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Welcome to Unbuttoned, a behind-the-scenes look at dating and relationships around the Gate City.

I'm Ginger, one of three bloggers here and a Midwestern transplant trying to make a home - at least temporarily - in the South. If you've already peeked at my bio, you know I'm in my early 20s and a little torn between going out and "growing up."

Simply: I'm not ready to settle down.

I'm a fan of local nightlife and you might find me at a party or out downtown late on a Friday or Saturday. But you're just as likely to find me curled up with a good book, experimenting in the kitchen, watching a bad zombie flick or downing a couple beers with the boys.

I'm here to give you a frank (and likely sometimes embarrassing) look at my life - and my two cents on the local dating scene - with some help from Ruby and Wingfella.

And we're hoping to get a look at your lives through talking about topics from the serious (When do you pop the question?) to the not-so-dire (Boxers or briefs?).

To get things started over here (and to kick things off by baring it all), we're going to dedicate the first week of the blog to firsts in our lives: First dates, first kisses, first crushing heartbreak ... all that uncomfortable and gooshy stuff.

Let me know what you think, and leave a comment or send me an e-mail if there are topics you'd like to see us tackle here. We'll do our best - and always be honest.

I can't even remember how many first dates I've been on that bombed because of the basics.

My freshman year of college, an older guy - the hot-with-glasses-and-a-guitar type who seemed smart but strong and sensitive (in my naive 17-year-old eyes, at least) - asked me out. At first, I was flattered. Then, he took me to a smoky chain bar-and-grill where everything was bathed in grease, the bathrooms smelled like fries and the food has less flair than something you'd order at a Hardees. When he tried to take me home afterward, I think I started laughing hysterically.

I was thinking about that awful date over the weekend, while out at a neighborhood bar with one of my best friends from college. He went on a date Wednesday with a guy he'd met recently. By all accounts, the guy was cute, well-educated, savvy and smart.

But there was a crucial difference of opinion.

While the guy had planned a multi-course Italian dinner topped off with dessert, my friend was looking for a simple lunch - or burgers or pizza at a low-key place where cutting an unpleasant date short wouldn't be particularly awkward.

I would have jumped at a fancy dinner - with all the bells and whistles and a long wine list. But for my friend, that elaborate plan botched the deal. And everyone ended up going home alone.

A first-date meal doesn't have to be expensive or fancy. All I'm saying is that, if you take me to the Olive Garden, I'm going to question your judgment and creativity.

Do menu choices matter to you this much? Or am I finicky for putting such a precedent on food during a first date?

I grew up in and around Charlotte until I joined the working world and eventually moved here.

Bachelordom and relationships share space on my dating resume, and I've learned that both arrangements tend to have their trade-offs. That also means that I've committed plenty of time to finding dates and/or trying to peer into the mind of the opposite sex. Don't mistake that for skill or wisdom with either task, however.

At 27 years old, the pizza boxes don't stay on my apartment floor as long as before, but I remember the good ol' days fondly.

As for what I like to do, going outside, writing, reading and listening to live music are up there with drinking good beer and watching pro football.

Dinner and a movie? Boring!

The first-ever first date I went on involved me and my 83 Honda Accord with a freshman from my high school. I was 17 at the time. We ordered sandwiches at a cafe and had cake. Afterward, we talked about how blue the sky was at dusk. Sweet, huh?

These days, it seems that getting away from that dinner/movie stuff is the best bet to get to know someone.

My most successful first date ever started at College Hill Sundries and ended at the Rhino. My friends have taken dates disc golfing, thrift store shopping, to concerts and out on paddle boats.
They're simple ideas, but establishing that "I'm going to be different," makes your date know you're not the norm.

I say keep the dinner/movie for date No. 2. That's when the magic happens anyway.

So what other places around here are good for an anti-first first date? Any bombs? Super successes?

I'm Ruby, a transplant from a different part of the Midwest.

I certainly love going out and being social, but there are bars and restaurants everywhere. It's the same for dates and friends: I'm looking for someone who can show me something I can't find on my own.

My relationships have been like dating through the looking glass. The happier I am being single, the faster I end up in a relationship.

I'll echo Ginger here: I'm here to tell it like it is, and that makes me look bad sometimes. I was immature and cowardly in how I dealt with the aftermath of my first date. But give me a break, I was 16.

This guy was practically famous at school for being strange. He wore a suit every day, rarely got a haircut and had spent enough time living abroad that he seemed sort of like a foreign exchange student.

I guess my desire for some male attention over-rode another strong motivation: my desire for my friends to think I was cool.

Only through work at Belk did I know this short cute blonde crush through my teenage years. She, like so many others, would become my imaginary girlfriend.

