Friday, January 31, 2014

Excerpt: IT'S JUST A F***ING DATE, by Greg Behrendt & Amiira Ruotola

In case you missed it, today bestselling authors of He's Just Not That Into You Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola stopped by The View to chat it up about their newest book It's Just a F***ing Date, a fun and easy guide that give you the tools, not the rules, to the art of dating. 

So today, we'd love for you to check out this excerpt straight from the book. Get your copy of It's Just A F***ing Date on Amazon, Kobo, the iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Bookshout, the Sony store, & Audible!

From My Name Is Amiira and I'm A Bad Dater (It's Just A F***ing Date)

“It seems like I should have figured that I was doing it wrong after the fiasco of my first marriage. Want to talk about going fast? It was love at first sight … except for the fact that he had a girlfriend. It was a matter of months before they broke up and we got together, so to make up for lost time we spontaneously got married in Vegas by an Elvis impersonator. That’s good, right? I had never been to his home, we hadn’t met each other’s families and probably didn’t know each other’s middle names. We did have similar record collections, so that should have been enough. Well, not surprisingly, it turns out that we didn’t really know each other that well, along with other biggies that eluded us, like similar values and the desire for children. So that didn’t work out, but I learned my lesson about jumping in too fast. Or did I? My next relationship went straight from “Nice to meet you” to “We should go to Barbados on vacation.” At least I had seen his house before packing my bikinis, plus we did have similar record collections. But ultimately we got too intense too quickly and we burned out on each other. Strike two! It’d be nice if there wasn’t a strike three, but there he was and who could resist the best friend that proclaims his love after too many Heinekens? Not I. So into instant boyfriend I fell. You know what happens when you go from being best friends to instant significant others? You realize that you probably weren’t meant to be boyfriend/girlfriend but are trapped in a relationship with a person you love but “not in that way.” That didn’t end well. So at this point I recognized that speed was my foe and the way I dated wasn’t working for me. The relationships I got myself into were plagued by the lack of certainty from rushing myself or someone else into feelings that weren’t fully cultivated. Then I met Greg Behrendt, who must have been doing the same thing in his life, because he was Mister Take It Slow. Nice. We went out on our first date, which was very good; in fact, we decided that we would go out again while still on the date. But then I broke up with him. Huh? It’s a long story involving an ex-boyfriend that wouldn’t go away. However, he said the most amazing thing upon hearing my true but cockamamie-sounding story about the ex-boyfriend on my lawn that prohibited me from dating him right now. He said, “It’s also okay if you don’t like me like that.” What?! Who the hell was this completely self-possessed guy? I told him truly that I didn’t know yet whether I liked him but would be interested in finding out. So we dated, the old-fashioned way. He called ahead, asked me out, plans were made and we went on dates. We also dated other people while dating each other. There was no hopping in the sack, no racing to lock it down, no panic about what the other was thinking, feeling, doing. Then one day he said something mind-blowing: “I’m not going to date other people. I only want to go out with you, but I don’t expect you to do the same until you’re ready to.” What?! Who the hell is this guy who is going to stop dating other people but not demand I do the same? I had never even heard something remotely similar to that sentiment. So we continued dating and soon after I came to the same conclusion that he did … I didn’t want to date other people. So there we were as boyfriend and girlfriend because we both truly wanted to be that and had figured it out at our own pace. Revolutionary!"

No comments:

Post a Comment