All Request Day: Watching Other People Date Chumps

L. asks for an etiquette post on "how to advise friends/acquaintances who are considering dating a jerk."

L. strikes me as someone who is a good judge of character.  Is that right, L?  So it's very hard.  I feel your pain.  But I would ask you to pose another question to yourself.  Is there anyone you know who would say, "I don't consider myself a very good judge of character?"  I don't know anyone who thinks that.  Everyone I know thinks they are a good judge of character.  Even the people who clearly aren't.  That might include me.  I have no way of knowing, really. 

So when you have the impulse to point out to your friend that the fellow she's besotted with is a chump of the highest degree, what you are really saying to her is, "I think you are not a very good judge of character."  And that is perilous.  I don't know any way to say that.  Best you can say is, "Not really my type." 

As someone who's dated chumps before, I generally had a little voice in my head telling me about their chumpiness early into it. 

I would count it as a favor if a trusted friend noted the same thing, and made me recognize and acknowledge that whispering doubt early on. But only if done very delicately, and only if done without the implication that my friend thinks I'm a lousy judge of character.

Here's the kind of thing I've said to friends, when I felt trepidation about a romantic interest of theirs.  These only work if they're honest, and are driven by true curiousity.  That means with the acknowledgment that your friend is a good judge of character in her own right, and might know better than you do who's right for her:

I don't really see it.  Tell me why you find him appealing.

You don't seem as much like yourself when you're with her as you do when you're just with us, and that worries me a little bit.  Am I imagining that?

Does it trouble you that he's not a reader?  (To a writer friend of mine, to whom words matter a lot.)

To tell you the truth, I was kind of put off by ____.  I don't know if that's typical behavior for him, but it bothered me. 

Comments

[l.]

Oh, I WAS being obnoxious... love the curiousity thing. Will definitely rely on that AT MOST.

To be honest, I never figured falling for a jerk was a sign that you are a bad judge of character. I mean, the whole point of a jerk being a jerk is that he will use all the signals and trappings and conventiosn relied on by people of good character to attract someone too good for him, right?

[l.]

Ok, I have a new twist on this topic after last night, and it's bugging me again. A guy friend walked up, said he had asked out a girl I know, and asked what I knew about her. I sort of shrugged, and he tried to tease out more info, and finally he was just like "If there's something bad, you have to tell me..." So I did, and he didn't care at all, and I know he's not going to be mad at me, no matter what happens with the girl.

I remembered then that it's really, really common fro guys to share info like that with eachother. A guy will say he's dating a girl and all his friends will say "I heard she's crazy.." Or "She dated a friend of mine and he hates her now..." Or whatever. And no one thinks it's a reflection on the guy that he decided to date this girl. (Also, the guy is pretty likely to date her regardless, but he'll just categorize the girl as not girlfriend material... )

Anyway, why can guys handle this, but girls take it personally when they've picked a chump? And, taking it further, why is it in no way a negative reflection on a guy when he dates someone icky, but there seems to be a stigma on the girl with a loser, like she's desperate or something? (I dont' think this, personally, I've just noticed it...)