Jared Freed

But dealing with all this is not as simple as just plugging your ears and going la la la la anytime someone talks about dating.

Dating is a huge part of life.

We don't do it in a vacuum.

We want to learn from and quietly laugh at other people's experiences while taking lessons from them and feeling glad we're not them.

Which is, I'm guessing, a big part of why you're listening to this audiobook.

You've either committed fully and already gotten the whole thing or you're listening to a free trial.

I don't know where you are, but you're deciding right now.

Do I want to listen to this book?

And you're doing it maybe at a gate while you wait for the flight to Charleston while you inhale a cold $20 chicken salad sandwich.

Either way, you're the kind of person who sees nine hours of dating advice and thinks there might be something for me here.

That or you hated me in college and you were like, this idiot has an audio book.

And you started listening so you could take a screenshot to send to a huge group chat of people who will discuss how little I banged and question why anyone would ask that guy who frequently wore three polos with all the collars popped what he thought about dating.

In which case, hi, I'd probably do the same.

But joke's on you because they paid me a lot of money for this.

No matter who you are, I want to start off by saluting you, my comrade in the dating trenches, for deciding that your friend who got married to their third-grade sweetheart but still has really loud Tinder opinions at the brunch table probably isn't the best source of advice on how to text someone back.

And yeah, I just did the thing where I kind of compared dating to war, but not because I think love is gruesome or that texting requires boot camp training at West Point.

or because I wanted you to know that I'm masculine enough to put the words boot camp and West Point in my book twice.

Ladies, is my penis big enough yet?

Okay, I'll stop.

To me, the dating is a battlefield stuff rings true because it's all so fucking messy and confusing.