The Second Date Drop Dead Theory
Examination of Phenomenon and Guide for Diagnosis
Prologue
According to legend, Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity completely serendipitously. Purely by happenstance, he was sitting under an apple tree when an apple fell, hitting him on the head and setting the notion in his mind that some force must have acted on the apple to make it fall. He went on to publicize his Theory of Universal Gravitation in the 1680s, essentially stating the existence of gravity along with an examination of how it functions. And so, a theory that would alter the course of the entire world was found on accident.
My research flows through a similar vein. Although likely not as earth shattering, it was discovered in a similar fashion. I will provide more detail on this in the following chapters, and I hope you bear with me as I unfold the story of my discovery.
This journal will be an examination of a phenomenon I have over the years taken note of, a pattern in which I believe there to be significant relevance to the current generation and especially to persons ages approximately 16 and up. In my 19 completed (I am currently in the process of completing the 20th) years of life, I have dated one girl. We started going out the second semester of my junior year of high school and continued in this fashion until July of 2018.
This, in reference to the rest of my life, is what a mathematician would refer to as a “statistical anomaly.”
Let me begin this compendium of poor luck by briefly listing the girls I have gone with on two dates, and two dates only. This qualifier will be important momentarily. To protect their identities, aliases will be used:
- Vomit Villain
- Camp Crush
- Benjamin Button
- Friend of a Friend
- Danny Phantom
While this may seem a short list, I can attest that this is not something I have any desire to continue going through, and once the pattern is noted it is increasingly difficult to break. As I have no expertise in psychology, I cannot speak to this effect, but I do believe the term “self-fulfilling prophecy” may have a place here. To my knowledge, no one has ever taken the time to look into this, and as this is the case, it appears I have the responsibility of naming this unique happening. I would like to christen it the “Second Date Drop Dead” theory, as what the name suggests is essentially what happens. To clarify: after the second date, one party (I will refrain from saying which) has obtained enough information to decide that they would not be interested in a third date.
In this lies my own area of expertise. As none of my colleagues have taken it upon themselves to study this specific phenomenon (and understandably so), it has occurred to me that I am the foremost authority on the subject. To this point, I do not ask that you take my findings without question; rather, understanding that the Second Date Drop Dead theory is just that, a theory, I would ask that you look for variations in the pattern that may have occurred to you in your own studies and take note of how these, too, may fall under what I’ve proposed here.
It is a necessary prerequisite for each of these girls that we have been on exactly two dates, and here I can brook no argument. As for their aliases, I have cultivated each one over time with the utmost care and precision. In the following paragraphs I hope you will see how important it was that these, and not any other option, be their chosen nicknames for their stories.
I hope that this collection of stories from my research will be a learning experience for both you, the reader, and myself, as the author, and that through our examination of the “Second Date Drop Dead” theory, we can arrive at a better understanding of how the theory operates in practice, a plan of prevention, or, failing both of those, that we can make our peace with the burned bridges.
Chapter 1: Vomit Villain
I met Vomit Villain (hereafter she will be referred to as VV for expediency purposes) my sophomore year of high school. As a young and naïve 15-year-old, I had not yet been on a “real date.” In retrospect, 6th grade through my freshman year of high school were the “troubled waters” of my youth, if you will. This is not to say I was a troublemaker; far from it. In fact, I was something of a poster child, albeit one far more on the academic side of the spectrum (that is to say, a nerd). These lifestyle choices led me to having only a few friends, as rightfully only a few could tolerate my crippling desire to win every argument coupled with my just as crippling desire to be liked.
I say all that to say this: my sophomore year, VV was, in some capacity, a wakeup call for me to change my ways. Upon discovery that my feelings for her were reciprocated, I resolved to ask her on a date.
The date itself was nothing spectacular. In truth, I don’t even remember what movie we went to see (after extensive research to find this particular fact, I still could not find what movie it was. I briefly considered consulting VV herself but decided against it as I cannot imagine her reacting positively to being contacted by me). What I do know is this: I bought the tickets, because from my operating knowledge base I understood this is what I was supposed to do, and that I paid attention to her and whispered jokes to her at the appropriate times during the movie, because I knew that being funny was crucial. For her part, she acted like I didn’t do or say anything weird, and as I am absolutely certain that I must have, I appreciate to this day her determination to give me a good experience on my first first date.
Now, the crux of the matter: where’s the vomit? Why is she a villain? I council patience. The first chapter of any story is crucial, and I would ask you bear with me as I bring you around the elegantly curved arc that is mine and VV’s two dates. The following section I consider to be an incredibly formative moment in my research, as it is the first time the SDDD theory comes into play for me personally.
