A Single Girl's View on Dating, First Dating, & Falling in Love

Aaron and me the day he graduated from the academy... and I locked my keys in my car just hours before I had to go take a final.

Chris and not me beside him... because I never remember to take pictures. But doesn't he look good?! (He is now happily engaged.)

Eric and me taking a break from roller skating. (He is now happily married.)

(And if I had the pictures, I would add Patrick who is now married with a baby, Jared who is now married with a baby, and Pete who's memory was incinerated shortly after the break-up. I can be dramatic at times.)

[March 27, 2011 addition to post. I received this picture in my email just a few days ago and thought of no better place for it than here on the blog.]

Pete and I at a BYU football game... this would have been the fall of 2005, I think. Crazy!

As promised, here goes: I'm a 27-year-old girl who is single and dating. Dating a lot, actually. But before you congratulate me let me insert that most dates are first dates. SOOOooo many first dates... the neighbor, the friend, the friend of a friend, the guy from the ward, the guy on facebook, the guy from the party, the guy at dinner. And if that's not enough, I have married friends with proven man-hunting and marriage-making skills who are more than anxious to help me catch a date with all their marriagely wisdom. Well, you get the picture. There are one million ways to meet guys and with average attraction and charm, I consider myself moderately successful at putting out "the vibe" if I'm interested. What constitutes interest? I guess the opposite of repulsed or turned off by. I go out on first dates with guys that ask me depending they're not a creep or a jerk. But even that is sometimes hard to tell. Still, I keep myself open to dating someone that is interested in me until I realize disinterest in him: I'm board when I'm with him; I don't feel engaged by his thoughts; I don't feel like myself around him; I'm not enjoying dating him, etc. But with all this dating, there is little development of emotional closeness. And for girls, at least, that is where it is all at (after the pecs and tight buttocks, of course.) Realizing this, I wonder why this type of connection isn't happening and feel myself turning off to avid first dating as a means of finding it.

Stop. Stop right there. Don't try to diagnose my illness; the "why" to my failure in finding emotional closeness. I know. You want to figure out why I'm single. We're so vulnerable to judgement as young single adults. There is always a reason, some character flaw that is looked for in diagnosing the cause of one's singleness. Is single and progressing happily as bad as married unhappily? Why is it a free-for-all when it comes to the single? I digress... But do you realize how many married idiots there are out there?!

With hesitation I share that this Utah dating scene is really throwing me off! Granted, I've only lived out of state for 3 years and I should have all this Utah stuff figured out by virtue of my residency but those three years outside of Utah were some of the most positive dating years of my life! They've set the standard for my expectations. It didn't ever seem as difficult to enjoy dating and find sincere, vested interest. Here's what I have to say about dating in Utah: Their are just too darn many of us! Here in Utah there is always somebody smarter, better looking, funnier, better educated, richer and more that none of us feel motivated enough to focus on one. Not me. Not guys either. So, it really takes being in a position where interaction happens consistently be you dating or not. Falling in love doesn't necessarily happen in the rigid convention of dating, although dating plays it's role. We fall in love by continual positive interaction with one another, depending on one another, sharing with one another, trusting one another. Sometimes it takes a common social setting for these things to happen in addition to or outside of dating. Take Angela from The Office. Who would fall in love with her outside of the workplace? Andy and Dwight are forced to be around her and she's kind of all they got... or at least all they focus on. The slams and put downs from her may be enough to discourage a guy from asking for a second date but they aren't enough to make either of them quit their job. This analogy is unintentionally drawing comparisons of me being Angela and "the office" being the small dating pool of Texas or California. I didn't mean to go there. Hahaha! I'm really not as beasty as Angela.

My mom often picks my brain for explanations of the epidemic of singleness that has settled upon a once anxious alter-going demographic. I like to return her questions with something like this: "because we are all emotionally tormented by the failed marriages of our parents." Checkmate. That's not entirely true. There are a lot of complex reasons that giddy, high flying feelings are harder to come by when we're older. One is we are becoming increasingly diverse in our life experiences with time which multiplies our differences and divides the number of things we share in common.

But here's the bottom line:

I realize I just pulled all the romance out of falling in love. It's not all that. I'm just trying to communicate that going out on dates (first, second, or third) really isn't a big deal to me. And that I think falling in love is a long process that takes more than just going on dates. It takes knowing someone for a long time. If a connection is going to happen it will happen, interest will develop, if there is something there. That is why I'm not really anxious to go on dates with guy friends neither do I really oppose it. It is what it is.

And that's what I have to say about that.