Must it come to an end so soon? Maybe so.
Well, thanks to the incredibly helpful advice I received (Ahem) from my friends regarding my recent difficulty in my love-life, I’ve decided that I probably can’t in good conscience continue to see the girl I’ve dated a few times now.
On this past Thursday, we went out again (during the daytime between my morning and afternoon classes, actually). As we talked, I started composing what has to be a quite juvenile list in my head of her good qualities and her bad qualities so that I could try to weigh them objectively in my head.
The bad qualities were easy for me to think about. They’ve been the little nagging things about her that have bothered me since before I met her, and in the few times that I’ve been out with her, I found myself fixating on the these things.
She doesn’t really seem overly bright. I hate the way that looks on paper as I write it, but it’s true. What insights I thought she’d had about issues I care about seem more and more apparent as a subtle attempt at pseudo-intellectualism as opposed to a genuine interest in matters that I find serious. I can live with people who aren’t interested in the things I love, but to pretend to be interested bothers me. I love science and enjoy discussing scientific advances in the understanding of the world around us. I don't expect that a woman I date will be a subscriber to "Nature" or "Scientific American," but, for the love of all that is sacred, is it so much to ask that she not say things like "Everything is 'vibrations'," or that she's interested in "the energy fields" of people? It's hard for a scientist (or someone who came close once) not to laugh when someone seriously discusses chakras and energy points in the body. Why not throw in astrology or crystal healing at that point?
She seems affected by some kind of wanderlust that I simply can’t relate to. She’s a world-traveler, and she regaled me with some stories of her numerous visits to Europe and her plans to travel to Africa this summer. While I enjoyed the tales, she made it clear that she intends to continue this habit of taking extensive foreign trips for the rest of her life. While I find that interesting, I’m not really of the traveling nature myself. I will likely never leave the country for any appreciable length of time in my life (aside from Canada perhaps), and what’s more, I don’t anticipate that I will ever really feel like I’m missing out on anything I would otherwise enjoy. I’m a homebody. My idea of a good vacation is curling up on the couch with a movie, a swimming pool, good company, and good food.
I’m punctual – obsessively so, in fact. All my life, I’ve been worried about other people judging me. When I was little and used to go to church, I hated it when we would show up late to the service because my Father would march us down the aisle to the front few rows (our usual seats), giving everybody a chance to watch us come in late, instead of quietly finding a place in the back unobtrusively. In college, if I discovered that I would not make it to class on time, I simply did not go. There were even classes that I would probably have made it to on time, but since I was afraid that I wouldn’t make it there early enough to class, I didn’t go. People in law school always seem to wonder about me when I show up for class a half hour early in the morning, or rush out of class to get to my next one, even when I have 15 minutes until it starts or something. I’m not intentionally snubbing friends who might want to talk, but instead am worried about getting to my next class on time, though it would be difficult to actually be late. I even rush out of class to get to my car and drive home, as if I were on a deadline to arrive at my apartment. This girl, though, has a more cavalier attitude about time than I do. On each of our dates now, she’s been late showing up – once by almost a half-hour – and each time without explanation or apology.
She leads - and desires to lead - a Spartan and ascetic lifestyle. She criticized my home décor as being too ostentatious (my word, not hers) and said that she likes the look of blank walls and empty corners. Though I’ve not seen it, she described her apartment. Apparently, she furnished her apartment with a couch, a table, a chair, and a bed. The walls are bare. She owns no knick-knacks or modern appliances. According to her, having things simply reminded her of all of the things she didn’t need. Perhaps it is the weakness of my will, or some flaw in my character, but I enjoy owning things. I like having a fashionable home, glassware with my sur-initial engraved on the side, and a library of quality books. She described her desire to live in a hut in the forest one day, and my mind is filled with the massive three-floored, glass-and-stone mansion I’ve been designing and decorating in my head for the past decade. (It includes a three-story atrium, an open-air salon with a grand-piano, and a two-story library with the rolling ladder-mounted on the sides…)
I’ll be honest. I love ostentation. I could get around in a beat-up clunker car, but in my head, I’ll always be the guy who wants to drive around in a Lexus. So, to put it bluntly, there are several personality differences here which would cause a lot of friction.
