Can’t figure men out? Rodney L. Demery wants to help. Why? Maybe penance for his bad boy ways, but mainly because out of his nine children, five are daughters. So, he figures, if anyone can set them straight about serial daters, it’s their self-proclaimed serial-dater dad.
Demery is a Louisiana cop who has spent over two decades on homicide, sex crimes, narcotics and armed robbery investigations. In his book, Things My Daughters Need To Know: A Cop and Father’s View of Sex, Relationships and Happiness, Demery shares his professional and personal life experiences as an investigator and a dater with an aim to “helping women see their lives and loves in a different way so they can learn to read their own dating situations better and hopefully change the outcome.”
I asked Demery (who is a big cheerleader of abstinence, no doubt because the book started out “as a letter to my daughters”) to share some red flags and signs you might be dating a player.
The first thing he warns is to watch for too many shared interests. “Men are motivated by their libido and whatever it takes for a man to get a woman’s confidence in a relationship, he’s going to say or do,” says Demery. “If we’re not into hang gliding and we meet a woman who is into hang gliding that we want to become intimate with, we’re going to be the best hang glider on earth.”
He goes on to recommend you test the waters by “throwing something out there that you’re not remotely interested in and see if he suddenly develops an interest in or knowledge of the subject.”
(Of course, I think his sudden interest in knitting finger puppets could be motivated by a genuine desire to impress you because he truly likes you. But Demery leaves no room for that nonsense. He seems to suggest that ALL men are rogues. I take this with a grain of salt.)
More red flags, he says, include past relationships. “If he doesn’t talk about any of his past relationships, that’s a red flag. If he talks about them too much, that’s a red flag. You have to notice patterns. If he’s constantly having problems with girlfriends because he’s cheated on them, well, he’s a cheater.” In other words, he’s not going to change for you. And if you’re the other woman, that’s a pretty good sign he’s a cheater.
Then there are his friends and family, and how much he lets you see of his life.
Demery says, “If you meet a guy and he’s vague about his private life, his home, where he works, or his friends, that’s a real big red flag. You want to meet close friends, not associates. You want to meet close family members, not extended family. You want to go to public places where he’s well known. When these things are absent, the obvious is there. If he can’t take you to his family church, it’s because he has a girlfriend or wife that goes there. If he can’t take you to visit his mom, it’s because his mom is going to wonder what happened to Jennifer.”
The funny thing is that we know these things, and yet, we all know a woman who has found herself dating someone who won’t take her to his place or introduce her to his friends, but who ignores all the obvious signs. Don’t be deliberately obtuse. You’re only setting yourself up for disappointment.
Demery sums it up best when he says, “These things don’t require a whole lot of thought.”