Confessions

I fall for my guy friends.

There's just something about friendship that makes it easy to see who they truly are and to love them, platonically, from the beginning. You let down your barriers, letting them see the 'real you'. They're super goofy and don't judge you (too harshly;). They offer support, celebrate your successes and accomplishments, and you become one of their cheerleaders by encouraging them in their endeavors. They might be a reallllly great friend and bring you chocolate or warm soup when it's 'your time of the month'.

Does this seem kind of selfish? Well, if I just stop here it might be.

Having friends provides a built-in family and support system. Ideally they'll do some of the things listed above (and so will I). Friendships provide an opportunity to love and to serve others and for those acts to be reciprocated. ALL relationships should be like this!! Siblings, roommates, friendships, romantic relationship, etc. should all be based on the principles of love and service. These relationships should provide an opportunity to support one another (emotionally, socially, sometimes physically and financially) as we find ourselves and work to create the best version of ourselves. EVERYONE deserves this! Whether they be the richest of the rich or the poorest of the poor, the most arrogant or the most humble, we all deserve the opportunity to be loved.

I cherish my friendships. I am an introvert, and because of that I let few people in to my life, which means that I have just a few close friends. I like to keep it that way, because then I can be genuine with those friends and I know that when we talk about life, it doesn't have to stay at surface level, we can go deep.

I get to know my friends really well. Like, realllllllllllllllly well. We get super close, we dive in to the deep and personal. We cry, we joke, we laugh until we cry. It's the BEST. That's why I fall for my guy friends, because we do get so close.
This has gotten me into trouble. I've had to learn that just because you connect with someone really deeply, it doesn't mean that you should 'be' with them, romantically. I've learned that the hard way. But now I'm a little bit better about discerning if I should act on my feelings for my guy friends. In most recent cases I have chosen not to, because I know that we are better off just as friends.

Now that that's off my chest, let's move on to some confessions. Here's the dirt on my dating life:

Confession #1: I’ve been to dinner and a movie only one time for a date.
Confession #2: [I had to delete this one because it's no longer true ;)]

Confession #3: I usually ask the guy out. I get impatient and tired of waiting for him to as me out,
so I just blurt it out.

Confession #4: In my 8 years of dating, I’ve been asked out only 4 times. And yet I’ve been on

30+ dates. Kinda eye opening, huh?

Confession #5: I have social anxiety. Sometimes it gets so bad that I come off as cold and
indifferent. This can be really frustrating, especially on dates.

Confession #6: When I was 17 I was counting down the days until my eighteenth birthday.

Not because I was excited to finally be an "adult", but because then I could legally sign up

for an account on an online dating site (this was before Tinder and such dating apps were

popular); I had to sign in on my laptop and had to pay a fee to even see other members of

the site. {I probably shouldn't have been so excited, because nothing happened and I

probably should have put the money that I spent on my subscription towards school.}

Dating has changed a lot over the past decade. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube,

FaceTime, and other social media sites have come further into the limelight. This is how

we communicate now. Our in-person relationships are very different than they used to be.

Dating sites are more accessible, most now in an app form. If you have a few minutes in

between class or work you can just open an app and swipe through a few people.

No commitment, no emotional connection. You don't even have to meet the person. Even

though I no longer have an account with the first dating site I signed up with, I do have

profiles on a few different dating apps now: Bumble, Clover, and Mutual. Earlier this

semester, when I decided to base one of my research papers on how social media

affects millennial dating, I downloaded about 15 dating apps. Excessive? Yes. But

the experiencing of using each of these apps helped me to see how much social
media influences how we date.
Over the course of the past 4 months I matched with about 150 guys (I'm not trying
to brag or anything by including this number, I'm simply presenting facts). If I
'matched' first then I would send a message; sometimes it was the generic "Hey, how's
it going?" but other times I'd ask him a question about something included in his
profile.
I never actually met ANY of these men in person. There were 3 that wanted to, but
then never followed through. Okay, actually, I did stand 1 guy up. And I felt really
bad about it, but turns out it was for the best because we come from very different
backgrounds and we learned that our short-term and long-term goals are very
different.

What have I learned from this experience? Well, I'm just one person, so
what happened for me would not be the same for everyone.... But the
biggest thing that this confirmed for me is that some people go on the
app just to see what's out there and to feel validated that they're not
a complete loss, that there is hope for them to find love in the future.
It's just a matter of actually opening yourself up and THE KEY STEP:
having an in-person relationship, whether it starts out as romantic or platonic
is completely up to those involved. But 'date' and 'commitment' seem to be dirty
or unspeakable words in millennial's dating culture.

Love,
D. J.