On top of these differences in personal taste, she is coming on a bit too strong. I’m willing to admit that I’m serious about relationships. Dating isn’t some way to go out and have fun without regard for the future. A date is a step in a very long interview process to finding a wife. At any point along the interview process, from the first date to walking down the aisle, the driving question behind dating ought to be “Is this a person with whom I could happily live?” So I understand taking relationships seriously. On our first date, however, she mentioned her anxiety that the rest of her friends are getting older and getting married and having kids, and how she was nervous about being left behind them. On the one hand, I understand what she means. She’s 30 (don’t get me wrong, I love older women), and people my age are gearing up toward marriage. In 5 years, I can imagine that many of my friends and old roommates will be safely ensconced in marital bliss and cuddling pudgy young babies on their laps. But on the other hand, something seems terribly off-putting about bringing up marriage and kids on a first date, out of the blue.
On the plus side of my list, though, I was able to only create one real asset: she seems to like me.
That’s it. That’s really all I could come up with. Now, that’s a big plus to me. Women don’t tend to like me that much. Well, that’s not true, really. Women tend to find me charming and entertaining at times, and I have on occasion been told that I’m a good friend and quite companionate. I was that guy in high school who had several female friends, and who sat at the table with a lot of the most-sought-after girls at lunch, but they didn’t like me because they were attracted to me. They liked me because I was safe. They could confide in me, tell me their secrets, ask me for advice, and they never had to worry that I would try to get them drunk at a party or anything like that.
I know it sounds awful, but I sort of miss that camaraderie. Guy-friendships are usually about sports-watching, back-slapping, and shallow connection. As a kid in high school, I could achieve a level of intimacy in my platonic relationships with my female friends that would just seem out-of-place among adults like myself. Being that guy who is ‘one of the girls’ would probably further enshrine the image people have of me being a little on the fruity side. Sigh.
I digress, though. Although women sometimes like me, they really rarely ever seem interested in me on a romantic level. I know that the few people that occasionally read this probably can’t relate to that statement quite as well as they think they can (due to the fact that they are female and are ALL desirable and highly-sought-after individuals). There is something a bit numbing after a while about seeing a woman’s eyes sweep across a crowded room, pass over you, and come to rest on the tall, handsome guy standing next to you. I’ve had a quarter of a century of that experience, and it just feels incredibly good to finally have her eyes stop on me for a change.
But, stepping back, that’s exactly why I am going to have to end this relationship. The only reason I like her is that she makes me feel good about myself. I don’t seem to like her because of who she is; I like her because of how she makes me see myself.
In the end, that seems like I’m using her affection in an impermissible way, and I’m not sure that I can live with seeing myself as the sort of person who uses other people for personal gain that way. It seems low, shallow, and self-serving, and of the few assets I have, my integrity is one I’d rather not throw away lightly.
On this past Thursday, we went out again (during the daytime between my morning and afternoon classes, actually). As we talked, I started composing what has to be a quite juvenile list in my head of her good qualities and her bad qualities so that I could try to weigh them objectively in my head.
The bad qualities were easy for me to think about. They’ve been the little nagging things about her that have bothered me since before I met her, and in the few times that I’ve been out with her, I found myself fixating on the these things.
She doesn’t really seem overly bright. I hate the way that looks on paper as I write it, but it’s true. What insights I thought she’d had about issues I care about seem more and more apparent as a subtle attempt at pseudo-intellectualism as opposed to a genuine interest in matters that I find serious. I can live with people who aren’t interested in the things I love, but to pretend to be interested bothers me. I love science and enjoy discussing scientific advances in the understanding of the world around us. I don't expect that a woman I date will be a subscriber to "Nature" or "Scientific American," but, for the love of all that is sacred, is it so much to ask that she not say things like "Everything is 'vibrations'," or that she's interested in "the energy fields" of people? It's hard for a scientist (or someone who came close once) not to laugh when someone seriously discusses chakras and energy points in the body. Why not throw in astrology or crystal healing at that point?
She seems affected by some kind of wanderlust that I simply can’t relate to. She’s a world-traveler, and she regaled me with some stories of her numerous visits to Europe and her plans to travel to Africa this summer. While I enjoyed the tales, she made it clear that she intends to continue this habit of taking extensive foreign trips for the rest of her life. While I find that interesting, I’m not really of the traveling nature myself. I will likely never leave the country for any appreciable length of time in my life (aside from Canada perhaps), and what’s more, I don’t anticipate that I will ever really feel like I’m missing out on anything I would otherwise enjoy. I’m a homebody. My idea of a good vacation is curling up on the couch with a movie, a swimming pool, good company, and good food.
