“I want this one moment...it’s what I want in a relationship, which might explain why I’m single now ha ha. It’s hard to...it’s like that thing where you are with someone and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it but it’s a party and you’re both talking to other people and laughing and shining and you look across the room and catch each other’s eye not because you are possessive or that it’s precisely sexual but because that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s a secret world that no one else knows about that exists right there in public unnoticed - sort of like how they say other dimensions exist all around us but we don’t have the ability to perceive them. That’s...that’s what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess. Love. Blah, I sound stoned. I’m not stoned.” - Greta Gerwig / Frances Ha 2012
Well, it’s happened, again. I hopped back on the dating apps and quickly hopped right back off. Let me give you some background information first…
I am approaching 28 at the end of this year. I have had, arguably, 2 seriously relationships in my adulthood. Both of which lasted multiple years. The first, we lived in the same college dorm and had an instant connection in a shared elevator. The second, we actually did meet online. This was when Tinder was far more popular and widely used. Both of these relationships were filled with love— at least, in the ways we knew how at the time. These relationships happened before I really began any sort of healing of my trauma. Before I started doing yoga or practicing mindfulness or had a steady therapist. They were traumatic in their own ways, but I can still reflect and see the love that shone through our wounded emotional bodies’ cracks. After leaving the last, I began making a concerted effort to heal. I reflected on all the parts I played in the ugliness of it all. Stared myself down to the point of almost blinding myself. Sitting with your shadow is hard, ugly work friends. Not to mention, it is unending. It is perpetual. And more often than not, I regurgitate my same old shit before I take a beat and choose to be different.
Upon doing all this work, I have become even soppier in my romantics. I find strangers in bars and coffee shops and almost always have something charming and witty to say which usually goes nowhere. I flirt with the grocer checking me out and kiss my friends on their faces. I give them flowers on Valentines Day and the same attention to detail I would a partner. I dance in my kitchen when I am cooking. I tell my students I love them on the daily. I sing and rub my dog to sleep. I hold the door for anybody whenever I can. I practice non-romantic love in any way I can. If I didn’t, I fear I might actually combust. The other, less shiny, side of this coin is finding love in places I shouldn’t. I expect reciprocity from individuals who owe me nothing. I am far too vulnerable far too quickly. This has caused a lot of rejection, hard feelings, and my own set-up of being let down.
That monologue above from Greta Gerwig’s Frances Ha astounds me each time I hear it. I feel it in my bones. It’s probably because I have had that. Anything less, now, just feels like shit. Having experienced this to end up downloading some man-made app that convinces us love is waiting for us there, is so bleak and terrible.
This is how it goes: I go through any photo of myself I feel somewhat good about— particularly looking for a photo that is not a selfie from fear of being assumed as conceited. Then, I have to push through the existential dread of really, really, not wanting to be perceived from strangers probably just looking at my profile trying to imagine whether or not they would enjoy sleeping with me. Next comes the swiping. It genuinely depresses me. We look at a few photos and maybe a few generated prompts and decide whether or not that person is deserving of some internet attention from us. Swiping makes me feel shallow. It makes me feel somewhat evil. This game is ugly and I hate that I feel the pressure to play it.
Here’s the thing, though. People struggle to engage organically in the real-world now. When’s the last time a stranger approached you or struck up a conversation when you were both braving the outside world alone? Plenty of folks gaze at me, but I couldn’t tell you the last time one of them spoke to me. I am not blameless in this, either. A few weeks ago I felt drawn to speak to a musician playing in a crowded bar I was in. I went to approach him by using the timeless line of asking if I could bum a cigarette, but was so overcome with anxiety I turned around half-stride away from him. Usually, I fear coming off as pushy or bizarre simply by speaking to somebody I don’t know. (Is this a symptom of gaslighting??) But deep down, we crave this. We want to be noticed and seen. We, ultimately, want connection.
Our deeply rooted fear of it is rotting us from the inside out.
In the past three years, I have endured five dates. Of those five, three were with somebody I met on an app. Of those five, only two of them I enjoyed the time spent and it didn’t feel like a waste. Of those two, only one left me curious to see them again. The thing about wanting connection is that it places you on either extreme end of the spectrum of being picky. Either we want it so badly, we are willing to take it wherever we can get it, or we become so picky we create a desert in our love lives. Now, I tend to fall on the latter part of the scale. I probably sum people up far too quickly and decide what they are going to do to me before I give them the opportunity. I become the reactive woman you’re probably glad you dodged. I get blocked or ghosted. I become ashamed and embarrassed of my intensity in a world that values casualness and your ability to not care and detach.
When did we lose our ability to see and be seen? When did we lose the longing of a slow-burn from a person we are slowly getting to know? When did we stop being eager to be a part of something drawn out and romantic?
When did we stop speaking to strangers?
Greata is the queen of mumblecore!