Jaded
I’m going to get a little deep on you guys today, but I promise, next week we can make fun of eHarmony again.
The first time I asked a guy out I was wearing my black D.A.R.E t-shirt and Adidas wind pants. I made my friend Kara walk across the gymnasium during third period phys. ed class and ask the boy I liked, Colin Diehl, if he would “go out” with me.
He said he’d think about it.
Translation: I like one of your friends. Even so, I’m going to lead you on until ninth period while your adolescent mind spends an entire social studies class planning what you’ll wear when I take you to our senior prom.
Seventh grade was the first year that I started swiping miniature tubes of mascara from my mom’s Clinique make-up samples and shopping at Limited Too for replicas of the trendy jeans and tight t-shirts that my friend Christine’s sister wore. I wasn’t afraid to ask the best looking boys in the class to slow dance to Celine Dion and KC & Jo-Jo songs at the winter dances our school held in the cafeteria. I didn’t blink an eye at the thought of calling boys I liked from sleepover parties, goaded by the pack of giggling, sugar-high girls huddled around me, before the days of caller ID when fed-up parents could trace 11 PM phone calls.
I lost some of this fearlessness somewhere between today and the eighth grade formal, when I was the last one of my friends to have a date, It was really only after weeks of protesting that I wasn’t going because I “just didn’t want to” that one of my male classmates urged his shy friend Steve, who looked at the floor when he talked with a lisp, to ask me to be go with him to the dance.
So, my mom and I shopped furiously until we found THE dress (it was a maxi dress. WHO WORE THOSE in 1998!?) and I spent the night watching other couples, real couples - a boy who asked a girl to the dance because he liked her and not because he said yes out of guilt or pity or any of the other marginal reasons why sub fourteen-year old couples might pair off.
When my carefree attitude toward liking and being liked dissipated, the prospect falling in young love evaporated as quickly as it appeared. For a long time, any fears or anxieties that I had surrounding the idea of dating was rooted in a fear of rejection. What if he doesn’t show up? What if he notices how bad my hair looks today? What if he doesn’t think I’m smart enough?
Now, those fears are subdued initially. In an era of online dating, matchmakng and “a friend of a friend who’d be perfect for you” I rarely go into dates with the sense of hopeful optimism that I once had. Instead of worrying about whether I’ll measure up, there’s a new ticker of concerns running through my mind and I tolerate them. What if he’s cheap? What if he turns out to be vulgar? What if he comes on too strong and I’m totally uncomfortable and I don’t know what to do or how to get out of it?
It isn’t until a guy that I’m dating manages to figuratively “get underneath my skin” that I start to have glimpses of the old recurring fears, only they come back stronger. When I start to grow attached to someone, it’s only then that I might fear losing him. What if this doesn’t work out? What if I get hurt? What if I like him more than he likes me? What if he turns out to not be who I thought he was?
It isn’t until we’ve reached a certain level of comfort in the relationship that my ambivalence is replaced with contentment. I need to feel like I can make the occasional thoughtless comment to him and he’ll know that I really DID go to college and that was just a brain lapse. If I cook a dinner that he doesn’t like, he feels comfortable enough to tell me and I’ll mock him for being as picky as your average seven year old and we’ll laugh about it and go on. We’ll grocery shop together once in awhile and I’ll watch the movies that only he wants to see because I know he’d do the same.
It’s a good place, but it isn’t easy to get there. If you’re out there on the market, or even if you’re not, what fears do you have about dating? At what point in a relationship do the nervous jitters turn into the good jitters?
March 13th, 2009 at 1:49 am
I’ve actually never been in a relationship, or even really dated. But somehow I still know exactly what you’re talking about! I think the worst thing for me lately has been this situation where I liked someone, knew he didn’t feel the same, and still had to see him ALL THE TIME. Yah, we worked together. Doesn’t unrequited love stink?
March 13th, 2009 at 5:45 am
I’m in a relationship, although I couldn’t say if this is the one, but I get worried that one day I might have to step back out in to the big and scary dating world again. I’m not sure your fears and anxieties ever really go away completely - but maybe oneday I’ll find out x
March 13th, 2009 at 7:30 am
I was in a long term relationship (4 years) and I’m now single. I don’t do the dating thing, because I hate it. I am much happier when it’s totally comfortable, when you know all the quirks and can let each other be. I’m not sure when that happens, and I know you have to go through the awkward bit first, I just can’t face it again at the moment.
March 13th, 2009 at 9:05 am
D.A.R.E. T- Shirts? KC & Jo Jo? No caller ID?
I love this post.
As far as jitters go? Shit, I have no idea. It feels like it’s been so long since I felt any kind of jittery whatever.
March 13th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I have no idea! Good post though…
March 13th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I’m doing a whole new kind of jitterbug lately, one that is entirely unfamiliar to me. I’ve been seeing a great girl for several months now, and recently I was knocked on my heels by a startling revelation: I’m more afraid of something working out than of something NOT working out. Call me your typical scared-to-commit guy, but the prospect of meeting that matching-bathrobes, grow-old-together kind of girl is terrifying to me.
See, if it doesn’t work out, I know exactly how I’ll handle it. I’ll round up the guys and go paint the town in drunken revelry, then call that girl I’ve flirted shamelessly with for the past semi-odd months and revert back to the college version of myself (which, admittedly, isn’t too far removed from the present version). In short, as juvenile as it may be, I’ll be just fine.
But if it does work out… well, I just don’t know. I know I want to find that girl I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with. Just not right now. So instead I’m filled with this jumble of feelings that all add up to me being scared. It turns out those old “I wonder what she’s thinking right now” jitters weren’t so bad after all.
How’s that for getting deep, Maris? Guess I’d better tune in next week to make fun of eHarmony…
March 14th, 2009 at 2:28 am
Can’t think of any post as great as this one! Good job!
March 15th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
This is something I have actually just mentioned in a post, albeit in a roundabout way. But about six weeks ago, I met this guy at a party (I sort of knew him already through work, but I only officially “met” him that night) and we ended up having a bit of a kissing session. I wouldn’t let him stay with me that night and I wasn’t really sure if I wanted anything to come of it anyway, but then everytime I saw him things were awkward. I decided to email him and be nice just to clear the air and started to realise that I actually really liked him, because I never really “spoke” to him at the party I didn’t know how funny and clever he was and so on. I ended up giving him my number last week and we have been texting quite a bit but I don’t know if he’s stil interested or not and I don’t want to huniliate myself by just coming out with it and saying I like him in case I get rejected!
And I can’t understand why I’m 29 years old and almost wondering if I should try and get my friends to set something up as if I AM back in high school!!!
March 15th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Yeah, it is a weird line between the awful scary jitters and the sweet giggly ones. It is nice when you stop overanalyzing your behaviour– especially now, in our twenties, when it seems like so much of it is about “playing it cool”. Blah.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:21 am
I have no idea. I’m essentially married and I still over-analyse.
March 27th, 2009 at 7:46 am
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