"Maybe no one's ever really loved you..."

A few posts ago, I talked about the love cult - individuals who truly believe that love can conquer all and are mortally wounded when someone does not share their beliefs. They're almost emotional, love-sick fundamentalists, ready to tear down anyone who dares to insult their God - the God of love. These are the same people who told me "Well, you've never really been in love." Fuck you. Yes I have. However, there is a flip-side to the coin, and I will explain it to you without further ado...

This different viewpoint was brought to my attention the other day - what if I have loved and lost, but the other person in the relationship never really loved me? While walking on the boardwalk I was musing over my friend's new relationship - the lengths that the man goes to in order to spend time with his girlfriend boggles my mind. As someone who has constantly gone out of my way to keep my significant other happy, the thought that it was being reciprocated by the man was almost too much for my mind to process. Wait. So you mean, he travels to you? He calls you first? He doesn't give you a hard time at the restaurant when you paid seven dollars short of your half? What on earth are you talking about?

And then, my friend turned to me and said: "It's because a man has never really loved you." The wind was knocked out of me...wow. She's right. All of the work that I put forth - the prepared meals, the travel, the moving across country, the stress - it was all for naught, not returned in kind. Realizing this, my friend quickly amended her statement: "Not yet...but you'll find him."

I don't believe her, but it was a delightful realization nonetheless, and it makes perfect sense. My relationships have always felt like exercises in futility, second and third jobs. I constantly felt like I was in a sinking life raft, and, as I struggled, a maniacal force was continually tearing holes in the already fragile hull. I was never the catalyst in my own break-ups because it was the other person who was never truly invested...they had never loved me in the way that fosters a more permanent union. Granted, I don't believe anything is permanent but there are other types of love that stand a better chance; the type of love that I have yet to experience (and doubt I ever will).

There is also another possibility...I created this atmosphere in my relationships myself. By never requiring my partner to put forth the effort, complacency inevitably resulted. I suppose the platitude "that which is easily won, is done" stands true for all of my relationships. I wish I knew how to be a girl - aloof, ever so bitchy, and just slightly unattainable. Dammit, I have a lot to learn. Tack that on to my desire to play the piano, and I've already created a very full fall season for myself.

The Risk of Attack

I am not sure if this post or rather, the metaphor I am going to use for it, is in bad taste. But, I found it to be so clever that I had to use the following analogy…bear with me.

I've been thinking a lot about relationships (shocking, I know) and I've realized something - we are never safe. Those of us that take the chance and become involved romantically with another person put ourselves at constant emotional risk. One is never safe from the inevitably heart-wrenching pitfalls that accompany each and every relationship.

I now draw your attention to the brilliant warning system that the Department of Homeland Security put together. The level of risk is broken down as follows: “Low”, “General”, “Significant”, “High”, and “Severe”. I feel that this system has been mocked to such an extent that I can use the following analogy:

Basically, we are never fully safe from a terrorist attack…and, should you decide to get romantically involved with someone, the risk of heartache/disappointment is always “low”, but never fully absent. I suppose I can better explain myself by providing a more detailed account of what each level means in the grand scheme of romantic relationships.

“Low”: You are entrenched in the relationship (maybe a couple of months) and while small disagreements may occasionally disrupt your bliss, the threat of dissolution remains “low”. Why? Well, you don’t know one another well enough yet for a complete deal-breaker to have been brought into the picture. There is no grand disagreement about the larger questions in life.
“General”: This tends to be a point in the relationship where for some reason, you’re fighting more than usual. The things they do annoy you more often than they seem endearing (about 1 or 2 years in), and you keep asking yourself “What’s going on with us? And why on earth is he chewing that way?!” However, the love still outweighs any general annoyances you may have, and the relationship, (unless the people involved have incredibly limited patience) lasts.
“Significant”: This is when we start getting into the nitty gritty of the relationship (2-4 years in) when major life decisions – moving, children, the prospect of marriage begin to factor in. These are the types of decisions that can make or break a relationship and destroy a once peaceful, love-filled union.
“High” and “Severe”: I am putting these together because “High” is just a hop, skip and a jump from “Severe”. This is when the problems that you’re facing as a couple can no longer be fixed. The “”I’m sorry”s and the “let’s just forget about it”s don’t seem to work anymore. You begin to nitpick at each other’s flaws and each and everything they do just doesn’t seem like it fits in your life anymore.

