I recently received an anonymous submission for my blog via email. At first I thought that the content should probably be broken into separate posts, until I looked a little closer. The fact is, anonymous completely contradicted herself, and yet I could fully and totally relate to everything she was saying.
We had our first big snowstorm in Montreal last week and I didn’t have a hat, and hadn’t yet taken out my proper winter jacket. The city goes into a state of chaos after every first snowfall of the year so all public transit came to a temporary halt. I waited for an hour in the freezing cold and by the time it came I was covered in snow and couldn’t feel any of my limbs. I was tired from an exhausting week of final exams and papers, and not being able to keep my eyes open I dozed off on the bus. 40 minutes later, I woke to find my face covered in drool and my clothes soaking wet from the snow that had melted off of my head and jacket. This is the kind of thing that happens to me a lot. Do I appear to be un-date-able?”
A total “this is why I’m single” moment if ever there was one. But we’ve all been there right? And yet the same girl wrote this:
Last spring I began dating a tall dark and handsome boy who was doing his Masters in Neuroscience at one of the best universities in the country. He came from a well-off family and it seemed like we had a lot of things in common. Then on our second unofficial date he introduced me to one of his friends as his “girlfriend”. I was stunned, speechless and completely caught off guard. Girlfriend?! It was our second date! I sat him down later that evening and explained to him that I didn’t think we were on the same page. To make a long story short, we never saw each other again. Shouldn’t I have been thrilled to see that an amazing guy was so prepared to be serious and straightforward with me? How often do women wish for men to stop playing games and be real with them? Well, I had found one who was prepared to do so and I pushed him away.
To break it down:
- Girl likes boy.
- Connection is made.
- Boy is basically Prince Charming.
- Boy professes love (ok, maybe not love, but at the very least an ability to commit).
- Girl feels suffocated by something boy does/says/demonstrates.
- Girl bails.
- Same girl feels insecure over a bit of drool.
Obviously this girl is a catch, or at least Prince Charming thought so. Clearly she is not single because of one unfortunate transit experience. So why are we girls so quick to go there? Anonymous asked herself the same things in her conclusion:
Do I simply like the thrill that comes with having my eye set on someone and trying to make it happen? Also, why do I hate the word “date” so much? Because it means that there’s the possibility for the situation to go somewhere and I find that really scary?
Well I’d like to take it one step further and throw in my hypothesis. What if this is a precarious balancing act between finding our perfect match and keeping our options open so that we can’t be held back? And just maybe we don’t want to admit this to ourselves, because then we’d have to start making decisions. I mean, I’m 26. I don’t want to have to decide what I want right now! It’s so much easier to blame a bit of snot or drool instead. Right???
Maybe this is why we’re single.
- e.k. & anonymous
