How I’m Combatting The Commitment Crisis
These are my – questionably successful – tips and tricks for surviving as a single person in the 21st century.
In the mid-90’s, I remember religiously reading Cosmo cover to cover. I fawned over face scrubs and my first bikini. My prepubescent self was not entirely aware of everything that exploded in front of my eyes. Consciously, at least. Subconsciously, I was learning that a good wax job trumped good character. That women were valued more for their bodies than their brains. Articles titled with variations of “How to Make a Man Love You” seeped deep into the surface of my skin.
CHANGE, my psyche screamed.
We – as in women – were being trained to become chameleons. Because we needed to work to make men love us. We needed to quiet ourselves in order to be heard.
And how fortunate I was to start this training around the ripe age of ten (please read my sarcasm here).
What I have noticed in my reflection of Stephanie 1.0 is that she presented herself to a potential mate as she would to a potential employer. For her, a date was a job interview. And she did not perform her due diligence – nor did she have the confidence – to place equal pressure on the interviewer. She carried the entire weight of the transaction while playing the role of the interviewee.
What my professional life has taught Stephanie 2.0 is that a job interview – like a date – is an equal evaluation of both parties. Choice exists on either side of the line. Neither interviewer nor interviewee is in a higher position of authority. And there is something very special about owning your “no.” Because, unbeknownst to Stephanie 1.0, you can be offered a job and turn it down.
So, what I now understand is that finding my voice was the most powerful gift that I could give myself.
My problem no longer lies in my silence. I know what I need to say. Even if I still struggle with the timing or the delivery of how to say it. I believe that my voice has value. I know how to use it for the betterment of myself and as the foundation for the betterment of my relationships.
I repeat. Silence is not my problem.
My issue is in my repeated choice to hold space for unavailable men. Because, dear lawd, a man tells me that he’s emotionally incompetent based on his track record for getting his heart broken and I rent out a Disneyland-sized parking lot in support of his soul searching. I patiently lap all the empty spots while sitting in the driver side of my Denali in an effort to prove my trustworthiness, my high factor of fun, my ability to sit on the underside of crazy.
Newsflash. For every single one of us that accepts excuses as Band-Aids to The Commitment Crisis, we further perpetuate The Commitment Crisis.
Ooph.
If you want to refresh your memory on my thoughts about our current fears towards choosing an individual with whom to invest our time and energy and song choices and inappropriate memes, you can start here. My intention with this third piece is to encourage us to extinguish the excuses, and more importantly, to stop accepting them.
Newsflash number two. You combat The Commitment Crisis by existing outside The Commitment Crisis.
So here’s my unprofessional advice on how to exist inside a foreign territory in 2019 that beckons for fidelity.
Disclaimer for all my male readers. The pronouns I use are ultimately interchangeable (because, let us never forget, we all suck at dating).
Date as much as possible
Test drive. All of them. Every. Single. One.
Because my shittiest dates have taught me as much about what I don’t want from partnership as the great dates have taught me about what I do. And I’m here to tell you that both lists are equally important.
So, don’t spend a month inside a chat log. Avoid scouring his IG feed. Just meet. In person. At a coffee shop or a dive bar or the dog park. Because the more you fabricate his identity and obsess over his digital version, the higher your hopes get for a person that has yet to give you even an ounce of quality time. Whatever picture you’re painting in the deep recesses of your mind is the picture you want to paint, and we’re all old enough to understand the gap between our wants and reality.
Dating is a means to an end. It’s a tool for exploring compatibility. So, understand your non-negotiables. Learn the questions you must ask in order to arrive at the desired answers. And, for the love of all things beautiful, follow the words of Mark Manson: “If it’s not a fuck yes, then it’s a no.”
Y’all, our biggest fear is not ending up alone. Well, I guess I should speak for myself on this one. That’s not my greatest fear. No. My greatest fear is ending up in a lukewarm relationship.
Read that again.
I can handle being alone if being alone becomes my most viable option. I can’t handle being with someone who doesn’t look at me like my smile is the reason that the world spins. I wouldn’t dare monogamously date a guy who doesn’t deem me his ride or die. No way in hell I’m tolerating that kind of mediocrity from a mate.
