My friend Lauren sent me this link earlier today: Is Writing a Dating Blog Ruining My Romantic Life? (scroll down toward the end of the post to get to that point, if you want to read it).
Anyway, Maura Kelly - a freelance writer in her 30s who allegedly has never been in love, has spent the past year trying to figure out love while blogging about it for Marie Claire. Today she wrote about how a guy she wasn't even that into found out about the blog from some light online stalking and was weirded out by it.
Duh.
When I was dating and blogging about it, deep-down I knew there was little-to-no-future with any of the guys I wrote about because clearly none of them would have been that psyched about his role as part of my little entre into the blogosphere. And, let's be honest, the only reason J accepts it is because he was sort of "grandfathered" into it all because we were broken up when it started. Sucker. Just kidding, sweetie.
However, after asking him on a scale of 1 to 10 his feelings about me blogging about a recent relationship story, he said 10 - aka do not go there. [Editor's update: J would like for me to clarify that he did NOT say "Don't go there" because apparently that is on the short list - along with "Talk to the Hand"- of things said that warrant receiving a 'Junk Punch'... Yes, I'm glad we're all on the same page now.]
So while some relationship/dating posts are obviously still in the future, I've reached the point where my dating life can longer be fair game for fodder, lest he will dump me. Other people's lives and stories, though, are still fine... So be careful what you share with me. Just kidding. Sort of.
Anyway, Maura was interviewed on The Frisky, yesterday, and I liked this answer:
The Frisky: What are the biggest mistakes you think women make, dating-wise?
MK: I don’t want to phrase it that way. It implies there are glaring errors women are making, and if only they corrected their ways, their lives would be perfect. Dating is not easy, which is why there are so many articles, books, blogs, and how-to videos about it. As a perennially single person, I hate it when some person thinks he or she has the magic piece of advice that will cure all my woes. It’s just not that easy to snap your fingers and—poof!—suddenly find the perfect relationship.
For both men and women, dating is pretty hard, maybe harder now than ever, because there is no agreed-upon set of “rules” we can refer to, to help us interpret what a certain behavior means. Between open relationships, late-night texting, and discovering that your crush might be dating six other people via his Facebook status updates, I think it’s really hard for anyone who’s out there in the dating world to really know where he or she stands—at least until they reach an exclusivity agreement with someone, at which point they’re no longer “dating,” since they’re in a committed relationship.
All that said, I will say that I think a lot of women give guys too much leeway. If he’s not responding to you, cut him loose. Don’t try to win a guy over if the situation has become fraught with anxiety for you. [Ed. note: This is precisely the best way to avoid CGS!] ...
Although Maura hasn't found love by making her personal life public, I recently read a Vows announcement about woman who blogged her experiment to go on 31 dates in 31 days to celebrate her 31st birthday. Date #6 ended up being The One.
"When I started this project, I had no intentions of finding a boyfriend. In fact, I had no idea what would happen. I just wanted to learn something. What I found was more than I could have ever imagined!"
Tamara is currently writing a book (slash trying to find a publisher) so sadly we cannot read all of these great learnings she discovered. But clearly something clicked, otherwise she wouldn't have made the Vows.
So there you have it. Maybe writing about dating will ruin my life, and I will end up alone, except for my 100 dogs (not going to become an Old Cat Lady because I'm not the biggest fan of cats based mostly on the fact that our cat growing up, Kitty, was basically evil-incarnate).
Or maybe I'll get married and the whole dating blogger thang will have helped my romantic future.
Only time will tell. Sigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment