Or rather, perhaps, the science of humans dating. It is an interesting endeavor. And I am sure there are people more qualified to make revealing insights into human behavior and why we do what we do...but I feel like I have the ability to provide special insider information on the anthropology of dating.
I have been doing it in some form or another for 45 years now.
My first real date? Ty Fussel (yep, that was actually his name). He took me to a Bullets basketball game in 6th grade. That was it.
My first boyfriend? 5th grade. Mike Scofield. It was sweet and basically consisted of passing each other notes in school and talking on the phone every night. I went to dinner at his family’s house for Christmas. It was sweet and he was kind and as I have previously written, I fucked that up big time.
Then was probably my first love - Mike Protchko in 7th grade. We were together for the better part of a year. And he was a great guy and it was a loving and lovely start to dating and loving.
And that is where all the sweet, kind, reciprocal stuff ends for me. Right there at the end of 7th grade.
It has been an evolving shitshow ever since. With varying degrees of failure and success.
But I have studied a great deal, this whole experience of being human and attempting to find connection. I have given it my best and been truly awful. Mostly, when I review, I have been aloof and terrified. And I believe, to a large degree, so has everyone else. We all seem to have these dysfunctional methodologies of which we are only marginally aware. Dysfunctional application is how we go about getting our relation needs met. Some of us focus on the physical aspects of human connection: touch, pleasure, sex. While others of us hone in on the emotional aspects of feeling a part of something greater than yourself, intimacy, vulnerability, and presence. And there are a great number of people out here in Datingville that are just using other people to make themselves feel better in whatever way they can. And they use the parts of themselves most wounded and broken to do so. And in so doing, break and wound a great many others.
I feel like I have enough information to write a dissertation. And one might think I would focus on the guys or at least my experience of them. But I think perhaps the more interesting and poignant story lies within an acute observation and exploration of my own dating behavior. Why am I still doing it? What am I searching for that I can never seem to find? What am I doing that is breaking and wounding myself and others?
Let me attempt to answer these questions. Because I am pretty sure that my answers would be applicable to a great many others. An examination of the cultural landscape of the single person over a life time.
Why Am I Still Dating?
Given my lack of success, one might wonder, and be very correct in such wondering, “why the fuck doesn’t she just hang it up?” And believe me when I tell you, I think about this very question every single day. And I could give you lots of reasons why but the most truthful answer I can provide is that I guess I still have hope. So I date.
I think all humans long for a connection where they feel wanted, desired, needed, seen, supported and loved. And we all have this idea, erroneous as it may be, that there is a person out there that will not only satisfy this cumulation of desires within us, but that we may also do the same for them. It is the great love story, it is the thing we all seek. It tantalizes with such promise of rich reward, how could one ever really just give up the quest?
I guess I still believe in the quest despite my many failures. I still believe that perhaps, if I am faithful and evolving, I might find someone out there that can not only tolerate me, but I them. And we could use this connection to come to know each other better and more intimately over time. We could allow this relationship to be a vehicle for our individual and mutual evolution. That is why I am still here. I want that.
What am I searching for that I never seem to find?
See above. It seems like I am always off. They like me more than I like them. I like them more than they like me. We like each other the same but there are barriers and we are both so caught up in the living of life, we aren’t willing to make concessions to give the whole us thing a shot. Perhaps it is just a persistent and ever regrowing delusion that someone day I will feel at home in the arms of another. Mostly, in my life, I have felt trapped. Which makes me shake my head just now because fuck, you would think that if this is what I felt, repeatedly, I would have done some different shit way earlier and had more willingness to deal with my past more efficiently and sooner. But here we are...
What am I doing that is breaking and wounding myself and others?
Dating. And not dating. And dragging myself back and forth between the two ever present poles of hope and fear. That is where all the destruction seems to come from. This incessant and rapacious idea that there is still time followed always, so it seems, by a paralyzing fear that I might actually get what I want.
I am not sure there is a science to dating anymore than there really is a science of human beings. We are all vessels of sinew, bone, blood and flesh. We all have the same base level needs: safety, food, shelter, water. We all have a sex drive that is largely warped and challenged by stuff that occurred before we all had our faculties about us and now have to attempt to unpack shit from a million years ago, but most of us don’t find the willingness to do this until it is almost too late. Or never at all.
Then there is the whole attachment style theory which is why I think my demographic is pretty screwed. In the younger generations, there is plenty of time for the secure, avoidant and anxious people to sort it all out. The secure people find each other and provide the stable and abiding basis upon which the rest of us shall judge ourselves harshly. The secure people create this yardstick of constant measurement that leaves us all feeling lacking, because, well, we are.
Then we have the anxious/avoidant interplay. Which also tends to sort itself out in the younger generations. But once you hit middle age, most especially in Datingville, this is really all that is left. Just a whole bunch of avoidant/anxious people chasing each other around and wounding each other more all the time.
Avoidant/Avoidant - that is usually over rather quickly. Neither one of them is going to bridge the distance that lies between. Both will opt for greener pastures rather than do the work to find depth and meaning.
Anxious/Avoidant - they will begin with such promise, both feeling their needs are met, the avoidant person feeling loved and wanted, and to some degree, safety. And the anxious person gets all lit up with their internal dysregulation so that this new person feels exciting and different. Eventually, the avoidant will feel smothered by the anxious person’s level of need, and thereby behavior more avoidantly, causing the anxious attacher person to become even more needy and demanding. Culminating in a relational shitshow that if you are on social media, you see discussed ad nauseam all day, every day.
Finally, the avoidant will ghost the anxious and then both parties shall wander off to recreate the whole scene again, usually with very little gap in-between.
This is the anthropology of dating in 2025. This is what I see all day, every day. And I will fully admit I am part of the problem. And I will own I haven't a clue about how to do it differently despite reading a great deal on the subject, going to therapy every week to deal with my shit and staying sober and doing my best to apply spiritual principles to my life. I know, to a large degree, my best efforts are really just me furthering my dysfunction and spreading it around. You don’t think you are? Well, I will leave that for you to decide.
I see myself. I see what I am doing and I know why. And despite really trying, I cannot seem to crack the code of my own behavior, let alone anyone else’s. So what am I still doing? On good days I would tell you trying. On bad days, I would tell you failing. And all the other days I would admit that I really haven’t a clue what I am even trying/failing for anymore.
I think I have come to this though: when I am afraid I want to be single forever and tell myself all sorts of stories to support the notion that I am just unpartnerable. When I am hopeful, I want to be in a relationship and tell myself all sorts of stories that support the notion that I AM partnerable.
So it seems to me the work must be done in that space between the two extremes. Not when I am running scared and not when I am smuggly satisfied. The work, so it would appear, must occur in moments like now where I am just here, living my life and attempting to make sense out of it all. I have tried the “I AM NOT DATING FOR A YEAR!” And I have tried the “I AM GOING TO DATE UNTIL I DIE, AS MANY AS I CAN!” I can tell you neither strategy provides any real satisfaction or peace.
So for me being willing to just sit in this proverbial shit that dating causes in my life and keep being accountable to the idea that we are all worthy of big, right, true love. And the only ones of us who shall never get it are the ones who remain content in practicing our dysfunctions without examination and responsibility.
I don’t know the end result. Do I find it or do I not? I am not sure I even have a way anymore. I just know that, for me, my growth requires that I keep trying, regardless of how much I fail. It is within these failures that I learn new and interesting things. And hell, I mean, we didn’t give up on trying to make fire once upon a time. Perhaps dating is the new fire starting deal. Except instead of rocks, we are banging together body parts in the hope of a spark that ignites the soul...
Again...still.
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