She Looked Great on Paper

I’m feeling more and more lately like I’ve turned a corner in my life. Maybe grown up a bit, I don’t know. But certain things in the guy/girl interactions that I used to love so much, have now turned into annoyances. Drunk dialing, falling asleep on the phone with another person, playing games to seduce a girl, laughing with hammered girls, even casual sex. It’s not that I see them as bad things now, just not something I want in the beginning of my next relationship. Am I getting old? If I had said these things a year and a half ago, I would be the biggest hypocrite in the world. So what has changed?

Well, I don’t know. But I think there comes a time in everyone’s life where they realize the things that used to make them happy, used to make them laugh, have turned into the things that annoy them. I find this happening in relationships all the time:

            Girls will love the fact that a guy is so independent. But when the guy won’t allow the girl to move in with him, she’ll begin to blame him for not being able to commit or complain about his reluctance to take the next step.

            You love the fact that he can control the room when he walks in. He exudes confidence and everyone wants to be around him. But over time his confidence and control start to worry you that other women might be trying to sleep with him.

            He’s the most honest person you know. And that was your favorite trait about him, but lately you feel like he’s been telling you too much, and it makes you uncomfortable.

            He’s a writer and touches many people with his articles about dating and personal experiences. You love that he can take a thought or a story and make it look so beautiful on paper. This is great until he keeps writing about personal experiences while you are dating him. You start to become self-conscious and more careful in the way you act around him, and begin to assume everything he writes is about you in some sort of way. Every time you read his writing now, you become hurt in some way. It is now a turn-off.

I do the same thing. I’ll choose to date a party girl and then get mad at her months later when she’s throwing up again at four in the morning outside of the bar. Or I’ll date an intellectual and be annoyed five months down the road that she never wants to go out and grab a drink with friends. Why can’t we just be happy with what we choose?

Well, most of the time, we don’t choose what we truly want. We’re blinded by the surface of something exciting, or different. We like the idea of a person, better than the actual person. We’re enticed by how they look on paper, but we never take the time to read the fine print. We become comfortable with their resume, but never worry about the interview process or background checks. Quite often, we don’t even know what we want. We tell ourselves that we know, but then chase after something completely different. We do this to ourselves.

You have to know what you want. Truly know. And then chase after that type of person. If you love the guy because he has an insane body, you’re not allowed to be annoyed when he spends his free time in the gym. Because what you really want is a guy who has a good body, but spends his time on other things as well. You chose wrong. It’s not his fault. He was always the same guy.

You might like a guy because he is so career driven, but then not understand when he tells you months down the road he’s never interested in having a family. He’s not a bad person for this, nor did he ever lead you astray or waste your time. You wasted your time, you chose wrong.

Everyone changes (this is something you need to remember), but not over a matter of a couple of months. I could understand if four years down the road suddenly your partner decides to pull a Mark Wahlberg, ditch the funky bunch and become a born-again Christian out of the blue. That would be their fault, not necessarily yours. But most of the issues in relationships, and the reason many don’t make it past six months or a year is because you chose the wrong person for what you wanted. And then you held on too long thinking they are going to change into that person you really desired.

Yes, it is up to them to be clear on their intentions. But unfortunately not everyone does that. They should, but some people are uncomfortable showing their true colors within the first part of dating. So it is up to you to know exactly what you want, and then do your homework. That way, if something really does change down the road, at least you’ll be able to say, “It’s not me, it’s you.”

So back to the change in my life. It’s not that I’m completely turned off by the casual sex or drunk dials, five phone calls a day or hungover girls at one in the afternoon. It’s that I now understand what I truly want. So I’m not going to get into a relationship with a girl who would drop her panties on the first night, and I’m definitely not going to become exclusive with someone who has the need to talk to me 8-20 times a day via phone call, text message, Facebook post, or the occasional email. I’ve decided to give the courtship a little more time, and to make a better educated decision on who the person really is past how they look on paper. This way, six months from now, I won’t be blaming them for something they never did wrong in the first place, I’ll be enjoying them for exactly who they truly are.

WJNTY - Seth


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