holiday greetings.

happy ferris wheel day, readers! this article was sent to me the other day as an early ferris wheel day present, so i figured i should share being it's the only holiday-appropriate bit i have this year. i'm all tapped out of heartwarmingly weird holiday stories after last year's post. shocking, i know - everyone should have a cache of ferris wheel stories.

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but i had promised last year that i would top that post this year, and given ferris wheel day 2008 was nothing short of tragic, i'm going to have to veer from the holiday a little, although still keeping it in the spirit of the season. so for 2009's sole matters-of-the-heart piece* i'm going to discuss an interesting phenomenon that's been taking place over the last few years....

guys i date marry the next girl they date after me. not all of them, but enough, thus far, during my post-college years, to become apparent. and although i know i'm not the only female - or person, really - on earth to experience this, out of all my close female friends, i am the only one to experience this. and experience it over and over again. and they all kind of look at me, mouths agape, whenever i've brought this up, so that puts it into "rare territory" in my book.

i've been trying to come up with a proper term for this affliction/superpower but still haven't found anything i like, nor read anything i liked from articles/other women who suffer from this. maybe 'penultimate girlfriend syndrome', but i feel like that phrase leans towards the negative, and in some cases - and so far, all of my cases - being the PG is most definitely not a negative thing.

but for brevity's sake, we'll call it PGS for now. so i've suffered from PGS since 2002, although i wasn't aware of it back then. but since then, three guys that i dated married the girl they dated immediately after me. all are still married, ranging from about 2-5 years of wedded bliss at this point. guy #1 even has two children.

a fourth has been dating someone seriously for the past few years after me. another is also in a serious relationship, and he's the settling down sort and a little older, so i wouldn't be surprised if they become victims numbers 4 and 5.

a sixth entered into a relationship about a month after professing his love for me this past summer. i'll be shocked if he doesn't stay with this girl, putting him on the list as well.

so that's three actual marrieds, three on the cusp. there's actually only two guys that - well, as far as i know, so there is margin for error here, but i'm pretty sure i'd know about it - have not started a serious relationship right after dating me.

so i've been told in the past that i should capitalize on my PGS and start some sort of backwards dating service for guys who really want to get married - they date me so then they can find the woman of their dreams afterwards. (before you think i'm dissing myself here, i realized that my PGS comes into play, at least so far, only in cases where i ended things. the men who've broken up with me are, for the most part, still running loose. this enables me to find humor in the whole situation, as opposed to sending me running into therapy). i imagine i could use the endorsements of the three who are not only married, but happily married for a decent amount of time already, in my marketing paraphernalia. alternatively, one of my female friends suggested another creative method of profiting off of this gift of mine -- she would set me up with guys that she likes, that way when i'm done with them they will be ready to run down the aisle with her. clever.

considering my current state of affairs, now is probably the time to attempt my abnormal dating service, although i worry that trying to use my PGS for specific means is tampering with the universe. but i am kind of curious to see if i can actually manipulate this innate talent i have of sending men fleeing from bachelorhood into a career.


*i realized in creating these 2/14 posts that it is just so much easier to write about these sorts of matters, but i just can't bring myself to be one of those girls with a public dating diary. not to mention the content would scare away all our readers. if morbidly curious, someday you will find them in my essay collection - working title is "love stories for the dark humorist".