The Man Blog: Part III
This is the final part of a three-part series where I interviewed men to really try and understand the inner-workings of their minds in regards to dating, devotion, and dick pics. Read part one here and part two here.
Sometimes, when I write, the words take on an identity that I’d liken to an out-of-body experience. Think acid trip. I’ve never done acid – or any drugs, for that matter – but I’ve heard stories. And, that hovering feeling described in those anecdotes – the idea that our souls exit our physical bodies to examine our movements – sounds a lot like the eerie awe I often times encounter while watching words fly across my MacBook screen. Words that my fingers wistfully create without any concrete direction from my conscious thoughts.
It’s weird. Life is weird.
And, aside from the intense amount of energy that went into this blog series – reading the male responses to my interview questions and then formatting their answers – much of it has felt out-of-body. I’ve written words that, in the moment, seemed like just an arbitrary collection of letters only to go back and be amazed by the compilation of those phrases. Not because of anything that I did. But because of the men who were open and honest enough to support me in this endeavor.
If I have learned one thing through my adventures as both a full-time Airstreamer and dater, it is that vulnerability is a learned trait. Transparency is a practiced skill. I believe that there exists within us an innate desire to be open, but it is suppressed by so much childhood trauma and societal teachings that – more often than not – we consciously and subconsciously extinguish that desire.
My work is to acknowledge when people choose honesty. I strive to listen – probably not well, but I make a concerted effort to really open my ears to the words and also to the themes that are dancing just behind the words when someone speaks.
As a lover of story, I want to know the taste that lingers on her lips as he drives away and leaves her standing alone – but beyond satisfied – in the darkness of her driveway. I want to know how the lower level smells with 14 seconds left in a tied game in the first round of the Final Four. I want to know what he hears as he boards the overcrowded plane in Denver to fly to New York City for his dream job interview.
I’ll spare you more details because I could – quite literally – continue down this rabbit hole for hours (maybe even days).
Because the secondary point here – I promise I’m getting to the guy’s answers for this final man blog – is that my obsession with story leads me to eavesdrop on many an interaction (evident in one of the first blogs I ever wrote, which you can read here).
Fortunately for me, stories abound in public settings, which is where I do most of my work. And in the last week, I’ve been forced to spend a lot of time at Starbucks – says the girl who actually hates coffee. My Airstream is still in the shop, so I’m currently living with my mom in Denver (life going to plan). She decided to redo her only bathroom in her new house – as in completely tear everything out – which means that I have gone four (make that five) days without showering while also peeing in the backyard as needed (true story). Nugget has been deemed the star of Starbucks, and I’ve been witness to a lot of interesting conversations.
Yesterday, two ladies were catching up while sitting cross-legged in the cognac leather seats across from me. The girl in the bright green terry-cloth onesie says to her friend, “Remember Andrew? We’ve been talking. I mean, we’re not dating because I’m not interested in dating. But he asked me to go camping, and I’m going, but I told him he can’t catch feelings.”
Oh, okay, because that’s how it works. Read: That is not how it works, people.
But somewhere between the advent of HOTorNOT and Bumble, we forgot what it means to date responsibly. Or even date at all (I wrote a blog post called The Death of Dating as a precursor to this series). And, yes, this is not how it works, but this is exactly what so many of us are doing – male or female. Everything is casual. Even when it’s serious.
With that being said, let’s dive into part three of the male mind (as perceived by my feminine brain).
On commitment
My little Starbucks story felt like a perfect segue into one of the heavier topics of this series: Commitment. Millennials are running from the word in droves. Work. Housing. Romance. We watched our parents commit their lives – more or less – to all three of these areas.
Spoiler alert. We. Do. Not. Like. It. And if you want some statistical data, click here.
Social media then exacerbates the fear of missing out – appropriately referred to as FOMO – and man’s desire to commit plummets even further into a dark abyss:
“Unlike former generations of dating, we currently have emotional justification from hundreds – if not thousands – of women. Guys, especially guys that didn’t have that attention growing up, thrive on it. They don’t want to miss out on the next best thing.”
Let’s be honest. This isn’t a guy issue. It’s a dating issue. None of us want to miss out on the next best thing. And we are currently drowning in images and videos that suggest an infinite supply just beyond the edge of our fingertips.
As I expand on this topic of commitment, I find it impossible to separate what is happening in the male and female hemispheres. Ghosting is not reserved for any one party; it is an epidemic of dating that we often mock but desperately wish would die out.
