I’m starting to get kind of good at dating.
And what happens when one gets kind of good at dating is it becomes not that big of a deal.
I feel much less desperate for a relationship now. Partially I think because I now have a bit more confidence in finding one and also partially because I’m not trapped in my head longing for one.
I’m having real experiences and I’m also realizing that I’m currently very happy in my life and don’t need to be rushing into changing it.
My impending doom has been removed and without impending doom life is pretty nice.
What makes me good at dating?
Being able to read people’s body language is one.
Reading body language is the polite thing to do.
People should not have to voice every single thing. If you think they should have to voice every single thing then you are likely not very charming.
A large part of charm is communicating without words.
Which is hard to do.
It’s very natural for humans we do it all the time. But it does take a degree of confidence and stability.
I didn’t have those things before. Confidence and stability.
It took me a minute to develop them. And before I developed them I was very ‘blunt’ and I expected everyone to be direct with me and say what’s on their mind and all that.
People don’t do that.
People who love you will do that. Because they love you and they’ll go the extra degree by being straightforward. But other people, no. They’ll always be as subtle and as polite as possible.
Learning to read rejection or interest from body language is not only the polite thing to do, it’s way more efficient and effective.
What else makes me good at dating is developing an understanding of what men want and need.
If you don’t think you need to develop an understanding of what the sex you’re attracted to wants and needs then once again, you’re probably not very charming.
But once again, it’s not easy to do.
It also requires a bit of confidence and stability that is troublesome to develop. Especially these days.
The amount of information we get bombarded with is destabilizing and does damage to confidence by inflating and deflating too quickly.
Getting proper confidence and stability is about being able to sort all the shiny things away from the real things.
And the real things are pretty basic displays of humanity.
Being present. Being trustworthy. Being respectful. Being lighthearted and having a sense of humor. Having some spontaneity with life and not always taking it so seriously.
I’m still pretty hung up on the last guy I really liked.
Which is common for me. I usually stay hung up on one man for years whether I’m dating him or not.
And in the past when I got hung up on a man I wasn’t dating I found it excruciatingly painful to try to date anyone else.
So excruciating it was nearly impossible. Though I did try to muscle my way through it a few times. But even if I could withstand the pain, I could not withstand the depression.
Because that’s what depression does. It helps you give up. By removing all hope. And with hope gone motivation will also quickly die.
What has gotten me out of my dating depression in the past has been impending doom.
Mortal terror is quite a bit more powerful than depression and it is what I’ve relied on for my dating motivation most of my life.
I really believed for a long period of my life time that I could not be happy without a man.
But in the last few years I’ve figured out precisely why I thought I couldn’t be happy without a man.
This will be difficult to explain. But I will try.
Attractive men (By attractive I mean men I’m attracted to) provide an incredible amount of motivation that is usually lacking.
People I like in general also provide this motivation, but men provide it in intense upfront amounts.
Work is a very good example of this. If I like my coworkers I will work ten times harder.
If I like a man I work with I’ll win an award. (Okay well I didn’t win but I was nominated twice)
Basically the ability for me to focus, problem solve, stretch outside my comfort zone, multitask, all of it times itself by a hundred.
This is how it is for all human beings.
But for a lot of women men can also be a kind of cheat code. Especially women like me (and I’ve met a lot of them) that have chaos minds.
A chaos mind is one that wastes a lot of energy on nothing. On trying to do everything. Or on things that go to zero like an addiction (cigarettes) or on choosing the wrong thing to focus on and becoming obsessed with it.
Men are much better at zeroing in. They see the goal not all the other stuff around the goal. Or everyone’s feelings around the goal. Or how much else they should do before they do the goal.
They just see the goal and they try to get there as quickly as possible.
That kind of efficiently can neutralize chaos and it’s very easy to become dependent on it.
Becoming dependent on it isn’t bad. But I was terribly deficient. I needed to balance myself out before grabbing for something outside myself.
My impending doom and mortal terror was of that instability and chaos. I thought men were the only cure.
But now that I’ve balanced myself out and I experience stability and efficiency I still need and want a man because they still provide all those amazing things.
But now I’m not a crack addict about it. Which is nice.
Not being a crack addict is a pretty nice life.
Jess lanai 