my shady past... with dating. part 4.

So far I've written three posts about my inability to date properly in the past. Right here is the last post, if you want to get caught up.

Where was I?

Right. We're at the part where I actually let myself be single for a while.
I sat. I stewed. I raged. I drank heavily. I watched a lot of rom coms. I wrote rambling letters that I never sent. And then I laughed. I learned to enjoy doing whatever I wanted, like watching the entire Veronica Mars series straight through in three days.

Yeah, I got really into that.

I made promises to myself that resembled the sentiment of Scarlett O'Hara as she declares "I'll never be hungry again!"

It was a pretty good time to be me. Minus the losing my job and blowing all my money on expensive boots, moving to Chicago on a whim,  and weekly pedicures.

I also realized that I had settled into a pattern of dating. Aka, the Chameleon Act where I became a child that needed to be taken care of OR a cheerleader that had to prod! my! boyfriend! along! encouragingly! in! every! tiny! daily! task!, whichever the current love interest preferred. I decided that I didn't want a relationship where I had to buy a whole new wardrobe to feel like I fit nor a life where I had to reassure myself constantly that it wasn't that serious to avoid panicking about the fact that I was disappearing beside the guy I was seeing.

I decided I needed to stop being swallowed up.

After months of brooding and and bitching to my friends and a lot to talking to myself like a crazy person I decided I was ready to do the one thing I'd been avoiding for six or so years, actually dating my best friend.

Matt.

2004. we've always been badass, we just smoke less cigars now.

The only problem was that Matt had given up on me after five years of trying to date me to no avail, because I'm a cold and heartless bitch and I never gave him a chance. Probably because I convinced myself I'd lose him as a friend if we dated. That plan backfired because he finally went out and found himself a willing girlfriend and I lost him anyway. We became Christmas card and birthday card friends. It sucked.

Really, the kicker for me was when I realized I had essentially been dating Matt more than the guys I was actually dating- the entire time. I told him my secrets, called him when I was scared or sad or mad, talked in my weird voices without a hint of embarrassment and laughed with him about the stupid mundane things that happened in my day-to-day. I really only noticed how much I relied on our daily conversations when they suddenly stopped. While I had always continued our interactions despite my relationships, he actually focused on his and cut me out.
What a concept.

Anyway. I tried to just ignore it and let him be happy after everything I'd put him through. But I couldn't. So after a year and a half of stewing about it, I sent him what I can only call a manifesto of crazy. It was intense. Sort of a 'Sorry I just realized I've been in love with you the entire time, let's give this a shot now, please?'

And then I sent it off and got whiskey drunk.

And then he read it. And he told me it was too late and he was sorry.


BUT WE'RE TOGETHER SO THAT'S NOT HOW IT ENDS.

Ten days later Matt decided that we should probably see if we could date without killing each other.

And we haven't killed each other.... yet. It's been a year and a half. We live together. We have a giant 150 pound dog baby. We're pretty happy. It's the most healthy relationship I've ever been a part of. I get to dance around the house singing in insane falsetto at the top of my lungs wearing no makeup and my dorky-ass glasses and he gets to walk around in his underwear and play video games involving head sets.

We fight. It's definitely not easy. Compromise sucks ass sometimes. He hates people and I want to attend every party ever. I need to see my girlfriends twice a week and he needs to see his guy friends twice a year. He wants to have deep conversation right before we fall asleep and I'm like zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  He won't eat anything green that grows from a seed and sometimes all I want is a salad and some hummus. I fight like a junkyard dog every time we disagree about the tiniest thing because I feel that I desperately need to hold onto my own way so that I don't lose my identity again.

We're different people, we see things differently- I think that's pretty normal. I'm just glad one or both of us isn't pretending to see things the same way just to keep the status quo. We'd never grow that way.

We both stay. Have stayed so far.  He gives me back rubs and I occasionally sit still long enough to watch a hockey game. I can't say I've never felt trapped and frustrated and just angry to the level of pissedoffedness where I'm over it and I'M DOING WHATEVER I FUCKING WANT TO OKAY.

But we love each other, so we try.

And since that seems to work pretty well, I going to keep on trying.




At my sister's wedding. 2011.


FIN.

my shady past...with dating. part 3.

