When I dated my first girlfriend, I dated her because she was cute, fun, and because she actually wanted to date me. I’m not trying to say that she didn’t have any attractive or noble qualities, I’m admitting out how shallow and immature I was. We didn’t date for long, we had fun, and then it was over (honestly, there’s not much else to the story, except that thing with the scar, and granted, that was post-break up). Clearly, I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s okay, I was 18 at the time, so my standards, or lack there of, were common among guys. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had friends talk about their “lists” or their “deal breakers” and “red flags”. I don’t exactly have a list of traits that I’m looking for, but that doesn’t mean that I’m back where I was at age 18, where I was just looking for a cute girl that would give me the time of day. While my friends have a list of specifics, I have more of a broad template.
During my sophomore year in college, I met a girl who we’ll name Josie (since I don’t know any Josies). I met her at a club meeting and even though we had some mutual friends, neither of us were aware of this at the time. We talked for about 2 hours and the topics ranged from small talk pleasantries (what’s your name? where are you from?) to literature and jazz. While she and I had different tastes, there was some sort of connection that we had. Even though she had never heard of Pavement, she was intrigued to hear about them. Even though I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the authors and books that she liked, I was more than eager to hear her talk about why she loved them. We were geeking out together and it was an amazing feeling.
We became good friends after that and it lasted throughout college until she moved away for school. We kept in contact for a little while but eventually we drifted. I remember when she came back from an East Coast trip, a few months after we met and everyone asked her how it was. She told most people about the weather and how it was fun, but when I asked her about her trip, she told me how excited she was at how late the museums were open out there. I did eventually fall for her at one point but she never felt the same way. Our boundaries were always good so I never felt like she was stringing me along and I respected that. As we got to know each other better, I realized that we weren’t a good match, which isn’t to say that I discovered things about her that I didn’t like. Though our friendship, I learned a lot about myself and most importantly learned that the “connection” we had provides far more amazing feeling than just some pretty girl laughing at your clumsiest jokes.
I’m glad that I never put her up on a pedestal. I don’t view her as “the one that got away” or as someone that I would drop everything and move for (as a friend, she’s asked me), and I’m careful to not compare girls I’m interested in to her. We are better as friends than we would’ve been as lovers. I just search for a “connection” where I can talk to someone for hours on end without having an agenda of things to talk about. Honestly, I can’t say that every girl I’ve been interested in or dated over the past few years, has offered me that same sort of connection. So while I can’t say that I’ve avoided the meaningless “she’s cute and she likes me” trap that I like to believe I’m too mature for, I know better to settle for a relationship that doesn’t offer me that stimulation. I understand that it might not come right away, but if it doesn’t show up at all, it is time to move on.
I have a bit of a bittersweet view on love. I have a picture in my mind of a muggy afternoon, the air conditioner is broken, there’s nothing good on TV, and there’s nothing particularly exciting going on in life. It’s just you and your significant other and the “No, I love you more, no, you hang up” phase is nothing but a distant memory. There’s no work stories to share of stories about your friends and family. You’re both tired and all you can do is talk and try to connect. All you have is each other and your ability to enjoy each other’s company with nothing else to aide you. I don’t find this as a depressing idea. I’m just a firm believer in the adage of “all you need is love.”
As much as I’d love to have a list of specific traits that my girlfriend/wife will have, I just feel like being able to have “the connection” will trump it all in the end. While I will absolutely admit that I would love to find someone before I hit 30, I know deep down that I’ll be happy to dismiss that silly goal if I know that I’ll be able to feel that connection for the rest of my life, because you can manufacture “having a good time” and I believe you can even manufacture “romance”, but you can’t manufacture effortless conversation and feeling understood.
A couple of years ago, I was introduced to someone who, after exchanging names and pleasantries, asked me what my personality type was. After telling them that I was an INFP, they told me “I don’t get along with INFPs.” We eventually became friends and we eventually he hit a point where we had trouble getting along. I don’t think our personality types caused our conflicts, because they don’t seem to get along with pretty much anyone. I won’t deny that personality types can give us a general idea of people, but it would be foolish to completely write people off or consider them your best friends just because of four simple letters.
