Hopelessly Burdened With Issues
In a rambling explanation of why he's giving up the NotDating™ lifestyle, TheYetitalks about risk and commitment. He said that it still applies well to the following groups: those who have “just recently broken up, young and not looking for commitment, looking to learn more about yourself or the other gender, or hopelessly burdened with issues.” It should be perfectly obvious to anybody reading this weblog which group best applies to me.
Before I get to the bit about commitment, he talks about wants, and specifically this: “We want different things. Women want men to be Men, and Men want women to be Women. This doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions, but for the majority of us, we want the man to pursue a woman and convince her he is willing to work for her and needs her by his side to truly be complete. [...] Myths aside, we want to be ourselves.” Earlier this year I had to deal with what I perceived to be my playing the role of a female friend's trusted girlfriend, in that she would tell me things that I thought girls only told other girls. Complaints about boys, previous and current (back then) sex lives, stuff like that. Stuff I was, as a male, ill-equiped to deal with because they were things that never happened to me. How should I know how to deal with a jerk boyfriend? What sex life do I have to base any opinions on? I told her this, that I didn't like being her "girlfriend", but she said that she didn't base what she told people on the gender of the listener. How can one not base what they tell people on the gender of the listener? And besides, I don't like being asked for advice on shit I know nothing about—or, for that matter, being placed in a position in which I have to tell you what to do—nor do I like being asked to give absolution. People have confessed all kinds of things to me as if it doesn't affect me in some way. Not looking for absolution, you say? Then why confess it? I hate to break it to those who think gender roles are bullshit, but men—real men—don't waste their time listening to the complaints of women. I'm a guy, dammit. I wanna do guy things like drink beer and watch guys beat the crap out of each other on the hockey rink.
TheYeti also talks about taking a risk if commitment is the goal. It feels like a huge risk, because how many women in the age range I'm interested in (early twenties) are looking for commitment to one guy forever? There are exceptions—and you might even be that exception (but just because you're that exception, it doesn't mean that the generalization doesn't hold)—but the sense I get is that people (guys and girls) just "want to have fun" while they're at college or "in the market". So it's a big risk for me to say that I want a long-term relationship, because every time I do, I'm told that I'm "young and should have some fun". Does being a self-conscious nerd having gone almost a decade without a girlfriend sound like fun to you? I'm looking for the wrong thing, you say? No, people who are not looking for commitment early on in life are looking for the wrong thing!
Which brings me to the risk it feels like I'm currently taking and the length of time (three months) it took me to decide to finally take that risk. Without being too specific, as usual I've found someone who is too busy to breath, much less want to spend time with me. It's frustrating, absolutely frustrating that after deciding to put at least some effort into it, that the rewards are as yet so slim. It's reminding me—very negatively—of the hell I went through in high school trying to chase girls that were either too close or that wouldn't give me the time of day. This feels like the latter situation, having entirely ruled out friends as potential dates unless physical torture were used as a method to convince me to try it.
In short, I'm not the type of guy who can even try the NotDating™ method, even though it is appealing. It's just that the opposite, i.e. putting effort into geting phone numbers (not impossible), making the first call (not imposible either, but less likely), and making a second call if they're not home or "busy" (infinitely approaches impossibility). I wrote about how I hate competing, but, more and more, that has less to do with an unwillinngness to compete than it does with an inability to compete.