If you want to get married, make it your job to find a mate

If you want to get married, make it your job to find a mate In case you ever doubted how incredible the comments section of this blog is, Melissa found out her boyfriend was cheating on her from reading the comments section. Here. And then she did what  most people  do when they discover their partner is cheating: Attempted to live in denial. Then she stopped. And moved out. The phone rings while my son is using it as a metronome and and I tell him, Ignore it. We are practicing. He says, But its Melissa. She needs you. I pick up. My son would usually use this moment to sneak away to the computer, hoping that I forget about practice. But instead he stays put, riveted to the drama. My older son comes barreling down the stairs like theres a fire. Is it Melissa? Is she talking about J? I try to listen to Melissa but its hard. My younger son says, She is not talking about him. She broke up with him. Older son: He cheated on her. Thats like breaking up with her. Younger son: He brokecheated! Melissa wants the title of this post to be Good Endings Make For Good Beginnings. WTF? This is why its so hard for me to find people besides Melissa to write about. Because people think they have good ideas for what I should write about and they sound like a Hallmark card. So in the post with the title Good Endings Make Good Beginnings, Melissa broke up with J. Since this is my post, I will tell you that J was interesting and fun to talk to but surely we all knew after my first (and last) post about J that it was not going to work out. Melissa  has a new apartment. She wants to know how to deal with the uneven nook. She wants to know how to treat the window sill that is too wide. She wants to know if she has good feng shui. I write instructions for furniture placement on a napkin. I used to think I had no idea what she liked and what she didnt like, but then I realized, she has an Airbnb aesthetic    location-agnostic, low-cost mid-century, looks great in photos: She asks, Should I buy more rugs? This question is not a small one. Melissa buys rugs  on Etsy and she is so paranoid about her finds that  she hides the favorites list of her account so that no one can buy rugs  out from under her. I say, Yes! More rugs! anticipating three days of no phone calls while she is indexing all the rugs for sale in the entire universe and cross referencing and price comparing to create the algorithm to produce the perfect rug purchase combination. Good, she says. Bye. No. Wait. I walk into the garden so I can listen to Melissa. If Im going to pick up the phone every time she calls then I want credit for being a good friend, and you dont get credit if you dont listen. We talk for so long about the new apartment and the breakup and pharmaceuticals (always related to a breakup) that I am able to fertilize the roses and cut some for the house. And take a picture. I dont hear from Melissa for three days. I assume she is buying rugs. After eight days, I am worried. She started dating. Shes been on 17 dates. What???!?!?! You always tell people that getting married doesnt just happen. You have have to make it your job. So Im making it my job. Like most women who are pulled together, Melissa spent  her twenties saying she didnt want kids so she was in no rush. And now she is 30 and she is in a rush. Melissa does not like San Francisco. Seriously,  San Francisco is not a real town. Its affordable only to people with no kids or people who have exited startups. And most  jobs are at startups all of which are  incredibly shitty to work for. And the town is rife with people like this woman  who moved to the Bay Area  because she is  mind blowingly ignorant about the rampant scumminess of  the startup world. Melissa would rather move back to NYC but she cant now  because NYC is terrible for single women five female models for each financially viable single male. And San Francisco is the opposite females  are the minority. Melissa  is changing her dating strategy  so she doesnt get another guy like J. She switched dating apps from Hinge to Bumble, which only lets girls initiate. She spent a full day  left swiping everyone who is a client of hers so they wouldnt see her on the app. Then she  went to the chiropractor for carpel tunnel. She tried looking for Fs to date. J was an INTP. And the guy before that was an ISTJ. And the psychos in her prior dating history were all Ts. But the  Fs were a no go. They kept talking about feelings. And Melissa kept talking about facts. And then she worried that after getting rid of everyone she has worked with that the whole dating pool would be Fs. She persevered. She went on two dates a day, forcing herself to go out with people she wasnt sure about  so that she stopped dating men who were bad for her. She had to take naps in between dates. She wore the same  thing for every first date  because who would know. After weeks of this she was down to ENTJs and INTJs. I told her the INTJs would be too boring. Melissa is an INTJ and they will  offer each other nothing new and INTJs get bored fast. Melissa told her INTJ date that I said that about INTJ dates and after the first date he texted her: I think your friend was right. So Melissa is dating ENTJs. I told her, Thats a bad idea. Why? she said. Youre an ENTJ. We get along so well. ENTJs  arent emotional and you arent emotional. I dont need a lot of emotion. I need someone who will always be competent and gainfully employed and driven to succeed. Yeah. But ENTJs give nothing. They are too goal oriented.  They will just be interested in you for how you help them meet their goals. They will use you to be better in their work. She said, What?? This is not news to me. Youve been doing that with me forever.