A lot of people are surprised that I’m introverted and that I’m extremely introverted to boot. They’re probably confused because they see me run around on stage like a maniac. I’m fine with entertaining a big crowd but I don’t like having to socialize with a huge group. It makes me tired, so I like small groups at best. Unfortunately, I have to kind of prepare myself for social situations so when a situation changes, it’s hard for me to be flexible. So when people show up uninvited, or when a small group turns into a party, I tend to be in a pretty bad mood, even if all the people in the room are people that I like. It’s something that took me a while to figure out, and now it’s taking me a long time to deal with it. Unfortunately I don’t think this irritation is going to go away any time soon.
Last week, I was going to go grab a late night meal with my friend and his girlfriend, so I showed up at his place and got in his car so we could carpool to the restaurant. As I sat down in the car, he said “Okay, now we’re going to pick up my friends”. It’s not that I didn’t like his friends or that I was particularly hungry, but I got noticeably irritated. At the end of the night, I ended up having a good time. I just know that I wouldn’t have been in a bad mood if my friend had told me we were going with others, opposed to surprising me with the situation at the last minute. As much as I try not to be anal about this, the order of events are important to me. I like to be able to emotionally prepare myself for situations, which sounds silly, and it is, but that’s how I work.
I wonder if this hang up will end up sabotaging any chance I have at “success” as an artist. I’m a bit of a paradox. I’m a performer that doesn’t like to socialize with the groups that I entertain. I plan events but I like to keep the invite list low. My gifts seem to conflict with my personality, but I think that’s why I’ve been able to grow a lot as a person. I’ve had to reconcile the two over the years and, while I’m not there yet, I feel like I’ve come a long way. Obviously, last week was a reminder that simple surprises can still get a pretty dramatic response out of me, but I eventually came around and I didn’t pout and shut down, and I consider that great progress for me.
It makes me wonder how I would act if I were ever given fortune and fame. Would I tell people that they can’t make eye contact with me? Would I end up snapping and living in a secluded cabin in the middle of nowhere? I would like to think that these are only the actions of crazy people, but I can’t rule them out for me either. Does this mean that I’m going to give up now to prevent myself from reaching anything close to these levels of success? No, I’ve come too far. I’m not necessarily saying I want to bite off more than I can chew, but I think I just need to let things run their course and take what opportunities life throws at me. To try to deny that would truly make me a crazy person.
So, maybe if I will have some sort of infamous meltdown one day, and I’ll make a complete fool of myself in a very public setting. I’m willing to take that risk and maybe my friend can tell all the people they know, “I knew he was going to do this one day because he’s an INFP.”
I recently found out the my ex-girlfriend go married. I found out via social networking; but not through Facebook or Twitter, or Myspace, but through Linked In, a business social networking site. After the breakup, we decided not to keep in touch and she is pretty anti-social networking. I haven’t really updated my Linked In account for a couple of years, I just tend to add people when I get requests, so I forgot to delete her. One day I was e-mailed “updates” from people we were connected to and when I opened the e-mail I saw a name that I didn’t recognize. It was her first name but a different last name, and then I finally put two and two together. ”What? Oh. OHHHHHHHH.”
Finding out your ex got married is one of those landmark signs of adulthood. (The first, I believe, is being genuinely happy for your friends when you hear they got engaged, opposed to wondering if pregnancy is involved with the engagement.) It’s always kind of a weird feeling. Even though I never had any ideas about getting back together with her, I will be honest and say that it threw me for a loop. We had been broken up for over 2 years so it made logical sense that in that time, she could’ve found someone, dated them, and gotten married to them, so I can’t say that the timing was a huge shock or anything like that. Perhaps it’s because in the time it took her to get married, I’ve been on a grand total of 0 dates.
Now I know that getting married isn’t a race, so it’s silly to think of my dating life in those terms. I also realize that going on a bunch of dates with a bunch of different people isn’t going to make me feel anymore successful about my personal life if I’m not finding any people that I can have a worthwhile connection with. I understand that finding the right person can take some time and doesn’t mean that it’s a reflection of how people view you when you’ve been on a bit of a dry spell.
I was at a sushi bar last week with my roommate. We sat at the bar, and there was a seat between this woman and me. She was asian, much older, and had already been drinking by the time we had gotten there. I just wanted to enjoy my sushi in relative peace while making small talk with my roommate, but this woman forced herself into our conversation when my roommate asked me if I was going to take my parents out for Korean food the next time they were in town. She proceeded to ask me if I was Korean and then told me about how the person that was on Deal or No Deal that day was a Korean man who was on the show so he could win some money to fly his parents back to the motherland and that he ended up winning $38,000. After trying to humor her for the duration of her story, I tried to shift back into sushi eating privacy mode.