You see, I was what they call a "late bloomer."

Not until after about age 18 did I ever get a serious girlfriend, and even then it was never that serious. There never was a high school sweetheart. There were plenty of girl-friends, but not girlfriends.

That put me at a disadvantage when it came time to talk about past relationships with any particular current romantic interest. All I had was a bunch of two week long flings.

These days, it's not so hard to maintain a relationship that lasts longer than a couple weeks or months. But what other late bloomers are out there?

Is waiting for a worthwhile "one" really fear of commitment, being too picky, or is it just knowing what you want?

About a week ago, I came to accept a tough truth about myself: I have a history of dating nerdy guys.

The ones who played Dungeons and Dragons in high school. Think Sam in "Freaks and Geeks." Think Xander Harris on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

I've been firmly entrenched in this pattern for the past seven or eight years.

There was the long-term boyfriend who toted his computer around in the car trunk in case his friends wanted to have a LAN party, some sort of pointless gathering where the guys sat in a room and played computer games with each other from individual terminals. There was the one who painted little figurines from the gaming store and arranged them on the top of his dresser. The list of oddities goes on and on.

Not so with my first boyfriend (and just to be clear, I'm not counting 7th grade crushes who gave me stuffed animals from the drug store on Valentine's Day).

No, my first boyfriend was one of the cool kids.

He looked sort of like one of those half-naked posters you see on the walls in Abercrombie and Fitch. Sure he was smart (he went to some ivy league school and is becoming a doctor, I think). But he also was popular, athletic, pretty much a chick-magnet, and what my parents probably thought was a good prospect - a sign that their daughter would go on to have a healthy dating life.

When people talk about having a type, I nod and smile. My chain of geeks - five or so that I dated and at least a handful more who became repeated hook-ups - is too long to deny. Then I wonder where that first boyfriend came from.

And whether he was, in the end, just too cool for me.

Do you have a type? And, if so, how has it worked out for you when you diverged from that pattern?

This week is turning out to be a gruesome trip down memory lane for me. My first everything seems to be the pancake that gets thrown away. It was round about the dissolution of my first co-habiting relationship after college that I guess I must have come to the conclusion that that's an OK thing. He hurt me, I hurt him, and now maybe we won't do the same thing to the next person we love.

My first boyfriend fits the pattern: total wreck. He was in college and I was still in high school and the more time I spent with him and his friends, the less engaged I got in my life. He left me for his ex, a girl his age, and I had alienated almost all of my friends by thoroughly assimilating his life.

Only some of them took me back.

Have you ever so completely adopted a date's lifestyle or values that your friends don't recognize you any more? How do you patch things up with your friends when you come to your senses?

My friends who live in big cities - mainly New York - complain constantly that they're surrounded by people but can't meet anyone.

For a long time, I thought that was ridiculous. During the time I spent up in that city, I had no problem meeting guys - at bars, at the farmer's market, even art museums.

So when I moved to Greensboro a few years ago, I thought 'No problem.' Making social headway outside my office was going to be a snap.

Not so.

My first few months in the Gate City were a pathetic exercise when it came to the social scene. I'd hit up Cafe Europa or Solaris and start a conversation with an interesting guy or girl at the bar. I'd chat someone up at Natty Greene's and hand out my phone number, hoping someone would find it later in their jeans' pocket and pick up the phone. No one did.

I don't know if my problem was in the come on or the conversation - whether it was the way I looked or the way I acted. And - to be clear - I wasn't even looking for a date. This was all about making friends and finding some bonds outside of work or my college friends in a somewhat unfamiliar city.

The low point came when I found myself telling a stranger how much I wanted to make friends, how cool I thought she was and how much I'd like to go out sometime. Not, let me tell you, a particularly appealing sell.

Predictably, once I stopped being so desperate, people started showing interest. I got asked out on dates. Men wanted to chat with me. And I even started conversations with a few women who could be potential friends.

But it still doesn't seem easy.

Have you had a hard time meeting people in the Triad? Am I going to the wrong places and taking the wrong approach?

If any of you are recent transplants to the area, I'd love to know how you've picked up dates or found new friends here.

He wasn't my first boyfriend. Maybe he was the third or fourth.

It was a head-over-heels situation. We met in the early summer, while working at the same newspaper. We went to lunch. Things progressed.

I was 17, I think. He might have been 20. Maybe a little older.

When I went back to school, we carried on, even though he was in the Midwest and I was states away. It seemed to me that we'd mastered the long-distance thing. I'd see him on vacations. He'd make the daylong drive to visit me or hop on a Greyhound.

There was no question of chemistry. We seemed compatible in nearly every single way. I trusted him. Completely.

