Conversation with one of my girls the other day:

“…he is so annoying! Disagrees with everything I say at meetings, critiques my work, tries so hard to always one-up me. But the part I don’t get is that if he hates me so much, WHY does he always have to be on my projects? So that I can make him look good?”

Me: “he likes you. Remember when you were elementary school, and a boy liked you? I mean, liked you liked you? So when you saw you, he made fun of you, pulled your hair, grabbed your bag and made mocking noises every time you spoke?”

Her: “yeah...”

Me: “I suspect that Annoying Boy, who from what you’ve told me is your equal at work and therefore doesn’t need you to look good, likes you. I mean likes you likes you.”

Her: “oh. You think?”

Me: “yeah”

Her: “but we’re not kids anymore…”

Guys, I will now ask you to pull out your wallets (no, not for money) and check your ID. Driver’s license, Health Card, Citzenship, Passport… something with your photo and your date of birth. Once you do that, check the photo. Is it you? Good. Check the year of birth. If it’s anything dated before 1997, then remind yourself of this: you are not a kid anymore…

Women figure that the “I like you so I must be a jerk to you” phase ended, oh… somewhere after grade 6. So, when you act anything like Annoying Boy from the above example, we don’t think it’s cute, we think you’re immature. Yes. Immature. It is hard to express feelings, trust me I know, but women have had enough trouble in their (adult) dating lives to try and decipher what you meant by your backhanded comments, rude behaviour or general all around jerk-ness. Mind you, there are some girls out there who love the “loves me/loves me not” thing and those girls also need to check their IDs.

If you want a girl and not a woman, then you can stop reading. If you think that manning up about your feelings means hiding them behind a veil of jerk-ness, you can stop reading. We’re separating the boys from the men in this post.

You do not want to be accused of playing head games, right? Take this short quiz:

The object of your affection shows up wearing an outfit that you would love to see on your bedroom floor. Do you:
a) make a joke about the ensemble and secretly gawk at her, memorizing the outfit and storing it in your spank bank database?
b) Say “you look…hot” and say nothing more (then memorize the outfit and store it in your spank bank database)?
c) Say “you’re looking really nice today…what’s the occasion?” or something like that (then memorize the outfit and store it in your spank bank database)?

You work with the object of your affection, and in a meeting she says something you wished you had said. Do you:
a) automatically disagree with it, just to get a rise out of her (because she’s kinda hot when she’s pissed)?
b) nod quietly and add this to the list of things you admire about her?
c) offer your own intelligent observation and then compliment her after on her comments via email or chat, somehow showing that you were paying special attention to what she was saying (in a non-creepy, non-stalker kind of way)?

The object of your affection makes contact with you (phone, text, BBM, Ping, Tweet…whatever) to ask you a yes/no question. Do you:
a) give a dumbass answer in order to prolong the conversation?
b) you decline to answer right away so that you have another shot at talking to her?
c) provide her with her answer and ensure you have a way to continue to keep the topic alive?

Results
If you answered mostly A’s – you’re Annoying Boy who sends mixed signals.
If you answered mostly B’s – awww...you’re shy. Work on getting over that a little or you’ll never get the girl.
If you answered mostly C’s – look at your girlfriend and say “I told you I was the shit…”

So, if you like her, I mean like her like her…be a good boy and man the fuck up.