I define the Dating DMZ as the space between where you are and where you want to be. Sometimes the space is wide, and sometimes it's narrow, and oftentimes you'll never know which it is until you're in it. Which is why we need some guidance so as to avoid being killed in there.
The most famous DMZ lies between North and South Korea. I've been there, a couple of times, and it's a pretty darned scary place. The funny thing is that the name is devastatingly misleading. Yes, the space between the two sides is allegedly free of military activity, but the two borders defining the zone are as full of stuff that'll kill you as anywhere on earth. (Short of a Bangkok titty bar.) It's a sleight of hand trick actually designed to divert your attention from the real action, which is the hundreds of mean-eyed dudes with machine guns trained on your bod.
It's a no-man's land, desolate and dangerous, with a disingenuous name.
Dating doesn't inevitably mean a transit of the DDMZ, but it's the rare bird who finds themselves in safe territory all the time. The nature of dating is that it involves risk, like all human activity. Finding and managing the amount of risk we can handle is an individual process; we're all up for challenges in different ways at different times of our lives. I'll give you an example:
I once was acquainted with a guy, back in Australia, who sized up his prospects for sex in an age-old way. He figured that if he asked enough women, he'd eventually get all the trim he wanted. His name was Alistair, and he asked pretty much every woman he met (socially, I hasten to add) if they'd be interested in getting together. He risked rejection in order to exercise his penis....a LOT of rejection.
Years after I first met Alistair, I ran into a friend who knew him better than me, and we discussed his case. Turns out that his success rate was much, much higher than we thought. Around one in ten women took him up on his offer. Maybe that doesn't surprise you - it does surprise me.
Alistair understood the DDMZ because he crossed and re-crossed it so many times. But he never lingered, because he was on his way to the other side, moving through increasingly familiar territory between the place he was prepared to risk being, and returning home. After a while, he became so familiar to sentries on either side, they both treated him like a 'friendly'. After all, everyone knew what he was up to, it wasn't like he kept anything secret. He would have made a great double agent.
The lesson of Alistair, the man who understood the DDMZ better than anyone I know, is to be on your way to the maximum point of risk, or on the way back. He never lingered when he was on a mission. He was either sprinting towards the target he'd chosen, or he was dancing around, changing direction. He decided what he wanted, then figured out a way to get there, and what he was prepared to do before retreating. Remember, too, that retreating is just attacking from a different direction. There is absolutely no harm in retreating, it's information about both your method of attack and your risk level.
Alistair's case is extreme, of course. He didn't use subtlety or finesse, but he knew what he knew about women and about himself. He was unembarrassable, and he knew that he was playing a numbers game. Voila, his DDMZ shrank to almost nothing.
Bottoms Up, Dating Warriors.
wombat@kissnblog.com
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