The Dating Game

Current Mood: Curious
Music Playing: OneRepublic, Dreaming Out Loud

Well, once again the great Carrie Bradshaw has inspired another blog entry. I have started to get back into the dating game, just barely putting my toes in the water because I don’t want to get in too deep for fear of sharks or drowning. In the final Sex And The City episode, her last words summarize the whole philosophy of the series: “I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you, you love, well, that's just fabulous.”
It got me to thinking about starting a new relationship and what it will be like. For the first time, well probably ever, I've found myself in a position where I have options... Three completely different and unique girls; each intrigues me in a different way. Lets play the dating game! Bachelorette number one, the girl I've been spending the most time with; she's everything that Megan isn’t but in a good way, but there are also a few very important pieces that are missing. To draw upon Carrie’s quote on relationships, even though this girl and I are not dating exclusively, there are too many questions coming up, too many red flags, and that’s just not working for me. Bachelorette number two seems more like Megan, she’s even an herbivore; which isn’t all bad, but I do love my meat. And lastly bachelorette number three, long distance; enough said, but that could be just want I need, she could bring me to somewhere unexpected… I guess what I’m looking for is a little bit of everything; I want something new but familiar at the same time and something that takes me to a new place, but back to where my heart started, a hopeless romantic looking for love’s last great romance. I spent 3 1/2 years with Megan, so the chances of falling into another relationship that feels like it did with her are highly unlikely; other then during our moments of frustration, to me at least, we were an exemplary model of a great romance. One of the biggest annoyances guys have in relationships is that the woman is always trying to change them; it could be something simple or something major, and sometimes things do need to be changed, but like Carrie says, if you find someone to love the you that you love, well that’s just fabulous! (Even though I loathe the word fabulous, but I’ll let that one slide because she has been the muse for two of my blogs) I thought that Megan was that person, she did have her grievances about me, as did I of her, but I thought we were mature enough, and loved each other to accept those things and move on, but apparently somewhere along the way, she changed and didn’t tell me. Dating is such a cumbersome task; it takes a solid month of steadily dating someone just to get to the point where you feel like you know them and can begin to trust them; at least four to six months to potentially be in love with them, sometimes longer… and a good year and a half to two years to feel 100% trust and feel totally comfortable in your relationship. But perhaps comfort is a bad thing; maybe being comfortable keeps you desensitized from the reality of your relationship and realizing the immensity that you have in front of you and you just assume that because you’re in love, you are untouchable. Then in a whirlwind you find yourself single, depressed, and living at mom’s house again… I thought I had a future with Megan, I was pretty sure she was the girl I was going to marry; now I hate her… Love hurts, but sometimes it’s a good hurt (Incubus) . But now, moving on, a stronger person, I wonder about these girls and if any of them have the potential to be that new, exciting relationship. At four months out, I’m ready to date other people, not entirely over Megan, she still pop’s up in my dreams; looking stunningly beautiful and is completely irresistible and I hate her for that too. So here I am, enjoying that idea of “courting,” but wondering what that spark feels like, and when will I be able to feel it again? Is it too soon to feel that spark, or is it an elusive thing; Eros’ unicorn? Are we destined to date people that make us feel one way? An old and familiar, a new and exotic, one to make us ask questions, one to bring you somewhere unexpected, one to bring you far from where you started, or one to bring you back? And of those, which is going to give us the future happiness we look for? Or is there a relationship that exists that has a combination of these different styles of relationships? And if there is, maybe that is what makes the best relationships so intriguing, and that’s why they are the most challenging and significant. Anyway, I’ve digressed in several different directions, and the answers just aren’t there. All the very cliché people in the world will say, you’ll know when you feel it, but then there are the cynics, like myself (all-be-it a romantic cynic) who wants to say, “I already felt it, and the bitch broke my heart!” I got to tell you, I really admire the people that are able to move beyond a great love and be able find one that is even better; that seems so inconceivable to me at this point but I have to continue to believe that the heart of life is good and that there is that someone that will love the you that you love. I just wish she was easier to find…

Where does love go?

