So…dating. Or not dating, which is more accurate.
This past week and a half the girls’ have been with their dad, enjoying the lake. And I have been all on my own, as completely usual. Which is fine. I promise.
And my therapist suggested that I take some time to consider this-when exactly am I going to want to date?
It is not completely accurate to say that I haven’t dated at all in the past 4 years. In fact, I had a really lovely relationship with someone, but the timing was not right. At all. And so it goes.
For all intents and purposes, though, I really haven’t dated in a serious, this-is-a-relationship way-in the way that I would choose to date someone, should they appear. I’m not now and I have never been a casual kind of person-I’m loquacious and intense and just a lot.
I try as hard as I can to just accept this as my reality-I don’t want to casually date someone, and that is how relationships begin, and if I can’t begin a relationship then here we are. There’s really not much more to it than that.
There is, of course. There is so much here to dig through I can’t begin to start sorting it all out, and so I am left with my strict, Type A routine and pretending that it doesn’t exist. But the point of the blog is to be honest about this process-to write down all the bits and pieces to who I am becoming and how I got to this point and where I’m going from here.
So, here’s the thing: being left behind hurts. It sucks. It messes with your head and your heart and your self-esteem. You think, am I a terrible judge of character? Can my heart be trusted to even remotely try this again? Why does this seem so easy for most people?
I have no real experience in these areas. I have nothing to go on other than how it went with Nick, and what I read. And just to give you an example, last week I read an article in the New York Times specifically stating how millennials are dating less and waiting longer to get married, thinking that this would be full of helpful insight (even if, with my 1978 birthday, I don’t exactly qualify as a millennial-it seemed close enough.) This is what I got- “Dr. Fisher found that among a representative sample, 34 percent of singles had sex with someone before the first date. She calls it ‘the sex interview.’” I’m sorry, what?
Importantly, I am not pining away, I am really, truly very contented and happy with my life as it is. And I am an eternal optimist-I truly believe that someday this person will come along. Somewhere there is a person out there who I am not too much for, who would find all of my quirks and idiosyncrasies endearing- I just haven’t the foggiest idea how to meet him, or when I’ll be ready, or any of the things. But I will get there. Someday.
"The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers do not finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."
-Rumi