The second date was rather impromptu. I began the day lifting weights at my friend Anders’ house. Once we finished, he asked if I wanted a protein shake. Sure, I thought, what could it hurt. These two simple acts of cognition woven together by my conscious and waking mind seemed harmless. What I did not know, and what I could not have known, was that that day I was playing the part of the West Point fortress during the Revolutionary War, and my brain was playing the betrayer Benedict Arnold.
After I emptied the protein shake (this will be important later), VV texted and asked if I wanted to come over and watch a movie with her and some friends. Of course, being as I wanted to woo her with my dedication to spending time with her, I immediately said yes.
Anders and I drove to her house (thus, the second date commenced). Again, my recollection of the evening’s activities are clouded at best, but it went similarly to the first date as far as I can recall. I can specifically remember watching the horror movies The Conjuring 2 and Oculus. Sitting there stiffly next to VV in that small basement, on an old couch with thin, worn out cushions, I truly thought that deciding whether to put my arm around her shoulders or hold her hand was as complicated as our relationship would get. At 10:30 P.M. central time, my mom came to pick me up. Heading towards the door, I stopped, turned, and kissed VV. This was an entirely new development for me, and not something I was aware I was even capable of doing at that point in my life. Riding that high, I joined my mother Stacy in the minivan and returned home.
This is when the metaphorical Benedict Arnold (my brain) betrayed the West Point fortress (me).
According to the Mayo Clinic, the stomach flu, or viral gastroenteritis is, “an intestinal infection marked by watery diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea or vomiting, and sometimes fever.” It spreads by ingesting contaminated food or water, or through contact with infected persons. It can, on occasion, take up to three days for symptoms to show.
I would propose to you now that through no fault of my own, I had unknowingly contracted the stomach flu sometime in the previous three days and was now about to experience the complications of said flu.
Arriving at home, I found that I felt very sick. Rushing to the bathroom, I proceeded to vomit. 7 times. Yes, you read it right: it was I who vomited, not VV. Does this then make me the true Vomit Villain? No. No, dear reader, though I wish it were that simple.
Immediately concerned that the sickness I had was contagious, I decided I needed to alert VV to the crisis I was experiencing. The following is a quote, verbatim, what I said to her via text: “Hey I’m really sick and I don’t wanna get you sick, so you might wanna like disinfect your mouth or something.” In retrospect, was this not the best phrasing? Probably. Could I have spun it in a way so as to cushion the blow? Maybe. But in my young mind, there was no blow to cushion. I was simply letting her know about the situation and ensuring that she took the necessary steps to avoid being in the same position I was at the moment of sending. I have no remorse for attempting to look out for her best interests.
Thankfully, she didn’t take it the wrong way (the wrong way being that she might have thought I was suggesting that it was her fault I was throwing up). However, for reasons unknown to me, she decided that it would be a good idea to tell people about the text I sent her.
Needless to say, this created such a flood of a narrative at school the next day surrounding the previous night’s events that I had a very hard time dealing with it. I will allow you to imagine all the insults and stories that were made up about what actually happened, who threw up, and why they did so. In the end, I told VV that day that I thought we were better as friends, conveniently ending our “relationship” if it could ever have been called that, and abruptly beginning a period in my life I both love and hate.
Chapter 2: Camp Crush
I met Camp Crush (CC) not long after ending things with the Vomit Villain. I am unabashedly still in love with CC to this day. This is not to say I am actively pursuing a relationship with CC; in fact, she is currently in a long-term relationship. However, if she were to text me and say, “Hey, do you wanna date?,” I would without hesitation reply yes and most likely break my phone screen in the process.
In the interest of brevity, I will not go into so much detail as I did in chapter 1. That story, as far as I can tell, has been my most formative experience with girls and therefore warrants far more time and consideration than the rest.
CC and I met over the summer at a leadership camp called HOBY. I was still 15 and, having a slightly broadened knowledge of girls thanks to VV, was entering the weekend optimistic about my prospects.
Upon meeting, we connected and of course, as is due protocol, exchanged contact information (Snapchats). After the weekend, this evolved into us talking every day. This is also the period in my dating career in which I learned how to flirt, although certainly not well.
The recurrent issue with CC was that she lived an hour away, and since I didn’t have my license, it was never going to last. Despite the distance between us, I asked her to come to my junior homecoming with me, and she said yes. When her parents picked her up that night, I couldn’t quite place the feeling I had, but I would come to know it as pre-Second Date Drop Dead syndrome. We will more closely examine the symptoms of pre-SDDD in a later chapter.
