Welcome to Scottsdale, stomping ground for snowbirds, situationships, and: So. Much. Sun. New York has The Village, and east of the 51— Arizona has the valley. With 360 days of summer and zero inhibitions, Scottsdale lands number one spot for the hottest city in America!
Desert life means permanent summer, so flirt and forget. The Scottsdale man cares more about his diminishing hairline and vape addiction than he does about you, and as he should — 120 degrees on a bald head isn’t a good look. Don’t laugh, you once cried to your girlfriends about being desperately in love with him when he left you on delivered.
So, what is it about summer in this city that makes us so desperate? Is the UV getting to our brains, are we so in need of a summer romance that we’d settle for the next Chad or Brad that slides up, or did we put on the milkmaid dress and suddenly become homemakers? Why are 20- something girls so ready to settle down? Rather, why are we so ready to settle?
It was an epidemic, everywhere I looked women were playing house with frat boys turned finance bros, serial polygamists. The phrase “Let’s be exclusive with no label” was ringing in my head from all the times I had heard it. I needed to get to the bottom of the issue before one of my own girlfriends was sucked into the cycle (again). So, I went to the root cause, the single Scottsdale man.
My girls and I got ready to traverse the most soulless, most shameless place in the Valley: The Entertainment District. In the heart of Old Town Scottsdale and filled to the brim with married men, sans wedding rings of course, bachelorette parties, and sticky nightclubs, ED resembles its abbreviation far too closely. The only thing you can count on it to do, is disappoint. Unless you’re about six shots of shitty Tequila deep, then you’ll be talking about the night for years to come.
Our first stop was Boondocks, a universally favorite indoor/outdoor bar in Scottsdale. Here, I met Justin, a 20-something self-proclaimed Finance Bro who considered himself a monogamist through and through. So, when I asked him why his previous situationships never worked out in his favor, he simply answered that the girls he had flings with were never “dateable”.
Justin keyed me into what he calls the “Bucket Theory” — think “Green Light Theory” à la Carrie Bradshaw and Samantha Jones in Season 2, Episode 8 of Sex & The City: The Man, The Myth, The Viagra. The Green Light Theory suggests that men, like taxi cabs, turn on their “available” light when they’re ready to commit to a relationship, and until then, they’ll drive right past you, no matter how much they may like you. In other words, the theory implies that timing, rather than true connection, is the primary factor in a man’s decision to commit. The key difference between these two theories on why men won’t commit is timing. While the Green Light Theory hinges on when you meet a man, the Bucket Theory focuses on what happens in the first few moments of your meeting. And unlike its predecessor, the Bucket Theory comes from the rarest, most elusive place known to womankind: the adult male brain — which, albeit deeply flawed, might just be the missing piece to breaking the harrowing cycle of situationships.
Justin goes on to say how a woman might need 2, even 5 dates before deciding if a man is the right fit for her, if he is dateable, meet her friends-able, even potentially marry-able. However, he says with complete confidence that a man knows within 5-10 minutes of meeting a girl if she goes in one of 3 buckets, the Friend Bucket, the Fuck Bucket, or the Fuck, I Love You bucket. He says sometimes, though rarely, if a man’s frontal lobe is fully developed and the girl holds almost all the qualities he is looking for, a friend can, given time and the perfect circumstances, drift into the Fuck, I Love You bucket. A Fuck to Fuck, I Love You transition, on the other hand, is about as possible as a temperate Arizona summer or a hinge date without “short-term relationship, open to long” in his bio.
Justin’s theory got me thinking, do all men decide our fates within the first 5 minutes of meeting us? Is Judgment Day really shorter than the time it takes me to air fry leftover pizza from a night out? I had to get to the bottom of it. Enter Brad (I wish I was kidding but that was actually his name), a freshly 21-year-old with a trail of Blood Orange White claw dripping down the front of his Phi Kap Spring Bash ‘23 t-shirt. After he referred to himself in 3rd person as “king of the ASU chapter” (eww??), I asked Brad how he feels about monogamy. After explaining to him that that word meant only dating one person, perhaps with the intention of a long term relationship, he was less than thrilled about the prospect. Surprise, surprise, the man that reeks of Axe body spray and poor intentions isn’t looking to settle down! I asked him what he thought of Justin’s “Bucket Theory,” to which he responded that women these days show too much skin on social media to be considered dateable and that the foundation of humanity was crumbling as a result. Again, I wish I was kidding. So, since I was obviously running Brad’s communal fraternity brain cell ragged, I said my goodbyes and left him to roam the streets, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I had just unleashed a horror upon the women of Scottsdale.
My next prospect was at Wasted Grain, amidst live music and a few 30-somethings mixed in with about a million inebriated college kids. Rohit was a financially stable, 30-year-old, Mechanical Engineer who seemed to have his sights set on my best friend. A perfect target, mostly for the purpose of making sure my friend wasn’t about to take some freak home, I asked him for his position on monogamy. Rohit was something most men his age are not, aware of their quickly diminishing hairline and value to 20-something women. Let’s face it, you’re a lot more inclined to contemplate settling down at 30 than you are at 22. He said he preferred monogamy, and when I asked why he was single, he said that his parents had divorced in a pretty gruesome fashion when he was just eight years old, leaving him with a negative view of commitment. So, his monogamy inclined heart was being held back by his “marriage is a lie” childhood trauma. But even Rohit could hear the clock ticking, and completely agreed with Justin’s Bucket Theory, though he expanded Judgement Day to around 20 minutes. Almost every guy I interviewed the rest of the night did the same — some said five minutes, some three hours, some three seconds. At its core, the Bucket Theory held one universal truth about men: the moment they meet a woman, she’s mentally filed into a bucket. And once she’s in, that bucket is basically sealed with industrial-strength glue. Good luck getting reassigned.
I thought back to a couple summers ago when I found myself shrunken down and exhausted from sitting in one too many buckets throughout college. I didn’t conceptualize the Bucket Theory at the time, I figured I was just dealing with my fair share of shit before finding “the one”. Eventually, the romanticism wore off, my nails were filed down to stumps from clawing away at the inside of the buckets I inhabited, and I figured, at the ripe age of 21, that love was simply not in my cards. Then, on a cool September night about a year ago, I went on a Hinge date that I figured would let me hangout in one of his “buckets” for a while. Instead, he rubbed the soreness from my body and taught me how to take up space again. His name was Jake and now he’s in all my buckets. No situation in sight.
So, ladies, make it a point to remember that although a summer situationship may be tempting, use caution when stepping into that bucket he holds out to you. The Justins and Rohits of the world might just forget you in there. The Brads will let you up for air long enough to slut-shame you in front of their “brothers” and then drown you in your sorrows. If you’re craving commitment, rest assured—your Jake is out there somewhere, probably wearing loafers with no socks and sipping a skinny marg at The Montauk. But let’s be real: it might take a few sticky summers and a handful of wrong-bucket boys to get to him. And while there’s zero shame in a little splash-around, remember—situationships are like pool floaties: fun for a minute, but they’ll never take you anywhere.
Meanwhile, always use caution when traversing the Arizona desert, odds are you’ll sink your Tony Bianco kitten heel into a prickly-haired cactus or an often lost, and always confused, Brad. Whichever it is, pick it off and keep moving. The last thing you want to do is be late for girl’s night out!
He might’ve put you in a bucket, but you’re the one who decides when to step out of it — and into something better.
Xoxo,
Aki
