My sister and I make what has become an annual and traditional visit to see BYU's Divine Comedy group perform their annual best of show. Last April, one of their skits was on dating, and I link you to it here for your viewing pleasure:
Like Kohor says in the skit, dating is painful. The only way to get around it is either, as he says, to get married or stop.
Dating for me seems to be a Kobiashi Maru. Nobody would have thought when I was in high school that I would be the guy who was alone at night with his beagle setting up shelves or mopping the floor or shining his shoes after the age of 30. Frequently, girls I get to know wonder why I'm still single. I wonder the same thing. Then I think about the dates. I have had some rather interesting experiences.
One of my favorite dating stories involves my car. I pulled up outside the girl's house and went to the door to get her. She came out and started across the front yard (I can't remember if there was grass) and stopped suddenly. What she said sounded almost like a verbatim Star Wars quote. "You came in that? This date is over". She referred to my car. Not to miss a beat, I thanked her for sparing me the money I would have otherwise wasted on some other man's future wife and left her standing there while I got in my car and drove away.
To be fair, sometimes the girls hate me because of things I say. In this particular instance, as has been true for others who have told me "You're a great guy, but..." I have decided to put them in their place. It seems to make very little difference to be a choice man if I am the choice of no woman. When they are extremely stupid, I frequently put them in their place.
Sometimes, I don't get the chance. This week, I was stood up again. It has happened four or five times this year, including one time where I showed up at her house to find her gone and that she didn't answer her phone or respond to an email I later sent, since I was worried something had happened to her. She resumed posting on Facebook a few days later, made no acknowledgement I had attempted to contact her, and then the next month moved to California, and I have heard nothing from her since. This week, I had scheduled to take a girl out to dinner for her birthday. I was surprised she didn't have any plans, so when she contacted me via text Tuesday an hour before I was supposed to go pick her up and asked me to move it to Wednesday so her mom could take her out that night, I let it go. The next night, she asked me to move it again since she was out with her brother and nephews. I did so. Thursday, I texted her to ask if we were still on for that night, and her only response was 'hey', which neither answered my question nor furnished me with anything substantive. I have heard nothing from her since.
Very few of the girls in whom I was seriously interested have any contact with me. It is possible that in the immediate aftermath they slandered me to their friends, but since it hasn't hurt me, I am not worried about it. True love cannot be so fragile a notion that it takes many months to build but mere moments to destroy. True love must include the idea at least of permanence, because true love is forever.
Meanwhile, dating is painful. I took myself out to eat Thursday after my biology lecture section and then went home and swept the floor so I could mop today. I can't really just meet someone randomly and expect to hit it off. I'm old enough now that I know what I value and what I can tolerate, and I'm after a help meet, not someone who hopes to meet my help. If you have someone with whom you mesh well, thank your lucky stars that you're not 'in the market' as it were. If you have someone, no matter what their weaknesses may be, ask yourself why it was you decided to be with them in the first place and think of reasons to stay together. That on which you focus your energies tends to be what happens in your life. All of you who are lucky enough that God has blessed you with a family of your own to love would do well to keep in mind how blessed you really are, how many of us yearn for that opportunity, and how many people are just existing in their marriages and families. All of you who are still single, keep the faith. Happiness is the object and design of our existence and will be the end thereof if we pursue the path that leads to it, and that is a promise of a prophet.
I am a great guy. I am sure there are great things about you too. I look forward to meeting you.
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