Dan's Relationship Advice Thread

[Guest smccown13]

I will take Dan's spot for now. I've been well educated in the spectrum of chicks. Ask away.

[thedavidescapeplan]

I'm glad that this came back from the dead.

On a related note I've decided that tomorrow is the day where I'm going to "make my move" or whatever. I'm not confident about it working out so we'll see.

[casey]

But Dan, I have far to big of an ass for girl pants...what do I do?

Look at 25% of the dudes at shows. Being fat never stopped anyone from wearing chick britches.

/threadjack. Sorry, Dan.

[divaface]

bump for more sexy men on leashes

[Guest smccown13]

bump for more sexy men on leashes

Let me charge my digital camera.

[danthemjfan23]

thought i'd bring this back, cause i thought of some really good advice earlier.

don't spit on your girlfriend, no matter how mad you are at her.

[murakami]

bump by request

[fourfourtwo]

So, I'm gonna be moving in with my girlfriend this summer. Its been long distance since the beginning (a year). Chicago - NYC long distance. We've only really seen each other about a week every month, if that.

Any tips? I'll be moving there. Stuff to bring, stuff to watch out for? Stuff to not do in front of her?

[scottheisel]

I'm actually in a similar situation -- I've been dating my lady for about 2.5 years now, all long distance, but she's finally committed to moving from Chicago to Cleveland at the end of March. I'm very, very excited about the possibilities, but I'm also nervous as hell as I've never lived with someone before outside of family or college roommates.

[fourfourtwo]

Yeah, this is also my first time living out on my own, and I have a pretty steady job with decent pay that I could transfer into Chicago, so finances are pretty set.

Unexpected cash black holes?

[kirbypuckett]

I'm actually in a similar situation -- I've been dating my lady for about 2.5 years now, all long distance, but she's finally committed to moving from Chicago to Cleveland at the end of March. I'm very, very excited about the possibilities, but I'm also nervous as hell as I've never lived with someone before outside of family or college roommates.

I was nervous about moving in with my g/f, but things could not have been better. We were only together for like 7-months at the time, so that was make or break kind of. She was my first roommate of any kind too.

We get a long well and I guess that's the most important thing.

I get a lot of me time though, since she sometimes works the night shift as a nurse. That helps a good bit at keeping us sane I think.

[danthemjfan23]

fourfourtwo: how did you meet your girl? did you guys have a friendship or anything at all before you started dating, or was it straight into dating between NYC and Chicago?

also, scott: a lot of this post is advice for you too, since your situations are so similar. i just wrote the whole thing as if i was talking to fourfourtwo, but almost everything still fits you too.

if you're going to be moving, i'm not sure i understand the "stuff to bring?" question. wouldn't you bring everything of yours? talk to her first about what furniture she has already, that way maybe you won't have to bring your couch if she's already got one. stuff like that.

stuff to watch out for: since you guys have never lived together before, you've either never noticed or have just purposely chosen to gloss over the little annoying things she does. she has done the same with you, too. when you only get to see your significant other once a month, it's not worth a fight if she leaves her dirty clothes all over the room. you're just happy that you're finally getting to see her.

i dated a girl for 3.5 years that was off-and-on long distance. we were best friends for our senior year of high school, then we started dating when we went away to college. she went to Northern Illinois, i went to Southern (6 hours apart). during the school year, we'd only see each other for like one weekend each month normally. but for winter break we'd be together for a month straight, and for summer break we'd be together for about 3 months straight. during the longer stretches we were basically living together, just splitting time between each of our places. i had half my stuff at my place and half my stuff at hers, and vice versa. it was certainly an interesting dynamic because if we had differing views on a certain thing (even petty things like ... "should you alphabetize your DVD collection?"), when we were at my place we would use my rule and when we were at her place we would use hers.

when you're only together once a month, that stuff doens't matter. but when you live with that stuff every day of your life, and when you can't just say "i only have to put up with this 3 more days, then i'm back to NYC for 3 weeks," you have to think of ways to handle it without letting things turn into a fight. living together isn't easy. there's a reason why more than half of all marriages in this country end in divorce. but that doesn't mean you can't make it work for you guys.

one thing i definitely suggest is to not let your friends dictate your relationship with your girl. what i mean is this... they don't see you and your girl together on a regular basis, so they don't know what your relationship is like behind closed doors. also, if you're like any other guy (or girl for that matter), the majority of the things you tell your friends about your significant other will be the things that make you mad because you want to blow off steam. if you sit there and tell them how happy she makes you all the time, and how you love all the cute little things she does for you, you get called a pussy or something so normally you just start to leave those things out. eventually your friends get the wrong impression about your girl because all they ever hear about are the annoying things and how frustrated you get with her sometimes.

you can let them give you advice to a certain extent, but don't treat their words as gospel. you and your lady need to work things out between yourselves.

