At any given time, people are always talking to someone. Whether that’s through texting, late-night phone calls, Facebook chat, or random calls for a last-minute dinner, many of us girls (and guys, if you’re reading this) always seem to have someone. Although this may seem to fill our lonely void, we’re really just working against ourselves.
What I mean by this is that the more we mask the feelings of our loneliness, the lonelier we get. Okay, okay, this is confusing. Let me explain.
Here it is, we begin to put off hanging out with other friends, which in turn limits the possibilities of actually meeting someone. If we try to fill a relationship void by hanging with the so-so “decent” guy who may like us (but that we have zero feelings for), people around us will start to think we’re taken. When we do this, we limit ourselves just so we can avoid the feeling of loneliness…But guess what? It’s okay to feel lonely, it’s a part of life. When we do feel lonely we should then do something proactive about it, rather than passively hanging out with a mediocre place filler. But what do many of us do??We hang out with the mediocre place filler!—the person that we’ll go out with because we think there’s no one else around.
You may think this is mean and rather snotty to call these people “mediocre place fillers,” because, after all, they may be very nice. But really, which ever way you turn them, they’re just not your type…and you know it. So, stop keeping them around at your own leisure, it’s selfish and in actuality, you’re limiting them as well. While it’s true that we (ladies especially) love to be treated for dinner every now and again, wouldn’t you rather go out for a fun evening with your friends than talk nonsense with a guy you know you don’t want to take home?
This leads me to my next question: how do we distinguish what’s real from what’s not? How do we know who is relationship material and who isn’t? After a recent break-up with a guy I fell quite hard for, I can’t seem to shake that natural intuitive feeling that I felt when I was with him. This isn’t to say that I can’t feel the same way with anyone else, but in the words of Michael Bublé, “I just haven’t met you yet.” Dinner after dinner, drink after drink, I still have not yet found anyone to evoke that certain spark that, well, came so organically with my last boyfriend.
Initially when we meet someone, a potential candidate to be our significant other, we want to feel excited. Why should you have to have a pep talk with yourself before heading to grab some grub with your new beau? You all know what I am talking about, because we are all guilty of this. These are not feelings of nervousness; these are feelings of anxiety. There is a big difference between the two. Nervousness emerges when you’re getting ready for a date with someone you’re genuinely attracted to, but you know when you get the thought, “maybe I’ll stay home instead” or “I feel bad not going out with this guy, because I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” but honestly, if you’d rather stay home alone than hang out with this person, well, Houston, we have a problem.
You know that feeling that you got when you started to hang out with your first real boyfriend?…Those days and nights when you spent every waking moment with them, only to do it again the next day? Yeah, those are real feelings. I’m so tired of playing the game. I want my feelings to be real; to mean something. I know I can feel that again, and quite frankly I have. So don’t let anyone try to tell you that you’re too picky. Besides, knowing what you want is sexy, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
This brings me to my next point: never settle. Last night, as I sat and talked relationships with a friend over a candlelit dinner, the couple next to us was absolutely miserable. The saddest part of all was that these people couldn’t be a day older than 25. Is this what they thought was real? A silent dinner? Sad, but more often than not, people feel that this is how it is—that this is how it should be, but don’t let them fool you.
In a world where we cannot describe the norm, there is no reason to rush, to settle—to be in an unhappy and unhealthy relationship. No, not at all. Relationships aren’t easy. They take effort and dedication. But this must come from both people in the relationship, because, well, to use the cliché, it takes two to tango.
So ladies and gents, stay true to yourself and stop settling for people that you don’t see yourself with. And don’t date out of guilt or out of the thought that you might hurt the other person’s feelings if you say “no thanks.” Instead, have fun, be yourself, and everything else will surely follow.
Photo credit: “3 Girls and a Mic”
