Nice Girls Finish Last(?)

Whether you’d like to admit it or not, someone or something is holding you back from leading a happy love life. My readers and I are all very familiar with the feeling of being too badly burnt to let anyone else in, but what happens when you have that breakthrough, and you’re ready to get back on the proverbial saddle. Are you seizing back control or simply allowing yourself to become a pawn in somebody else’s game? And if the world of dating is simply all about playing cunning mind games you read about in a magazine, how does anybody ever truly find happiness? Is this it? Tricking your opponent into falling off balance and therefore winning the tug-of-war for power? That being said, there is something quite idealistic about manipulating your personality into a new all-powerful version of yourself… don’t text them back and you can seem more aloof, or perhaps flirt with all of their friends so it seems like you are more desirable. It seems that “playing the game” translates into displaying yourself as a nasty, heartless beast to become fit for romantic consumption. But my darling, it’s because I care so much about you that I ignore you!

Finding yourself truly ready for dating may come as a shock if you have been out of the routine for a while. If you’re human, you’ve probably encountered the false alarm of readiness, a very large dose of unrequited love. I could write for days on the subject, but that is for another time and a longer attention span. It is not the stuff of poetry, but a feeling that can render you unable to function properly. Instead of sharing moments of tenderness with your beau, you are the outsider, the besotted onlooker. It is ugly but also addictive. You always knew that it would never work out, but you clutched onto the fittingly teardrop-sized beacon of hope like your life depended on it. And perhaps for a while, it did. It is the most self-destructive type of affection you can suffer, and you had better hope for a good friend to empty your heart out to on a regular basis. My dear friend Katie describes it as feeling like getting lost in the woods, but not wanting to leave.

Dating is supposed to be fun, though naturally some dates can leave you wishing you’d opted for the quick disappointing shag, parting ways as strangers but instead you are faced with an abundance of too formal questions and a gifted drink you’ve been nursing for an hour. Quick! What does Cosmo say about trapping a man in your web?

There has to be something in it, but I just don’t understand why we have to follow a set guide of rules and pretend to be someone else to find love. Don’t do this, though sometimes do that, don’t put out on the first date, but perhaps you should so he knows you’re into him. Whatever happened to just following your heart? Or have we truly been so broken by the ones who didn’t deserve us that we’ve forgotten that nothing can be forced? It’s a hard truth to accept, but I believe that sometimes you have to relinquish your power and just let it be. This of course can be very difficult if part of the healing process was clutching your cards to your chest and as mentioned in my previous blog post (see here) that keeping the power could be the only way to balance after such a knock. Another issue lies in the fact we are so fixed on forcing an outcome that it can be easy to forget that some things just aren’t meant to be. There is no such thing as the “friend zone”, they were just meant to be in your life in a way that perhaps you weren’t expecting. I hate to be that person, but “He’s Just Not That Into You” speaks a lot of sense – if he wants to call, then he’ll call. And seeing as we are going along with the wise words of others, I will leave you with a quote from The Only Way is Essex “Why have a fish finger when you could have lobster?”