Dating Without Expectations
Sometimes, when things get hard,
and you see one dating failure succeeding another one, it’s hard not to lose
hope and not to give up on your search for love all together. When it comes to
dating, after seeing my catastrophes repeating themselves with different guys,
I couldn’t help but wonder – In a city like London, where possibilities are
limitless, why does it seem that when it comes to guys I only had one? Why does it seem like every
relationship/dating attempt I make will end in nothing, but a disaster and a
complete waste of time? When I realised that I couldn’t answer that question,
no matter how hard I tried, I decided to change my perspective on dating – or
maybe I just gave up…
As a girl, every time I meet
someone new, I don’t just try to establish whether the guy will be good to date
for a couple of weeks or just sleep with for the night and then wave goodbye. I
usually like to find out more about them and their lives – evaluating whether I
could see myself with them in the foreseeable future. And if I go out with them
a few times and I see that they might be a good match, I find no need in dating
other guys, until I see where my current dating endeavour will lead. So,
naturally, when I met Cristiano I applied the well-known, familiar dating routine
I was so accustomed to. Little did I know that he would end up being worse than
most of the rest ones. Not only did Cristiano represent the exact pattern of
guys I always go for – arrogant, selfish and self-absorbed – but he proved to
be a lot worse. Cristiano enjoyed making a spectacle out of his many conquests,
by categorising them, undermining them and exposing the admiration they had for
him. He liked to boast about the number of women he had slept with and how none
of them meant anything to him, despite their best efforts. He liked to believe
that simply because he had been cheated on and had his heart broken in the
past, he had the right to treat women like objects. His sexual fetishes only
verified his resentment towards all females. And when the short dating escapade
between Cristiano and me ended – because as you can see, it is evident that it
would never had lasted – I couldn’t help but notice a pattern between all guys.
No guy is looking for the one when dating; no guy dates just one girl and sees
it out until they see how the future looks with her. On the contrary, I came to
realise that guys work very differently.
The dating pattern that guys tend
to follow is neither meticulous nor calculative. Men live in constant fear of
losing their freedom – so naturally they date girls randomly, just to have fun
and long-term potential is nowhere near their train of thought when they go on
the first few dates. Dating seems to be like a race when it comes to ‘the one’
for them – the girl that lasts the longer and puts up with their overactive
dating life, will make the cut. But other than that, they have sex with
multiple girls at the same period of time, they enjoy dating them and cuddling
them – they like them all, but not enough to be with one. When it comes to men and women, as a general rule, it seems that the
former like the idea of dating more than they like the people involved in the
process, while the latter view dating as an unnecessary evil in search of a
relationship. And once I realised that there’s a different mind-set to it,
it made my life a lot easier…
I suddenly decided I had enough;
I had lived through the same disappointment in the face of different guys and
Cristiano was the icing on the cake – I wasn’t prepared to go through that
anytime soon again. If men can date differently, I can do the same! And just like that,
I stopped dating one guy at a time, I stopped expecting a date to be more than
what it was and I stopped trying to envision any future with any of them. I
stopped caring if the guy I saw last night would text me or not, because I had
5 more texting me and I stopped caring when I would see him again because I had
3 more dates planned in the next week. On the contrary, I almost wished he
wouldn’t want to see me again any time in the next two weeks simply because I
had no time and he was so replaceable. I enjoyed seeing all the guys, but
suddenly none of them were important. They were a number, they were a way to
pass my time pleasantly, to have a drink, dinner, a movie or sex and then get
on with my life. And just like that, I finally started to feel liberated and
actually enjoyed each date for what it was. Dating ceased being a painful
necessity to find ‘the one’ – it was a fun way to spend my time and there was
no pressure on myself or any of the guys I was seeing.
I’m not quite sure whether I gave up on
looking for the right guy or if I just discovered the key to dating
effortlessly and enjoying – but I know that I am not willing to trade it with yet another disappointment. So dating
like a man can be fun, but I don’t expect anything to come out of it anymore.
So for the time being, dating without expectations is fun and effortless, and
if at the end of the day something come out of it, then let it be – but I
definitely don’t expect it to.
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