Category : Articles

Sub Category : Relationships

Should I Give up On Dating & Other Reflections.
 
1)
A recent experience has inspired me to write this piece here.  This is a long time coming and is long overdue.  Something happened to me exactly two days ago to the date that made me re-evaluate my life, my experiences with women my dating choices.  Not only this, but it made me take an objective look at society in Ireland in 2018.  In this piece here, I will ask questions that will make you think and reflect on society now and your own life and choices made.
Two days ago, I went out on a date.  This in of itself is not unusual but my circumstances and wishes are as such that I don’t have sex and I don’t date.  Essentially this practice of celibacy has been happening for a year and a half now.  It’s my goal to find someone with whom I have a spiritual connection.  I got talking to a young lady of twenty-two about three weeks ago.  After we talked about our mental health and how we felt about the dating world in general, we agreed to meet up.  However, I think we were at two different places in our life.  I am a twenty-six-year-old male who has essentially gone through the ‘one-night-stand’ phase already.  It’s shallow, offers nothing of real substance or depth and is just typically hollow.  I think once I experienced having sex with someone I really loved, all else kind of became a fraction as good and pointless expending energy trying to achieve.  She was four years younger than me and still wanted to have sex with random people.  As a by the way, I’m not even sure why people do this in college.  It almost feels like a right of passage to do or, like no one could be THAT horny as to sleep with someone different every second night.
As another by the way, I would classify myself as a person that can be quite easily hurt by someone I care about or that I like.  These defences and walls that people seem to erect are almost non-existent in me.  The notion seems sort of silly.  That’s essentially the mind not giving the heart what it wants.  It’s the mind trying to take control of the heart, which to me is sad. 
So, I went on the date with this girl.  Plain and simple, it was an ungodly disaster.  I was already anxious enough about meeting her.  I have very little practice these days with women.  I made a promise several years ago to just be myself.  I wanted to find what felt good for me and just roll with that.  Granted, this isn’t going to suit everyone.  Some people might find my personality irritating or annoying.  Some people might find me fun in small doses and some people might love spending time with me.  The last group of people are those worth keeping.  When I arrived on the date, her friend was there with her.  What a fucking disaster.  Not only did I have to entertain the actual DATE, but I had to walk a fine line of making sure her friend wasn’t ignored and was kept involved too.  I know what it’s like to be ignored and it’s seriously painful.  I can’t lie, I did feel awkward.  Even when I feel awkward I will still try to create conversation.  I don’t want to be one of those people that seizes up and doesn’t speak.  After an hour of just walking around, I ended the date.  It was totally nonsensical to keep it going.  It was like flogging a dead horse.  After I had left I got a text saying that I was awkward, and the friend thought I was ‘weird’.  What the fuck.  Here was me trying to make sure she didn’t feel excluded and this cunt had the fucking nerve to call me weird.  I was trying NOT to be weird.  If I was a real piece of shit, I could have told the friend to fuck off, but I didn’t.
It just wasn’t a good vibe.  I had liked this girl a good bit, which is unusual for me.  About an hour later, as I was on the train home I reflected on the last few hours.  I wanted to cry.  I felt totally hurt and let down.  I reflected on all the dating choices out there.  These mostly included dating sites.  I repeatedly thought how utterly hard it was to keep a conversation going online.  Women get messaged hundreds of times a week and have God Knows how many matches in her inbox.  Unless you are a cut above the rest, you will stay as an unopened message.
2)
Online dating wreaks HAVOC on the self-esteem of the average guy.  I would consider myself average looking and at a push I might get 1 match on Tinder every month and trust me I swipe ‘like’ for everyone.
If I don’t get too caught up emotionally in all of this, I can look at it from the outside.  Are the risks worth the reward today?
When I used to go to clubs & bars, this also made me feel no better about myself.  Before going to clubs and bars I would feel pretty good about myself and confident.  After most times I went to the club, I felt totally shit. Having to navigate through hordes of drunk people and having loud music blasted down your throat was all worth it, to talk to a girl you thought was pretty.  Often, nothing materialized out of my interactions with women.  Either they would kiss me, give me their number and never talk to me again or their friends would ‘rescue’ them from me, if they thought I was a serial killer, ugly or a rapist.  That’s what always got me down.  Just feeling like I had no agency, control or power over how the interaction went.  At the last minute it was always just destroyed, either by the conversation ending the next day or her friend(s) rescuing her.  A bad interaction could stay with me for days afterwards.  I would feel hurt for days afterwards.  I’m kind of soft spoken, quite sensitive to loud noises and people shouting.  This seemed to be the norm in clubs.  After a while I thought, ‘why am I still coming here?’.  I would feel so much worse about myself than before I went in. 