I tend to wear very interesting t-shirts. I know they draw a lot of attention so I’ve grown used to people asking me what they mean, or what brand I’m wearing. It comes with the territory. On this particular night, I was wearing a t-shirt that Bruce had gotten me for Christmas a couple of years earlier. On the back of this t-shirt, a man in a banana suit is chasing his friend with a knife. If you don’t understand why there’s this image, don’t worry, it’s kind of an inside joke. Unfortunately this woman decided to make the worst possible interpretation of this shirt ever:
“Is there a banana on a shirt because you’re a banana?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know a banana, yellow on the outside, white on the inside!”
I politely tried to explain that my friend got me the shirt and I didn’t know what it meant (a lie – I just wanted to keep the conversation short). She asked me if she had offended me and told me that she would stop talking to me if she did. She said she wouldn’t take it personally but then said she really would (the train of though of a crazy person), and my discomfort level was off the charts at this point. She got the hint that I didn’t want to talk to her and then she started telling the sushi chef that she was in her own league and that she was 44 and single and awesome. She was pretty wasted at this point and she was kind of ruining my dinner. She finally stumbled out of the restaurant after being surprised that her credit card didn’t get declined and that was the last that we saw of her.
On the ride home, my roommate teased me about the whole incident and how he was scared that the woman was going to try to sit on my lap or do something crazy during the night. I honestly felt bad for her. At 44, she was desperately seeking connection but she was shut out. Drunk or sober, I was probably not the right person for the job. It reaffirmed that I’m probably happier going on 0 dates than going on a bunch of dates where either myself or the women were just desperate for some sort of connection. My ex might’ve found that certain someone and I’m happy for her. I’m happy and resigned to the fact that one day, I’ll also have that certain someone, and that it’s okay that it’s just not today.
In college, my friend Haniel (he picked this name for this story, not me), was known as a girl hating cynic, but in reality, he once jokingly told me he pretended to hate all girls so he could secretly be in love with all of them. So when he started dating his girlfriend, and now wife, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was dating one of the girliest girls I’ve ever met, but I was. It’s probably because we used to have these weird anti-Valentines Day celebrations on the weekend of February 14th where a bunch of the guys would get together and splurge on sushi and watch whatever romantic comedy that was out in theaters at the time. The two years we did it, we were fortunate with the movies we had to choose from. Our first annual anti-V-Day dinner was concluded with 50 First Dates and our 2nd (and final dinner) was followed up by Hitch. Sure they weren’t the greatest movies of all time, but for Valentine’s Day movies, they were probably as guy friendly as romantic comedies can get.
We tried to continue the tradition a year later but Haniel had started dating his wife and after sushi, no one wanted to watch Something New so things kind of died after that. I guess we felt lost without our fearless leader or maybe it was just fitting to end it since he had gone from cynic to hopelessly in love. A year later, I started dating, so I think that officially killed any chance of the tradition being continued, since no one wanted the torch passed to them. I don’t blame them, passing the torch to someone is like saying “Hey, I don’t think you’ll find anyone anytime soon, so you should plan these things from now on.” It’s more of an insult than an honor.
So after a couple of years of dormancy, I kind of retooled the anti-celebration. Last year a bunch of my single friends (boys and girls) and I got together for a dinner in West Hollywood. There was no movie afterwards, we just walked over to Milk for some dessert. Sherlan and I got there earlier than everyone else and we decided to go get some rum and slurpees at 7-11 (and a liquor store). As we were walking back to the restaurant, we passed by a Subway where we saw a couple of middle aged men were sitting at a table eating there sandwiches. It’s possible that these guys were a couple, but we didn’t go inside to investigate. It was a bizarre sight without having any context of who they were or why they were there. We drew our own conclusions and continued on our way back. As we approached the restaurant, Sherlan told me “Happy Valentine’s Day, Ryan.”, which caused the both of us to burst into laughter. It was a throw away comment, he said out of obligation and mostly just to be ironic. These events on the way back from the 7-11 were probably the only things that differentiated the night from the typical hang out in West Hollywood, because I honestly can’t remember much about the dinner or dessert, other than I know I enjoyed them.
