While Jenny is away I’m highjacking her her blog to share some thoughts of my own. Hi, my name is Jack, and I am single LDS male in my late-twenties.

First of all, I want all you girls to know how expensive it is for us guys to take you out. I’m just getting started in life, and I don’t necessary have the budget to spend $50-100 every time I want to see you. Anyway, just understand our limits. And I never mind it if you just order a small salad.

Now that’s said, I want to share another frustration with dating. Moms. They are keeping me from dating their daughters. And it’s not because they don’t like me. In fact, it’s actually the opposite. They love me. You’d think that be a good thing, right? It would be—if only the girl loved me too.

Yup, it’s not until I meet the mom that it all starts going downhill.  I don’t know why. I got that adorable thing going on. I’m personable. I look people in the eye when I talk to them. I’m on a professional career path. Even my hair is short and neat, and I don’t have any tattoos. I smile a lot.

I can only suppose that in some sort of rebellion, girls don’t trust their mothers. Maybe I should become some sort of badass, or maybe I should just set my sights on older women.

**So if you want to date Jenny, don’t worry about her mother, Jenny won’t introduce you to her until it’s safe to do so. Oh, and keep in mind that moms love Jenny too. 

My poor mother. I think my singledom affects her more than anyone else. When she looks at me, I can see the sadness in her face: “where did I go wrong?” Back in the day, my mom had many suitors. She was married at 21 (engagement picture below), and by the time she was my age, she had 3 kids. And here I am, her daughter, in my late twenties, single, and without any prospects—the exact opposite of her.

I really don’t know how I want my mother to be involved in my dating life. For starters, she tells everyone about her finder’s fee of $1,000. (The match has to result in marriage, mind you.) But my mom is bi-polar when it comes to my dating. Whenever people suggests they know someone to set me up with it, my mom immediately says, “We’ll take him!” Another example: one time I was quietly inquiring about a guy at a family function. My mom was standing by listening, and when she heard he was a skier and going to med school, my mom shouts out loud, “Jenny, he’s the One!” It was like one of those moments when the jukebox stops, the whole room goes silent, and everyone turns their heads towards YOU.

But on the other hand, I’ve never dated anyone she’s really liked. “He’s a nice guy Jenny, but I just don’t think he’s it. She has even gone to the extreme of arranging a date when I was steadily seeing someone else. Tell me, how awkward is it when you are hanging out with your guy when some waiter she met last night calls to ask you out? Usually my boyfriends sensed what was going on and broke up with me first. (But thanks, Mom, it was a blessing in the end.)

My mom has a thing for waiters. She leaves my number on restaurant receipts. She tries to secretly give the waiter a nod in my direction. One time, she relentlessly pursued some cheesy beefcake from “SoCal” until he finally agreed to go out with me. (We have quite different tastes.)

Last week when we were eating at CPK, a quasi-cute, super-smiley waiter served our table. After he took our order with way too much enthusiasm, I looked at my mom and said, “NO!” before she could even say anything. She started laughing. “I know what you’re thinking, and NO!” If it were up to my mom, she would have asked the guy out there for me right on the spot.

Back in college, whenever I mention that I’ve met a new guy, she interjects, “well, did you tell him you’re a ski instructor at Deer Valley,” thinking the guy would immediately fall in love because I was a skier. “No Mom, my first words to the guy were not, ‘did you know I’m a ski instructor at Deer Valley?’” Sheesh.

Sometimes I tease my mom by saying, “Mom! I’ve met somebody!” and when she gets all excited, I then say “just kidding!” She tells me I’m too old to be joking about this anymore. She often threatens she’s going to take over the situation and put me in an arranged marriage.

But I try to take her behavior with a good heart. A lot of my motivation for finding a nice guy is not only to make me happy but also make my mom happy. She’s been through a lot in life, and I know she’ll rest easy if I marry a nice guy. I do believe moms have a sixth sense when it comes to their offspring. She’s been right about everyone so far. So when it comes down to the nitty gritty of dating, my mom is the only person I will really trust.

**So if you date Jenny, you’ll probably have to meet her mom, but probably not until you are practically engaged. That’s how both my older brothers handled it.

There is a misperception that if you start a book, you HAVE to finish it. I have been a victim to this, until recently. I was reading a book about the history of salt. I thought it might be interesting. It wasn’t. Overall, it was pretty boring. But I was determined to finish the book. Why? Because I started it. So as painful as it was, I kept reading—until I remembered my economics class from college.

Economic theory states that when the cost of something exceeds the benefit, you should stop doing or consuming that something. Apply this theory to my reading of The History of Salt, and I should stop—even with one chapter left. Why? Because the cost of time wasted reading that book was greater than the benefit received from reading it. So I put the book down. I guess I overestimated the joy of learning about the socioeconomic effect of salt mining in 6^th century China.

It may appear that I’m weak, or I’m the one losing out by not finishing the book, or I don’t have the character to finish what I’ve started. On the contrary. I am the winner. I’m the winner because I was strong enough to RECOGNIZE that by continuing to read that book, I was losing opportunities to do other things more valuable with my time.

To illustrate my point, I created the graph below.

As you can see, I continued reading to the point where the time spent and the opportunity cost was greater than the joy I received from reading. In other words, I should have put down the book a long time ago.

Please note that it DOESN’T matter that I’ve already invested all those hours. Those are sunk costs. They can’t be part of my decision whether or not I should continue to about the history of salt. My decision has to be based on what’s the most valuable to me in the future—and it was NOT finishing that book.

I’ve applied this theory in other aspects of life—including dating. If the cost of spending another minute with a guy is greater than the benefit he offers me, I stop dating him. For example, even if the guy takes me to nice dinners or buys me gifts, those benefits still don’t outweigh the cost of having to listen to him talk about how he’s the greatest lawyer ever to walk the face of the earth. I also created another graph to illustrate this:

As you can see in this graph, I’m a lot better at recognizing when to call it quits with a guy than I am with a book

I loved that econ class. It taught me how to maximize every decision with the economics of life. The result? I’m now spending my time enjoying a really funny book about an agnostic man who tried to live the Bible as literally as possible. And I’m now dating nobody.

**So if you’re on a date with Jenny, and she starts what appears to be doodling on a napkin, don’t think she’s drawing pretty flowers. She’s probably doing some cost/benefit analysis of whether or not it’s worth spending any more time with you that evening