It’s up to a man to generate his own confidence in this world.  Women get praise handed to them on an hourly basis.  Whether it’s through Facebook, snapchat, Instagram or dating sites, women can get their ego boosted to enormous levels within thirty minutes of uploading a picture of themselves.  There is something to be said for ‘toughening up’ and accepting these facts of life in 2018.  Thing is, I’m tired.  I’m tired physically and emotionally. You can either look at this life as being very lonely, or you can look at this life as learning to enjoy your own company and basking in solitude.  There are only a couple of people I felt I had a spiritual connection with in this world.  All others were just these passing shadows to me.
3)
There are two options to this.  One lies with me and me life and the other lies in society.  I think my problem is both.  I feel emotionally and spiritually sad.  On a profound level.  This is my problem.  This problem stems from how I view the world.  The other option is that society is fucked up.  I must look at both options and maybe it’s both that haunts me.  I am so aware of how social media shapes people’s views of the world.  What we see on social media dictates our desires and attitudes.  Maybe not right way but these ideas that we see on social media hack away at our subconscious.  If someone constantly sees posts on social media of a spate of murders or rapes in their country, I think we all have the tendency to blow this out of proportion and cause us to view the world in a scary way.  In my opinion my instincts to love have been corrupted.  They have been soured by negative experiences.  Maybe this happens to a lot of people, but my love has turned to fear.  Fear of being shot down, rejected, tossed away and forgotten.
There is a bottom line to all this.  If someone has an illness, the doctor might ask where you were and what have you been doing that led up to catching this illness.  Where you were and who you were among might lead to some clues as to what virus or disease you have. So as a society, if something feels wrong, we must look at the over the last number of years.  What has changed and is anything different.  I see a society plagued by fear.  I see a society that is plagued by mistrust and most of all, hurt feelings.  I think the people that are most staunch in favour of the hatred and mistrust of women/men are those that have been hurt the most.  Like me, these people have been disillusioned and disenchanted by how poorly their love has been received.  Hate isn’t all that natural. Hate is a learned thing.  Our want to care, protect and love is very natural.  You can put things in perspective.  If you suffer, the problem may be with you and society.  I am almost so certain that something has gone wrong with society.  Am I the only one who feels profoundly lonely or left behind?
4)
We have so many people in society who dictate to us on what to believe and how to feel.  What’s the right way to feel, I don’t know.  Right now, I am ignoring relationships, women and sex.  What I have learned is that a lot of women don’t trust men and don’t like men.  In revolt, men turn to anger and hostility to women in their quest to be heard and to be listened to.  I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.  I want what everyone on Earth wants: To be understood, loved and heard.  No man is an Island and we all need each other.  We need each other badly.  More than ever.  Yet, most of what I see is based on fear, distrust and anger.  How long can this anger be held onto?  How much longer can you distrust your fellow man?
There is so much information these days.  Not all of this is helpful.  A lot of this information is designed to draw us into a cult of belief.  It’s wanting you to sign up for a belief system.  It wants you to forget about your heart and start thinking with your mind.  Not just thinking but overthinking.
Do we have any salvation?  When do we listen to our hearts and put overthinking aside?  You can think yourself into a fit of rage.  You can’t think yourself into loving someone.  Loving someone is an exchange of pure energy between people.  It supersedes conscious thought and is the basis for all life and is as valuable as water.
 
What’s happened to us?  Life seemed more innocent ten years ago.  Maybe I was more innocent.
To me, we all ignore each other.  We act as if we live forever and that nothing can hurt us. We don’t live forever, and anything can hurt us.  I feel a huge amount of emotional disconnection from people around me. Sometimes I get on public transport and 90% of people have their heads down and looking at their phones, they ignore everyone.  God forbid someone they don’t know speaks to them.  Don’t forget that our want for love, our want to be heard and our want to be understood are the basis for all people.  You might be fooled into thinking differently.  Even the staunchest activist who is full of hate for opposing tribes wants to be heard, loved and understood.  This is the human condition and we cannot escape it.
In summary, I am only one person.  How can I shape the future for the better?  How can I become the master of my own destiny and make this a world that feels right?
I know this to be true and this is my final line:
We are all much more vulnerable than we want others to think we are.  What lies underneath is rarely shown to the world.  Fear controls us all.