I didn't see the signs.

One morning, when we'd been dating for about a year, my phone rang. There was a girl at the other end. She didn't know me, but she'd seen my number on his phone. She wanted to know who was calling him all the time. After all, she said, he was living with her best friend and had been for a few months. Things were serious, she said.

I didn't know what to say. It's true, he'd moved into an apartment. It's true, there was often a girl there - someone he claimed was his roommate's sister. It's true, he'd never taken me there - we always went out when I came home to visit. And it's true, he wasn't answering his phone as often.

He never admitted anything. And after all those months of long-distance effort, I didn't give him much opportunity to explain. I was too appalled. Too disillusioned.

After we split up, my friends came out of the woodwork to tell me all the reasons they never liked him. Everyone seemed shocked at the specifics - but they weren't suprised he turned out to be scum.

Since then, I've been through a number of heartbreaks - but only one other was anywhere near that bad. Looking back, though, I wonder how I could have been so blind.

Have you ever trusted anyone so much that you overlooked the danger signs? Are women more likely to be so trusting than men are?

And are long-distance relationships just risky territory from the start?

I can only shake my head now at how completely I fell apart after what looks like such a short and low-intensity relationship. We dated from Thanksgiving to the end of our freshman year of college and I think we got together because our other dorm-floor friends thought we had a similar sense of humor.

We did what I think a lot of college freshmen do -- at least we had a lot of company: we drank a lot, played a lot of video games, astounded ourselves with our reflections on life, ate at the dining hall.

Around spring break, he started hanging out with another girl on our dorm floor. For a while our friends sort of pretended there was nothing going on, the three of us even hung out sometimes.

Then it was over and I fell completely apart.

I missed classes because I couldn't stop crying. I got something like rug-burn under my eyes from scrubbing away tears so often. I moped around campus inflicting my grief on everyone and I nurtured a furious hatred of this tiny, short blond girl for stealing my man.

Then we all went away for the summer and the next year we lived in different dorms and life pretty much went on.

I have better strategies now for dealing with break-ups. What are yours?

After the sting, the scar tissue is tougher. And it makes you battle ready for other stuff to come.

Looking for a prom date, I was shot down by three different girls. The last one I asked didn't even go to my high school. She had no real excuse.

(Full disclosure: I was a skinny, zitty teenager and more well-known than popular)

College gave me a couple hookups, but even more denials. Hey, when you're a freshman, it's hard to get some.

Well, that time out on the dating firing range teaches you somethin':

1. Know when to cut your losses.
2. It's not the end of the world. There are many fish in the pond.
3. If you don't shoot, you don't score.

After a tough couple years I became a confident, not desperate fella. If they didn't want me, chances are I don't want them either. And I became OK with simply being friends - a woman friend makes for a great wingman.

All because I was shot down a bunch.

What has being shot down taught you? How have you changed, post-dumping?

This applies to anything, from cooking an egg to sex. If you don't know what you're doing, then make sure you have someone there that does.

Otherwise, the first time out can be a disaster. Which mine was.

I didn't know what to do, she didn't either. At the end we had more questions than answers. It was much later that I would 'round the bases again.

Overall, it seemed kind of pointless, embarassing and not what I thought it could be.

How was your first? Amazing? Embarassing? Painful?

Remember: this is a public forum. Please don't write anything that would offend your mom or grandmother.

Reading the Friday paper last week, I couldn't help but notice the Life story on standing up at friends' weddings.

In the last month, I've been to three weddings - two of them for cousins in their early 20s. I have photos of myself with Cousin 1 and Cousin 2 as babies and toddlers, sitting on the couch at my grandparents' house. Somewhere, there's a home video of us running around at my fourth birthday party.

So this whole getting married thing seems a little weird to me. A little premature.

At the same time, the flurry of family weddings has put some pressures on me. At the most recent one, my aunt said (somewhat hopefully) that maybe our whole family will be traveling to a wedding for me soon. At another one, the groom asked me when I'm planning to take the plunge.

Everywhere I turn, someone is getting married or talking about weddings. Except for me. And I'm fine with that - I'm not ready to commit - but I'm never sure how to respond to people's comments and overtures about my situation.

Is it wedding season among your circle of friends? How do you respond to those awkward questions? Is there some sort of snappy comeback I should be using?

In the late 90s, it was briefly cool to let the thong hang out above the beltline.

Numerous women took that as a chance to express themselves in lace, polyester and all manner of elastic material. Sometimes it just looked painful.

Styles have changed, and underwear is now often below the waists of those low-rise jeans. But a few have failed to catch on to this decade. Really, if things are going well enough, us fellas will see them eventually.