We did go on a second date, of course. A friend and I met her and a friend at Buffalo Wild Wings, which, as we all know, is cursed along with Denny’s after 10 P.M. central time and Steak n’ Shake after 1 A.M. It was an ill-fated trip with an ill-fated end. Once we parted ways, CC didn’t text me for a week, and each day I grew more disheartened. This time, it was her who told me we would be better as friends.
(We are still friends and talk on occasion, so this one has a bit of a happier ending.)
Chapter 3: Benjamin Button
From chapter 2 to chapter 3, there is an approximately two-year time skip during which I had my one real relationship. As this is the only time that the Second Date Drop Dead theory has not reared its ugly head, I will refrain from speaking on it. In the first two chapters I was 15, but after these two years (and several months) have passed I am now 18 years old, in the summer before entering my sophomore year of college. The implication for me was quite clear: no longer could I blame my failure to go on more than two dates with these girls on my lack of transportation. I now had to take full responsibility for my shortcomings. The crutch I’d previously clung to was no more.
By this point, I had revolutionized the way I was meeting girls. No longer was it required that I meet and talk to them in person. As with the world today, so had my interactions with girls been much more relegated to the internet.
I logged on to Twitter one day to a direct message from my friend, who I will call Kathy for her protection. Kathy knew that I had not been on a date in a very long time, and so had taken the liberty to send me Benjamin Button’s (BB) profile with instructions to DM her.
I am a man of science. Like Einstein, Galileo, Curie, Tesla, and Edison before me, I was constantly in search of new experiments, new ways to see the world and create new things within it. As Einstein said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”
In the name of science, I felt that I had to follow Kathy’s instructions so as to determine if BB would respond. I carefully crafted a message that I felt would maximize my chances for a response. After minutes of painstaking mental labor, I confidently sent this DM: “Hey wanna ruin my life?” Within minutes, I had received a confirmation from her that she held at least a passing interest in ruining my life. I knew I would have to handle this extremely carefully moving forward so as to hold together the tenuous connection we had established.
In the process of getting to know BB, I found that while she was in the grade below me, she was in fact several days older than me. This, in the end, was what caused me to stop seeing her. The pervading feeling that I could not shake, try as I might, was that she was still caught up in high school drama, something that I had no interest in anymore. Despite her being older than me (really, almost the same age), it felt like we were in entirely different seasons of life. I could not find any common ground for us as she continued talking about past relationships and lead our conversations into unfamiliar, yet tired and uninteresting territory, as though we had travelled from a cornfield in Illinois to one in Nebraska.
These feelings of distance between us culminated in our second date, whereupon we went on a double date with two of her friends, one of whom was my childhood best friend. As much as I wanted to forget my feelings and simply have a good time, I could not.
To return to Einstein, if only for a moment, I would like to relate shortly his discovery of the Theory of Relativity. Far from accidental like Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery, he had already published a theory of special relativity. In 1907, two years after it’s publication, he realized his theory could not be applied to an object experiencing acceleration. This led to a period of eight years of research, culminating in his publishing of the theory of general relativity. While I am no Einstein, my research to this point is truly only in the early stages, merely on the verge of a more whole actualization, as opposed to any deeper development. I do desperately hope, however, that my theory will not require eight years of frustration and dead ends to be complete.
In any event, BB didn’t get the chance to ruin my life. This turned out for the better for her, as she is also now in a long-term relationship.
Chapter 4: Friend of a Friend
I met a Friend of a Friend (FOF) my freshman year at Illinois State. She was one of my very good friend’s roommates. We spent a considerable amount of time together, accompanied by what I would suggest to you was an outrageous amount of flirting, but that was as far as either of us ever dared to open up.
My sophomore year, first semester specifically, something changed. We had been talking for a few weeks, following the same pattern of flirting with no follow up, when she invited me one night to her Cardinal Court apartment to watch American Horror Story. For those who don’t have any experience with the show, I urge you to keep it that way. Despite my ill feelings toward the chosen activity for the evening, I still found myself having fun. Internally, I thought this to be a positive sign and was apprehensively optimistic about what that meant for possible future dates. The title of date is also more loosely applied to this night, but for the sake of the theory I will be counting it as the first date. At the end of the night, walking back to my own apartment at Cardinal, I found I had a familiar, unpleasant feeling in my gut.
Approximately a week later, we had agreed to go on a second date. All second dates, or the ones I have been on, seem to have the same kind of cadence to them. I hadn’t at this point identified or begun to work on the “Second Date Drop Dead” theory yet, but I had begun to know subconsciously how it felt when it was headed that way.
