The Dating Game

I, for one, will never understand dating. I hear the girls who have come to me for advice laughing their heads off right now, but it's true. Dating is a ritual, a dance, a song, a boxing match, an anatomy lesson. Every beginning is just laced with mistakes of former endings. You feel yourself making the same missteps and errors. Maybe it is because we carry so much of ourselves into the relationship that we follow the same patterns, or maybe it is because we have all learned how to love in specific ways that those are the ways we continue to express it, or maybe- just maybe- we keep closing our heart off- not giving the future a chance to distance itself from the past.

As I hand my number to the third man of that evening, whilst responding to texts to three men of the evening before, and making three plans for the next evening- I get a sense of deja vu. Yes there for some odd reason seems to be some luck in the number three, but more then that, I feel myself already making the same redundant mistakes before I even begin. I decided I was going to do it right this time- find the "right" man. Yet as the evening goes on it's not the multitude of handsome men that are telling me about taking the MCATS, or the LSATS that are holding my attention, instead my mind is still cursing the wrong one.

What makes us like someone? It's a question mutlitudes of self help books have tried to answer, but I feel for every person it is different. I have been told, by a scientific magazine that shall remain unknown, the top three traits women look for in men are 1)career, 2)sense of humor, 3)good looks. Well if that was true- I wouldn't have even started to date Mr. Wrong, things would have worked out a lot better with my best friend who was in love with me, and by the end of the evening I would have been hanging off of the arm of a certain man tonight. But as it stands- I am not with the many many men who do indeed fulful the checklist of all three, and instead find myself gravitating in directions unknown.

But I look at life and see it all around me. So many women and men aching for the person that is the worst for them. Maybe it's because we always want what we can't have. The idea of something beyond our reach, beyond our grasp- will always be an alluring enigma. But I have to believe it's more than that. Maybe it's because we tell ourselves over and over that we can do better, and like a song- if played enough the melody will break a hole in your resolve. It can weave a disastrous turn of events by opening your mind to the person because you have gotten used sound of their name running through your head. Maybe it's because we recognize the persons faults to begin with, and find some solace in the fact that we can create a relationship without the misconceptions. We don't automatically put them on a pedastool. The feelings exist without the stripping process. Or maybe it's because their faults meld so perfectly with ours. We see someone with all the imperfections, and how they match our own. Or maybe- there really is an invisible string leading us to all the wrong people in our lives to teach us all the right lessons. We follow the pulling and tugging- insisting there must be a reason- and having faith in the outcome. Yet as the outcome crashes around us, we still feel that string pulling and wonder where those unwarranted feelings began.

I don't understand feelings. The way they can pull two people closer together, or make one person feel even more isolated. The way they can make people cry when they are standing across from each other taking vows of time and all eternity, or laugh when they are standing across from each other looking at the shambles of a blown up relationship. Feel nothing when the perfect man is professing his love, and feel so much when the man with nothing going for him is telling you he feels nothing. The way that they can start as hate, and mold to love, and mold back to hate. Feelings are tricky things. So back to the question- why are we attracted to some people and not others?

Why can't I be in love with the many men who are bended knee? Maybe all of it is Heavenly Father's way of leading us to the right person. Without the list of wrong ones, we wouldn't appreciate the right person so much in the end. And every relationship has only two outcomes- and if it was always positive we wouldn't understand how special it is when you find that one person. That one person who loves the fact that I have to comfort the crying stranger in the grocery store, or will ruin my hair and makeup to run in a sprinkler. The things that drove others insane- will be the very things that make the person you are meant to be with crave you. I believe this with all my heart. I am so excited to learn the weird things about all the many men I date and find out what makes them so unique for me or someone else.

I don't have the answers to attraction, dating, understanding the rules of it all- but I do understand that it sucks. The process, the redundancy, the amount of rejection/hurt/dissapointment/and apathy you are going to feel throughout it all is going to sting. But here I am doing it- because putting your heart on the line to get crushed is one step closer. You play the game because you know the prize is a million times better than anything you could ever lose.