The 10 Phases of Dating

By David Berry

Buy this book if: You've ever had a failed Tinder or Bumble date; wondered which emojis make you look douchey; ripped your hair out over another last-minute "something came up" text; and seriously wish someone would make sense of it for you. If you said 'yes' to any of those, this is the book you've been waiting for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483582559

David Berry

David Berry is a writer, journalist and filmmaker. He has written about health and leisure for a variety of publications, and for twenty-five years he was a documentary director for the BBC. He has been playing tennis since he was eleven years old.

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

My friends are assholes. Every Friday afternoon, we meet at a gym in downtown Miami to play basketball; a healthier version of Happy Hour. (I grew up in Rochester, NY but have called Miami, FL home since 2004).

On one of those Fridays, in the midst of warm-up jump shots, I mentioned nonchalantly that I’d decided to write a book about modern dating, from a guy’s perspective.

My friend Eric stopped dribbling the ball and turned to me with a look that said are you effin’ serious? Then he said, Are you effin’ serious?

A bald, single guy with no credibility whatsoever as a dating expert, talking about 10 phases of dating? Look, Berry, just write those 10 phases down on a sticky note and give it to me. I’ll make copies for you. Then you’ll have your little book!

Of course, every word, every intonation, dripped with the flavor of biting sarcasm that only a close friend can get away with.

Even though Eric was being a dick, he had a point. Or several, really.

Dating books aren’t a guy’s domain, for starters. Most men don’t read them, and I’d have to have a pretty big ego to think that women would gain something from my perspective that they haven’t already gotten elsewhere – from a woman.

And finally, I do recognize that this book could’ve very well survived as a pamphlet or even a list. In Eric’s eyes, I could’ve cranked out some witty metaphors, hit the print button on my computer, then taken my sole copy of the ‘book’ and run off 300 copies of it at FedEx/Kinkos.

Boom – here’s the world of dating in 10 pages, thankyouverymuch.

But like all good things in dating, the longer it lasts, the better. (Note: Yes, that was a sexual innuendo. Yes, there will be others. Sue me.)

This is a book for a reason. I’ve written it because I actually want to help you get through the bullshit of dating and come out on the other side happy, alongside someone you love – and not drop you off with a self-help guide that’s masquerading as a dating book.

As such, this book isn’t necessarily a love story, but it’s on a love mission.

That’s important to note, because this whole thing is founded on the premise that true love does exist. I’ve been told by some friends and acquaintances that that’s idealistic and naïve for two reasons: one, for believing that true love exists for everyone in the first place and two, for thinking that I’d somehow leave people feeling inspired enough to believe it when they close the cover on the final page.

But if you’re still reading up to this point, then I feel confident that you’re on board with that – and that you’ll gladly take real people and real stories over another contrived dating book from a ‘dating expert.’

I am not that.

So no, I won’t try to tell you the reason that you’re failing at dating is because the opposite sex is from a different planet, and I won’t tell you that acting like a bitch is going to miraculously drop the perfect man at your doorstep in the middle of a rainstorm.

Instead you’ll find the truth. You’ll find a living manifesto filled with the stories of people who probably are or were a little bit like you, and it’s baked-in with my smartass opinion. Also, the men and women who’ve had their stories told in these pages were only willing to participate because I paid each of them a million dollars. Ha!

Truth be told, I chose them for no good reason at all. In fact, I didn’t want to pre-screen people just to select those with a story that somehow looked better than another. I wanted normal people with normal dating experiences.

And it’s a great cast of characters.

You’ll meet Michael, my tall-dark-and-handsome friend who spent several years trying to bang as many Manhattan women as possible, and you’ll meet Crystal, a young woman who would probably be a great FBI agent in another life because of how well she creeps on the opposite sex via social media and dating apps. You’ll also meet Alex and Alyssa, who went through an unconventional route to love and who wouldn’t be together if it had been up to me.

And you’ll read about my single days (they’re still ‘single days’ at the time of print), how I got broken up with by a girl I was never dating, and my first love, Kristina (#TBT).

I should note that not all of these phases are linear – you may never end up in the ‘hooking up’ phase, for example, and you might be fortunate to avoid the ‘dating/not dating’ phase altogether. (Spoiler alert: the same can’t be said for me). But make no mistake, these phases all exist.

As such, these experiences and perspectives are all over the board, but they’re real, like you should expect a dating book to be.

And with any luck, it’s going to be awesome.

CHAPTER 1: SINGLE

SINGLE

According to the illustrious educational source, Urban Dictionary, being single means the following:

Sin-gle [sing-guhl] When you are currently not in a relationship with a significant other.

It usually does not bother you, but the problems start when selfish and inconsiderate assholes rub in the fact that they have someone, and start saying they love their oh-so-sexy boyfriends/girlfriends and start going on and on about what he/she does for them, CAN do, and blah blah.

NOBODY CARES HOW GREAT HE/SHE IS TO YOU!! If you're taken, and love your partner a lot, then good for you, but for goodness's sakes, at least show some consideration for SINGLE people! Some of these people may even be heartbroken ones, who have been abused by past partners, or just simply some that are sick of hearing about some stupid narrow-sighted people who only see either how hot their partner is, or how much money he/she has.

Talk about your partner if you want to.. but.. just calm down about it. Your life does not fucking revolve around him/her, so don't act like it.

There are a number of things at play in this definition, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s start with one part we can probably all agree on: …at least show some consideration for SINGLE people!

Well, Urban Dictionary author, you’ll be pleased to know that I intend to do just that. And for that purpose, let’s pull another key nugget from this definition to serve as our launching point.

You are currently not in a relationship with a significant other.

At its core, that’s what it means to be single; you’re not in a relationship. Easy enough, right? Not really. In this instance, singleness is ironically defined against the backdrop of inconsiderate assholes that are in relationships.

As experience shows us, though, being single is rarely as simple as the absence of a significant other, though it’s not as neatly defined in the above-referenced script, either. And I’ll probably find an editor to tell me it’s a stupid idea to say so, but I’m not going to give you a neat and clean definition of what it means to be single, either.

Because among us, there is a living, breathing potpourri of different types of single folks. It’s here that I’ll attempt to give you a glimpse into each of their lives.

In no particular order…

The ‘Woah is Me’ Crowd: Let’s start with people who are single but were cheated on or betrayed at some point – and they never got over it. For the sake of comparison, and to better understand these folks, imagine for a second that you arrived at your favorite frozen yogurt establishment and discovered that they were all out of cookie dough and hot fudge toppings.

Does it suck? That’s an easy question – it’s one of the worst things that can happen to a human being who may or