I decided to take this winter off from dating after going on a date with someone in 40 degree weather with high wind chill; she could have been my soulmate, but I was too cold to notice. I swore off dating until it hit the 60s. But just because I wasn’t dating, didn’t mean I was going to waste this dark, lonely, nearly-killed-us winter. If I remember anything from algebra, it’s that luck=preparation+opportunity. So, I would use January, February, and March to prepare for my future relationship, and then get lucky with lasting love when spring weather and Tinder presented me with opportunity.
As snow piled up, I pillaged the relationship self help aisle like I was a woman on her third marriage desperate to make this one last. I re-listened to Esther Perel’s “Where Should We Begin?”, a podcast in which she holds one time therapy sessions with couples, and includes some of her notes on the session. Through this, I came to understand how important it is to build your relationship around your needs and wants, and not blindly fall into society’s patriarchal one-size fits all model. I read her book, “The State of Affairs,” equipping myself with all the tools for repairing my relationship should my future partner and I cheat on each other. I frequented The Gottman Institute’s website, discovering that curiosity and admiration are the antidote to contempt. I binged “Couples Therapy”, a tasteful docu-series on Showtime in which four couples go through six months of, you guessed it, couples therapy with Dr. Orna Guralnik, who is very on trend by being a couple’s therapist who is super hot (she has a tattoo on her arm that has me considering getting the exact same one). The series taught me how confusing and difficult relationships can be when we don’t do the work on ourselves. Lucky for me, I’m in therapy. I took a quiz to find out my love language: 30% quality time, 23% words of affirmation, 27% physical touch, 20% acts of service, 0% gifts (if you ever gift me something, I will break up with you no matter how much admiration we have for each other!) And I read a book on attachment theory, coming to learn that I was severely avoidant. But not to worry, I could work on that in therapy. I was fucking ready to slay a relationship. PUT ME IN, COACH!
Dr. Orna Gorlanik and her pooch rethinking her profession after a grueling session with some wild couples.
Early April came, bringing with it cherry blossoms and “all you need is a light jacket” weather. You can imagine how amped I was when this cute girl messaged me on Tinder and asked me to hang IRL. Let’s call her Brachel. We went on a date in the park, she brought wine and a blanket and I brought my A-game. It was the best date I’d ever been on, meaning I felt the most at ease. Our conversation flowed from the park to the bar, past closing time, and all the way to the subway where we had a sweet, awkward (because of the masks) farewell. Immediately, we were texting each other the music we’d referenced, podcasts, and articles. We spent the week discussing the similarities between FKA Twigs’ Cellophane music video and Lil’ Nas X’s Montero music video. At one point, she asked me to help her create a poem for her upcoming Dungeons and Dragons game. So, I stopped what I was doing and crafted a poem for her D&D game, sending the verse to her nonchalantly as if I’d spent five minutes on it and not three hours. She loved it, and her approval felt like a warm bath. On our second date—wow—I’d never felt so comfortable with someone. We played tennis, got a drink, went dancing (outdoors), got another drink, went back to my place, had the best sex I’ve ever had (which doesn’t mean much when you’re 27 years-old), and punctuated it all with coffee and pastries in the morning. She asked for a kiss goodbye, and then said, “let’s do this again.”
In an effort to not be avoidant, I texted her later that day, affirming that I liked her and had a great time with her. She didn’t text me back… One day passed. Two days. Three. Four. The cherry blossoms began to fall. If I learned anything over the winter, it’s that communication is key to a relationship, but maybe this was something I could eventually express to her— that I needed her to respond within a reasonable 24 hours. What was my winter training useful for? It could only aide me once I was in a relationship, not if I was being ghosted by someone who I thought was The One. I did the obvious speculations: is it my fault? Did I say something weird? Did she use me for my poetry skills? Did she die? I typed in “what to do when someone you like doesn’t text you back” into Google so many times that I feared it alerted the Algorithm Nerds of my desperation and now they were all laughing at me in the cafeteria. I rationally considered Brachel was working hard, but even at my busiest, I still had a moment to text someone I liked back. Four days and no response, so I decided to send her a chill text because I didn’t need to play games. Me: “Hey, do you want to go to the park this eve? It’s p nice out.” She texted me back within the hour—a long paragraph apologizing and responding to my last text. Oxytocin flooded my body. She explained that she really wanted to hang out but had to work late. Me: “Okay…what about going to Bathhouse this weekend?” She said she felt nervous because of COVID. Understandable. And then, her last text: “let me noodle on something for this weekend and get back to you.”
I didn’t text her again, the ball was in her court. And it was clear, as the weekend came and went, and my phone didn’t light up, that Brachel was simmering me. I kept going back to her age—29! Too old to ghost. What had her early twenties been if not a series of lessons that ghosting takes up more energy than letting someone know you’re not into them?
The cherry blossoms became pedals in the gutter by the time I gained some clarity. Sure, time heals all wounds, but there’s nothing like a few therapy sessions, and a hard night of chills and fever dreams courtesy of the J&J vaccine to show me what truly matters. I didn’t need to pine over someone who couldn’t communicate or stick to their word. I looked up from the gutter of bruised blossoms, and dazzled at the trees bustling with green leaves. I was hesitant to sideline my relationship lexicon, but I needed to take a little break from the dating game.
One day, my sister remarked that Brachel was actually really weird, and she didn’t see what I saw in her. I took this in. True, I came out of the winter gate a bit strong and was blinded by my desperation to be in a relationship. However, my feelings of wonder, lightness and adoration were still real, but maybe they were directed at myself rather than at Brachel. I was more in love with how relaxed I was, and impressed with how I could be more myself on the date. For so long, I’ve struggled to know how to just be me in the company of others… I didn’t know I was gay until I was twenty, and then when I did, I spent so much time rejecting that part of me. Going on dates in public with women made me so anxious that I often did a line of coke and a shot of whiskey before going on one just so I could disassociate a little. And now, I was able to simply be with myself as I was, on a date. What if my relationship knowledge wasn’t going to waste, but had already been put to use? After all, I was, and always will be, in a relationship with myself. Through words of affirmation, and cultivating a curiosity and admiration for myself, and never giving myself physical gifts, and going to therapy, I’ve built a solid and loving relationship with myself. This whole time I thought I was on the sidelines begging Coach to put me in, but little did I know, I was already on the mother-effin’ field.
