Once you graduate, there are no more mixers, but you’ll still be meeting the same frat boys you hung out with (and went home with) in college, just all grown up. Here’s a starter guide so you’ll be ready when these overgrown frat boys start spitting their grown-up game.
1. The Grown-Up
You go out with this boy man because you start seeing engagement announcements and think it might be time to go on a date that doesn’t end with breakfast. He was probably in a mid-level fraternity in college, but he has it all now. He’s exactly who you should be dating so you can achieve your goal of trophy wifedom, but your mentalities make you feel like he’s at least a decade older than you are. He’s not, actually (I said trophy wife, not sugar daddy, gross), but it seems that way. He’s an adult man, and you’re still struggling to make sure your life doesn’t end up an exact replica of the latest episode of Girls.
2. The Pretend Grown-Up
You can still find him at the campus bar every Thursday night, where he’s always overdressed. We get it, you have a job, and we get it, you still want to bang undergrads. He wants to give you the impression that he’s so nice, which he is. He is certainly so nice to whichever girl he’s with each night for the sixty seconds he’s with her, but it’s the furthest thing from genuine. His number one goal is to hook up. You thought those days were behind you, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The difference is, he takes you on dates to try to get in your pants. If that doesn’t work, he’ll surely turn to his saturday night slampiece. He knows sometimes you have to settle, but ladies, don’t settle for this surprise douchebag.
3. Peter Pan(ic)
You’re missing your college days, so you decide a casual hookup is exactly what you need. Then you realize the boy you’ve chosen is never going to actually grow up. You knew he was bad news, but you didn’t care. You thought all you needed was an overgrown douchenozzle to make you feel young again. He is exactly like so many guys you knew in your college days. His fraternity hazed the hardest, and he’s never quite gotten over the trauma of it all. He treats his slams worse than he treated his pledges, and they were beyond used and abused. Despite the fact that he’s “in the real world,” he parties just as hard as he did during his college days, in an attempt to black out the tedium of his 9-5. Avoid this red flag at all costs. He won’t make you feel younger, but he will make you realize it might be time to grow up sooner than you think (and nobody wants that).
4. The Overgrown Frat Star
This boy still attends all of his fraternity parties, and sometimes you forget that he graduated and is not amid yet another victory lap. He takes his shirt off at most events, whether it’s warranted or not (it usually isn’t). He’s a bartender, so even his job encourages him to get wasted. Whenever you’re around him you feel sober, which isn’t something you’re used to. If you happen to make a one-night mistake with him, it’s fine, because he won’t remember it anyway, making it way easier for you to erase it from your own mind.
5. Blacked Out Boy
This one night nightmare shows you that your post-grad lifestyle is getting weird. Your night started normal, but ended with shots of Jagermeister and Malibu, a combination that seemed delicious, but has now turned deadly. You’re at your regular bar, it’s last call, and you start looking for a prospect. Your eyes lock on a guy who looks cute enough in your drunken stupor. In the cab he tries to unpeel your sticky bra. At his place you think things are normal, until you realize he’s a pirate. Statues of ships, a role-playing eye patch, a tattoo of a skull and crossbones, the whole nine yards. You know he was in a frat because the brand on his bottom gives him away, but that seems like the only normal thing about him. You text your friends that you’re safe, but realize next time you might not be so lucky (no one wants to be kidnapped by Somali pirates). When your friends ask who he was you blame a blackout for sudden memory loss. It’s better than admitting you went home with a Captain Jack who was certainly no Johnny Depp. You know, hypothetically.