Free The Mandates by Dave Singleton Page A

spend an entire weekend with other friends. Most anything would have worked.
    Of course, the immediate ramification will be a response like “What’s wrong with you?” or “You are being unreasonable!” But this is when you have to remember that dating a gay man is not so different from raising a two-year-old. Gay men and two-year-olds test you. They want to know limits. Limits mean love. They want to know when they have been bad. They want to know that you are paying attention to them. They won’t respect you if you always act whispery, levelheaded, and passive. In Brad’s case, his boyfriends wound up doubting he cared because he was just too laid-back.
    Of course the reason this approach will work for you, and not the hotheaded Latin lover, is this: you know when to quit.
    Knowing when to quit will lead you to the best makeup sex you have ever had. But you can’t wimp out and give in too soon. You have to know the fine line between maintaining an air of justified self-righteousness and holding on to a grudge. You have to know the difference between being assertive and requiring a restraining order. But, as Brad is now learning, if you master this fine line for calculated manipulation purposes only, you’ll be able to control when and how you let go.
    This isn’t callous or cruel manipulation. This is being thoughtful and making your partner feel secure. Sometimes in the hope of establishing something long term with a boyfriend, guys mistakenly believe that being agreeable or malleable to all circumstances is attractive. It’s not.

22
    BE TRUE TO YOUR OWN STANDARDS
    (And If You Don’t Have Any, Get Some)

    The key to a successful relationship is not believing that everyone is imperfect and, therefore, you should be happy if you find a guy with most of the traits you like. The key is drawing a line in the sand for what’s totally unacceptable.
    You have to decide what you absolutely cannot abide and then pray like hell you’ll get over the rest. This is called having standards. Most people either have ridiculous standards or none at all.
    When people meet thirty-five-year-old Steve, a banker in St. Louis, they wonder why he’s single and why he’d have such trouble finding a decent date. He doesn’t get it, either. “I am an attractive guy and a good catch,” says not-so-modest Steve. “All I want is a good-looking, smart man who will sweep me off my feet.” Sounds reasonable right? Who doesn’t want that?
    After some prodding about the type of guy Steve dates, the truth comes out. He is only interested in compulsive circuit-party boys and exhibitionist bodybuilders with less than 5 percent body fat who want to spend quiet weekends alone with him. He wants a guy that Mom would approve of, but Steve isn’t out to his family so it’s not like Mom is going to meet anyone. The only guy he’ll date is someone wealthy but not snobby, popular but without too many friends who’ll be a distraction, successful in his career but not too driven, and really comfortable being gay but, as Steve puts it, “no rainbow-wearing, drum-banging parade marcher.” You get the picture. Steve has set up impossible standards for his dates. Why not add “Must be able to swim the English Channel” to the already overpopulated list of impossible standards?
    Thirty-four-year-old Gordon from Boston, on the other hand, has no standards at all. He is “equal opportunity” when it comes to dating, and it gets him nowhere. He has more dates than anyone else I have ever seen, but they are all exercises in futility. Gordon’s date-screening criterion is “Hello.” If they say that, they are on the list. He is reasonably attractive and engaging but has no idea what he really wants out of dating, and that has led to deathly quiet dinners as he finds out midway through the second course that his date has nothing in common with