Baby Steps

So, those who know me--or who have read my blog--know that I've been on a lot of first dates.  In fact, I took the time tonight to tally up the total number of first dates I've ever been on (to the best of my ability).  For our purposes, I will consider a first date anything that both the man involved and I considered to be a date. This is important because I was kind of a late bloomer, and so for a while, I might have considered any one-on-one meeting with a single male of my age a first date in my head...just to be less lame.  Which, in retrospect, is actually lamer than not going on any dates.

I guess I was a late bloomer in self-respect, too.

So, 16 years after I got my period (my mom's welcome-to-womanhood marker), I've caught up on the blooming and have found myself to be a woman with plenty of quantity.  I've been on at least 33 first dates, agreed to probably 15 second dates, and made out with a few strangers, all of which led to a whopping total of...

3 boyfriends.  A significantly less impressive number.

Even more unimpressive, the duration of those relationships.  The first boyfriend lasted 18 months and ended in a full month of tears and some serious need for therapy down the line.  The second boyfriend came eight years later (my early twenties were pretty dry), and he lasted five months.  The third boyfriend came two weeks after that (my 29th year was pretty busy), but he only lasted for three months.

I'm not exactly the poster child for substantive relationships.

It's not that I don't want one.  I deeply crave the intimacy and love and friendship that comes with a long-term life partner.  The problem is that I did eventually bloom into someone with strong self-respect, and once you've got the self-respect bug, you can't really shake it.  No matter how many attractive men I came across, I couldn't stand to ignore the flaky behavior, the rude comments, or the trust issues that came with them.  I preferred to be alone over pursuing something I knew would never make me happy.

When I finally gave into online dating, the number of dates I went on increased exponentially.  Still, no amount of quantity could disguise the fact that the men I was meeting online were of approximately the same quality as the men I had been meeting in real life.  They were short-term connections at best, non-starters at worst, and they really challenged the doe-eyed version of Louisiana men I'd carried with me through my college years.  A nice, handsome, tall, and muscled man from southern Louisiana who went to church every week and played sports and cheered on the Saints and LSU every weekend.  It turned out that the ideal I'd created in my head was just as misguided as the men I was meeting.  Even if this "perfect" guy existed, would I really like him?  Did he have the intellectual capacity to challenge me?  The values that mattered to me?  The humor to keep us laughing?

Over time, I gave up on the ideal, and along with the ideal, began to give up on voicing the things that really mattered to me.  Church-goer?  Well, I'd settle for agnostic.  Athletic?  Muscular worked, too.  Handsome?  Not ugly was enough.  Nice?  I'd go with decently respectful.

In so doing, I did drop some of the unimportant qualities I'd been setting up as deal breakers for myself: wildly handsome, at least two inches taller, things like that.  But I also let go of some of the things I cared about: someone who wasn't afraid to be affectionate, someone who valued kindness and compassion in all areas of life, someone who attracted me in a substantial way, someone who was looking for a life companion and a family like I was.

I threw out the baby with the bathwater, to the point that my therapist literally asked if I'd considered getting pregnant or adopting on my own down the line.

To cope with the disappointment, I turned to the craft I'd begun learning in high school and the comedy I'd dabbled in when I was in my mid-twenties, and I wrote about all my bad dates.  Everyone likes a good love story, but what people really crave are stories about all the hilariously horrible dates that come before and between love stories.  Maybe it makes them laugh, maybe it makes them grateful, maybe it makes them feel a little less alone in their loneliness.  Whatever it does for others, it's helped me through each time.

But as I spun these tales of dating distress, I fell into the habit of writing about the really good dates, too.  Anyone who's ever seen a romantic comedy knows that examining the details of a budding relationship can timelessly capture the complete infatuation that comes when the feeling is mutual, and it offers to the people who participate an emotional high of their own.

It also creates an unreal image of the relationship that slowly eats away at the real one.

No matter how infatuated you are with someone a week after meeting them, and no matter how much you're sure they're infatuated with you, too, saying it out loud changes things.  Voicing those feelings can be overwhelming.  And a little off-putting for the other person.  And it sets up massive expectations for something that's only just begun.

Writing about it isn't really much different.

It happened with "Jack," even though he never read the blog.

It happened with B, when his ex-girlfriend shared the posts with him.

It happened with California guy, who it later turned out wasn't even close to the idyllic match that I thought he was.

And I think I've finally learned.  16 years ago when I started at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and began reading all the miserable and/or suicidal writers that have made history, I pledged to myself, If I have the choice between being a great writer and being happy, I'm taking happy.  Somehow, I forgot that pledge in the midst of life and all its twists and turns, and I'm only just now remembering why I made it in the first place.

New guy and I have been seeing each other for a little over a month now, and to my surprise, it's not that hard not to write about it.  Not because it's not great.  It's the opposite, and I value it, and I want it to grow naturally and without all the limelight that the blog brings.  Sure, it doesn't make for much of a read for you.  And I'm sorry about that.  But I think you'll understand.  I know you will.