Ahh, to be young and in love. Isn’t it wonderful? Well, I would assume so. I was in love once, but that was with the human embodiment of Satan, so it’s probably safe to discount my experience for the general consensus that love really is, as previously mentioned, wonderful. For those of us who remain unattached, to be young and seeing-someone-but-not-really-sure-if-you’re-seeing-them-by-whatever-the-definition-of-seeing-someone-is-because-you-haven’t-had a-conversation-about-what-you-are-or-how-you-feel-even-though-they’ve-seen-you-naked is probably a more accurate depiction of the average singletons current situation. To put it simply, very few of us know what the hell we’re actually doing. In fairness to those few, those who prefer affairs of the strictly casual persuasion, and those who are emphatically set on saving themselves for their soulmate; congratulations. You’ve been blessed with the gift of feeling absolute certainty. For the vast majority of us, however, who fall somewhere on the spectrum of these two vastly contradicting desires, learning how to navigate our way through the dating minefield is no easy feat.
Let’s use an experience of mine as a shining example. They all start the same: I met a guy (such an event is usually announced immediately to close friends and followed by the statement “oh my God, tell me EVERYTHING” at which point there really isn’t much to tell, but we’re bloody amped about it and we’re going to overanalyse all the insignificant details together anyway). At first glance, (cue fake name) Doug was attractive, but I had to know if he was more than just a pretty face, if there was more to him than meets the eye (and not in a Transformers “robots in disguise” kind of way). So I did what any modern, go-getting woman would do and asked him out for a drink. Before I knew it, we were sitting at a bar, engaging in quality banter, throwing our heads back in fits of laughter, and finding any excuse to make physical contact. From the moment our knees touched, I was smitten. Of course, the first few weeks with Doug were great. He was faultless. Well, that was until I used the word euphemism in conversation. When I was met with a dumbfounded expression and the words “I’m just a builder” as his response, I knew we were in trouble. Not as much trouble, though, as when he told me about a time where he went out of his way to be blatantly rude towards a group of females on a night out. I listened in disbelief as he spoke with a sense of pride. Had he forgotten that I too was of the fairer sex and not one of the Neanderthals he usually shared his company with? In that moment, he went from being the image of perceived perfection to, well, just a bit of a dick. Needless to say, I didn’t see Doug after that. Instead, I was left to wonder how I could’ve gotten it all so wrong, again. Initially it seemed that Doug possessed a number of attributes that I found attractive. In the end, however, his quality of character was about as appealing as a sheet of cardboard, and a flimsy one at that. I felt deflated. I got excited about someone before I really even knew them, before I could discern if we had more in common than superficial first impressions could attest to. Someone once told me that it’s easy to go fishing; you just have to put your line in the water and see which fish takes the bait. It’s trying to catch a good fish in a sea that’s full of all sorts of them that’s the real challenge. Metaphorically speaking, the same can be said about the compatibility between two individuals. Regardless of whether you date actively or passively, meeting and finding a suitable match is not just a matter of knowing what you want, but a process of figuring out, early on, whether or not someone you’re interested in is actually right for you. It’s about following the basic principles of “it’s not you, it’s me.” But what happens when you’re faced with several counts of incompatibility? Whether you’re the the rejected, or the rejectee, surely even the most confident singles can’t help but ask themselves the question: maybe it is me? While I’ve had my fair share of my dating mishaps, I like to think I’m still dateable. Even though my level of physical attractiveness peaked too soon at the tender age of 19, a recent, passing comment that I was a “solid 7.5, and at least an 8 in the wind” assured me that I do indeed still have it (in the sense that I’m not completely hideous). I’m moderately funny, I use an adequate selection of vocabulary, and if you refer to my CV, you’ll find that I very much enjoy going for nature hikes to keep fit (not as much as I enjoy consuming bags of crisps, though - honesty is key). In all seriousness, I don’t always toot my own horn. I’m self-assured, but I’m not without my flaws. To put it in 21st-century terms, I’ve swiped right to more carelessly judged individuals than I’d like to admit and I’m guilty of using images of cats donning bow ties to diffuse difficult conversations about feelings rather than express myself with words. Despite such cringeworthy experiences making me wish that I was as asexual as a leaf, they haven’t all been bad. Far from it. But even so, the most eligible people are still susceptible to the perils of dating etiquette, and the happiest of singles aren’t immune to thoughts of loneliness and longing, either. When you’re a single, heterosexual female, so single