So, a few questions.

Is it really that sexy, in public, to let it all hang out? Has there been a prospect that you shut off due to too much undies on the outies?

I had a talk over the weekend that was like stepping into the twilight zone.

I'm thinking about marriage in a theoretical, sometime-in-my-life kind of way. It's impossible not to as all of my friends are getting married. I decided to ask a friend of my family, an older guy who works in finance, if he could tell me what to keep my eyes open for on the financial side.

I have a clear idea of what I want in a partner for the love, honor, cherish, forsake all others part. But richer and poorer is in there too, and I've given it almost no thought.

Pretty much I wanted to know what I could expect if I married someone at my same income level. I have a calculator, I can figure out some of that myself, but I was curious what an expert would say.

After an hour on the phone, I still don't know the answer to that question. But I know there are still some people in the world who think that a woman is making a mistake if she marries a man who can't support her. Support meaning pay for everything.

There was this amazing doubt in Mr. Finance's voice when he said "Do you want to work?"

Would it be nice to never have to work? Heck yeah. I could totally get down with the garden club, make some babies, learn golf. But I can't really say that has ever been a goal of mine. Especially not a goal to achieve by hitching myself to the right man.

I've never thought of my employment -- the most important thing in my life -- as a hobby.

After the conversation I found myself thinking "I'm so glad I don't live in his universe." But do I?

I need some men to tell me why they want to pay for everything and some women to tell me why they want to have everything paid for. Am I the one living in the twilight zone?

I have a friend who talks to her ex-boyfriends often, e-mailing or chatting on the phone with them.

She's met their new girlfriends. In some cases, she's gone to their weddings.

And even though she dated most of these guys for at least a year and was pretty serious about them, it doesn't seem to make her feel weird.

A lot of my friends are on good terms with their exes. I'm the weird one, I think sometimes.

I don't talk to anyone I've dated in the past, whether they were a monthlong fling or a longterm relationship. It's not that I'm on bad terms with all of them (although there are some I'd prefer never to talk to or see again); it's just that it seems strange to me - and unfair to anyone else I'm dating, who might worry that conversations are re-igniting old flames.

Do you talk to your exes? If you're in a relationship, do you and your partner have a stance on spending time with people you've dated before? And has a relationship with an ex ever caused problems with your current boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse?

A friend of mine recently joked that she wanted someone that she could call occasionally, with no strings attached, for an evening.

And not for an evening of playing cards.

Somewhere out there, people have friends-with-benefits. But I've never heard of it starting easily or ending well.

I've never gone that way for many reasons. So often I hear that one person becomes attached, and then it's a problem. For many, there's a big moral issue to get around. There's also the possiblity of a health risk. And with any relationship, there's expectations.

Friends-with-benefits seems to only exist on television sitcoms and in a comedian's punch line.

So does the friends-with-benefits arrangement only work well on paper, but not in practice? Have you ever heard of one that worked with no complications?

Ladies, we know you really watch football for the tight pants. Same for baseball, too. To deny it would be like guys saying that we ignore the cheerleaders.

But most of us non-professional athletes rely on the gym or a rec sports league to find other active people in the real world.

Some of those sports seem to attract the attractive. Or maybe the activity just whips participants into shape.

Either way, my friends and I have agreed that female rock climbers and paddlers tend to be pretty hot to trot. And there's the mystique and grace surrounding gymnasts and dancers.

As summer gets underway, most folks become more active either watching or participating in sports.

Which sports and activities have the highest hottie ratio? Have you ever gotten a date through recreation like jogging clubs or the local softball league?

I've been feeling guilty for a few months because of my reaction to some news from a close friend.

She's in her 20s and has been working a good job for a little less than two years. And she'd been having a tough time meeting people in a relatively new city.

Then, she met a guy. And a few weeks later, she got a job offer across the country from the company that she's wanted to work for ever since I can remember.

She turned it down.

When we talked about her decision, she mentioned a lot of factors. It wasn't like there was one major factor, she said. Then she brought up the guy - the boyfriend of a couple months, at the most. And said she didn't want to move right after she finally had met someone ... especially after such a long dry spell.

My response: You've got to be kidding. Take the job. Leave the guy.

Since then, I've wondered if that was a callous reaction. She's happy, and I'm thrilled she has someone in her life finally. She likes her job, and the city she's living in seems to be growing on her.

But my happiness for her is warring with my No. 1 dating rule: Don't let a relationship govern your life; and don't give up your aspirations for something that's not a sure thing. And I worry she'll eventually regret giving up her dream job for a guy.

