Dating and other bad habits.

Haircuts are a very polarizing topic in many relationships. Seriously.

I know a guy who dumped his girlfriend almost immediately following her decision to chop off her long locks into a haircut he referred to as the Pat Benatar. All the time they’d spent together, all the laughs they’d shared, it didn’t mean anything because he couldn’t stand to look at her.

Now maybe that’s a bit shallow or an extreme case of how the haircut can ring the doomsday bell. I’m sure they likely had other problems and the haircut just sent him over the edge. But the important part of the story isn’t why he dumped her, it’s why he was compelled to do so. Why he was so upset that he couldn’t think of anything more logical to do than cut ties with his newly-shorn pretty lady.

Why exactly? Because she didn’t talk to him about it first.

Not that she needed his permission; no one is saying that. But what hurt his feelings and shocked him so much was that he wasn’t expecting it.

“I thought she loved her hair,” he told me quietly one night. “People always told her how beautiful it was. I always told her how beautiful it was,” he confessed.

Ahh. So there it is. He liked her luscious locks. He told her so. And when they were gone he didn’t know how to feel. So he panicked and pulled the trigger.

Hair is a touchy subject, but more often (I should think) when it comes to body hair. Still, I have another friend who takes her boyfriend to get his haircuts. I can’t imagine how it sometimes feels to be him when the clippers come out and his girlfriend is behind the stylist, directing traffic.

“He got it cut right after we first started dating,” she explains, “and it was so awful looking that I cried. So after that I just started going with him so I could tell the girls how short to cut it on the sides and where to shape it up.”

It’s a little too mother-and-child for me, but I get where she’s coming from. And if he’s fine with her calling the haircut shots in their relationship, who are we to judge?

Which brings me to my own haircut story.

The BF needed a hair cut. It was getting to that place where his stick-straight hair was trying to be curly. Doing the wave up and over his ears. It was time.

And while I’m not in camp “I’m-going-to-come-with-you-and-boss-the-pool-Great-Clips-girl-around” I’m also not in camp “I-love-the-way-they-shave-your-head.” Because they do. Every time!

Every time BF gets a hair cut he says, “Oh they used this-number on the sides and that-number on the top, so it’s longer this time because I know you don’t like it so short.” But they lie to him. They set the clippers at whatever number is above “totally bald” but directly below “you’ll be able to tell you still have hair” and they buzz it. And while, yes, it’s soft to rub with my fingers, he looks like he just got out of the military when they’re done with him.

So imagine my surprise when I see him after a lunchtime snip and clip and he still has hair!

“Did you get a hair cut?” I ask him, incredulously, not believing that anything has changed because I’m not shocked by its lack of existence.

“Mmhmm,” he says absent mindedly.

I start touching it; pawing at it unabashedly, disbelieving it’s real. But it really is his hair and not a piece of something glued on to his scalp as a practical joke.

“I had them cut it,” he informs. “Like with scissors.”

And I am the happiest girl in the world.