my love life
hahaha, that’s a joke. there’s not one of those.
I kind of mulled this over all day yesterday and it led to a whole lot of different thoughts which all sort of stem from the same general theme. I’m going to bravely attempt to collect them here in some meaningful way. Good luck to me, and godspeed to you if you choose to ride along with me. I promise, this angsty melancholy bullshit will only pop up on rare occasions. I just gotta get it out. And if I start making absolutely no sense at all, feel free to throw dense objects at my head. Or nails. Or just take mean-spirited joy in my pain (schaden-what?), depending on what sort of human being you are. Here goes.
Dating for me has generally been a cyclical thing. Two or three or four potential candidates will show up in my life around the same time. Maybe I’ll date one or two of them a little bit. Then when that’s done, for whatever reason, then a few months will go by where there’s absolutely nothing on the radar. Then it kind of picks up again a little bit. It’s kinda been like that. And I’m pretty sure I’m at the tail end of one of those dry spells right now, but as of late, I’d kind of like to see something other than the usual meaningless casual dating thing come along.
See, at this point, dating has kind of become a pain in the ass, for a whole slew of reasons. First, it’s just rather hard to do. For me. Like, actually dating is great, and it’s loads of fun with the right person, but I’m not really great at getting to that point. I generally suck at meeting new people. If there’s context, like I meet someone through something, some shared reason for talking, I’m okay with that. But when it comes to just randomly walking up to a strange girl and striking up a conversation… forget it. It’s just not a thing I do. Also, there’s that whole “right person” part. I’m really not picky, but jeez. I’ve discovered that, in Wichita, it’s really hard for me to meet a girl who is pretty, smart, driven, fun, reasonably open-minded, and available. (Believe it or not, dudes aren’t the only ones who can be pothead losers.) It’s extremely rare that I meet someone who I don’t immediately realize is not a qualified candidate for some reason. Fuck me for having standards, right? I know.
Also lending to the difficulty is the fact that it’s kind of amazing how many people here are married. I mean, it is the Bible Belt, I guess, where people are encouraged to hurry up and get married and have children and whatnot. I’ve been to Catholic church; I’ve seen my fair share of glaringly obvious examples of families who do believe in marrying young and don’t believe in contraception. *shudder*
Don’t get me wrong - I’ve dated — relatively recently — some great girls. Pretty, smart, ambitious, a joy to be around, but… maybe that spark just wasn’t there for whatever reason. Of course, I’ve also dated some serious basket cases, which I’m so completely over. That’s a whole separate post.
Also, can I just take another small moment you’ll never get back to mention how intensely the frustration is compounded when there is someone on the periphery who I might really like to get to know? Like, I have to play it cool and not be all stupidly overexcited, because you just come off like a creep when you do that. But no, someone I’m only marginally interested in, oh they’re all over it. All up in my shit. No, please. Sigh.
But the thing about dating goes deeper than that. (Shut up, that is NOT what she said.) I’m at the point in my life right now where I just kinda wish I could skip it. I’m ready to move on to where you just get to spend time with someone who means so much to you. I’m just kinda feeling like I’d like to have that person in my life.
Obviously I know I can’t just skip the dating part. I am so very much not ready to just marry the first halfway qualified girl who falls out of the sky. (Besides, that’d likely be a sticky mess.) I’ve been around the block a couple times. I know it would be disastrous not to vet someone in that way. But you know what I mean, right? We’ve all felt that way at some point, right?
There’s a lot in my life that I’m happy with right now. But more and more, this is kind of becoming this big glaring thing that I’m *not* satisfied with, and I’m starting to wonder about it. Like, at what point does this one thing become big enough to influence the whole of my life in some large way? I mean, I’m pretty convinced that a huge part of my dating difficulties stem from the fact that I live in Wichita. Thing is, I’m pretty happy with living here in lots of other ways, and I’m not sure this one thing is enough to make me consider a move (although obviously I’m considering it on some level, or I wouldn’t have brought it up). All my friends and family and history are here - that’s a scary jump for me. Like, what if I move somewhere, and I don’t know anyone, and I have no babysitters that I trust, and I can’t go out, and so I never meet anyone… yeah, this is the slippery slope that happens inside my head. Welcome to my brain, it’s a pretty ridiculous place sometimes.
On the other hand, while I don’t have a lot of really solid life goals at the moment (shhh, working on it), I do fully intend to find a partner to be with. I’m just too gushy and sentimental of a person not to. I love being with someone. And when I do travel out of the ICT, I usually love the places I go. Like, I’ve been to DC a couple times and loved it. I liked the Bay Area, San Diego, Vegas, hell, I even like KC (although I hear dating is terrible there too), and Dallas, what little I’ve seen of it. (Chicago sucked though.) It’s just enough to plant that tiny seed in my brain and make me wonder about another place. What if…
And again, I really don’t have ridiculous demands. I just want someone who I love to talk to, look at, hang out with. Someone to share jokes and food and showers and tv and… just share life with. And I’m actually a pretty decent catch myself, it’s not like I’m some huge loser who needs to improve my life by a thousand percent before I start bitching. I like relationships and am good at them -I was raised in a really great family so a healthy relationship comes naturally to me. I have that built-in sympathy for kids that only comes with being a parent. I have a skill set that I can use to make some pretty good money. I’m useful around computers and cars. I’m phenomenal at parallel parking. I can spell. I tend to exercise common sense a lot of the time. I like to keep the kitchen and the bathroom clean. These are all attractive qualities, I feel.
There’s hope though. In fact, I’m always hopeful, although I’m sure it doesn’t sound like it right now. I don’t think I’ll ever get to a place where I just don’t even bother to try. I can’t imagine that. I just kinda needed to get this out since it’s been bouncing around in my head all day.
So there, it’s done. Bitch switch off, and I’m gonna go build some websites, send some e-mails, and generally get back to work.
