Breaking and Making Rules
Reading these young adult romance novels always has me feening for a different high school experience. (One that actually had dating and romance in it.) Mine didn't have any romance, not really. Just pining, and wanting, and longing, and loneliness. It certainly didn't have any dating in it.
But even once I got older, I didn't really date. I'm just not that kinda girl. I always manage to sort of fall in and out of these immense epic dramas, but I don't really date. Even now the idea of "dating" doesn't really appeal to me. There are too many things in the process of dating that I don't like, but that are unavoidable. I didn't like it then, and I still don't.
For example:
A. Awkwardness. I hate the awkwardness at the beginning, when you're just getting to know each other, and there's uncomfortable silences, and fumbling and misunderstandings. It's irritating and it's time consuming. I like to relax somewhere between butterflies and comfortable.
But the big one is :
B. The "Talking" Stage. *sigh* The first level of relationship gray area. When you're "talking" to someone, you are climbing the mountain, hoping that at the top there'll be some big pay off (intimacy, committment, love, etc.) but there are no rules for what you do while you're climbing. For some, that is precisely the benefit of the "talking" stage: you're not "going out" (meaning there is no expectation for time or money spent), you're not committed (so there is no supposed expectation for monogamy), but if you decide that you really really want the cake, it's there for the eating. I know that I'm not into labels, and labelling love and all that, but in my experience, no rules means, "I can do it, but you can't." I'm a boundary pusher, and I realize this about myself. My unintentional motto is "When the rules are unspoken, the rules get broken." Unfortunately, what usually takes us out of the talking stage is either the forgiveness of a broken but unspoken rule, or the prevention of a broken-unspoken rule. We make the rules about flirting, and committment and monogamy, because we don't want them to get broken....again.
The Talking stage does nothing but toy with your emotions. Example: I met this dude while I was out of town this weekend, got to talking to him, I wasn't terribly interested in him, but he was alright. Persistent but respectful, which I can respect in return. I told him I was "involved" with someone (I'm not, we're in the "talking" stage, but I figured it would be a quick blow off for the guy) and he could've cared less. I ended up taking his number, and the more and more I thought about it, I felt both guilty and excited about the possibility. Not that I have any deep interests in old dude, but I felt like my emotions betrayed me. Like there weren't any formalized rules that should be making me feel guilty, and nothing that said I shouldn't just let this guy take me out and have some fun. But because the emotions involved in the "talking" stage had sort of implied that we wouldn't "see" other people, I wanted to break them. I wanted to break them so that we could make a rule. So that I could be worthy of a title, not a label, but a title that implies a certain degree of responsibility to, and maybe a little bit of ownership.
But even once I got older, I didn't really date. I'm just not that kinda girl. I always manage to sort of fall in and out of these immense epic dramas, but I don't really date. Even now the idea of "dating" doesn't really appeal to me. There are too many things in the process of dating that I don't like, but that are unavoidable. I didn't like it then, and I still don't.
For example:
A. Awkwardness. I hate the awkwardness at the beginning, when you're just getting to know each other, and there's uncomfortable silences, and fumbling and misunderstandings. It's irritating and it's time consuming. I like to relax somewhere between butterflies and comfortable.
But the big one is :
B. The "Talking" Stage. *sigh* The first level of relationship gray area. When you're "talking" to someone, you are climbing the mountain, hoping that at the top there'll be some big pay off (intimacy, committment, love, etc.) but there are no rules for what you do while you're climbing. For some, that is precisely the benefit of the "talking" stage: you're not "going out" (meaning there is no expectation for time or money spent), you're not committed (so there is no supposed expectation for monogamy), but if you decide that you really really want the cake, it's there for the eating. I know that I'm not into labels, and labelling love and all that, but in my experience, no rules means, "I can do it, but you can't." I'm a boundary pusher, and I realize this about myself. My unintentional motto is "When the rules are unspoken, the rules get broken." Unfortunately, what usually takes us out of the talking stage is either the forgiveness of a broken but unspoken rule, or the prevention of a broken-unspoken rule. We make the rules about flirting, and committment and monogamy, because we don't want them to get broken....again.
The Talking stage does nothing but toy with your emotions. Example: I met this dude while I was out of town this weekend, got to talking to him, I wasn't terribly interested in him, but he was alright. Persistent but respectful, which I can respect in return. I told him I was "involved" with someone (I'm not, we're in the "talking" stage, but I figured it would be a quick blow off for the guy) and he could've cared less. I ended up taking his number, and the more and more I thought about it, I felt both guilty and excited about the possibility. Not that I have any deep interests in old dude, but I felt like my emotions betrayed me. Like there weren't any formalized rules that should be making me feel guilty, and nothing that said I shouldn't just let this guy take me out and have some fun. But because the emotions involved in the "talking" stage had sort of implied that we wouldn't "see" other people, I wanted to break them. I wanted to break them so that we could make a rule. So that I could be worthy of a title, not a label, but a title that implies a certain degree of responsibility to, and maybe a little bit of ownership.