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A Geek Girl's Guide to Meeting Men
Dating as a geek girl can be frustrating. After all, being a true-blue, roleplaying, fantasy-writing, convention-going geek limits the dating pool substantially. Sure, I could probably find a great guy who would put up with my idiosyncratic interests, but I’m much more interested in finding a guy who will know what I’m talking about when I threaten him with my Rod of Wonder.
Sadly, geek guys can be darn hard to find, possibly because most of them are hiding in their basements playing WoW. (Girls, if you don’t know what that stands for, stop reading now. You’ll need to do a bit more research before you catch your geek.)
I have a friend who’s taken a vested interest in helping me find a geek. Unfortunately, his definition of a geek seems to be somewhat different from mine--he keeps finding me guys who are socially awkward in the extreme. When I said “geek” I did not mean “incapable of carrying on a conversation.” Try again.
The other problem I’ve found with dating geeks is that they all know each other. So, you have a bad dating experience with one, and suddenly all the guys in your dating pool know him.
I’ve got to get some new friends.
Now, I’m told that roleplaying groups are supposed to put the odds in your favor, since there are generally more guys who roleplay than girls.
My Friday night roleplaying group currently consists of two single girls, and one married couple. Not much in the way of dating potential.
In related news, my character who was dating the lich has now married him. They eloped and are very happy together. This further proves that I would be much happier if I dated uber-powerful undead magic users.
Okay, so maybe not.
The question is, where do I find geek guys who aren’t necessarily in my roleplaying group?
The online thing hasn’t worked well for me--I find that when I meet people in person I met online, it’s weird, because you know each other, and yet not. Just because a dynamic works in text doesn’t mean it will work in the flesh.
Cons can be a great place to meet guys with similar interests, as long as you’re okay with all the cute ones wearing Star Trek uniforms. Or tails.
At Cascadiacon in September I was actually stalked down the corridor by a man with a thin mustache and a stuffed otter on his shoulder. He had that otter on his shoulder every time I saw him that weekend, and he followed me all the way down the hall, and then all the way back.
Freaky.
As a side warning: never date a guy who’s a panelist for a discussion of Alien sex. That just screams red flag.
I could talk about the vast sea of opportunity that is game stores, but I won’t, first because I’ve beaten that horse to death, and second because my game store group reads this column.
And I’m in enough trouble already.
Ahem.
I must say that recently I’ve experienced a strange change in lifestyle.
I used to be the girl no one asked out. Now suddenly I’ve had to reject several guys within the space of a few months.
(On that note let me say that I much prefer being the rejectee to being the rejecter. I know I can handle the pain, and I hate hurting other people.)
On the upside, I’ve gone out on more dates in the last three months than in the previous three years combined. (No, you won’t be getting exact numbers on that one.)
I even had a guy ask me on a date to play Magic. How awesome is that?
I’ve learned yet another very important lesson: I’ve been going for the wrong guys all along.
I’ve conferred with other Geek Girls, and many of them have had the same experience: they never dated until they embraced their geekiness and started hanging out with like-minded males.
After all, a pretty, socially-competent Geek Girl is an Ioun stone in a bin of diamonds.
Who needs those useless rocks anyway?
Even so, it seems a miracle that two people, like minded or not, ever actually end up dating. So many things have to work out exactly right, or things just don’t happen. Even if you manage to find your social niche and meet the right kind of guys, there are still a plethora of things that can go wrong.
Some days, I just want to give up all together and become a nun.
Maybe I could find a prestige class for that or something.
Point is, dating is frustrating. It’s frustrating for girls; it’s frustrating for guys; it’s frustrating for geek and non-geek alike.
Single Geek Girls, here’s hoping ya’ll find what you’re looking for. And which is more, here’s hoping you know it when you find it.