another HUGE tip is to not be fooled by the closeness. while you guys were long distance, all you had was communication. i know for me and my ex, we would talk on the phone like an hour each night before bed (if not more), send each other texts throughout the day, sometimes talk online and send e-mails, write on each others' facebook walls, etc... it was nearly constant communication because that's all we had. then when we'd be together, we would barely talk at all because we were... umm.. how can i put this... "making up for lost time." of course the first couple weeks/months are going to be crazy with you guys just going at it nonstop, but you can't let the communication suffer by assuming that since you're spending all this time together, you're already communicating. it's not that way.

of course, you're going to have to find other things to communicate about because when you're apart you can have the "what did you do today?" conversation and the "i wish you were here so we could..." conversation, but when you're living with one another, those conversations are moot because you either already know the answer since you were together, or you can just go and do those things you each wish you could do. no conversation necessary. it's a constant struggle to maintain communication, but that is by far the most important thing in any relationship.

as for the "what should i not do in front of her?" question... hopefully the answer is 'nothing' to that one. if you have to hide certain things about yourself from your lady, that's not a good thing. of course you don't want to go around the house farting all day, but that has less to do with the fact that it would gross out your lady and more to do with the fact that it's just gross in general. you're going to learn a lot more about your girl in the first 6 weeks living together than you have learned up to this point in your relationship. a lot of things you never wanted to know. learn to love those things. learn when her period is coming each month and do one of two things: 1) stay the fuck away OR 2) be extra nice and give her massages and cook her dinner and shit. normally i opt for number 2, but not every guy is the same.

this is kind of a pessimist's view on long-term relationships, but bare with me: it's more important to learn the things she hates than it is to learn the things she loves. let's say your girl loves getting flowers. if you get her flowers for her birthday, and again on your anniversary, and again on valentine's day, and again on sweetest's day, and again on (you get the point), and you have to do that EVERY YEAR, eventually they start to lose their meaning anyway. but if you know your girl hates something (for the sake of this example let's say she hates pizza) and you try to do something cute and bring home dinner for you guys and it's a pizza, she'll flip out because "you know i don't like pizza. you could have brought ANYTHING home and you pick the one thing you know i don't like."

i'm not saying it's not important to know the things she loves, and i'm not saying it's not important to try to do little things that make her happy. but i am saying it's VERY important to make sure you aren't doing things to make her mad. because eventually all of those things will rise to the surface and it's going to make for a super messy fight, if not worse.

[scottheisel]

For the record, I definitely do not plan on lowering my amount of farting just because my girlfriend's living here.

And here's a tricky question: What is my girlfriend responsible for, bills-wise? We've been talking about it a little, but we haven't decided on anything yet. There's easy ones like internet or cable, and then there's way bigger ones like groceries or the mortgage; what should we split and what should I just shoulder the burden on?

[danthemjfan23]

definitely a tough situation. are you guys going to be moving in to a new house/apartment/whatever together, or is she going to be moving into the one that you currently occupy? if she's moving into your current house with you, then you can just look at it as "everything just got a little bit cheaper because now it's being split between two." the only price that will go up in any noticeable amount is the groceries amount. the mortgage won't change, the electricity will barely change, the water should barely change, internet and cable won't change unless you want to upgrade. so basically all the things you're already paying for will still have to be paid for, but now you can do it from 2 sources of income instead of just yours.

also (and i'm not asking you to post this publicly, just to think about it), what do you make versus what does she make? if you're making $100,000 and she's making $15,000, i would suggest you shoulder the burden on more things. but if you guys are pulling in even similar amounts of money, i don't think there's anything wrong with splitting things up a little more evenly.

you guys should also set aside some rules for stuff like cleaning and cooking. like "if i make dinner, you do the dishes and clean up." or "for the most part i'll do my own laundry and you do yours, because i don't want to fuck up your clothes, but if you ask me to help you out i have no problem with that." shit like that.

if your girl is normally the one to cook, then have her do the grocery shopping too. normally the person who does the cooking is a better grocery shopper because 1) they know what ingredients they'll need, obviously... and 2) they've probably bought those things before so they know what things should cost normally, and can determine whether or not they need the name-brand pasta sauce or if the store-brand will be just fine.

that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't go along for the ride and help her out, and it doesn't necessarily mean that she should be the one to pay for groceries all the time, but i think you know what i'm driving at. just figure out what each of you can afford right now, and try to work around those numbers. in a few months, re-evaluate things and see if it is working out the way you have it set up. if not, adjust a little bit. the worst case scenario would be to let things sour due to financial reasons when they don't need to. sadly, money is often a huge bone of contention in serious relationships, though. just be open and willing to talk with each other about it, and things shouldn't be that bad.

[scottheisel]

She's moving into my house, and we make roughly the same amount of money. I just think there's some trepidation on having her contribute to a mortgage she's not legally required to pay.

[danthemjfan23]

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[eddieruckus]

I moved in with my fiance in august, I make way more money than her, she goes to school, we have another roommate too. I pay most of our half of the rent, most of the groceries and dog and cat food, and all the bar tabs and dinners out and stuff... we split the cable and electric evenly three ways

bitch is making me poor haha, theres a lot of bar tabs

joke

but that system works well