Dating.
Every single person's personal hell.
So why do we do it?
The best answer I can come up with....because we have to.
It's an unwritten rule that some bored housewife came up with centuries ago so that she could gather her girlfriends around on Sunday mornings, have an excuse to eat bacon with maple syrup whilst sneaking champagne in her orange juice and scoff at their awkward adventures.
And then one day, some genius in Hollywood decided to start visually documenting these adventures and made millions off of what most of us now pay $12 a pop to see the latest Rom-Com. Except real life dating is far more awkward than your typical Hollywood heartbreak-turn-fairytale. Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway aren't getting rich off of movies about blind dates that your friends met at a random bar and set you up on, or the time you showed up in heels and were a clean 4 inches taller than your date. Lest we not forget the dinner where your date verbally assaults you in a lame attempt at humor and then hangs out for 3 glasses of water past the bill payment. No, no, these are NOT the dating escapades that the movies have promised the average 20-something female.
The way it's supposed to go is that I pass a handsome gentleman on the street, probably in New York City, we exchange a lingering glance, share a great exotic meal, and then cut scene to the big elaborate wedding with doves, a jazz band, and me and Mr. Right cruising away in a white Rolls Royce waiving in tandem through the back window. Cut scene again to the 4 bedroom house in the sunny suburb with 2 kids, a golden retriever, and perfectly clean kitchen.
So seriously, why do we keep doing it? Simply for the hope that our cut scene is just around the corner? That maybe this next date will really be "the one". The guy that convinces me that spending time with him is far greater than the joy of going home from a long day of work, putting on my largest pair of sweatpants, curling up with Mickey and watching the latest episode of Bachelor Pad? Ha!
But with the pressures of getting older and the feeling that you are lagging behind and missing out on something that everyone else seems to have figured out, it makes you really examine WHY do I put myself through the misery of countless bad dates and excrutiating dinners that I don't want to be at. Just for the hope of winding up in a cut scene situation so that one day I might wake up and Mickey has a golden retriever best buddy, who is jumping in bed on a Saturday morning while the kids have made their own oatmeal and are watching cartoons while the hubby and I just laugh about the amusement that is our daily routine? I think I just wrote the newest Tide commercial...
And as if dating weren't already hard enough in and of itself, now you have to layer modern technology on top of it all. Facebook fights, private email addresses, who are you texting now? was you Twitter post about me?? It's Ex-haust-ING.
So for those of my other single ladies who are struggling with the same frustrations in dating, or trying to as best as one can in the real world, I wish you many minimally awkward dinners, adequately tall escorts, and hopefully many happy cut scenes of love. May you each be the exception to the rule and find that soulmate with whom you will one day wave happily through the back of a car window at your adoring well-wishers.
And if you have a particularly amusing bad date story, I do hope you'll share. I'll bring the champagne if you bring the orange juice.
Guess I should rest up, I'm gonna need my strength!
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