Fear and Loathing in New York

Given that I blog about relationships and the mentalities of men and women you’d think I would be way more cautious and understand what I do with a deeper more poignant perspective. Who am I kidding? Let’s admit this, I suck at dating, but I’m great at giving advice about it.

I have been in and out of the dating world for the last 3 years or so. But let’s be real honest, how many of those guys were really relationships material? Probably none, but that’s not really the point I suppose. The point really is the fact that I am so freakin’ clueless when it comes to that in between stage of being with someone or not being with someone. Like most of my life, things are lived in absolutes. Black and white. Loathe and love. So, for most of my life I have either known life as being single and ready to mingle or as a girlfriend. Rarely in my life have I had to deal with the dating purgatory that is well…dating. Odd how that works out.

One of my biggest character flaws, and one I’m not so sure I want to change is my passion. I’m deeply involved in things that I care for and deeply oppose things that are outside my realm of liking. This transcends many areas of my life especially dating. As many people around me know, understand and try to accept, is the fact that rarely if ever do I find a man that I find is worth my time and effort. I call it my sixth sense, or my gut instinct that allows me to guide my life in this manner. (However, this is currently up for debate as I will describe later). So, when life throws me subtle surprises, a nice wonderful man will come around and it will start playing in my mind as this “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, what do I do not to fuck this up?” mentality. To ensure this non-fuckedupness I do what I do extraordinarily well…analyze the hell out of everything. I’m still trying to figure out who I picked this trait up from… I’ll blame mom for the time being.

Anyways, so my mind starts going on overdrive. I start analyzing sentences, words, gestures, anything I possibly can. Now you may be wondering, 1) how does she have this much time to worry and 2) where is this worrying coming from? Or maybe you don’t care about either, but anyways I’m going to tell you. First off, lack of sleep leaves plenty of time to think and where does this worry come from? Well where else? Fear.

One thing I have come to realize throughout dating, both in my experiences and hearing other people’s thoughts is the simple fact that we let fear dictate so much of what we do and how we interact with people. If you really analyze a lot of what you do throughout any given day a majority of the steps you take are based on certain fears, subconscious or conscious. I mean why else do books like “Culture of Fear” exist. So, the question is then, how do you change your life from letting fear reside to letting in love and letting that rule your world?

That’s my dilemma. I have been so closed off from love or anything that resembles feelings of love that I look at it with trepidation and with fear that I am so desperately trying to remove from my life. The best advice I can give in this though is to follow the advice of one of my friends and “just shut the hell up.” I know he meant it in the most lovingly way, but women so many of us do this. We are perpetual word vomiters who say any and everything that is in our heads and more dangerously, in our hearts. I cannot even imaging how overwhelming that can be for a guy, well I guess I can imagine simply because it’s overwhelming enough inside of me that I throw it up over onto someone else! So, I’m up for playing the game… even though I hate games and think they are really emotionally taxing for no good reason, compromises are in order to let love creep back in.