When I started writing this post, it was very different. I wrote very defensively, as I have in the past, about why I haven’t seriously dated anyone in two years. Or at least, why I thought I haven’t seriously dated anyone in two years.
I’ve blamed circumstance. I’ve talked about how the opposite sex has let me down. The other night, while drinking wine with my mentor’s wife, Kelly, I literally said to her:
“There is something very wrong with this generation. Men my age – I’d rather just be alone.”
I’ve sincerely believed that. I’ve lived and breathed it. I triumphantly said, “aha!” whenever I went out with someone and it didn’t work out. I was always trying to prove to myself that there weren’t good guys out there.
It wasn’t me, it was them.
A few days ago, I got a text from someone I don’t talk to often. It piqued my interest because she commented on a blog post I wrote about my lack of success in dating.
I know why you feel that way, she said.
Let me know when you get the .pdf.
Email notification on my phone.
I glanced at it quickly, and went back to laughing about something with my friends Peter and Maggie.
I didn’t think about it again until the next morning.
It was an e-book about relationships. I was skeptical, but figured if she could take the time to send it to me; I could take the time to read it. I started to skim the pages, and then quickly, became engrossed.
It wasn’t about how to be single. It wasn’t even really about how to date. Instead, it explained something I’ve wondered about again and again.
It explained why I was single.
I was single because I was doing everything in my power to stay single. I was actively choosing guys who showed me time and time again, that they weren’t looking for anything serious. At every turn, I was sabotaging myself by disappearing into a narrative that didn’t look anything like reality.
I met a guy last year that I only went on one date with. It was during a time that I really, really thought I was trying to date someone. I had signed up for OkCupid, Tinder, etc., determined to meet someone who quote, “wasn’t such an asshole.”
But I bailed on the first date, which I did to many other first dates. I kept telling myself I was just weeding out guys that it wouldn’t work out with. Most of them didn’t care when they got blown off.
This guy was different though.
As I fed him an excuse why I couldn’t make it, he suggested we talk on the phone instead. At the moment he texted me (and I’m not proud of this), I was at my ex-boyfriend’s house. We had met up so he could return some of my old things, and it spiraled into both of us wondering whether or not we should get back together.
Thrown off by this new guy’s approach, I agreed.
When I got home, we talked for over an hour. The conversation ranged from the old Oregon Trail computer game to the breakfast machine in Casper. It was actually pretty great.
So we went out on a date.
The day of, I was a mess. I had slept at Tassy’s the night before, so I was a little unkempt and reeling from the possibility that I was getting back together with someone else. She and I had even joked about it – that I was going on this date with sloppy hair, no makeup, and a little hung-over.
But despite all of that, the new guy and I had a really awesome, three-hour date. We had pasta at Oak City Meatball, wondered about the presence of Coors Light at Raleigh Brewing Company and went to his friend’s show at the now closed Tir Na Nog.
We laughed about everything. We made derpy voices. We told each other stories about our friends and families.
But still… my eyes lingered on my phone, waiting for it to light up.
At the time, I didn’t feel bad because I didn’t know the guy very well. I had known my ex for years – what if he was the one? What if we could fix it? What if this was the push to finally make it work?
It wasn’t like fireworks were going off or anything; the new guy and I were just having a nice time. Nice times are easy to come by, right?
I realize how dumb that is now.
I was going off what I thought I knew about love. Love was supposed to be challenging. Love was supposed to make you feel deep, conflicting things. Love was about yearning and excitement… wasn’t it?
What I was feeling for this near stranger had absolutely no chance of competing with what I thought love was. My history of dramatic, tremulous relationships ruined me for anything that even resembled steadiness and consistency.
There was my marriage that I left, mainly because I wanted to travel and be independent. There was my on/off three-year relationship that always ended because my boyfriend wrestled with whether or not I was the one. There was the younger guy I was fixated on for nearly a year, who never wanted to actually date me because he “didn’t want a girlfriend right now”.
And of course, other short-term flings and dates sprinkled in here and there.
But none of them ever worked out, because in every single one, both parties were measuring the relationship by the red-hot, magical and passionate moments either of us assumed to be love. It’s actually pretty embarrassing to admit that, because the same red-hot, magical and dramatic moments pulled me further and further away from real love than I ever realized.
I was in a nearly ten yearlong romantic comedy starring me, the slightly damaged and jaded girl who deep down, doesn’t think anyone will ever truly love her. Thus, no one who actually could gets the chance to!
Yeah, I’m an idiot.
The whole time, the evidence of real love was everywhere in my life. From all the platonic relationships I formed with unexpected people, to the art exhaustedly made, to the process of adopting an oversized Ewok and teaching myself how to share my life with him… what this book was saying, and what I was blind to, was that love is something you create, and not something you’re entitled to.
Real love was there all along, right in the open, desperately waiting for me to simply notice it. It patiently waited while I got distracted by fear, uncertainty, lust and and attraction. Valid feelings, but often, just a desert-like mirage for someone like me, who thought they were seeing and feeling love, only to have it vanish the moment I tried to touch it and prove to myself it was real.
So when reflecting on the past few years, instead of seeing a series of failed relationships, I see a series of relationships that never really stood a chance. If I had listened, if I had paid attention to the moments that I couldn’t trust a guy to show up, or not leave in a moment of doubt, I may have ripped the mask off of whatever was masquerading as love.
And what about me? If someone observed my actions, would they think, “here’s a girl who is looking for real love,” or would they see all the times I bailed, the times I fixated on the wrong guy and think, “I think she’s looking for drama much more than she’s looking for love.”
Then again, maybe I was keeping myself single as a form of self-preservation. Maybe I was slowly realizing that whatever I thought love was, that thing was crippling me. I was starting to recognize that the all of the red-hot, magical and passionate moments weren’t worth the price I had to pay to get them.
That realization made me a little sad, but it also liberated me. If love really was something I could choose, something I could nurture, it wouldn’t catch me off guard. I didn’t need to be scared of it, because it wasn’t this desperate, fleeting thing that would elude me the moment I caught it.
Real love would stay, but only if I chose to recognize it for what it was, and not what I wished it would be.