Have you ever given up a job offer or another dream because of someone you're dating? How would you feel about moving to a different state or country for someone? And what are your limits on giving things up to make a relationship work?

Every guy I date has little quirks and habits that annoy me.

It's just a fact of relationships - as you grow closer to a person and better appreciate the best things about them, you can't help noticing some of those irksome traits.

Last night, I started thinking about some of my own. After all, I've spent a lot of time on this blog being snarky about other people's love lives, and I haven't put much effort into analyzing my own.

I'm sure people I've dated would gladly add more annoying traits to this list - and some of them would be more biting than anything I've come up with.

But so far, here are the top contenders I've come up with:

* I'm demanding and controlling. There's a certain way to do almost everything. And I'm not going to hold back if I think you've botched a process.

* Details are important. So important that I get bogged down in them and can be kind of obsessive sometimes.

* I'd rather sleep on the opposite side of the bed. Cuddling is great, but I've got limits when it comes to sharing personal space.

* I get bored easily. Most of the time, I'll follow your story to the end. But sometimes the glazed look in my eyes is going to wear on you.

* I'm a cat person, and that's non-negotiable.

* I can be overzealous about healthy eating and hitting the gym, even when you just got home from a long day at work and just want to sit on the couch, drink beer and watch basketball.

* I don't understand football. I never will. And you can't teach me.

What about you? Are there traits you know annoy your significant other? And are there things about people you've dated that just drive you crazy?

Somewhere in the first few dates, most people have a conversation like this:

Guy: You know what really irks me?

Gal: What?

Guy: People who (talk in libraries/use cell phones in public/kick puppies/quote Meg Ryan movies/etc.)

Gal: Ohmygosh! Me too!

And both wind up feeling more affectionate because they've got more in common through stuff they both can't stand.

Now you can find those people with similar dislikes online.

We know that similar interests are part of the foundation of a relationship. But what about common dislikes? What things have you and others united under in mutual disdain?

I think men are big fibbers. Like how all of them say they like women better with no make-up, but then when you wear make-up they tell you how good you look. Or like when they say they want to be friends, but then when you tell them you have a boyfriend you never hear from them again.

Just like the point of disclosing some information is to be enticing, some of it is meant to say "buzz off" in the subtext of dating speak. At the very least, it is meant to establish some parameters. But not always. Sometimes you can take information at face value. I think.

Like the other night, when I met a guy who asked if I wanted to hang out sometime, and I was like, "Sure! You don't mean a date, do you?"

See, I was a little sneaky here, because I do have a boyfriend, but I know that if I had deployed the "boyfriend jab" this dude would have heard "I'm being nice to you by not actually using the words 'leave me alone.'" And I genuinely wanted to get to know him. Mainly because he was wearing a cool red baseball cap that advertised a tow truck company with the slogan "Omaha's best hookers." It might not have been Omaha, but still, I love a hipster.

So I just kept the fact that I've been living with my boyfriend for three years under my hat, he assured me that he didn't mean a date, and later on he called me.

I was thinking over the weekend about Ruby's post from Friday and the different rules couples have in their relationships.

On the one hand, I know men who don't go out, one-on-one, with women other than their girlfriends or wives. And I know women who have the same policy.

On the other hand, I have good friends who go out as they please, with anyone they please. They trust their boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses, and their partners trust them not to misbehave. And that's as complicated as it gets.

I fall somewhere in between: I don't mind if my guy has female friends. But if he talks to the same girl all the time, goes out drinking with her often, crashes at her place or ends up in date-like situations with her, I'm going to raise hell about it.

Of course, relationship rules don't just cover who you spend time with. They might apply to how long you date someone before stepping up the commitment; how fast you hop into bed with someone; when to say "I love you;" how a guy treats his exes; what a girl says to her friends about what happens in the bedroom.

In my rulebook, you've got to date someone for at least a year before moving in with them or getting engaged. Saying you love someone is OK, as long as it doesn't end up just being routine. Even if you love me, limit the PDA - too much public touching is a major turn off, and it's just not classy. And sharing generalities about your sexual satisfaction is fine - as is picking up tips from friends - but dishing intimate details about your partner's sexual prowess seems like dirty pool.

What dating rules do you have?

Last night, The Simpsons opened with Marge reading "The Bridges of Madison County" and craving more romance. It got me thinking about the idea of romance. I don't have much patience for it.

Every time a guy has tried to do something romantic for me it has either been contrived and cheesy or -- when it was a long-ago boss -- super creepy. And I admit I've never tried doing anything "romantic" for a guy. But the word comes up all the time with friends describing their dates and mates. They make it sound like a good thing.

I wonder if there is a way to be modern, serious and romantic, with no 12-sided die required.