in fact that the last text you received from a male was 5 weeks ago (and it was the thumbs up emoji from your dad), it’s easy to start feeling nostalgic about certain people you’ve dated. The presence of social media in our lives does little to appease this. One minute you’re scrolling through photos of puppies on Instagram and the next you’re confronted with a picture of Randall, the moron who ghosted you after your third date, holding a surfboard and throwing up a shaka on some beach in Hawaii, captioned: “I’m catching waves not babes, dude.” Now, I know what you’re thinking, as you roll your eyes: you’re so over Randall. He doesn’t even have a hot name and his Insta captions are whack. But let me tell you, those pecs and that six-pack you just feasted your eyes on beg to differ. This image of Randall living his #bestlife sets the wheels of nostalgia in motion. He wasn’t so bad, was he? I mean, he’s educated, he’s somewhat athletic, and he was funny, I guess. Remember that time when the two of you drank that $10 bottle of pinot noir on the beach while you watched the sunset? Charming, right? Yeah, Randall was cool. On another note, do you remember that guy who decided to never speak to you again without any forewarning? Oh, that’s right, it was the same guy (and yes, he was terrible)! Speaking of nostalgia, I had a little dalliance with it myself recently. I was mindlessly looking at my Facebook newsfeed, stopping every so often to tag my friends in posts that someone basic might describe as “so us” when, suddenly, I was faced (Facebook pun) with a photo of an ex-not-boyfriend-but-something. Our not-quite-relationship didn’t end on bad terms. In fact, it didn’t really end at all. I mean, how does one end something that had no definitive existence? Communication just became less frequent and wasn’t enough to sustain whatever we had. Despite this, all I could think was: “Wow, (insert name here) is looking good. Like, real good.” Soon enough, I was playing our memory reel back in my mind’s cinema, wondering why we weren’t still holding hands and skipping through fields of flowers together (Disclaimer: This didn’t actually happen. Sorry to all the hopeless romantics out there). For a brief moment, I felt tempted to reach out with a half-assed “hey stranger” wishfully thinking that such an unimaginative message might reignite the flame that our mutual fade put out. I opened our conversation, scanned over our old messages for all of five seconds, then promptly closed it. That small window of time was all it took to remind me of one, simple fact: he was about as enticing to me as a carrot is, without hummus. Don’t get me wrong. Carrots are great. I like carrots. Fundamentally, there’s nothing wrong with them. But it’s hard for me to like carrots just as they are. Why? Because I want them covered in hummus, too. I mean, imagine eating plain carrots every day. No fancy trimmings, just ordinary carrots. You’ve got to ask yourself: is this it? Is there not going to be any hummus? And what about the olives, where are they? Or the sun dried tomatoes, or the cured meat, or the cheese for that matter (a girl’s gotta have some Camembert)? If you’re being completely honest, you want everything on your damn platter. Would you be prepared to settle for carrots alone? Even though you know something is missing? Could you really, truly love carrots, as they are, for the rest of your days? No? Then stop wasting your time with carrots and go find yourself the platter you deserve. Ridiculous analogies aside, the bigger idea is this: it’s easy to see the people you like through rose-tinted glasses. Instead of falling for the person in front of us, we often get lost in the idea of what we hope they will be. In these situations, our hearts always seem to be a step or more ahead of our heads. If we’re attracted to someone, we see them as the “platter” - the person who can offer us everything and more. It’s only when our head catches up to our heart that we begin to use our rationale to delve deeper, to uncover the things that create meaningful and lasting connections. Quite simply, no one can live up to the expectation of being something they’re not. Really, we shouldn’t have expectations at all. If anything, knowing exactly what we value and asserting our personal standards surrounding these values will help guide us away from the people who aren’t right for us, so we can start spending our time and energy on the ones that are. So, whatever happened to old “carrots”? Well, as much as I liked carrots, we just weren’t a match. Truth be told, I don’t really believe he thought I was the bees knees either. We will meet plenty of people in our lives who won’t, and it would be egotistic of us to presume they think of us otherwise. They might not even consider us to be the bees toes, the bees wings, or any other of the bees appendages. And that’s okay. Because really, we don’t want someone to admire us only for select parts of ourselves, especially not just what they see on the surface. We want them to see us as the bee, the whole bee, and nothing but the bee. After all, we haven’t been exposing our vulnerable selves to this dating minefield to settle for anything less, have we?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
B is:A 26-year-old tea drinking writer of words trying to find her place in the world.
Archives
April 2020
|