I think we can all agree that right now, dating is pretty much a joke.
Sure, you’ll meet someone, and you may go out on a “date” or two and maybe even talk on the phone… but then after a few weeks, they stop talking to you, and you wonder what happened when they don’t give you an explanation for why you’re no longer dating.
I’ll be honest — I envy those who are still with their high school sweethearts or who found someone in college. Most of us hope to find the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with when we’re still in school. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to find them at our workplace or apartment complex. The rest of us, though, need some serious good luck.
To a degree, there is nothing wrong with keeping someone at a distance when you first talk to them, especially because today’s dating culture is rough. We’re all trying to gauge what someone is like when we first meet them, and this includes whether or not they receive you respectfully. This is part of the reason why you don’t tell someone you just met all of your “baggage” or the horrors of your last failed relationship.
But the hard part comes when you’ve been consistently talking to someone for a few weeks or months, and you’re still trying to decide if you can trust them.
Welcome to my world.
I’ve accepted the fact that most guys who haven’t grown up with me will probably leave at some point. Some of us girls have amazing guy friends who we can confide in, but we can’t say the same about our romantic relationships. Due to this “revolving door” of relationships, it’s easy for me to remain as closed-off as I can about certain things. After all, what you don’t tell someone can’t be used as fuel to hurt you when an argument breaks out. And boundaries are healthy too.
So where does that leave us when we try to date?
We need to remember that everyone we try to date is different. My first thought whenever I meet someone is to go with my “gut feeling,” about them — it hasn’t ever let me down in the past few years. Forget the list of traits your teenage self thought that your future spouse should have. Be open to the fact that the person you end up with may not be you’ve ever imagined but will also be so much more. Sometimes the person you least expect to be attracted to ends up being everything you hoped for.
Featured Photo by Djim Loic on Unsplash.
