roll up at my wedding with a set of coasters. I don't want your coasters right now because you'll be able to say Oh, well. You know things are tight for me right now. I want to wait until you have a good job with a lot of moneys... then I want to hear your excuses. The longer I wait, the nicer the presents I will get. In my opinion, weddings are not about solidifying my love for someone in front of all of my friends. If I haven't done that on a daily basis, then I have no business getting married. Weddings are for presents. The end.

7. I don't have any neat ideas for hipster wedding pictures.
I'm just going to go ahead and get it out there: I'm not on Pinterest. I like the idea of being super crafty, but I'm still cleaning up a glue gun mess from when I was seven. So for the safety of everyone in my life, it's really best if I don't try getting creative at my own hand. But that leaves me with everyone else's ideas. Cropped pictures in sepia of a girl walking around in casual clothing inside of a barn or pastoral setting. That's pretty much where I grew up, and to me, there's not really any unique, quaint sentiment that comes along with it. So, I'm going to wait until something else becomes popular... preferably painted family portraits. Put that in the newspaper and on your save the date. Paint me acrylic or paint me single.

6. You don't have to be married to have babies.
As many of you probably saw on Facebook, I'm expecting. It's true. After giving it some thought and realizing that I've become pretty good at feeding myself, Andrew and I have decided to bring another animal besides Ben into our home. If I have my way, it will be a little boy named Chico. He's four months old, and he's been caged for about a week now. I will walk around with him and refer to myself as "the man." If I can take care of a cat for at least a year without killing it, then maybe I'll entertain the idea of welcoming a human into my home. From what I hear, people that get married get bored after awhile... and when the sex gets predictable, they have kids. Even if I get bored in my twenties, I'm assuming that it's pretty easy to get a baby. People leave them at the park down the road from my apartment all the time. You don't need a spouse to have a baby when you have a nursery next to the basketball court.

5. I haven't had a successful relationship in... oh yeah. Awkward.
My longest relationship that I've had last six years, and now she's married, so that's over. Thanks, Kasi. But even when we were Bo and Hope from Days of Our Lives, our entire relationship was a roller coaster and a half. The last relationship I was in was nursed by too many indie record songs to count. I'm just not too good at making these things last too long, and that's frustrating, so I'm going to assume that without some further practice, I'm probably going to crash and burn... but with a license and a family attorney. I don't have a super athletic-like day then sign up for a 5K... the same theory applies.

4. I haven't met anyone with a super cool last name.
I know, I know. I'm a boy. But listen to me for a minute. You should never pass up an opportunity to upgrade if given the opportunity to, so I'm going to keep my options open. I have a pretty hard last name to beat. Not only is Kirkland a pretty strong name, but it also is the name of a pretty cool furniture store, and it allows me to have my initials be JK. I have a pretty sweet deal, but that doesn't mean there isn't a sweeter deal out there. Don't waste what really conservative folks say is the only marriage you'll ever have by getting a shitty last name or keeping the shitty last name you have. Don't waste an excellent opportunity to improve your drivers license by careless 20-something mistakes.

3. In 44 states, I'm limited to only a 50% selection of who I can marry.
I like my options. If I go to Burger King, I expect to be able to get chicken or a burger. And yeah, it's nice that I have the option, but what happens when someone who can't eat beef shows up and all the chicken is gone. It's stupid and wrong and an ugly, ugly idea to even consider. So, if everyone isn't allowed to get married, then I don't really care to get married either. Getting married seems like purposefully overdressing for a party...  I get it. You have nice clothes, but there's people here who don't. I guess for me, marriage doesn't make a lot of sense if it's only available for a certain group of people. And it's not like it's a crazy assertion to let two consenting adults pay their taxes together and have power of attorney... it's not like I'm trying to marry Chico (which would be a double hit, because he's a cat and a dude). If I find a dude and hit it off, and he doesn't want to watch sports when Grey's Anatomy is one then (gay)me on.

2. Even if it's without consent, I have someone to snuggle with anytime I want.
I forgot to put that I do this in my online roommate profile, but Andrew has quickly found out that more times than not, I'm going to corner him and then nuzzle against him for about thirty seconds or so until I get my physical-interaction-fix. I agree that it's important to have a physical interaction with someone, but I'm going to get a little liberal and say... you don't need a ring on your finger to do that. And I'm lucky because he doesn't try and escape me that often. And when I'm done, he listens to me complain and celebrate my life. Maybe it's a little too I Love You, Man for your taste, but I don't think it's particularly important to solidify a spouse early on as a source of love and support. Call me lucky, but I have a pretty great support system that I never have feel obligated to buy dinner for, and having him around is practice so that I can see what drives people so crazy that they don't want to be around me anymore.

1. I just recently realized that I have no idea who the $&#^ I am.
I mean, yes, there's a base. All of the stories I've written on this blog are evidence of that. But when you're 22 years old and move away from home and know not a single person, you really start having to look really hard at yourself. I came out of eighteen years of living with my parents followed by four years of living on a college campus. Then, you're thrust out into the world and you start proving to yourself who you really can be. And I guess you could argue that you're going to be changing forever, and I suppose you're right. I'm going to maybe be self-absorbed in saying this, but I think that right now is our time. This is your chance to figure out why you are you. And people say, we can grow together, but I want to share my life with someone... not forge it into one. My biggest fear is to look at someone that I love one day and realize that I didn't give them the time to become their own person and know that we have grown apart.