Here is the thing about cultivating new friendships as an adult: it often feels like dating. Maybe you meet someone when you go out with a group of similar acquaintances. You put your feelers out, wait for the glimmerings of a connection, or a common thread of conversation. Anything that signals “I could maybe get along with this person, and tolerate to spend an afternoon with them” you talk basic things, movies, music, sometimes politics. You stumble across some thread of common ground, you chat, and then you have to work up the courage to further the relationship. Do you add them as a friend on Facebook? Do you get their business card? Do you work up the nerve to awkwardly call and suggest you do something just the two of you? There is always that weird moment of wondering if this person felt the connection too, or if you are just coming off as a potential stalker. So then you get the one-on-one time, you make small talk, learn about the person, ask some basic questions, discover more, share stories, build a bond. Make plans to meet again… it’s dating without all the fringe benefits. Gone are the days of being best friends with the kids a few doors down the street, simply on the merits that they are there and you are the same age. “Everyone” always says that you make your closest friends in high school (wrong) and college, but what they neglect to tell you is that the reason for this is because it can be painfully awkward to make friends when you are in that inbetween stage between graduation and enrolling your kids in pre-school. So here I find myself in a town and a job that I love, floundering around between age groups, hoping for a kindred spirit my own age who lives in my same zip code.
I decided a long time ago that I am pretty much an old soul, so really I’m not even that picky about finding a local group of friends in my age group, but dating is an entirely different story. I’m perfectly content to gab with my slightly older colleagues, bond with the people in my yoga class, and grab coffee with my married friends while their kids are still at day-care. I can handle the fact that most of the people that I meet here are either in the college age-range, or the very post college age-range. I love hearing the advice of my past professors, love getting feedback from a wiser person with more life experience than I do, love having intelligent conversations with any person regardless of age, but when it comes to dating I try to stick to my own age-range. (a task that proves slightly difficult in my currant town).
When I first discovered that making friends as an adult is essentially like dating, I thought “this is a lot of effort, and my time is a precious commodity, I’d rather just date someone if I’m going to invest the time” But recent experiences have made me recant this statement. I forgot about all the awkward expectations and mixed messages that can accompany dating (though they can certainly accompany friendship as well, it’s much more loaded in a dating situation). When I was in college my grandmother send me a letter, and the closing line was “look out for all the jerks and weirdos out there” At the time I thought this was hilarious, and even today my mother and I still say that to each other, but the more time I spend in the adult dating world the more I think my grandmother was really on to something. There are an infinite number of jerks and weirdos out there, and for whatever reason, quite a few of them seem to be drawn to me.
I used to think that I was just being too picky, but after evaluating the things that I think are important in a partner (even if it is just a short-term one) the bottom line has to be that he gets me. I think at the end of the day, you need to be on the same page with the other person, even if it is just on a really basic level. You can have everything in common, and yet, if you are in different places, the relationship is doomed from the beginning.
Two years ago (at the ripe old age of twenty-three) I was dating a guy who was two years older. In the end it didn’t work out, and I couldn’t really fathom what the huge issue was… Though I certainly don’t claim to have my life figured out, and have everything together, I can at least identify that there is a huge difference between where I was at twenty-three and where I am now. I came upon this self-realization, when a slightly younger guy kept trying to establish a connection that just wasn’t happening for me. There is this huge part of me that just wants to call up my ex and say “wow, I get it now!” but somehow I don’t think he would appreciate the call.
There was so much awkwardness that surrounded this particular fellow that I just couldn’t fathom how he wasn’t picking up on it. Granted, dating makes us do really stupid things, and apparently ignore all normal social cues. I guess in some cases you want to believe what you want to believe, and so you interpret things differently than you normally would. This is where the major difference between cultivating a friendship and dating really exists. If a potential friend was avoiding meeting up with you, not really engaging in conversation, and in general not showing an interest in furthering the friendship, you would probably let it drop. Oh well, I guess it just won’t work out, no worries, moving on. Add even a hint of romantic interest to that situation, and suddenly avoiding you becomes “playing hard to get.”