The Result: The Break-up

Granted, these stages can happen at any point in a relationship (I was just working from personal experiences), but I simply wanted to illustrate my point that relationships are always in a constant state of risk; and they always seem to be wavering between calm and catastrophe.

For me, this constant worry seems to be the main hindrance to my wanting to get involved with another person. Unfortunately, my desire to have someone to see concerts with, to turn to and smile and say, “Wasn’t that great?!” somehow outweighs this worry…DAMMIT. I guess I just wanted to point it out…

I’m losing my role as a cynical touchstone aren’t I? Before you know it, I’ll be crying while watching “Pretty in Pink”…it looks like I’m at “high risk” of becoming an optimist. We need to remedy this immediately.

R'Angry

OK, so this post is going to be a bit of a bitchfest...but you know what? I haven't had one of those in a while so I feel that it is necessary.

As I lie in bed with my laptop propped on my lap, I began to let my mind wander. Have you ever done that? Your mind starts going and eventually, once it settles on a train of thought it's like a locomotive out of control and you realize that you're lucky if you make it out alive.

Well, I had one of those moments this evening. I began to think about the platoon of men that has rejected me over the past year and then I began to think of other women that I know - absolutely remarkable, amazing women who I feel lucky to know...some of them are in relationships and some of them are not. However, for those that are, I can completely understand it. Hell, I want to spend time around them ad nauseum, so why wouldn't someone else, who can also add sexual attraction to the mix, do the same?

I lighted on this pleasant thought like a butterfly settling on a daisy when the negative thoughts kicked in...

You might say: "No! You were doing so well!" Well, I'm sorry. This blog is about being jaded so at least allow me to stick to my central thesis.

I then began to think of those women that are inherently unremarkable (to me) or better yet, those women who make it a point to use men for personal gain and/or an ego boost. What I found to be the most troubling was that it is usually these women that get the most remarkable men, and I am stuck pining away for their leftovers (only to be rejected, mind you).

These women may be cute, they may be magnetic...hell, they may even be slightly intelligent. However, the point remains that, in comparison to other single women, there is nothing inherently special about them...This frustrates the rest of us who make it our mission to constantly better ourselves so that we might become even a fraction of what our potential dictates. We do this not for men, but to create a sense of self-worth so that, when we meet a potential love interest, we have interests and hobbies to define us and provide us with, at the very least, conversation starters...

Now, I am willing to admit that many of the women I am referring to are unremarkable TO ME. I am sure to their significant others, they are the most amazing individuals, worth crossing oceans for. Unfortunately, in the interests of this blog, their opinions mean nothing to me. ::insert smiley emoticon here::

And yet, in New York City, millions of interesting, intelligent, beautiful women remain single...why? Is there a line that can be crossed when you have too much going for you? When does personal fulfillment and personal endeavors go from beneficial to completely off-putting? Furthermore, have I reached this point? Have I become so intent on being an enthralling conversationalist that I forgot how to be a girl (i.e. manipulative, bitchy, and coy?) I will give you that the previous statement was somewhat misogynistic...again, if you don't like it, get your own blog. (I told you it was going to be a bitchfest).

I suppose the point of this blog was not to argue a point (that's what tomorrow's is for) but instead, to vent more than anything. Sometimes, I have more anger than I'd like floating around inside of me so I need to find some way to let it out. Thank goodness for the Internet.

What do you think? Do you know any women or men for whom, because of reasons unbeknownst to you, dating and finding a mate just seems easier? Let me know that I'm not crazy...well, at least not in this case. Thanks.

"Food is Life, the Rest is Parsley"

I am coming at this blog from a completely different angle today. I find that as cynical as I am, my mind is occasionally occupied with the thought of love/a relationship/romantic bliss - will I ever find it? Does it exist? Does its existence hinge merely on its presence or its absence in one's life? Will my life change in some sort of fundamental way if I meet someone who makes my cynicism an exercise in futility rather than a constant, albeit adorable, part of my personality?

