Online Dating: Eye on the Prize

I have a bad habit of over thinking things when something troubles me.  A friend of mine wanted to chat this morning, and the conversation began innocently enough.  We were talking about what we were up to since the last time we talked, movies we wanted to see, our choice of weapon for the impending zombie apocalypse.  You know…just stuff.  Inevitably with Valentines rounding the corner, she and I were talking about exes and where we went wrong.  Eventually, she asked a certain question: What do you think my biggest fault is?

Ladies…I say this with love.  When you ask us questions like that, it’s almost like letting us see you put the bear trap in our path, and then forcing us to walk over it to see if the thing will take our leg off.  These kind of questions rank right up there with “Which one of my friends do you think is the hottest?” or “Isn’t my mother so annoying!?”  Men, if you have any sense of self preservation in your entire body, you tread carefully!!  That screaming voice in your ear yelling “IT’S A TEST!!!” is me.  Thank me later.

Anyway…being genetically programmed to not want my face eaten off, I opted with the softest answer possible.  It wasn’t her, but her choice in partner.  They simply weren’t at the same place in their lives as she was, and they didn’t have their priorities in order.  Now, all of that is true…but I just did a two-step around the real answers, because again…I want us to remain friends.  Plus it’s 7 AM, and I don’t trust my brain-mouth (fingers?) filter before I get my first shot of caffeine.

Without asking if I wanted to hear my faults (most of which I’m already aware, thank you), she decided to kill the suspense and tell me.  “I just think that you are so easy to love, but like, maybe you’re too easy to love? You should hold back a bit, be more of an enigma!  Kind of be the bad boy!”  I see these words on my phone, and I let them sink in.  The rest of the conversation was reasonably short, and I think she could sense me pulling back a bit when I responded a little more curtly than usual.  And now, I was left with this giant fault of mine laid out at my feet.

I was angry for most of the day because of that comment, but really couldn’t figure out why.  So I did as I described at the beginning of this entry, and I analyzed the crap out of it.  What bothered me the most about what she said to me was that she was telling me to denounce who I was.  Change my personality to suit the pleasures of some person I had yet to meet, who apparently would only like me based on a superficial mysterious personality.  Was she saying I tried too hard?  I don’t act this way to get the girl, in fact it’s barely any effort to behave the way that I do.  It’s my normal way of doing things.  To state to me that being loved easily is a fault and not an admirable trait is frankly insulting.

But…being me, I had to see it from her perspective as well.  Sigh.  Trying too hard, being so easily loved makes you an easy target.  No one gets a thrill, betting on a sure thing.  It’s about the gamble, the chase.  It’s possible that this easily loved personality comes across as desperation.  Basically, as I walked through work, the only phrase that kept popping into my mind was “A prize too easily won, is not a prize.  It requires no skill and garners no satisfaction.  The fun of the game lies in the possibility of losing.  No one wants to play a boring game.”

And because my blog is mostly about online dating, I thought about how my profiles and my emails made me look.  You can very easily appear over eager in an email by writing too much.  But you immediately dismiss yourself from their minds if your email is short and poorly written.  If you write too much in your profile, you come across as wanting someone to know all of you immediately, and seem in a rush.  Too little and it shows that you have no interest in utilizing the medium to form a relationship with anyone.  Do you lie, do you tell the truth, do you write more, write less?  How should you sound?  How should you act?  How close to the real thing should you make yourself out to be?  All these questions rattling around in our brains until we shout “ENOUGH!”

And as I worked today, riddled with self doubt, I tried to rally myself.  No!  Calling a relationship a prize implies that you see it as only a tangible object.  It’s not some carnival booth stuffed animal!  It is true that it requires skill to attain, and that anything without excitement is by definion boring.  But that isn’t to say a man that’s loved can’t be exciting.  Too much,  you say?  I say, passionate!

And somehow I plateau, neutralize into somewhere in the middle…but I came back to the knowledge that there are some things that I couldn’t change about myself even if I tried.  Still others that I wouldn’t change even if I wanted to.  My anger at my friend’s comments was probably me screaming “What do you want from me!?” in some generally frustrated manner, that maybe wasn’t even directed at her.  Maybe all I wanted from the universe was to affirm that the direction that I travel was the correct one, and that at some point in the near future I’d see where this side of this tunnel is connected to.

Cheers. – Your slightly bipolar Badass.