My latest essay at The Frisky is entitled "Why I'll Never Date Another Guy Named 'Tom'" and looks at exes and names and how they affect our perceptions of future people we encounter with the same name. Name as dealbreaker? Yes...probably.

Relatively recently, I dated two men in a row with the same first name—I’ll call them both Tom for the sake of this essay. One I fell in love with, and while I’m mostly over him, I’m not there all the way. Both are guys I was friends with before dating them, and I considered the possibility that the name thing would get weird with Tom 2.0, but I’d had a crush on him, so I overlooked it. They’re fairly different in personality, but the fact that in addition to sharing a name, both Toms have similar body types and professions adds to my sense that men with this name are not my type. Not to mention the fact that after I dated Tom 1.0, I had to keep calling Tom 2.0 by his full name when telling my friends about him, lest anyone get confused.

Dating men who share a name is not the same as, say, dating one guy who’s the spitting image of another, but it’s close.