"You're Still on My A-Team": Blocking and Burning the Doctors and Lawyers

I think men of certain professions—physicians and attorneys for sure—but also finance executives, tech bros, CEOs of [whatever] get a disproportionate amount of attention from women on dating apps. I understand why. Among the crowds of men instructing matches to “text me, I can’t see messages” (because they’re not paying for the app) and men clearly living in their elderly mothers’ basements, the notion of a successful, financially secure-if-not-wealthy partner is appealing.

Men on social media love to accuse women of being gold-diggers (it’s always the men who have no gold), but that’s a misogynistic and reductive take on women; the truth is that too many women are financially supporting too many men, and many of them are fed up.

So I’m certainly not blaming anyone for being drawn to the doctors and lawyers, nor am I suggesting you shouldn’t date them. I *am* suggesting, however, that you don’t give them extra chances you wouldn’t give other men, and I’m also suggesting you not tolerate bad behavior and poor treatment that you wouldn’t tolerate from men of less-lofty professions.

The last time I was on the dating apps, I ended up blocking one doctor and one lawyer, and I still feel good about both those decisions. Here are the stories:

I met the attorney on Hinge. Sometimes I’m suspicious of attorneys, but this guy claimed to be a human rights attorney, which compelled me. I quickly found him on Facebook, and then on the news, being interviewed about a high-profile case he had litigated (and won). His Hinge profile said he’d climbed Mt. Everest, which is usually something that makes me roll my eyes into the back of my head, but the other claims he’d made were checking out, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

His Facebook profile pic was a shot of a silouette of his head backlit by the sun rising over Mt. Everest itself. This struck me as pretentious, but I decided that wasn’t a sufficient reason to disqualify someone; maybe he knew it was pretentious and was sort of mocking himself or something. I entertained these kind of possibilities.

He’d set up one of those “two truths and a lie” options in his Hinge profile, which is my fave because I almost always get those right—if you know enough about critical discourse analysis those are super easy to crack. He was impressed I got his right and asked me how I figured it out. I told him I had a Ph. D. in applied rhetoric and these kind of games are child’s play to me (lines like this almost always work with male attorneys; they fancy themselves smarter than everyone else, and they’re generally intrigued if a woman does anything smart at all).

His response to that was to send me his phone number. He said, and I quote, “I give most women my burner number, but you seem different, so I’m giving you my real one.”

😂

I should have blocked him then, because that’s obnoxious, not to mention disrespectful of other women he was meeting, who I assume were no more threatening than me, but for some reason I didn’t. We had one phone conversation, which went well, and set up a date for the following week. The more I thought about it, though, the more I didn’t like something about him. He was exhibiting not only an “I’m the prize” vibe, but the other side of it, which is “I have deemed you a prize and will therefore treat you differently/better than I do other women.” This part I couldn’t get over, so I canceled the date.

A few of my friends thought I’d acted rashly, which was potentially valid, but then a few weeks later he messaged me on LinkedIn. The message said, “Hey Jennie, how’re you doing? Just letting you know you’re still on my A-Team.”

This really did make me laugh. I was on an A-Team of single women? Like in a Robert Palmer video? Can you imagine dating that? I was so glad I’d opted out.

The doctor I met in person. We had both moved to the same town during the same month, and we met in a coffee shop. I had two girlfriends with me at the time, and they were immediately captivated by the Hallmark-movie/meet-cute potential of this narrative: “You both moved to the same adorable town at the same time, and he’s a single doctor and you’re a single teacher and you both love dogs!”

We had exchanged cell numbers at that first meeting (I did look him up and verify his identity as well; I do research on all prospective dates!). He texted me the following day and said, “Great meeting you. Just so you know, I’ll be at the coffee shop around 8:30 on Sunday morning.” This wasn’t exactly a date invitation, but it seemed fine to me at that point—it was no pressure and a place we both liked to go anyway. I showed up.

We chatted easily for a half hour or so, and then he had to go because his dog was getting antsy (it’s a dog-friendly coffee shop).

He texted me the following Sunday right at 8:30 and said, “Just so you know, I’m down at the coffee shop.” This I didn’t love because it felt more like a directive. I texted back and said I already had plans.

This happened three more times, and I never showed up at my assigned time. Several weeks later I just happened to be in that coffee shop at 8:30 on a Sunday morning, and he was in there sitting at a table talking to a woman. Then she got up and left and another woman appeared and sat down at his table with him. So that was his schtick: he simply notified women of his whereabouts when it was convenient for him, and some of them would show up.

He continued to text me most weeks for several weeks, never once asking me out, never once asking what my schedule was—simply telling me where he’d be and when. I never showed up, and eventually I just stopped responding. It’s now been over a year, and I still see him around town; he doesn’t seem to be partnered with anyone, so I guess none of the women were so much into this program.

Rhetorically, this is revealing, right? This man doesn’t seem to realize that the women he’s asking out might have a life and a schedule that’s as relevant as his own.

To sum up, neither of these guys did anything horribly toxic, and if my number one goal were to find a man with a good job, I might’ve blown it, but that never was my goal anyway. I realize single women face a lot of pressure to “lock these guys down” or whatever, but that’s misplaced. It comes from an era in which women were expected to make emotional compromises for partnership, to sacrifice their independence at the altar of financial security. We don’t have to do that anymore.

So go ahead and block-to-burn those guys if you want to. Above all, I think you should trust your gut. I trusted mine in both of these cases and have never regretted it a bit.