Observations in Dating

"How have you been?"

It's always an interesting question and, to an extent, many of the people that ask it get a different level of honesty when I respond. The full honesty generally belongs in the emails to my closest friends or in my journal. However, I occasionally get to verbalize it to someone that I know will provide some of the best feedback and that's always one of my scariest and most enjoyable times.

The concern with expressing your feelings and thoughts to someone who's opinion you truly value, of course, is that they may disagree with you, or they may think you've lost your mind and that you might as well be describing the purple elephants you saw the other day in your back yard, as the person knows you don't even have a back yard. However, there's also the potential that the person will agree with you, smile, and nod, saying, "I think you're on the right track."

I experienced this recently at my psychologist's office. When you pay for the feedback and they're a licensed professional, it somehow makes it all that more valuable - even if your closest friends have already said the same thing. Months ago, as we began to chart my prior relationships, she had me make a list of every woman I had ever dated, and provide the reasons I had been attracted to each one of them and the reasons I had been repelled from them. This had seemed like an absolute waste of time when she gave me the assignment. What the heck was a list going to show me? (I have since learned that lists of all sorts are great because once you've written it, it's hard to ignore it. List the pros and cons of a decision. List what you need and your priorities. Listing and writing can be great ways to get to the heart of things. I guess that's one of the reasons lots of companies have mission statements.)

So there I sat, compiling my list, thinking to myself, "This is an absolute waste of time and it's getting me no where. Why doesn't this woman just give me the darn answer and leave me alone?" The reason, of course, is that she didn't have the answer, I did, and three quarters of the way through the list, I saw it. Every woman I had been with had been different. Different hair color, different personality, different careers, different level of charisma, different different different. However, the dynamic in every single relationship had been exactly the same. The reasons for my entering and, more importantly, the reasons for the relationship not lasting had all been very similar, if not exactly the same. "Wow." I felt so accomplished and scared and confused. "What the hell was I doing?"

Now, perhaps a year later, we discuss it some more and I provide her with my reflections on how I now view my life and how I think about relationships when I enter them. (I use examples of real life relationships and people that I know to provide examples of what I mean when I talk to her, but will not do so here so some things may be lost in the translation.) I'm starting to see exactly what I would want in a relationship, and I'm starting to see it as a best friendship, but maybe with some added flavor. I now see relationships as two people with lives coming together. Each person has their own activities, friends, family and other things, and it's not a matter of the people then abandoning this identity to be in the relationship - forsaking a hobby, friends, family, or their career for the other person. It's about being with someone that can be your best friend and support, and sometimes share, in these things that are important to us.

In many relationships, I frequently see the two people hanging out and doing things that they perhaps really do not want to do. One or both of the parties is so frequently trying to please the other, and sacrificing their own needs and identity in the process. I dated a girl that did that and she was miserable after a year because she felt no matter what she did, she could never make me happy. She never understood that I wanted her to just do whatever she wanted to do - "Don't go changing to try and please me". If you are happy, I will be happy for you. The friends that I have who are in truly happy and amazing relationships always have the same answer to this observation. They describe their time together as effortless like when you are with your best friend. You are able to hang out anywhere together and have a good time. (This is not to say that there is no effort put into the relationship. Just as there is effort put into the closest friendships you have, you often do not see it as effort or a sacrifice.)

Often to accomplish this the two people, again, must have commonalities, just like in a friendship. Overall, the two people keep their separate lives but have certain commonalities and such that integrate with one another, making time together occur naturally (not forced). For example, I love bookstores and spend hours in bookstores or listening to music or doing simple boring stuff (like people watching) that many other people wouldn't care about. I have best friends that share in my complete boringness and I love our time together. I like going out with my friends sometimes too, but over the years, I've become more low key when I go out and I love relaxing nights. I like my down time, and I like being with someone that shares in that.

My therapist, way back when, had wanted to know why I didn't correlate friendships with relationships - why I separated them in my mind as mutually exclusive categories. My closest friends in relationships that I just find extraordinary - the ones that seemingly exist with practically no effort and no fighting - had always told me that it was about friendship more than anything. It was about being with that person where all of it occurred naturally. Where you were able to maintain your identity and still add to it. I guess I am now really starting to grasp this concept. You really need to be with your best friend in a relationship, and I imagine that as hard as it is to find a best friend, so too is it hard to find that special someone. However, from all I have observed, once found, it is totally worth it.