A Rare Post About Dating & Love

I hardly blog about relationships and dating and love.

 Three reasons for that:
 a. I have many opinions and much speculation but few (if any) concrete answers,
 b. I place a high value on privacy, both mine and the guys I date, and
 c. I do NOT want to become THAT girl who only ever talks about her relationships (or lack thereof).

These (almost) always outweigh my desires to share ridiculous stories, vent over perceived wrongs or philosophize ad nauseum about things out of my control.

And now I will say this: I have decided that I understand not even a third of what I once thought I knew about dating and romance. BUT I feel three times more sure of who I am, and increasingly clear on what things matter to me and what things are negotiable. I sometimes feel cynical and am often confused, but underneath, there is hope.**

Also, I will admit that I think often about these things. I have many, many thoughts. Here are three particular snippets that my mind continues to come back to:

1.
 In January, I posted this entry that mentions a re-thinking of my dating/relationships assumptions (with further thoughts in the comments). I have definitely moved out of the motivation & framework I held as a student/fresh graduate. But I haven’t yet cohesively articulated where I find myself now. Maybe I will pull these rolling thoughts together and put them on paper sometime soon.

2.
 Several few weeks back, my friend Kat posted this quote on her blog:

 "We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. [...] They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real-but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else." - Chuck Klosterman 

I like to pretend that the past doesn’t impact my present, and that I’m impervious to influence from sources I don’t want to influence me. Buuuuuuuuuut, that’s a big fat lie. Not sure I agree 100% with Chuck on this, but I think he raises some things to consider regarding expectations, reality, and owning our histories. 

3. 
 Recently, in a conversation about #1, a friend commented, “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how love is irrevocably intertwined with trust and really the person you end up loving with your whole heart is the person you trust to take on your baggage and vice versa.”

Yes! Someone who wants me to help carry their baggage and is offering to take part of my load. That’s a beautiful thought, isn’t it?

**I don’t just mean hope that I will get married someday. That’s not a given, and even if it does happen, it doesn’t guarantee a “happily ever after.” I mean hope that my life will be full and rich and I will continue to take risks and care for people with my whole heart and be a blessing and not a curse to their hearts.