Dear Red,
What is your take on taming the party boy? Will the party boy change his ways to find love or will he keep partying until his future wife happens to walk into his bar?
We all know those great looking, honestly good guys who at the root of their frat boy facade lies a great person, but for some reason thinks that throwing back shots and getting a little too wild on the weekends makes for a fulfilling life.How when a great match walks into their bar are women supposed to take the "Ryan Gosling's (Crazy. Stupid. Love character - pre-emma stone)" seriously?
Sincerely,
A Curious Dallasite
Dear ACD,
Love this question, because I think it applies to more than just the party boys. It applies to all the people we fall for that we just can't change. "He/she is really great when he/she doesn't do this one bad-behavior thing."
I used to call this the "everything but the..." syndrome.
In reality, we are now at 7 billion people in the world. With those kind of numbers, it's more than possible to find a girl or a guy who doesn't think that the highlight of his or her week is throwing up behind the dumpster at the local hot spot...again.
I guess for me, the key is to just demand better for yourself, though that's not always an easy task.
For example, I sat down with a dude a few weeks ago whom I would have been head over heels for earlier this year. Like, a serious, gooey mess. Totally my "type"...scruffy, All-American good looks, great body, laid back attitude...he only had one little problem: he still wasn't quite finished living out his bad boy phase.
Normally, I would have been patient with this behavior to get just a portion of what I wanted. (Because we do that a lot, you know. We'll sacrifice our own desires /wants/needs for the instant payoff of that zing of a crush, or low-hanging-fruit-type payoff. You know, like hot sex with a hot dude.)
Instead, I sat across from him, shaking my head and chuckling a little at myself. It was simply no longer worth it to me to have a charged roll in the hay with some guy who (admittedly!) would later do something that would truly piss me off, disappoint me, or otherwise make me feel like I made a bad decision.
And I've DEFINITELY learned that it's not my responsibility to change someone (though some change is inevitable when you choose to walk in step with someone for a time). I especially can't change anyone who makes it pretty clear from the beginning that he doesn't find anything terribly wrong with his behavior.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the party boys who change because the "right" woman walks into the bar are the exception and not the rule.
This is not to say that one day, he won't wake up and say, "There is more to life than getting hammered at the bar." I really hope that happens for all of our male and female friends who get a portion of their jollies from feeling attractive, sexual and on the hunt in the latest meat market bar (and lest you think I'm judging, many, many of us have gone through this faze...and it's fun! But for always? No.).
For the rest of us, however, to wait around and hope that our party brothers' and sisters' time frame for this awakening will happen on our time frame is maybe not in our own best interest.
So, to sum...can you tame a party boy into a responsible, attentive, kind, long-term-relationship-type-material human being?
Maybe.
The real question is, does he want to be tamed? Because really, that shit is up to him, and you may not factor into his personal evolution.
Sincerely,
Red
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