If you've read the two posts from last week about my unfortunate past with dating, then you know about the pitiful lack of experience I had with boys by the time I turned 18, you've seen me do some annoying number crunching that went nowhere, and you've also maybe read about the fact that in college and beyond I rocked at finding men to date. I mean, they were the wrong men. But still, they were there, dating me.

At 18 I dove headfirst into the waters of the college dating feeding frenzy instead of considering what I was comfortable with, what I was looking for in a guy, and what I expected a good relationship to be.  I went ahead and just let whoever was giving me attention sort out all that stuff. * After all, they probably knew more about it than I did. Right?

Settling into a pattern like that is easy-peasy and also totally unhealthy because it's a hard cycle to break and sometimes it hits you one day that you're 24 years old, a shitty partner, and you have no idea what you actually want.

Thankfully, I did 'wake up' so to speak. And once I was up, there were reminders of my passive journey through Relationshipland everywhere.

For instance, one morning I had just set off on an all-day drive. I popped in the first cd I found whilst digging around in the center console without looking and Social Distortion started rocking through the speakers. I could have slid on my sunglasses and sung along but instead I fixated for hours on the fact that I had no idea if I actually liked this band or if I just knew all of the words because a former flame loved this band and I thought I could make him love me by liking the music he liked.

What the hell? I've always been a strong, self-confident, outspoken female in nearly every other facet of my life, but when it came to men I was reduced to some malleable substance vaguely resembling play dough- That is, so long as they didn't try to label what we had as a 'serious relationship.'

Granted, I do think we pick up a lot of things from the people we date. After all, we (usually) like them, we spend a lot of time with them, and we ideally learn a lot about them when we're together. I still run my toothbrush under the sink before and after I put toothpaste on it due to a former beaux. It's just a habit I picked up that I ended up liking. I don't often think of him, but he's the source of said habit and oh well, I like a wet toothbrush.

But I think a large part of my problem was that I spent a lot of energy trying to become the perfect girl for every guy I was dating rather than considering if they had any potential to be my perfect guy. Or even a guy I was compatible with.

I know it seems strange that I say I never intentionally entered into a relationship or really wanted one- and then I go on to talk about how much I lost myself in the guys I was seeing. It doesn't really make all that much sense to me either, and it didn't happen overnight, but rather gradually, which is probably why I didn't notice it at the time. Basically, I think I lied to myself.

Because of the guy I am dating, I've been full-on country western, punk rock, a total hipster, and extremely preppy. You should see my closet, it STILL looks like an overflowing costume trunk. Slowly, like a chameleon, I did what I thought I had do to, and then time and again I was surprised when I found myself totally unhappy, unfulfilled, and trapped in a situation that I couldn't stay in. The lesson? Forcing myself to fit better with whoever I was dating didn't help me fit any better in my own skin. It didn't make our relationship any more likely to succeed or make me want to consider it in a serious light.

It was exhausting.

And I did it to myself.

By the time I realized what I'd been doing, I'd been single for a year. After a particularly volatile end, I built a wall and reinforced it with rage. And realizing I'd been losing myself to the guys I was dating only increased my resolve. But then, something good happened. I started healing. I started  to learn about myself again, to take the time to consider why I liked or didn't like something. I started to actually like myself again.

Which takes us quite neatly to tomorrow's post about my current relationship, and how it started.

See you then.

Sara

*(Except sex. I hung onto that V-card like a sacred flower waaay longer than most of the girls I knew.)

my shady past... with dating. part 2. time machine addition.

Yesterday I talked a little about my shady history with the wide world of dating.

And now I'm going to talk about it a little more.

I'm sure you're overwhelmed with joy.

Now where did we leave off? Somewhere around me bragging like an asshole over how easy it was for me to find men to date. Right.

The only problem while I was dating all these wonderful eligible men that wanted to take me home to Mom and carve our initials into the old Oak in the back yard of their childhood home?

I was totally unprepared to be dating at all.

Let's travel back in time and crunch some numbers and facts for a second.

I graduated high school at 17. During those 4 years in high school, I spent 80% of my time worrying about running track and cross country and hanging out with my team and 20% worrying about school. That's 0% time spent thinking about boys.

