Disclaimer: For those of you who have been married for more than 5 years, your memory (or lack of) will not allow for you to fully understand this post. You see, this post is about the frustrations of dating, which you may think you remember, but you don't. The pain of dating has now become nothing more than a memory that has confused itself with your dreams/nightmares. :)
Today I am feeling frustrated with dating... again. Shocker. I've often said that I wouldn't mind being single if I didn't have to date. This concept seems nice to me because I've never been a girl who has minded being single. Truthfully, I haven't minded dating either. I'm pretty open to whichever path my life takes, single-ness or relationships. However, I don't love that dating inevitably comes with feelings of one kind or another. I hate feelings. I wish I could just do my thing, live my life, date around, meet someone great, fall in love with him and never have feelings involved.... Oh, and become a millionaire. I'm just now learning that it can't work like that... I'm a little slower than most. (By the way, I blame Disney movies for my naive misconceptions about relationships, in case you were wondering). Writing this post, for me, is acting as a sort of purging of my soul; maybe I'll feel better after I let it out. I'm recently starting to see the error of my ways in dating. My "dating" life has been following the same pattern for years now and it took a dear friend coming into my life to help me see the light.
It all started in college when I was a fearless dating machine. I dated a whole bunch, was flighty, fickle, and has absolutely no intentions of getting serious with any boy. Then one caught me off-guard my senior year when I finally admitted to myself after dating him for almost 8 months that I REALLY cared for him. By the time I reached a point where I could actually tell him this, things were too far gone. Anyhow, one thing lead to another and after over a year of dating he and I broke up. It broke my heart. Worse than I could have imagined. I would then spend the next few years just trying to get over him, not admitting to anyone that I wasn't over him.
Then came Captain A-Hole, as we lovingly call him in my family. He seemed like the perfect fit for me. He seemed too good to be true. And he was. He forced his way into my life and fairly quickly into my heart, only to take a sudden, shocking exit... where he got away with my self confidence and trust. But over time I realized that the breakup was a huge blessing.
I consider those two experiences my only real serious experiences, though there have been many fillers between them. Both were damaging in completely different ways. Surprisingly, it seems to be the effect from the first experience that I just can't get past.
After Captain A-Hole left my life, I found myself grasping onto friends and pulling them in as closely as possible. They all happened to be boys. As our friendships were getting strong, I was fighting to come back into life with feelings and a heart toward the opposite gender. This stage is when I REALLY became "one of the guys." I forced that role upon myself to fill a void in my life and not have to deal with feelings beyond friendship. This is the part of my life I'm feeling frustrated with lately. For the past few years, having mostly male friends that I spend vast amounts of time with has created a lot of grey areas. I keep running into situations where one of the 2 people involved starts to have feelings or wonders if they do.... and typically the other doesn't. It's even more frustrating because I never see it as it's happening, someone usually has to point it out to me. I'm sick of the grey area. I'm sick of having male friends with ulterior motives. I'm sick of spending a lot of time with guys friends who will never think of me as more than a friend when I'm secretly hoping in the back of my mind that they'll come around. I have spent years running in circles of telling my friends that I don't think of them like that and having the same two boys who "don't think of me like that" still taking up good amounts of my precious time.
This talk was given by Dallin H. Oaks to a group of Young Single Adults in 2005. I know this talk well. Almost well enough to paraphrase it. "Why?" you might ask, do I know it so well.... probably because once the talk was released on video, young adults in my area were inundated with its message in Sunday School, Priesthood/Relief Society Meetings, Family Home Evenings, etc.
So today I pledge to shut my friendship door, or at least close it halfway. I am going to keep male friends in moderation and not let myself get attached to them or let them get attached to me. Today I pledge to rediscover true dating and make a place for it in my life! I will grow up and no longer be a 20-something Peter Pan. I know that there is no guaranteed outcome, but I can do my part. All I can do is try.