When it was obvious that my general apathy towards this particular person wasn’t being translated as such, I tried a more direct approach. I will admit I am very bad about coming right out and saying “this is so not happening” and so I tried to be delicate, but in a direct way. This also backfired because his response was simply “what gave you the idea that I was interested in more than friendship in the first place?” I could have gone off about signals, and intuition but decided against making the effort. Of course we had coffee, because in the end if two people are just claiming they want to be friends, there is really no reason not to get a cup of coffee… or at least not a reason that doesn’t make you seem like a terrible or stuck-up person. Per my expectations awkwardness ensued. (and no I don’t think it was due to intention on my part). What resulted was an encounter that lead to this conversation. “Yeah your hair usually looks pretty good… obviously it doesn’t right now” and “wow, you are kind of full of yourself” (both things every woman is clearly dying to hear on a non-date coffee date). I left feeling baffled by the entire situation. I’ve tried not to analyze the situation too much, but seriously? Date, or no date, even if cultivating a friendship was the only thing happening, I still wouldn’t open with “obviously you don’t look good right now” and following up with “you are kind of full of yourself” (even if it was in a joking context, which I’m still un-clear if it was). Is it the playground mentality of “if I’m mean to this person they won’t think I like them” or maybe trying to overly prove that he didn’t have a romantic intention? Maybe he was just nervous? Maybe he is just socially awkward? These are the questions that I have… probably I will never know the answers to them.
I left coffee feeling as though my initial intuition was correct, no connection, no kindred spirit, no prize for sweeping me off my feet. So I was surprised when I got a text from him a few minutes later, and then throughout the evening, and shortly thereafter another invite to coffee. I retraced our interactions, and tried to figure out if I had been misleading and actually been sending mixed signals. The bottom line is, I wasn’t. That is the thing about dating, or being on the verge of dating. It’s so much easier to get through the day when you have the idea of something on the horizon. Something, to keep trying for, something to fall back on, something to divert your attention. It is so painfully easy to ignore the signals when you are blindly clinging to the hope of something more. I’ve been there, so I get it… but it’s still a little annoying. It’s hard to continue to try to let someone down easy… I mean there are only so many excuses, so many times you can say no without having to just cut things off completely.
I was hoping my hectic schedule would do that for me, it didn’t. When he started talking about tickets to the symphony, and over-night trips to Seattle, I knew I had to say something. I mean I know everyone has fantasies about the future (this coming from a person who attends weddings for a living, hello!) but jumping from one awkward non-date to a trip to Seattle was a little much even for me. I was trying to figure out an exit strategy that was less abrasive than “I’m deleting your number, don’t call me” but more firm than “My life is really busy right now.” And then I was given a gift. He started hating on the Red Sox. He may have just been joking, he may have just been trying to get a rise out of me, who knows, this is the beauty of the ambiguity of communicating via text message. But it is what pushed me over the toleration line. Which is slightly sad. He can insult my hair, and call me stuck up, but what really makes me livid is hating on the Red Sox? You can only push a girl so far, and really my love of the Red Sox is not something I’m going to compromise on.
I already have enough friends who do not have a tolerance for baseball, and at that moment I knew that I really wasn’t in the market for any sort of relationship (friend or more than friend) that I couldn’t take to a baseball game. Is it shallow? Maybe. Is it an excuse? Perhaps. But the bottom line is that I’m a woman who knows what she wants, and at the end of the day I’m looking for someone who gets me, and who knows enough not to trash talk the Red Sox. Of course there is more to the story, and more things that annoyed me, and countless other reasons why I just wasn’t feeling it. But it was a good exit. I told him I would tolerate quite a bit, but dissing on the Bosox wasn’t one of them and he has pretty much sealed his own fate. Sure maybe down the line after we has established some sort of rapport and understood each other’s sense of humor, or pet peeves… but you don’t pull shit like that when you don’t know a person very well. He of course thought I was kidding, and proceeded to ask me more questions. I put my phone aside, ignored any further correspondence. It’s like saying “I hate Chihuahuas and I want to punch them in the face and then feed them to my Bulldog” only to discover that the person you are talking to owns six Chihuahuas. I digress…
So I continue my search for Mr. Right… at least all my experiences in the land of jerks and weirdos keep life interesting.
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