Okay, maybe only 78% on things running related and 2% on boys aka Freddie Prinze Jr.

Still.

I had exactly 2 'boyfriends' in high school. They were both my senior year and lasted 4 and 3.5 months, respectively.

Between the 2, I estimate 3 make out sessions, 4 real dates, 1 prom, 1 break up due to me being tired of always having to drive to his house to hang out and then having to pay and 1 break up because I wasn't willing to have sex.

That's essentially 0% preparedness to attend a frat party.

OH my GOD do I hate math.

And then I turned 18 and was magically a mature adult (HA!) and moved to another state and attended the largest university in the nation (that year) and proceeded to start dating the first guy that walked me home from the first kegger I attended, the second night I was there.

We dated for three months until I met The First Serious One, who we'll come back to, eventually.

So here's the deal. That's when the cycle started.

I like to call this little cycle The Child or the Cheerleader routine.

Because that's what I became every. single. time. Since I didn't have a clear understanding or knowledge of what I wanted in a relationship, I just dated any 'good guy' I found, and then I forced myself to fit into a box that met their vision of how our relationship should go. Hence, becoming someone they felt they had to take care of, the child. Or someone that was constantly telling them how great they were and encouraging them to reach for their dreams, hence the cheerleader.

I can be both of those things, when the time is right, but those qualities do no define me as a person. Except, that they did. For a very, very  long time.

Which we'll talk a big more about tomorrow.

XO Sara

my shady past... with dating. part 1.

Let's talking about dating for a minute... or like maybe four posts.

Now, I've been out of the scene for a hot second at this point, but I remember it well. For me, dating largely consisted of flirting with friends of friends and playing hard to get with men I'd flirted with in bars until one of them snared me into a casual hangout that led to emotions without me realizing it and the rest was history an ensuing battle of me trying to valiantly escape without anyone getting hurt. I'd never intentionally entered into a serious romantic relationship.

Never. Intentionally.

Yeah, that's a true story. Ask my first college boyfriend what I said when he finally got up the nerve to ask me to be his girlfriend after we'd seen practically nothing but each other for three months

It was something along the lines of, "Ummmm. Well. I mean, I'm a freshman. I don't really want a boyfriend, you know, a serious one. But, I guess we could give it a try. Let's just keep is casual, okay?"

Fast forward to our HORRENDOUS breakup a year and a half later. He's ugly crying on a park bench and I'm standing around like an asshole waiting for it to be over so I can go cry to my girlfriend over ice cream about him crying over me.

Rinse, repeat for six years.

One minute I'm perfectly happy running around like a crazy person on my own. But never really on my own, you know? Just surrounded by the best and happiest people I can find.  I'm so busy and full of life and movement and the next thing I know, BOOM, I'm either dating a total asshole with bigger commitment issues than myself, or I'm shaking my knee like I've been holding in four big gulps for an eight hour bumpy ride with my father behind the wheel. Antsy. Shifty-eyed. Trapped with absolutely no idea how I got here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not heartless or especially cold or incapable of emotion in any way. I cry during movie previews for christs sake. I ended up caring deeply about everyone I dated over the years, whether it was for three months or twenty. I formed friendships with their families, who they ALWAYS wanted me to meet. I grew to like many of their friends, and I liked almost all of them as people. But it took me a REALLY long time to realize that kind of compatibility doesn't necessarily mean ROMANTIC LOVE in capital letters, as least not the kind for which I was looking.

You see, my problem was never that guys were hard to find. In fact, my problem wasn't figuring out places to meet decent men, it wasn't weeding out men, it wasn't getting men interested in me. It wasn't even getting men interested in me for my personality instead of my looks. Although honestly, I'm kind of an asshole and don't really pay much mind to my appearance, so that part kind of escapes my logic.

(Please note that I'm not implying that men were flocking to me like Salmon during the spawn, nor am I a hussy by any means. I just got really good at figuring out how to screen out shady men and make the rest really like me.)

My problem wasn't in logistics or the pool.

And no issue of Cosmo or Glamour or even Carrie Bradshaw herself was telling me what the eff was going wrong here, despite my desperate perusal or any advice they had to offer.

It was me.

And tomorrow, I'll tell you why.....

Xo Sare