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Dating & The Single Grrl:
Mr. …Right?
At the beginning of the New Year, I made a resolution. I was no longer going to sit at home and lament as to why I could not find a decent single guy, either to date, or to just be friends with, and hence by association date his similarly decent friends. Instead, I was going to go out and find him. I knew this would turn into an exhausting venture, a literal "manhunt". Would I even do anything if I found him? Or was I just on an obsessive quest to prove that he actually exists? I had also vowed to take the garbage out every day, so as to avoid the temptation of old pizza boxes, and, more recently, leftovers from Swiss Chalet. If that had worked, maybe the manhunt would, too.Though we had also resolved to not venture to the Maddy for quite a while, my friend and I decided to check the bar out again. After all, it was a New Year, and thus there were probably new men there who were casually leaning on the piano, or playing pool, all awaiting our arrival. Our reasoning was simple, illogical, and good enough for us.
We headed to the Maddy on a Thursday night, thinking that both university students and working guys would be there. We arrived around 11 p.m., with hungry eyes - for nachos. We wandered around the many floors of the bar, unsuccessful in finding a table. We then settled into a booth on the heated patio and ordered drinks and nachos. We took stock of the talent surrounding us - unattractive guys, guys with girls, uninteresting guys, and of course, no guys. That's when we noticed a sign on our table - Ladies Night, 9 p.m. - 11 p.m. We had missed it.
At one point, I found myself at eye-level with an old, foreign man's ass. He turned and blew smoke into my face, and that's when I knew that it wasn't meant to be.
I put my feet up on the booth and gave up on looking remotely sexy or coquettish - clearly "the man" was not to be found at the Maddy. That's when I noticed something. The guys behind us - they were looking. And they looked all right, even fun. And they were wearing baseball caps. I looked at one of them and he smiled. At that same moment, a 50-year old man and his beer-gutted buddy passed by and tapped me on the shoulder, saying hello. I looked back at the baseball cap guy and he was still smiling. No wait, he was laughing. And so were his friends. At me.
Later on, I noticed two more men, who we didn't want to meet, walking over to us. Don't these guys have wives? Or lumber to cut? I picked up my cell phone and began talking, in a last-ditch effort to deter them. Unfortunately at that moment, the phone rang and more laughter was sent in my direction.
Although we didn't find any guys with whom to spend our valuable time with, we did learn a few things. Clearly, our future lovers have a bedtime of 10 p.m. Clearly if we were to find our future lovers at the Maddy, we would have to remember that they have a bedtime of 10 p.m. Also, it is never okay to pretend to talk on a cell phone to make people go away.
This trip to the Maddy also made me think about some other things. We did get approached a number of times. This confirmed the fact that we were attractive, or at least that we looked female enough. We weren't exactly welcoming to the prospect of these less than perfect guys. So were our standards still too high? Was it us? Did we subconsciously send signals saying that we did not want to be approached? We had resolved to get out there and meet people but yet we sat in the corner and rolled our eyes at every person who approached us who didn't have qualities to be THE ONE. It seemed like every outing turned into the same story - plot, setting and characters.
Then I wondered - why were we different? Why didn't we date casually like everyone else around us? People around us seem very content with going on dates with Mr. So-So…even if they didn't have that amazing "crush" feeling when you really, really, really want to talk to the person all the time, when your stomach flutters when they say the exact quirky and funny thing that you were thinking, when you hope that they like you back. Where do you draw the line? Do you settle for "anything's better than nothing"? If we accepted every offer, we'd date all the time - a whole string of dates that go nowhere. And that's a waste of time. Is it possible to just adjust your standards and keep an open mind, without compromising your integrity and your value?
Maybe it was us...our minds weren't as open as we thought they were. Maybe it was the environment and we were too used to it. Or maybe we didn't know what we were looking for, and thus lost out on a lot of prospects because the guys we saw were different from our norms. Or at least different from our ex-boyfriends, who, for a time, we actually liked. We can't always base what we want on what we had previously. After a relationship ends, you don't always know what you want. In the relationship, you thought you had it. And when it has ended, it's gone…you could have a whole new set of ideas or requirements. This was something we hadn't thought about seriously because we were so caught up on thinking that we probably had to find guys who were like our friends or our exes, or like the guys we'd been around for the past five years at university.
The point is…the guys are out there. We just aren't necessarily putting our best faces forward all the time - our best, untainted, non-judgemental faces. More than being unfair to the guys, it's unfair to us. The realization hit that it's not possible to hunt for something that isn't even defined.
Since the year was young, we considered trying something completely different. We decided to become born-again virgins…of the dating scene. Because let's face it - you always have a story about your first time. And even if it's not the best story, at least it's one that hasn't been told before. ¤ Dani