Unqualified - Anna Faris

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to Live By: The Professions of Men You Should Not Date (I Broke My Own Rules)

      Before you read this, a caveat: I am attracted to all these types of people. And in large part, have dated them. Or married them.

      1. MAGICIAN

      The idea that someone gets off on tricking you is just fucked up. I dated a guy in college who loved scaring me. He would hide behind the door and pop out just as I entered a room. Of course it freaked me out, but then I’d get mad. He’d giggle and I just wanted to punch him so badly. I didn’t, because I don’t have strong fists. But magicians have that similar desire all the time. To be clear, I love the idea of magic and the beauty and artistry around it, but the desire to trick people and never let them in on how you pulled it off? That seems to me like a person who will never fully reveal himself to you. I don’t mind magicians as people, but in the realm of dating, the tendency to trick is very confusing to me.

      2. MUSICIAN

      Here’s my theory on musicians: when you have an audience of more than ten thousand people worshipping you, how do you go home to your partner at night and be like, “So how was your day?” There’s got to be an intoxicating head rush when you look into a sea of fans and know that you could have sex with any of them, no matter their gender preference. After that, can you ever be satisfied with anything less? Plenty of musicians don’t achieve that level of success, I know, but even unsuccessful musicians are looking for that kind of attention. People who follow their creative passions are fascinating but also complicated, and they all have a tricky combination of narcissism and insecurity. The one thing that keeps some actors in check is that the crew is not laughing at their dumb jokes. The key grip is checking his phone and rolling his eyes, and he just wants to go home at the end of the workday. When you ad lib a joke, the boom operator, who has undoubtedly worked with much bigger stars than you, is probably thinking, What a narcissist, and you feel that, and it’s humbling. But being a musician on a large stage? How do you separate yourself from the rockstardomness of being a rock star? So don’t date musicians, except maybe a classical one. Second-chair oboe. I would stay away from first chair. And definitely not a conductor.

      3. DOCTOR

      My experience dating doctors has been that they’ve pretty much been dicks. Also, I have never dated a doctor. Plus, I saw that Alec Baldwin and Nicole Kidman movie. What was it called? Malice? The one where she’s complaining to her husband, played by Bill Pullman, that “I hate our new neighbor” but of course she’s screwing him because he’s got a total God complex. That seemed realistic enough.

      4. ATHLETE

      Not necessarily because they cheat, which I know is what you’re thinking. But because if they’re getting older or there’s a new recruit or they have massive injuries, you have to spend a lot of time stroking their ego. “Honey, don’t you worry about Brock. I’m sure he’ll tear his ACL too.” After a bad game, you have to be so emotionally supportive, and the exhaustion will just burn you out. Plus, during the season, what are they going to have left to give you?

      5. CHEF

      I know, it sounds like a good idea. They’ll cook for you. I get it. That’s what I call the Chef Trap. Don’t fall for it. As someone who has dated a chef zero times, I can tell you that the culture of the kitchen might not translate to relationships. It’s hot and incredibly stressful, and, as I know from experience watching Hell’s Kitchen, temper is encouraged. If people have a hot temper at work, I just don’t think they can avoid bringing it home. And he probably gets home at three thirty in the morning.

      6. THERAPIST

      I haven’t been to much therapy at all. It terrifies me. Growing up, my parents were of the belief that if a person is in therapy, that was true validation that they had a mental illness. But in LA, you’re the person with the mental illness if you’re not in therapy. So I went once, and the therapist asked me where I see myself in ten years. “I’d like to live in Northern California in a house with a lot of land and plants and maybe an amphitheater to put on plays,” I said.

      He responded, “Do you realize that in that explanation you didn’t mention your son once?” I wanted to throw something at him. Um, that’s why I want to go there, dick, to be with my son and give him everything I wanted as a kid. And would you ever say that to a man? Question his commitment to fatherhood because he focused on himself in therapy? After that, I was therapyless for years because it made me so furious. If you date a therapist, I imagine their silent judgment at home, your therapist boyfriend dissecting the meaning underlying everything you say or do. And who wants to date someone who is going to be analyzing them all the time?

      7. ACTOR

      We all just need so much praise. I know I do, and male actors are the same way. Still, I can’t help but be attracted to them. And I know many men have actresses on their “don’t date” list, too. Of my four serious relationships, two of the men—so, not a great percentage—told me their moms said they should never date an actress. Hearing it for the first time was jarring. After the second, it was like, Is this really a thing? I wasn’t even successful yet. I was doing local Seattle theater, and I wasn’t all that dramatic of a person. I just wanted men not to cheat on me.

      Basically, the only profession you can or should date is a woodworker, or a guy who makes boats. Like Kevin Costner in Message in a Bottle. Someone who is brooding but carves wood all day, making something gorgeous with his hands while he ruminates on lost love, and finding new love, and stormy seas.

      Chad Burke was my first boyfriend. He was a junior, I was a senior and, as far as I was concerned, he was the hottest guy in our high school. So I couldn’t believe it the night we kissed at a Stone Temple Pilots concert. Chad was incredibly angry—this is the guy who snuck out at night to write Rage Against the Machine lyrics on telephone poles—which turned out to be a theme in my life. I spent a long time feeling drawn to angry men.

      Chad worshipped Steven Seagal. He looked like a high school version of the action star, with the low ponytail and everything. It was 1993, back when that was sexy. (Was it, though? Or was that just me?)

      Chad was popular because he was good-looking, but not in the way well-liked people are popular. He would never have been elected the captain of a team or voted Most Likely to Succeed or anything like that. He was a cynical, bitter teenager, but looks can get you far in high school.

      He was smart, too—although, can we talk for a minute about how fucked-up our societal intelligence scale is? Why do we gauge smarts the way we do? I say this out of pride, because I took an intelligence test in high school that scored students on a level of 1 to 5 and I got a 2. The teacher told me my score and suggested that I should become a secretary and I was so pissed off. Not because secretaries are dumb—I’m sure most secretaries are plenty smarter than a 2 out of 5—but because being told what I “should” or “could” do, as if I was too stupid for anything else, was infuriating.

      Similarly, I scored a 1060 out of 1600 on the SATs and I remember this guy in my grade asking me what I got, and after I told him he said, “Oh my God, I thought you were so much smarter than that.”

      “I know,” I said. “I thought I was, too!”

      Thank God I had parents who believed in me, because I really took that secretary thing to heart, and if I didn’t have a family who constantly encouraged me I certainly wouldn’t have the confidence to write this book that I’m totally unqualified to be writing.

      But anyway, by conventional standards, Chad was smart.

      One September evening in 1993 a group of seven or eight of us went to a Stone Temple Pilots concert. It was exhilarating to be out with the cool kids. I was not in the popular crowd in high school, and while I mostly tried to stay under the radar, I found myself on the receiving end of mean girls or general mocking a decent amount. Being a theater kid wasn’t looked highly upon in Edmonds. So

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