The Serious Side of Salad
Once upon a time, someone in facebook posted a "Why Geeks Make Better Boyfriends" list. Britney St. Patience felt the need to point out its inaccuracies. She prefaces it with "Sure there are geek guys out there who are great partners. But being a geek does not guarantee that a guy will be a great boyfriend."

It's a pretty standard 'Nice Guy' deconstruction.

The main highlights are:

Myth #3: Geeks are low maintenance
Supposedly geek guys make great boyfriends because they can subsist on pizza, Mt Dew, and your affection. Just wait until you meet one who will ONLY eat pizza and maybe 3-4 other foods, like some sort of overgrown five year old. It took me nearly a decade to get my computer programmer ex husband to eat salad. My Star Wars obsessed ex boyfriend could not be taken to nice restaurants because he refused to wear anything except ripped jeans and nerdy tees and would not eat anything he could not pronounce. LOW MAINTENANCE MY ASS.

and

Myth #6: Geeks appreciate women
This one is, by far, my favorite geek guy myth. The myth of the guy who spent all of high school playing D&D but secretly wanting someone to love and when he finally gets a girl he imprints on her and covers her in puppy-like devotion. OMG WHERE DO PEOPLE GET THIS SHIT? You know what really happens when guys don't get laid in high school or college and spend all their time reading coming books and filling their spank banks with Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic? They fill their little nerd brains with unrealistic expectations, waiting around for what one of my gamer friends calls a "magical pixie girl". An unattainably hot woman, who will love the nerd boy not in spite of his nerdiness but because of it and somehow his life will be transformed by her love. And he shall get a job. And he shall move out of his parents basement. And he shall cease to be whatever it is he dislikes about himself because the magical lady doth love him. But woe to any girl who does not live up to his fantasy. She will be treated with the same regard as yesterday's Mt Dew cans.

So, a little harsh, but all in all not a matter for anger, right? Wrong!


It gets posted to Metaquotes, and it starts to get weird.

First, the appetizer of rebuttals that only confirm the post.


The myth of the guy who spent all of high school playing D&D but secretly wanting someone to love and when he finally gets a girl he imprints on her and covers her in puppy-like devotion. OMG WHERE DO PEOPLE GET THIS SHIT?"

They get it from reality. That described me perfectly. It happened. It still happens. She completely ripped out my heart and shit in the hole eventually, and I got over this pattern... but it happens. That's where people get the idea.

The OP is demanding, high maintenance, dissatisfied with all the men out there... and yet continues to put herself into relationships with people SHE DOESN'T LIKE in some misguided attempt to make them into something she does like.

Of course it doesn't work, millions of people can tell you that (and probably did), and now she's bitter as a result of her mistakes, and is shifting the blame onto a large and diverse demographic that, in the aggregate, does NOT actually fit all the stereotypes she is perpetuating about them.

But then Candidgamera shows up and he Does. Not. Like. Salad.

If the girl I was dating was bizarrely fixated on me eating a salad, it wouldn't take me ten years to dump her sorry ass.

Making your husband eat a salad makes you a controlling harpy.

What follows is an extended debate over whether asking your spouse to eat salad is controlling, an act of deepest love for your dearest one, or something in between. Over salad.