I’m punctual – obsessively so, in fact. All my life, I’ve been worried about other people judging me. When I was little and used to go to church, I hated it when we would show up late to the service because my Father would march us down the aisle to the front few rows (our usual seats), giving everybody a chance to watch us come in late, instead of quietly finding a place in the back unobtrusively. In college, if I discovered that I would not make it to class on time, I simply did not go. There were even classes that I would probably have made it to on time, but since I was afraid that I wouldn’t make it there early enough to class, I didn’t go. People in law school always seem to wonder about me when I show up for class a half hour early in the morning, or rush out of class to get to my next one, even when I have 15 minutes until it starts or something. I’m not intentionally snubbing friends who might want to talk, but instead am worried about getting to my next class on time, though it would be difficult to actually be late. I even rush out of class to get to my car and drive home, as if I were on a deadline to arrive at my apartment. This girl, though, has a more cavalier attitude about time than I do. On each of our dates now, she’s been late showing up – once by almost a half-hour – and each time without explanation or apology.
She leads - and desires to lead - a Spartan and ascetic lifestyle. She criticized my home décor as being too ostentatious (my word, not hers) and said that she likes the look of blank walls and empty corners. Though I’ve not seen it, she described her apartment. Apparently, she furnished her apartment with a couch, a table, a chair, and a bed. The walls are bare. She owns no knick-knacks or modern appliances. According to her, having things simply reminded her of all of the things she didn’t need. Perhaps it is the weakness of my will, or some flaw in my character, but I enjoy owning things. I like having a fashionable home, glassware with my sur-initial engraved on the side, and a library of quality books. She described her desire to live in a hut in the forest one day, and my mind is filled with the massive three-floored, glass-and-stone mansion I’ve been designing and decorating in my head for the past decade. (It includes a three-story atrium, an open-air salon with a grand-piano, and a two-story library with the rolling ladder-mounted on the sides…)
I’ll be honest. I love ostentation. I could get around in a beat-up clunker car, but in my head, I’ll always be the guy who wants to drive around in a Lexus. So, to put it bluntly, there are several personality differences here which would cause a lot of friction.
On top of these differences in personal taste, she is coming on a bit too strong. I’m willing to admit that I’m serious about relationships. Dating isn’t some way to go out and have fun without regard for the future. A date is a step in a very long interview process to finding a wife. At any point along the interview process, from the first date to walking down the aisle, the driving question behind dating ought to be “Is this a person with whom I could happily live?” So I understand taking relationships seriously. On our first date, however, she mentioned her anxiety that the rest of her friends are getting older and getting married and having kids, and how she was nervous about being left behind them. On the one hand, I understand what she means. She’s 30 (don’t get me wrong, I love older women), and people my age are gearing up toward marriage. In 5 years, I can imagine that many of my friends and old roommates will be safely ensconced in marital bliss and cuddling pudgy young babies on their laps. But on the other hand, something seems terribly off-putting about bringing up marriage and kids on a first date, out of the blue.
On the plus side of my list, though, I was able to only create one real asset: she seems to like me.
That’s it. That’s really all I could come up with. Now, that’s a big plus to me. Women don’t tend to like me that much. Well, that’s not true, really. Women tend to find me charming and entertaining at times, and I have on occasion been told that I’m a good friend and quite companionate. I was that guy in high school who had several female friends, and who sat at the table with a lot of the most-sought-after girls at lunch, but they didn’t like me because they were attracted to me. They liked me because I was safe. They could confide in me, tell me their secrets, ask me for advice, and they never had to worry that I would try to get them drunk at a party or anything like that.
I know it sounds awful, but I sort of miss that camaraderie. Guy-friendships are usually about sports-watching, back-slapping, and shallow connection. As a kid in high school, I could achieve a level of intimacy in my platonic relationships with my female friends that would just seem out-of-place among adults like myself. Being that guy who is ‘one of the girls’ would probably further enshrine the image people have of me being a little on the fruity side. Sigh.
I digress, though. Although women sometimes like me, they really rarely ever seem interested in me on a romantic level. I know that the few people that occasionally read this probably can’t relate to that statement quite as well as they think they can (due to the fact that they are female and are ALL desirable and highly-sought-after individuals). There is something a bit numbing after a while about seeing a woman’s eyes sweep across a crowded room, pass over you, and come to rest on the tall, handsome guy standing next to you. I’ve had a quarter of a century of that experience, and it just feels incredibly good to finally have her eyes stop on me for a change.
But, stepping back, that’s exactly why I am going to have to end this relationship. The only reason I like her is that she makes me feel good about myself. I don’t seem to like her because of who she is; I like her because of how she makes me see myself.
In the end, that seems like I’m using her affection in an impermissible way, and I’m not sure that I can live with seeing myself as the sort of person who uses other people for personal gain that way. It seems low, shallow, and self-serving, and of the few assets I have, my integrity is one I’d rather not throw away lightly.
posted by The Academian | 9:29 PM
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