If you’ve ever wondered if someone is too old or too young for you this is a simple equation to figure out society’s expectations in dating.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should do it. At least that is what I learned when I tried to be a player this summer and found out that that game is best left to professionals.

All right, I work at a coffee shop and I see a regular influx of the same people from day to day. Hundreds of regulars come in every evening. Being that I earn much of my spending money off tips, I naturally use flirting as a way to get more money.

I am a giant tease. At work, I will flirt with any woman or man who shows interest.

Guess what? I’m very poor, and there is no shame in making someone think that he or she has a chance with me so I can earn a few extra bucks.

Some of the people I talk with happen to be of the female persuasion. So I do develop crushes on some of these female customers. At this point, I am flirting for real.

Then there are some female customers who develop crushes on me, or so I think. I do indulge their fantasies by giving them the Han Solo-patented and ever-so-charming lopsided grin. I’ve never asked a customer out because I’m terrified of rejection. But over the summer I, by something’s good grace, was asked out by three different regular female customers in the same week.

Now I knew a little about these girls, and I did think that they were all attractive. But there was that horrible feeling of doubt in the back of my head.

The coffee shop I work for is in a suburb. There is a fair amount of college campuses around that area, but I had this nagging feeling that these girls weren’t in college yet. Oh my God, what if they weren’t 18 yet? Could I be a pedophile for girls under the age of 18 asking me out because I flirted with them to get money?

After a week of investigative research (asking for IDs to validate their credit cards), I put my fear aside, slightly. They were all over the age of 18. But none of them were over the age of 19 either. So I found myself in a position were a lot of males would like to be, with three women fighting for affection.

For the first time in my life, I decide I could do this — I could be a player, too. Now I told everyone to watch me date all three women at the same time. Please notice I said date, not have meaningless sex with and never speak to again. So we went to a movie, dinner, coffee shops — standard places of the dating world.

Seeing as I was 23 at the time, there was the natural element of bars and alcohol missing from my usual dating equation. And, quickly without the opportunity of the going to places open after 10 p.m., I ran out of ideas for places to go and things to do.

Almost as fast as my pretending to be a player had started, it had fallen apart. Communication between me and each one of the girls dissipated and now they are all but ghosts in my cell phone.

After discussing my failure with my personal and professional colleagues, I was informed of a rule, which I now, for the most part, follow. Now people, please, this rule does involve some basic arithmetic, so I will wait for the non-math majors to get out your calculators, abacuses, and for the slower ones to take off your socks and shoes.

I like to call it the 20/25 rule of dating and it’s like a sign on each one of us that tells everyone else how old you must be to ride our ride.

Here is how it work: if you’ve ever wondered if someone is too young or too old for you, this is a simple equation to figure out society’s expectations in dating.

To figure out how young is too young in society’s eyes, you just take 20 percent of your age. That number is the maximum number of years that can be between you and your younger partner.

The maximum number of years that someone can be older than you is 25 percent of your age.

Here is the example using myself: I am 24 years old. Therefore, 20 percent of my age is 4 and 3/4 years. So the youngest I could date is a 19-year-old. There is no rounding to gain an extra year — stop trying to cheat. And 25 percent of my age is 6 years. The oldest person I could date, in order to not get dirty looks and societal frowns, is a 30-year-old.

The reason my attempt at being a player failed was because all these girls were too young for me, which becomes obvious once you use the 20/25 age equation.

I had already experienced much in life that they found new and fascinating at the moment. So, naturally, there was a disconnection between you, not of personalities, but of stages of our life.

I wasn’t looking to settle down, but I needed someone who was well adjusted to life in college. They needed someone who was fascinated with finally having the chance to live life on their own.

The 20/25 rule exists as a security for stages of life — it works all way up to somewhere around 90. But it is fair to point out that the 20/25 rule deals with matters of love, and if “West Side Story” taught us anything, it is that love has no rules. People break the 20/25 rule all the time and they end up fine.

> Comments