Tag: postaday

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Dating by Numbers

Okay. I will be the first to admit I haven’t dated all that much in my life. By the time I was dating age (i.e. 17) I was finally a senior in high school, but I was going to a large public school where I knew pretty much no one, and I was afraid to approach most girls. The one girl I got up the courage to ask out laughed in my face, so that wasn’t a good batting average for me. Needless to say, I didn’t ask out another girl from school that year.

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Dating myth: Flowers win the girl over.

However, I also went to church, and my mother was always suggesting I go out with one of the good Christian girls there. But so many of them I had grown up with, and it would have just seemed weird to want to court one of them. Well, except for this one girl, but she treated me like a brother, and I didn’t have the hurt to damage that relationship in order to try and craft another one out of its ashes. There was another girl, though, who was relatively new to our church, and I finally just asked her out.

GIRL #1

She had short, dark brown hair and a smile that never left her lips. She was also world-smart, meaning she didn’t come originally from a church family. So she was not really the sort of girl the preacher’s kid was supposed to be going after. I suppose that made her more appealing in my eyes. I asked, she said yes, but it was the date that never happened. That seemed to happen a lot to me for some reason. Just say no if you don’t want to go out.

GIRL #3

Me and Girl #3, we actually went on a date. Seven of them to be precise. I was 20 at the time, but a lot more world-weary than I should have been at that point. We met first online, and our initial phone conversation was horrendous. But we still met in person, which was a good thing, considering we hit it off from the start. We met, we wooed, we made exchange of vow. And yeah, as you can imagine, things went much too fast. I guess it either went nowhere, it went too slowly, or it accelerated swiftly back then for me. I think I scared her away. But those were a nice seven dates. Continue reading “Dating by Numbers”

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Hey, Jealousy

index“You can trust me not to drink, and not to sleep around. And if you don’t expect too much from me, you might not be let down.” -Gin Blossoms

Jealousy is and always will be tied and connected to trust. If you have trust in the person you’re with then you shouldn’t be jealous, right? But it’s not that simple. Nothing is ever that simple in life. There can be the utmost trust between two people, and yet jealousy can still creep in because we are human. In fact, jealousy can even be seen as a compliment by some, a sign that you still truly have feelings for someone. But what is jealousy anyway?

“Jealousy: resentment against a rival, a person enjoying success or advantage.”

I remember liking a girl in kindergarten, when most of the rest of the boys in my class were still talking about girls having cooties. Her name was Kareema, and she was the most beautiful girl I had seen to that point in my life. So I hit her one day during recess, which was my clear sign to her that I liked her. She didn’t get it, instead telling the teacher on me and getting me a demerit for it. I would watch her from then on, but I stopped hitting her, and I noticed her having fun with her girlfriends. I was jealous that I had missed my chance and they were having fun with her instead.

Then fast-forward to fifth grade, and there was Mia. Ah, Mia. By this time the other boys were finally admitting they liked girls, and the girls were playing attention-seeking games. But Mia was different. She was a quiet sort, but she had a dynamic smile. And she was my friend, but we had a bit of a flirtatious relationship. Well, flirtatious for fifth graders in the mid-80s anyway. I was even very close to asking her to go steady when Jermaine showed up. He was smooth, and before I knew it he had asked her to go steady and she said yes. I think maybe she tired of waiting around for me to ask her. I was so jealous of him, not only for getting Mia, but for being confident enough to ask for what he wanted. Continue reading “Hey, Jealousy”

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Confidential

th“Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.” -Peter T. McIntyre

Having confidence is easy. Just convince enough people of it, and you’re in. The old “fake it til you make it,” mentality that seems to work on so many people because they want to believe it. The key is to find out what others are looking for from a confident person and portray that. Now, some people aren’t good enough actors to pull this off, and those are the ones we label “anti-social,” or “followers,” which is okay. But many people exist who push that fear down deep enough to project confidence.

Want to know something funny? Usually pretending to be confident is adequate over the long run to actually make you confident. That works with anything, pretty much. Remember Eddie Murphy’s character in “Trading Places”? He was down on his luck and resorted to running scams to try and get cheap money while living on the streets. But then he was picked up out of the gutter and given his heart’s desire, and a sense of purpose. Suddenly he began acting like a more confident man to the extent that he shed the bonds of those men and made something of himself. By himself.

“Confidence is the first step. It doesn’t matter how you achieve it. What truly matters is that you get it in the first place.”

This happens often, from shy nerds who only have confidence in their computer abilities, to weightlifters whose confidence comes strictly from their physical strength, to stay-at-home mothers who are only confident in their homemaking skills. Yet, if these people are placed in other situations which require confidence of a different sort they can usually adjust and pull it off. How? Because confidence is the first step. It doesn’t matter how you achieve it. What truly matters is that you get it in the first place. Then use the power of transference and you’re set. Continue reading “Confidential”