I’ve only writing about these instances because they’re the only Valentines Days I remember (aside from actual dates – no need to bring those up). As much as I’ve loathed the day in the past (aka when I’m not in a relationship), I’m pretty indifferent towards it now. I don’t necessarily look forward to it, but it’s no longer a day where I want to lock myself in my room, eat a bucket of fried chicken and watch How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. (<- Please understand this is a joke) I’ve got a good group of friends and enough single friends where I don’t feel like I’m being left behind. There’s that fear lingering in the back of my mind that I will one day grow old with a lot of cats, but it doesn’t come out in full force on Valentine’s Day, like I’m sure it does for some of the lonelier folks. I’m not necessarily in the mindset that 30 is the new 20 and that I don’t need to date anyone, I’m just not going to let a made up holiday dictate how I should feel about my tax filing status.
Plus, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that eating a whole bucket of fried chicken in one sitting is bad news. I guess this all just part of growing up. Happy Valetine’s Day!
I’m not sure how long this has gone on for, but every week when I talk to my Dad on the phone, he asks me if I have any good news. So I tell him “I still have a job, that’s good news, right?”, but I know this is not the good news that he’s obviously fishing for. My Dad wants to hear that I’ve found the girl of my dreams, his future daughter in-law, and that she can’t wait to start to pumping out the grandchildren. Like I said, this has been a recent addition to our phone conversations and it doesn’t look like it’ll be going away anytime in the near future.
When these conversations began, I think I was amused by the fact that my Dad was talking to me about girls. I embraced being a bachelor, using the cliche “I’m happy being single” whenever anyone brought up dating and quickly dismissed the “good news” question whenever it came up. Over time, that happiness of being single started to dissipate, and the itch to find a significant other started to show up to my chagrin. It’s not that I don’t want to be in a relationship, it’s that I usually get stuck in the “friend zone”, and it’s not because I can’t “initiate”, I’m just not the type for the girls I chase.
So after doing some chasing and being shot down, I turned my attention to a certain popular dating service. I found a deal for a 3 month trial and decided to give it a shot, since 3 months of this service would only cost me the equivalent of a video game purchase. I often found myself frustrated. I didn’t have a problem with the service, I ended up talking to people who only checked the site once in a blue moon. I can be a bit of an anxious person and I like to be in a rhythm, so perhaps this dating service doesn’t really fit with my personality. I don’t expect to hear responses every day but I think waiting a week for people to answer some basic questions is also too long.
Then I was able to find Whitney. Whitney’s very cute, very smart, and has a sense of humor. The fact that she’s in the midwest wasn’t going to deter me from getting to know her, especially since I grew up there and would consider moving back at some point. We found a nice rhythm and I didn’t find any red flags with her. She didn’t seem crazy, she was just sick of the bar scene and wanted to find someone serious, and didn’t care if that guy was across the country. We only knew each other’s first name’s and at a certain point, I gave her my personal e-mail address, which has my full name in it, hoping to move things along to where we would actually talk on the phone or even fly out to see each other, (or however this works), but I guess this is where I messed things up.
So, I have a blog (this one), so you should probably know that this is not a personal blog where I talk about my issues or my exes or anything like that. I write short stories about my life, like I’m doing right now. At the time of my corresponsdance, my most recent post was about how my friend thinks that this little kid at church looks a lot like me and that they could be my kid. (Technicolor Salvation). It’s become an inside joke between a bunch of my friends, so I decided to write about it in a creative way. I wrote about how I think this kid is my kid from the future and then wondered why my wife from the future would send her back to me. It’s definitely an comical piece that really breaks down the perils of time travel, but I could understand why this piece in particular might scare off someone who is interested in dating me and doesn’t know me very well.
I know Whitney visited my site because I have Google Analytics and no one from her suburb ever visits my site. You could call this stalking, but she stalked me first by looking me up and visiting my site, so I think we’re even. She never wrote to me again, so I can’t be sure this is the reason that we stopped talking, but since I’m a writer and she’s left the ending to our online relationship open ended, I’d like to believe that she was scared off about the story of the future child. And do you know what? If she can’t accept that kid as our future child, maybe I don’t want to be with her anyways.