Flirty Fridays: Terms of endearment aren’t so endearing.

So my friend Suzan and I have decided that Fridays are going to be about our online dating communications. Be prepared for a little snark, a lot of sarcasm and no exposing of identities.

The prevalent habit to refer to strangers with terms of endearment creeps me out. I also dated a guy who had to fess up after two dates that he’d forgotten my name and had dubed me Red to cover his ass. With him, it was funny because he really did try to figure it out but it’s amazing how difficult it can be to acquire a person’s name. Anyways. I honestly had to force myself to read beyond that first sentence.

It’s smart of him to get me to name the price of my date. He’s inviting me to tell him exactly what effort he needs to expend on me. This is an economists trick I learned thanks to Freakonomics, a podcast I highly recommend. In a lot of ways, this helps guys set the extent to which they need to leap through hoops, we know what our expectations are and things progress accordingly. But when I don’t know you? Eh. No thanks. It comes off as lazy and creepy.