Confession. Please review my previous comments about holding far too much space for far too long for the sake of far too much emotional unavailability. It might also behoove you to revisit my blog about setting boundaries (or, really, my lack thereof). Because it’s easy for me to write that I won’t accept mediocrity; however, I’m not ignorant to the fact that my application of this statement is far more complex.
And that complexity stems from the majority’s disinterest in integrity, which brings me to my second point.
Believe his words
When a potential love interest tells you he’s not ready, guess what? He’s not ready. And he articulated these words because you’re not the right person to change his readiness (please send my apologies to your ego).
I argue that, in a perfect world, we should all arrive at readiness on our own terms without the persuasion of another to guide our paths; however, when a guy meets the right girl, it’s never the wrong time (feel free to revisit The Man Blog for reference).
We naturally attach ourselves to the adage, “Actions speak louder than words,” but what happens when words speak louder than actions? Because I’m now the proud owner of a laundry list of men who did all the right relationship-y things while verbalizing statements like, “I love your soul, but I’m not ready for commitment.”
RIP, Exhibit A.
So, my challenge is to actually listen to a man’s words. And, yes, still give weight to his actions. Because what I’ve observed in this world of online dating is that men say a lot of nice things as the hook for their self-perceived romantic interests, but the second that both parties’ routines start to align on the side of a potential relationship – daily DMs, weekly dinner dates, the expectation of being the plus one to his cousin’s wedding in two months – those words shift.
Because he likes the companionship. But he’s not emotionally equipped to handle the permanent presence of a real-life partner. Or he doesn’t have the ability to articulate his lack of overall romantic interest. So, he proceeds with business as usual without honoring the woman’s need – the human need – to be told that he is not equally as invested in doing the work as she is.
Translation. He wants to look and touch. But he doesn’t want to buy. And he sure as hell doesn’t want anyone else looking or touching or even thinking about buying.
Cliff Notes. He’s selfish. That’s not to say that his intentions are malicious. It simply means that he lacks the maturity to do the right thing.
And men, please refer back to my original disclaimer here because I know you’re struggling with the same damn things. Integrity, by definition, is when actions and words align. Unfortunately, that’s not a quality that I’d use to describe the current dating climate. And I’m here to shout from the rooftops that it is our collective responsibility to exist inside such honesty.
But we – as in our female egos – like to complicate the confusion. We like to convince ourselves that he doesn’t actually mean what he says. That he’s really just scared of his own feelings. We talk ourselves into the fact that he’s going to change.
Newsflash number three. Mixed signals are the clearest signals of all.
He is not going to change.
Let me repeat that.
He. Is. Not. Going. To. Change.
Do people change? Sure. I mean, yes, of course (read: dear gawd, I hope so). But his change is going to be a byproduct of his own internal discomfort of staying the same. His emotional availability will be achieved via his investment to himself.
Your job, as a woman, is not to prove yourself to him as a means of initiating his soul searching.
Chameleons prove themselves. They voluntarily blend into their backgrounds. It is a coping mechanism that keeps them safe.
You, sweet girl, are not a chameleon.
Toughen up
I recognize that this next bit of advice may be coming from my Enneagram Eight. But it’s worth noting that, to be in the ring called dating, you must have the ability to take a few punches.
I obviously don’t mean this literally, and I definitely don’t mean to walk in with walls up. I simply mean that, if you’re asking for the truth, expect to get the truth. And if you’re expecting to get the truth, then realize that you’re not always going to like the answer.
You can be the world’s greatest human. Ever. And you will still get dumped. And you will, most certainly, still get ghosted.
So, do whatever work is necessary to prepare yourself for some brutal blows. And then realize that you’re going to have to actively fight against your own bitterness and cynicism as well as the bitterness and cynicism of those around you.
Presence and self-awareness are vital pieces to this dating puzzle. Practice them in other areas of your life and realize that you’ll must certainly need to show up with them here.
Act as if
This next point has been my biggest dating breakthrough in the last few months. Because, for a long time, I let my reservations win. For all intents and purposes, I harnessed my inner-chameleon from Cosmo.
I am notorious for allowing the man to lead. Again, let’s recall me driving around in my Denali in a parking lot the size of The Happiest Place on Earth. Thousands of open spaces. Meanwhile, I’m on cruise control, spinning around in circles (not happy).
Because God forbid I park the car. God forbid I ask that some space be held for me.
It’s recently gotten pretty old. A reflection, I’m sure, on some of my own personal bitterness and cynicism. But I’d also like to give credit to wisdom. To confidence. Because I deserve for my space to be held.
