Dating Insights from my Two Year Old

Today I saw the future.

And quite possibly the explanation for half the guys I dated.

It started on the playground at Ironflower's school, where I was following Hugmonkey. I usually follow Hugmonkey around her playground - not only is it not built for 2 year olds, the boy also has a habit of hitting strangers. Sometimes I kinda hope one will (gently) hit him back to teach him a lesson, but so far he has only attacked nice children who just look at me in horror. Anyway, today Hugmonkey was approached by one of Ironflower's classmates, a sweet girl who totally needs a baby sibling. He ran away from her.

Then he spotted the older sister of Ironflower's friend. He strutted in front of her a few times. When that didn't elicit a "Hi, cutie!" or other positive attention, he threw a rock at her. That, of course, got a response. A hugely negative one. I forced him to apologize and he walked away to regroup.

He then began performing for her. There was jumping, a recent accomplishment that involves both feet actually leaving the ground. There was dancing, a perennial standby that always elicits cries of adoration from the family. There was grinning and cocking his head, which is pretty much how he gets out of all the trouble he causes. After proving his adorableness, he sidled up to her again. "Hi!" he said loudly.

She said hi back. He took that as an invitation to start trying to play with the Pokemon cards she had. When she expressed dismay, he picked one up and handed it to her, grinning. She grinned back and started to pay attention to him.

He promptly ran away.

All I could think was, "Holy crap, I dated someone exactly like that - more than once!" I suppose that's an odd thing to consider when watching your toddler at play, but trust me, he was totally trying to woo her. At the beginning anyway.

"I guess he's over me, " said the little girl cheerfully. She started to play with a friend. Hugmonkey's response was to coming running back, I kid you not. This time he skipped over rock throwing and went right for the dance moves.

When I was dating guys like that - and finally realized that they were indeed guys like that - I always assumed that they had mommy issues. Or terrible childhoods. Or some other reason to fear commitment. It never occurred to me that they were born that way. But Hugmonkey and I have a normal relationship, his childhood is not so terrible and it's not like he's had his heart broken or anything.

So either there's a gene responsible for this behavior, or the adult men who act this way haven't evolved beyond the age of 2. I'm hoping for the latter, otherwise I'm going to feel compelled to write a warning letter to every woman Hugmonkey eventually dates.