Spreadsheet Love: A NYC Dating Tale

So recently, I sent this video to a girl who was frustrated with dating in New York.

If you are too busy to watch the video, you'll never know what I was trying to tell her.

Actually, that's not true. I'll tell you anyway, busybody. The video is of Lucy pulling the ball away from Charlie Brown, again. (This clip is the promotional property of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., by the way.)

You know the drill. Charlie knows that every time he tries to kick the ball, Lucy pulls it away. But somehow he convinces himself that this time it will be different. This time Lucy will let him kick the ball. This time he won't end up flat on his back.

And he is always wrong. Lucy will always pull the ball away at the last minute.

Where were we? Oh, right. So I was telling this girl that she should not agree to further dates with a guy who regularly stands her up. She'll never listen to me anyway, so why do I bother? It's like my own version of Charlie and Lucy: I keep saying please don't, and she does anyway.

Sometimes it helps to just make our own mistakes. We want to learn from others but we really cannot. We just have to do it badly ourselves.

Which brings us to the guy with the Excel Spreadsheet of dating prospects. There's all sorts of things wrong with this guy's spreadsheet of girls he is interested in.

First, if you are going to limit yourself to women who rate "7" or above, you are actually distorting the curve. The "1" ranking is an anchor. If you start at 7, then everything is crunched together. Second, when you meet the girl from "coastal Romania" who "looks beautiful," you don't put her in a spreadsheet. You actually date her.

Anyway, if you are a young women wondering why the guy of your dreams is not as responsive as you'd like, this story should be helpful. He's not a jerk — he's a nerd. He's got you in a spreadsheet and is trying to configure you into a pitchbook. That sounds horrible but it isn't. That's just the way the world is. Think of it as a compliment: everything else finance-boy cares about is on a spreadsheet. And now, you are, too.

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