Just because I’m comfortable with myself – the woman who is ready and willing to show up for monogamous companionship – does not mean that I have to be the one doing all the carrying. It means that I need to treat potential partners as if they are ready and willing to do the very same. It means I get to interview, too.
I recently blogged about my affinity for physical touch, which you can read here. In that same blog, I described some of my insecurities for initiating sex. As you can imagine, my insecurities don’t stop there, but I find it ironic that I have zero qualms asking for a guy’s phone number or requesting a second date or starting all the shitty conversations, but put me in a position to initiate intercourse and we’ll be hard-pressed to make it past second base.
No one ever said our stories would make sense. In fact, that’s the thing about our stories. Out of context, they make no sense at all.
So, on the very off-chance that a guy with “hang out” potential decides to start his day by texting me, I won’t leave him on read for five hours to make a point. I respond when I genuinely want to respond. And if that texting were to lead into asking for a few hours of my time in the evening, I say yes without worrying about what we’re going to call it the next day. And if I felt so inclined to lay my head on his shoulder while watching YouTube, I’m not going to ask him if it’s okay. I will just do it.
Because that’s what I want and that’s what I want to do. And I don’t need to abandon myself simply because he’s unsure. If he’s asking to spend time with me, then I get to be in choice around how I show up in that time. And then he gets to be in choice around whether or not he wants to keep doing it.
Worst-case scenario game. He never asks to see me again.
And great. If he never asks to see me again because he doesn’t like me in my most authentic state of existence, then this is actually the best-case scenario.
Because the person who doesn’t want to be tangled up with me inside of sheets or sit on the balcony until 3am while swapping conspiracy theories or escape into the mountains together on the weekends is simply not my person.
Stop settling
At the heart of all of this rhetoric is the commitment to never settling.
I’m still drawing, erasing, and re-drawing that line that calls for me to hold space for men when they access their vulnerabilities. I’m still deciphering how much space is an appropriate allotment in exchange for their honesty, until that holding can – and eventually does – impede on my own self-respect.
I wish I had an answer for you. The truth is that I don’t.
I do, however, believe in two things. Manifesting and learning.
When it comes to partnership, I think that our manifestations of that ideal person benefit deeply from our experiences. Exhibit B, Camo Pants, Vegetarian, Gemini. They’ve all exposed me to another layer of myself that – without them – I would never have known existed.
And while they all showed up so full of promise, their emotional unavailability was and is a stark reminder of the fact that I, too, have needs (which deserve to be met).
Speaking of Exhibit B, remember when he asked me how I know when the next one is the right one? The relevance here to that answer that I pinned to the Internet almost a year ago is that I’m still confident that both people just know. A mutual “fuck yes,” if you will.
Because the complexity of the chemistry and the timing and the love languages and the personal work can’t sit back and be okay with a maybe.
So, I’m combatting The Commitment Crisis in the same way that I’m combatting the ever-creeping cynicism and bitterness. I’m choosing hope. Even on the days when it feels so damn hard. Because I have to believe that we all just want someone who’s going to be nice to us.
The guy who takes out your dog when it’s raining. The girl who returns your car with a full tank of gas. The guy who throws your towel in the dryer while you’re in the shower. The girl who puts notes in your carryon when you leave for a business trip. The person you can bake brownies with at 11:37pm on a Saturday night after eating edibles. The kind of relationship where no one is keeping score. She cooks. You wash the dishes. He does the laundry. You clean the bathroom. She shovels the snow. You mow the lawn. He drives. You pick the playlists.
A state of constant reciprocation. Physical. Emotional. Intellectual.
Someone who’s going to sharpen you. Someone who’s going to make your days better. Someone who will carry the weight of the world when you’re simply too tired to carry it alone.
If we are invested in doing life with someone at a much deeper level than mediocre, then we cannot succumb to blending into backgrounds. We must be able to discern people’s truths from their excuses, and then we are called to include our feelings in that equation.
Because holding space for someone is a beautiful thing, but it cannot come at the cost of ourselves. If the motive for this action is to win over a heart – as opposed to selflessly give to someone who would provide the same action in return – then we are setting ourselves up for failure. We are giving all of our power to the interviewer. We are chameleons.
And let it be known that the world needs every inch of our humanness.