Finally, we have arrived at the place where I’ve deemed it time to discuss the symptoms you yourself may have experienced. Here is where research has begun to collide with practice, as much as I wish it didn’t have to. I referred to this in chapter 2 as pre-SDDD symptoms. As the identification of these symptoms is more of an art than a science, I suggest to you that there is a strong possibility my list is incomplete. I would still hazard you against conducting your own research into this theory, but if you have past experiences you feel have relevance it is important to document them for later study.
Philip Ball, English physicist, chemist, and writer, took upon himself the task of identifying patterns in nature. He draws on the work of another scientist, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, citing that nature’s creativity is still held back by physical and chemical laws. He also notes in his book Patterns in Nature that patterns are not as easily defined as identical repetitions of an occurrence. Rather, he says, “But many patterns that we see in nature aren’t quite like that. We sense that there is something regular or at least not random about them, but that doesn’t mean that all the elements are identical. I think a very familiar example of that would be the zebra’s stripes. Everyone can recognize that as a pattern, but no stripe is like any other stripe.”
This is, in my mind, the best way to consider the “pattern” I will shortly lay out for you. While there is certainly something regular about it, a familiarity present when it begins, the steps within and to the end are variable, even though they may look similar. The pattern is something like the four steps below; I will be saying “she” and “her,” but this can go for both men and women.
- You pick her up. You say something funny when she gets in and she laughs, but not that hard. You’re quick to console yourself, thinking that it wasn’t your best material in any case.
- You go out to eat where she wants. You pay.
- You’re there only as long as it takes for both of you to finish eating. No extra time for conversation afterwards.
- You drop her off, and she gets out without giving you a goodbye kiss (or hug, or punch on the shoulder, or hand squeeze, or something. Not all dates end in kisses and that is okay).
The last two are the big indicators, and therein lies slightly less variance. The first two can vary more widely, so be sensitive to smaller tells such as constantly checking their phone or often asking you to repeat yourself, both signs of disinterest or feigned attention.
Our second date followed the pre-SDDD pattern or symptoms I have laid about above almost exactly. It was destined to fail from the outset, and so I have no additional analysis on this chapter, although it is notable that here is when the pattern truly begins to pick itself out.
Chapter 5: Danny Phantom
In my opinion, this is the worst experience I have had with a girl and hopefully the worst one I will ever have. Due to this, I will spend the least time on it because I don’t particularly enjoy talking about it, but I would be remiss not to mention it as it fits all too well into the SDDD category.
According to Tinder statistics on businessofapps.com, a site that analyzes the business models and success of apps, Tinder has over 57 million users around the world. It also reports that Tinder users go on over a million dates per week. The Tinder algorithm is based on one simple thing: location. It shows you users in your proximity, adjustable up to 100 miles, and then it’s in your hands to swipe right or left. Should two users swipe right on each other, it’s a match, and they can then message through the app.
I met Danny Phantom on Tinder. This is the only girl I have ever gone on a date with off of Tinder. My advice for this app: do not download it. Do not meet people off of it. It is not worth it.
To cut to the heart of the matter: Danny Phantom and I went on two dates, and after setting up a third one, she ghosted me. For those of you unfamiliar with “ghosting,” it is when one party cuts off all interaction with the other, generally not responding to any messages as well as unfollowing or blocking them on all social media. Her name is derived from the television show Danny Phantom, previously aired on Nickelodeon from 2004-2007. She was given this name in direct correlation with Danny’s iconic line, “I’m going ghost.” I believed it appropriate because she ghosted me. Again, I do not have extensive analysis on this experience. It is in my mind, however, exemplary of the SDDD theory.
Epilogue
I would like to begin wrapping up by putting in a slight disclaimer. All 5 of these stories have within them incredible variation, and while I believe them to follow similar patterns to their ends, no two are the same. Due to some constraints, I have cut down on background detail for them and tried to give you what I believed to be the most important substance they held. I also lay no claim to having been on the right side of all of my research; there are certainly things I mishandled and other avenues I could have pursued that may have resulted in this paper not even existing. However, I hope my effort to document and understand my own experiences may aid you in the future to recognize symptoms and avoid this pattern.
The Second Date Drop Dead theory is not universal. There are many variations across every relationship. As I spoke about earlier, I am currently the foremost authority on this subject. This paper is the culmination of years of research and several experimental trial runs. Many scientists have been considered crazy for their theories- Wegener, Mendel, Copernicus, Kepler. All of them were eventually proved correct. I, for one, hope for the sake of humanity that this theory is incorrect, and that it does not hold water for anyone other than me. However, should you find yourself trapped within this pattern, I hope you can return to this publication and find something herein that helps you to break the cycle.
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Layton, Julia. “How Does Gravity Work?” HowStuffWorks Science, HowStuffWorks, 27 Jan.
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