Current Mood: Contemplative
Music Playing: John Mayer, Room For Squares

Strangely, after saying my final goodbye just a few days ago, I came home to an episode of Sex And The City, where Carrie was wondering why it’s so hard to stay friends with ex’s that you were in love with, and so she asked the question, “When people fall in love, and then they break up, where does the love go?” This question could quite possibly be one of the great wonders of the world…
When you fall in love, no matter how many times you’ve done it before, you always have the expectation that this new love could be your last, and when it turns out not to be, you are trampled yet again underneath the unforgiving foot of the love god’s. Often time’s love disappears even before the break-up. Often, people’s daily lives full of stress and routine affect the depth of love, and how you deal with these changes directly affects where the love will go. The stress of life can take a toll on any good relationship, we get so wrapped up in ourselves, that we forget and neglect the one thing we love the most, our partner. Frustration mounts because things aren’t like they used to be anymore and each party blames and accuses the other for the deterioration of love. Before you know it, love becomes a mixture of negative habits that tend to overshadow the positives in your relationship. The one thing that often leads to a failed relationship is communication; all other things can be perfect, but if a couple is not capable of communicating their frustrations during this period of stress and blame, then there is no solution, there is only an end. It’s no surprise that the more a couple struggles with their daily routine, the more they push away their partner, which inevitably leads to a break up. One thing all couples need to realize is the importance of addressing an issue like this, because the love is still there, you just don’t know how to weed out all the other crap to find it again. You have to be willing to say, “I’m frustrated” or, “I’m not happy,” because if you don’t do that, the relationship will without a doubt end. ALL couples go through rough patches, you just have to figure what to do to repair so you can re-energize.
When you are in a long-term committed relationship, break-ups don’t just happen with a snap of the fingers. Though we all wish it could be so easy, break-ups take awhile to go through, and it takes awhile to get over that love. Sometimes people find new love relatively quickly, and the new Mr. or Mrs. Right make it easier to forget about the emotional draining process of forgetting their ex, but in reality, they aren’t entirely over their previous love; it doesn’t take a new person to heal, in fact, it can turn out to be a very ruinous experiment. We need time for ourselves, and distracting ourselves with someone else does not heal wounds. We need to wrestle with our emotions before we can feel better again, before we can really accept new love. As cliché as it is, it has always been said that you need something like 3 months of healing for every year you were together, but somehow, people still find the ability to move on even before the thoughts of their past love are out of their head. Is the love really gone or are they just hiding from it because it feels better to be loved again, then not at all? After one month, one year, or one century, where does the love go? Someone once said that trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you never met. When you love someone, especially to the point of marriage or planning your life with them, when they go away, the love will forever remain a part of you. Is that to say that should they return to your life that you are capable of love with them again? Not necessarily, going back to Sex And The City, Carrie tries to make a “friend date” with Big, when Big has already moved on and is engaged to supermodel, Natasha. She finds that just being friends with him is difficult because there is already a “replacement” after her. It is in this moment when we see love return, it had been hidden somewhere inside, but when we realize that we have been replaced, we realize how much we still love our ex. When love re-emerges does it make us realize what we’ve lost and start to feel doubt and guilt about losing our ex? Possibly, but you can’t ask questions when your past love has already moved on.
Does love move onto the next partner? No, for each new partner, there is a different love; love is not one constant, never changing feeling; and so, though there is a new love, it is not the love you had before, that love is still inside of you, it has just been pushed further down to make room for new love. In the end, the person that is single ends up getting burned because they thought that their ex must have been going through the same turmoil as they had, but when there’s already someone new, everything becomes dishonest and hurtful.
They say that you need a full month or more of no communication to be fully over an ex, or to make you realize that you’ve made a huge mistake… But sometimes it doesn’t matter how much time is taken, healing takes a lot of work, and some people just handle it better then others; some find solace in friends, some in new love. Getting back to the question at hand, where does the love go? It comes and goes, it never leaves, but it also never stays, when you can stop hurting, stop questioning, stop hoping, the love can finally go into remission; now I say remission because as I said before, it never fully goes away, it’s much like a cancer that can come and go without warning; it can come on a song, in a smell, in a movie, and it always comes on anniversaries… But eventually with time, there are new songs and smells and movies that camouflage the others. Love wears many masks; it takes the form of hate and despair, of loneliness and envy, and in the end love becomes just a memory, all be it a very long memory...