Peter Pan

As a girl, I never could understand the fascination with Peter Pan. He always came across to me as silly with his crew of young, impressionable Lost boys and selfish with his desire to just remain a boy forever. I mean, a big part of being a human is becoming an adult. Personally I couldn’t wait to grow up and be able to drive cars and drink fancy drinks with umbrellas in them and to have a job (preferably as a DJ). For this very reason, I couldn’t grasp why Wendy (or Tinkerbell for that matter) would ever waste time on Peter. Fast forward to now, and I still don’t understand the fascination. I can embrace the idea of being young at heart, but remaining stunted in adolescence forever is not such a good thing. And in the dating world, it is a very bad thing. Like most women I know, I’ve come across my share of men suffering from the Peter Pan syndrome. But the following boys, well, they really take the cake.

George was perfect on paper and cute in person. He was old enough at forty to have an established career in finance and clever enough to keep me laughing with the yarns he could spin. The only problem was that after spending a good chunk of Saturday together, he would take off like a vampire once the sun set. At first, I figured that he just needed space. But then my friends began to question this – what kind of guy leaves his girl alone on a Saturday night? Determined to get to the root of the problem, I began to dig and eventually discovered that he spent weekends with his parents and that he didn’t want to sleep over because they might get the wrong idea about me. I’m sorry but what guy spends the entire weekend, every weekend with his parents of his own volition? Strangely, he never worried about me getting the wrong idea about him!

Curtis was a dream date – funny, handsome, and a phenomenal kisser. Between bowling and karaoke, we had so much fun on our first date that I practically had to pinch myself to believe it. And the kissing, well I’m not much of one for PDA but we literally couldn’t keep our lips off of each other. So, when Curtis booked the second date before the first had even ended I was on cloud nine. When we parted, we made plans to see each other the next day. But when the next day arrived, he requested that we see each other the following day. And then the following day went by without any communication from him. Eventually I received a lackluster e-mail from him apologizing for his flaky behavior. Turns out he was outdoors and the weather was beautiful and he was just having too much fun to be bothered. Excuse me but he was having too much fun to be bothered with calling me about the date he booked with me? Yikes.

Call me crazy but I like my men to be mature enough to be able to sleep (and for that matter live) away from home and follow through on important things like showing up for dates! I know these might be extreme cases but I guess what it boils down to this - there is something sweet about a man who has a little bit of boy in him, but there isn’t anything sweet about a boy (ahem, grown guy) who only has a little bit of man in him. Note to Wendy and Tinkerbell: Please feel free to keep Peter Pan, I’m holding out for a real man.