Because it’s exhausting. Of course, there are the immediate digital matches that deliver one line and then disappear altogether. Most of us agree that it’s quite ignorant to be in the app if you’re not capable of stringing together more than a single sentence, but considering the brevity of the interaction, it’s excusable.
Sidebar. I recently saw a meme that said, “People who are on dating apps just to make ‘friends’ are the same people that go to Costco and taste all the samples without buying anything,” and I really felt that.
What we cannot excuse are the people who spend hours, sometimes days, sliding into every imaginable DM – Bumble, Instagram, SnapChat, Facebook, iMessage – only to fall off the face of the planet without so much as a warning.
Case in point. I distinctly recall using the pickup line “Tarheels or Blue Devils?” with a guy who proudly proclaimed his home state of North Carolina in his Bumble bio. He was quick to inform me that it was the best pickup line he’d ever received (duh). We proceeded to banter for an hour before I fell asleep. Yet when I opened up my app later the next day, I watched as our chat log faded into oblivion. He unmatched me. After telling me he wanted to hand-deliver my medal for being the pick-up line princess (I told him I’d only accept tacos), he actually one-upped ghosting by completely terminating our co-existence.
Moral of the story. I didn’t – and don’t – care.
Second moral of the story. Am I asking too much for him to simply tell me he was nonchalantly swiping on a Friday night because he was bored and had zero interest in actually commingling past a one-night digital dialogue? Am I too bold for demanding that a man just tell me that he’s not interested in me? Am I out of line?
Spoiler alert. Answer is no. To all three of the above. And men agree. Because this same damn thing happens to them:
“I matched with a girl on Bumble who hit me up with a legit opening line and then proceeded to give me her phone number. She repeatedly told me she was stoked to meet me. Then, a few days later, she stops responding. I hear nothing from her for two months until she randomly decides to follow me on Instagram. I follow her back and shoot her a DM that says, ‘I thought I recognized that face.’ She responds, so I ask if she wants to get a drink. And she disappears again, but manages to still follow me on Instagram and still watch all my stories.”
It’s all fun and games until you actually have to meet in real life.
And if I can offer one observation here, it is that maturity plays the biggest role in commitment, not gender. And I want to be very clear that I do not, in fact, mean “maturity” as we naturally assume it relates to age. I’ve been doing this dating thing for far too long to naively believe that our time on earth guarantees any level of successful adulting abilities.
Our choice to commit to a person is deeply rooted in our levels of self-awareness: “If you can’t make commitments with yourself, you will probably find it hard to commit to another human being.”
Louder. For. The. People. In. The. Back.
And I’d actually like to offer up that I’ve had far better experiences dating younger men when it comes to this area of self-awareness. Not to disappoint my fellow mid-30 males, but I have simply experienced less bullshit when interacting with 20-somethings. They seem to be strikingly more confident in their career paths, more accepting of women who might potentially be bread winners, and more honest in regards to their intentions (I plan on expanding on this hypothesis in a later blog).
The important takeaway here is that males and females are facing the exact same struggles with commitment. We’re both frustrated. We both wish there were more clarity. And, obviously, we’re both out there making the same mess that we often like to pawn off as being the other sex’s fault.
In case you forgot those wise words from your third grade teacher, blaming doesn’t help anyone.
We must first commit to ourselves in order to reasonably believe that we can then commit to someone else, and we are responsible for understanding our end goals for dating to then articulate them and decipher how they align with another’s words and actions.
On the current state of dating
It goes without saying that social media has also exacerbated our inability to authentically engage with one another. Because it’s difficult to establish an intimate connection with someone when you can learn nearly everything about that person – or, at least, how that person wants to be perceived – by stalking his or her Instagram handle or Facebook profile.
My men – yes, apparently, I’m deeming them mine – took it a step further:
“More than the thinking that someone better might be out there is the fact that, with social media, you never really have time to miss each other. You’re always in contact in some way. She gets a new dress, and you see it before you’ve actually seen it. She’ll be home cooking dinner for you and you’ll know it before you even walk in the door. Before you have a chance to smell it for yourself. The surprise factor is gone.”
Speaking of surprises, our subconscious thoughts tell us that our chances of meeting someone in the wild are quite, well, wild. To be single on the brink of 2020 feels like a quiet resignation to the fact that our only possible partner is waiting on the other end of a heart emoji.
To be struck by an organic connection would be – and I assure you, it is – intoxicating. We are forced to ask questions. We are also forced to listen. There is a depth to the knowing that supersedes the swipe rights. Because we have to manually exchange phone numbers and then nervously wait for one person to use them. Because we have to relinquish our addiction to our expectations. Because we have to throw out our objective criteria that serves as our barometer for placing an individual inside one of only two opposing options: hard yes or hard no.