I decided (solely with the goal of torturing myself) to count the number of men/boys who have rejected me over the course of the last year...::cringes at the thought that I am about to admit this to you:: but the lucky number is...ELEVEN. Eleven men have decided that I was not worth getting to know (some after date #1, others after date #3). The "old me" would take this as a reflection of some kind of fatal character flaw. However, after being rejected by a man every 30 days or so, I have decided that that's not what it is; and I also don't care to know what caused these men to reject me. I could say the clichéd "it just wasn't the right time", "they're not the one", yadda yadda...but I don't believe that so therefore, posing either one of those as a reason would be ridiculous and quite frankly, out of character.

Even with all of this, I learned one very important lesson last night - "Food is life, the rest is parsley." That quote is care of Alan Richman, a food critic for GQ Magazine, and I'm also currently reading his collection of articles, Fork it Over.

Last night, I visited Eataly in Manhattan - a culinary Mecca that is the brainchild of Lidia Bastianich, her son Joe Bastianich, and Mario Batali. As I walked through and saw baby purple potatoes, full, gorgeous heads of radicchio, marbled steaks and hazelnut truffles; the worry of my dating debacles melted away. Food is my passion – it’s what makes me happy. If food is life, and the rest is parsley, then dating is nothing more than tarragon – an addition that very few people actually enjoy, but it finds its way into our lives from time to time to cause us stress and make us ask ourselves, “why the hell am I eating this?”

The Narcissus of Our Generation

Up until this point, I have cited the "quarter-life crisis", i.e. the inability of 20-somethings to know what they really want, as one of the reasons that relationships and marriages between them cannot ever work. Well, today, I would like to point out yet another reason why finding/creating a meaningful relationship as a 20-something is difficult, if not virtually impossible.

20-somethings, in today's day and age, are taught to be as self-centered as possible. Within the realm of the world-wide web, we are required to let people know what we're thinking and feeling; what song is stuck in our head at the current moment; and what our hopes, dreams, and aspirations are. Facebook kindly asks you: "What's on your mind?" As a result, we've become introspective, self-centered individuals, thinking more about how a Beatles song defines our current angst about our job/relationship than thinking about the people around us.

Living in New York City only exacerbates this situation. In a city of millions, we cannot feasibly pay attention to every individual around us. As a result, we plug into our iPods, put our earbuds in place, and disappear from the outside world. We are immersed in our music and our thoughts.

Now, many of you may say: "But all of this is good! It makes us more aware of who we are as individuals and forces us to analyze what we really want out of life. We are given the opportunity to be self-analytical, which only helps us grow as people."

OK, valid. However, I would like to respectfully disagree. While the 20-something (and even sometimes, 30-something) generation are a very self-aware group, we are also sadly, and detrimentally, self-involved and I'll even be so bold as to say, neurotic. We are always asking ourselves: "What do I want?" "What am I thinking?" "Where do I go from here?" I wonder if it all began with St. Elmo's Fire "I need to have something for myself FIRST, before I can share it with you..."

While this may bode well for our professional lives, I don't think it does much for our romantic existence. The 20-something generation loves to date - especially females, who feel like we're living out the life of Carrie Bradshaw as we tirelessly search for love in the bowels of New York City. However, our constant self-involvement makes it impossible for us to progress past date 3...(in my opinion, date 3 is when real feelings begin to develop - not across the board - but just in general).

Once we're at that point in "dating", we begin to become accountable to another human being. We begin to realize that our actions and our words could potentially affect someone who, a few weeks ago, didn't even exist to us. As a 20-something who is always in their own head; whose independence was established at 18 when they went off to college; and who spends most of their time being self-analytical, and self-involved; this becomes a frightening concept. As a result, out of fear of such accountability, we turn off our iPhones, defriend on Facebook, and delete them from our societal bubble within the World Wide Web. Phew, glad that's over. "What's on my mind?" you ask... "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as though they're here to stay..." "I can't wait until my friends see this and ask me what's wrong!!"

The pursuit of a relationship throws us off kilter - we have to think about someone else. Furthermore, we could potentially fall in love, but we're so enamored with ourselves that the thought of sharing that love scares the crap out of us...

I will even admit, that this blog is a supreme example of self-involved self-actualization and self-analysis...

Oh my God! Maybe that explains why I suck at dating! Hold on, I have to put this on Facebook!