Hello faithful readers! The weather has begun to turn cold and fall has made its presence known. What a perfect time to light a bonfire, grab a pumpkin pie blizzard, and snuggle up with a loved one.
I would like start off this week’s column with a new segment. It’s the official L&RRTR Trivia Time. If you can correctly answer the weekly trivia question presented in the column and you email the answer to me at 200806058@panthers.greenville.edu, you will receive a shout-out in the next column and a personalized letter from me, Dr. Crews, or Michael Jordan in your campus mailbox, whoever is available that week. And Michael Jordan is usually pretty busy. So here is this week’s question: What is my favorite holiday? Again, if you can answer this question correctly, email me and receive your shout-out and free prize. Now, for our weekly love question:
Dear Dr. Crews,
On September 28th at 12:05 in the morning, a new message came into my inbox that I need help with. You see, it is from a guy who used to pursue me my sophomore year of high school; long distance type of thing. We instant messaged for a while, but I soon realized that we had a difference in interests, so I kind of ended it. I haven't heard from him in years, and then this message came: "Hey completely random but I had a dream about you last night lol but just thought I'd say hi! Hope all is well." Dr. Crews! What does this mean? Do you have any wisdom concerning dreaming and ex-interests? Should I dare to respond? If so, what advice do you have concerning the content of the response? I am very much so in love with my boyfriend, Jason, so I don't want to "encourage" another pursuit...
Facebook freakout,
Sarah Beth Meyers
Warrenton, Missouri
Sarah Beth, what a great question. This is a situation that us doctors in the love field get quite regularly, particularly with college and high school students. This is what we like to call an IMR (Instant Message Relationship). It definitely gives you the willies and creeps you out a little bit. I believe it would be correct to say that we all have been there. It seems in this particular context, you, Sarah, haven’t spoke to him in years and then, out of the blue, this young man returns and tells you he is having dreams about you. Flattering, yet disturbing.
Fortunately, I happened to have written a book concerning IMRs. It’s entitled, The Aim of Love: Relations by the Use of Instant Messaging. This book explores the pros and cons of relationships through the media of the World Wide Web. The pros are meeting your potential spouse through eharmony and the cons are a crap load of creepers, sex offenders, and filthy minded men contain practically free reign over they entire Internet. Surprisingly, you seemed to have come across a con. Now that we have identified that this Internet relationship is not one of the warm, fuzzy feeling kind, we need to move on about how to take care of this situation.
There are about three different ways to attack this situation: Aggressively, moderately, and lethargically. The lethargic way would be to ignore him. Although, this particular attack is somewhat effective, it is not ideal and hovers around a 24.7 % success rate, which is not good enough. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is the aggressive attack. This one is difficult to pull off but his highly effective. The technique is you respond to your old friend with a message that says, “Hey, this is Sarah’s sister and I just wanted to let you know that Sarah died in a horrific bowling accident. We are all still grieving pretty heavily. I have access to her account so I can keep everyone informed. Please don’t respond. – Serena.” This approach will of course have to be followed by deleting your facebook account, possibly create a new one under a fake name to keep in touch with loved ones, and stay at home except when you are sure you are at a place that you won’t see him. Like I said, it’s aggressive.
If you are not up for either of those techniques, then it seems that the moderate attack is the one for you. In the moderate attack you basically respond to your old friend with statements that sorta, kinda compromise your morality by sorta, kinda lying but it’s not reallllly lying and you ultimately convince yourself that there is no other way of doing it and you have to because you don’t want to lead this guy on and hurt his feelings when in reality you just don’t really want anything to do with him. This is the most common technique. You give him answers like, “Yeah, I’m married. Actually, I am really busy this weekend. I just dropped my phone and it doesn’t work, so there is no use giving you my phone number,” those sorts of statements.
With these three attacks, you are sure to put an end to that IMR. Thanks for the question, Sarah. What a relevant question for today’s youth of America!
That just about does it for this week’s column. On last thing is an opportunity for all you single-ladies (Beyonce, anyone?) out there. After weeks of badgering on behalf of my roommate to feature him in the article so to remedy his singleness, I have decided to do so. Jarrod Beasley is 19 years young, with a killer beard and a love for metal. In his spare time he likes to put together puzzles, play farkle (thanks to me), watch football, perform in the campus Improv Troupe, and go on bike rides. Jarrod’s top two goals for his tenure at Greenville College are to 1) Receive an excellent education and 2) find his wife. This is your opportunity to meet the boy of your dreams. He can be contacted by facebook or at 618-334-0916.
Well thank you again Sarah and good luck Jarrod! As for me, I will see you in two weeks. Join the facebook group and love your neighbor!
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