I’ve decided to cease writing about my dating life. For now, anyway. Up to this point, I’ve looked at dating as a kind of game, partially to keep myself from going mad with frustration and to not take it all too seriously—to find the humor in what is really my most serious endeavor.
I learned in my past relationships that being open and honest was key to the success of any future relationship for me. And I really want just one more, someone to spend the rest of my life with. This openness sort of backfired recently, when a few of the guys I’ve gone out with reacted negatively to this exposure—like, maybe my need for openness doesn’t have to include the entire internet?
One guy’s ready to dive right in, another’s not quite ready to open himself up, yet another seems not quite right for me. For the one not quite ready to open himself up, I feel something that feels like love, already, so powerful, but not the liberating love that I felt with Manny or Bob, just a disagreeable Bronte-esque longing that seems, frankly, unwelcome at this stage. Yet I feel this thing. I want to jump ahead, past the chapters about loneliness and despair on the moors.
It doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen—all that exposition, I can’t avoid it. I do hope to pick up the story later on, and fill you in on those details, in edited and perhaps less graphic retrospect, but for now it doesn’t feel like a game anymore.