To meet someone outside of an app that is realistically designed to match people, more or less, based on physical attraction is an exhilarating anomaly. It is an open invitation to fall in love with person. It is also an open invitation to fall in love with story.
And, as biased as I am to the beauty of story, story is what unites all of us inside our human existence.
All this is not to say that technology has doomed us. It’s simply a call to, that aforementioned word, our self-awareness:
“I believe that the best thing people can do is try to be the best version of themselves. This means getting over your ego and losing the pessimistic outward focus on the world. It means, even if someone you meet isn’t showing up or being the best version of themselves, it shouldn’t phase you or derail your flow and centeredness. It means you won’t judge someone because you’ve been there.”
It’s easy for men to blame women and women to blame men when it comes to our current path for finding partnership, but the truth is that we all suck at dating. And since it’s impossible to completely exist outside of normal modes of operation – try as we might, Millennials – we must, to a certain degree, embrace our current state.
All the men I interviewed seemed to be in agreement that honesty is the answer: “Be more transparent, better, or just different. Don’t think the grass is always greener on the other side.”
It should come as no surprise that I believe males and females both have something profound to learn from such a statement.
On having hope
When I arrived in Breckenridge back in December, I remember feeling fresh out of hope in the dating department. Leaving Houston had been a hard decision for me, and my discomfort served as the catalyst for my lack of faith in being able to ever find a man with good taste and good intentions. Oh, and also funny – especially funny.
With that attitude, it was natural to assume that every other single person on the planet was commiserating with me. I wasn’t out of line. Go talk to a single person. You won’t find many – if any – who comment on the ease and excitement of dating.
But I was wrong about my assumptions. Because we are all continuing in this seemingly crazy game because we have hope. We’re playing the odds. We’re believing we’ll win:
“Sure, compatibility is hard to find, wasting time sucks, and closure is basically a myth found in a Grecian epic. But I am convinced that if I stay true to myself, a woman will come along and completely rock my fucking world for the better.”
[insert the Oprah screaming giph here]
Because we can’t give up. No matter how often we might want to surrender.
I found one of the guy’s comments really interesting in regards to the infamous saying that encourages us that love will find us when we least expect it:
“I’ve always hated that saying. I feel like you’re not gonna find what you’re not looking for. If you want to find love, you need to act as such and then keep an eye open for similar actions from those that attract you and that you find attractive.”
I have to agree; however, I compare my thought process here to the argument that I make for creatives and consultants to justify charging higher hourly rates. Talented professionals are fast – and should therefore charge more – because of all the hours of previous training that went into their present abilities to efficiently execute a task.
And back to dating. If you’re building your foundation to find love, which works in tandem with your ability to love yourself, then you may very well find love when you least expect it. But it wasn’t because you gave up. It was because you created and held space for the opportunity. It was because you had done the work. It was because your hours of self-development finally found their match.
And if you’re feeling a lot like me when I pulled into Colorado’s most-frequented mountain town just a handful of months ago, know that it’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to step away from the noise. It’s okay to choose you. Because you cannot be a great pair without being, first, a great one.
But for those of us who are in the ring – male or female – let us commit to real. Open. Raw. Chivalrous. Generous. Let us dance and kiss and cook and laugh. Let us smile. Let us lose ourselves through city streets and on mountain trails and inside our favorite Netflix series.
Let us forfeit social media stalking for the sake of playing 20 Questions. In real life. While our knees knock against each other because we’re huddled up together in the corner of a local bar.
Let us send each other songs and text each other a sweet message every morning and tag each other in videos on Instagram that make our hearts feel alive. Let’s snap selfies in the backseat of an Uber on our way to the Mat Kearney concert, and let’s forget to take pictures on our first road trip to the Tetons.
Let’s exist as real-life lovers inside this digitally dominated world.
Let us be honest. In everything. And let us listen. Without judgment. Especially if the relationship doesn’t seem to be working. And let’s be real about why.
Let’s give each other space to grow. As people. And as a pair.
No ghosting. No cheating. No excuses. No saying yes to camping trips and then telling the person who extended the invitation that he or she better not catch feelings.
Let’s prove that Millennials can change the dating landscape because we believe in a deeper allegiance to commitment, which often serves to paralyze us into making no decision at all, but let’s be willing to try.
If we want partnership, let’s show up for it. Let’s do the work. Let’s go.
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To read more on what men (really) want from women, you can view part one here.
To read more of men’s takes on pet peeves, honesty, and dick pics, you can view part two here.
