"I've been dating the same guy my entire life, he just keeps changing his name."

It never ceases to amaze me how we can make such bad decisions in choosing partners and fail to a. learn from our mistakes, and b. listen to our friends' advice. You can always see the mistakes your friends are making, but when it comes to evaluating your own, many of us have horse blinders firmly attached to the sides of our heads and the sage advice from people who care about us falls on deaf ears. When fall hits, I always have a sense of needing to take stock of my life and since it's fall now, that inevitably means talking to my friends about our dating and marriage disasters, and this year, hopefully learning from their mistakes as well as my own. As Lauren says, "I've been dating the same guy my entire life, he just keeps changing his name," but I think we all want to break the pattern.

I called Ava on Saturday and we had a chat about her latest dating disaster. It wasn't actually dating, since the guy tried to pick her up in a very sneaky fashion, although she certainly has had her share of traumatic moments with men. She went out with Stavros (who turned out to be bisexual, if not truly gay) for two years, and the only fight we've ever had in our long friendship was about him. She also dated one guy who, when we were all out to dinner together, began clapping out of the blue. I asked him why he was clapping and he said, "Handclap to God! I gotta give props to God. He was having a really good day when he made me." He was serious, too.

Back to the story at hand, though, Ava had gone out to dinner last week with a friend of hers to a new spot in their city. The waiter asked them if they wanted to be on the VIP list for future events, and both replied in the affirmative. Ava didn't have a business card on her, so she wrote down her phone number. The next morning, she received a voicemail from the waiter, asking her to have drinks with him over the weekend. Realizing that the VIP list didn't exist, she called her friend with whom she'd gone to dinner and they jointly decided that this guy was sketchy. They set about Googling and checking offender databases and discovered that the waiter had several convictions for assault and battery, as well as a lengthy prison term for road rage in which he attacked a driver with brass knuckles, leaving the victim with metal plates and screws in his face. (Really, who drives around with brass knuckles in their car?) Adding to the absurdity is the fact that you can easily rhyme his last name with "retarded."

"Poor MODI," I told her. "You really do know how to pick them, don't you?"

She laughed. "First I turn guys gay, and now I'm attracting felons. Who do you think wins the Worst Boyfriend Lifetime Achievement Award, me or Lauren?"

That made me hoot, because Lauren has a couple of felons in her past, as well as the gay porn loving ex-husband. For a time, she dated a guy with a very long rap sheet who had schizophrenia to boot. When he wasn't taking his meds, he'd go for weeks without showers or brushing his teeth, but Lauren loved the person that he had been in the beginning and she stuck it out for a time. (Again, the only fight I've ever gotten in with Lauren was over this dude. I think there's a pattern here.) He continued his nefarious activities and, though Lauren wasn't involved, she was aware of it. Once they were driving in the car together and she was putting on lipstick in the mirror. He asked, "What are you doing, getting ready for your mugshot?" When she was finally ready to date again, she put up a profile on a dating website and ended it with, "I'd prefer if you didn't have a rap sheet long enough to wallpaper the Great Wall of China."

Of course, I'm in the running for the Worst Boyfriend Lifetime Achievement Award myself. On top of my painfully apparent poor decision making skills in choosing a marriage partner and a stubborn refusal to listen to my friends' concerns, I dated a sociopath before Ex who was my first real heartbreak. I was so anxiety-ridden over him that I couldn't eat for months. I lost a tremendous amount of weight, becoming so skeletal that when I got on the scale it would just flash, "Eat a sandwich!!" I also briefly dated a much older dethroned mayor and talk show host with a history of bouncing checks at massage parlors. His first line to me when he picked me up for our first date was, "Am I older than your father?" He is. Oh, and did I mention the Senate hopeful whose dreams were dashed when his divorce records were unsealed, revealing that he'd forced his beautiful and famous ex-wife to attend sex clubs with him? I see that award looming on my personal horizon.

All of this to say that despite the collective mistakes that Ava, Lauren and I have committed and continue to commit, I still believe in learning experiences. The arduous divorce process, which is stalled for me until the end of the month when I have a conference with Ex, is teaching me that even serious lapses in judgment that result in litigation transpire for a reason. I just hope I can detach my blinders on the next go-around. This time, I'll listen when my friends give me advice.