What do you get when you fall in love?
A diamond pin to burst your bubble
That’s what you get for all your trouble
I’ll never fall in love again
I’ll never fall in love again

there have been times in my past where i was so jaded, i actually started to scare away some of my friends because talking to me was depressing them. kind of funny now, when i think back to how jaded i was when it came to relationships. i think that i had gone through a pretty bad breakup and i was pretty devastated at the time. i remember on more than one occasion i told a friend of mine that i was going to swear off women because they were all evil.

there was a time in my life when i thought that all women were evil. i really believed that they were here on this planet to make my life miserable. to tempt me, to dangle that promise of happiness in front of me only to snatch it away. it was just more than i could bear.

What do you get when you kiss a girl
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
After you do, she’ll never phone you
I’ll never fall in love again
I’ll never fall in love again

sometimes it feels like no matter what i do it just isn’t enough. in the past i’ve felt that i was just bending over backwards to accomodate my significant other and then i started to be taken for granted. no one really enjoys being taken for granted and that can only lead to bad things.

and i felt like i kept getting into relationships that just didn’t work out for one reason or another. maybe i didn’t feel as connected to the person, maybe the other person didn’t feel it for me. maybe we just weren’t meant to work out. maybe there were just too many issues and not enough good problem resolution on our parts. at times it seemed like dealing with women and relationships was just more work than it was worth and i started to just give up.

Don’t tell me what it’s all about
‘Cause I’ve been there and I’m glad I’m out
Out of those chains those chains that bind you
That is why I’m here to remind you

other people tried to reassure me. they said that not all women are evil and there are good women out there. i think that i wanted to believe them, but after having gotten out of so many relationships where i eventually felt it was better to be out than in, i wasn’t sure i wanted to jump back into the dating game.

What do you get when you give your heart
You get it all broken up and battered
That’s what you get, a heart that’s shattered
I’ll never fall in love again
I’ll never fall in love again

Out of those chains those chains that bind you
That is why I’m here to remind you

it seemed like an endless cycle. get into a relationship. really dig the girl, start to love the girl, and then something happened. i don’t know what happened to change things, but it seemed that something always came up. when things got more serious, something came up that made things not work as well. things that bothered my girl about me started to resurface or vice versa. things that we thought we could work through weren’t being worked through. there came a point in the relationship where you had to decide what was the best course of action.

and that’s how i got jaded.

What do you get when you fall in love?
You only get lies and pain and sorrow
So for at least until tomorrow
I’ll never fall in love again
I’ll never fall in love again

but regardless of how jaded i was, let’s face it, i can never really be so jaded, so disenchanted from all of my experiences to think that true love isn’t possible. i mean, come on, i love women. i can’t help it. no matter how burned i’ve been in the past, no matter how unlikely it seems that i will ever find that other person who can complement me, who i would want to share the rest of my life with, i still believe that that person is out there. it’s just a matter of time before i find them or they find me. i mean, sure, i could be a little cynical about love from time to time, but deep down i can’t help it, i’m a romantic at heart and i still believe in the notion of true love.

my favorite type of movies are romantic comedies. i think my favorite movie is when harry met sally. the idea that you can find true love despite all the failed attempts, despite all the fruitless searching, despite overwhelming odds…i just know that it’s out there. kissing jessica stein is another one of my favorite movies. sure jessica wasn’t sure what she was looking for and went to great lengths trying to figure it out. but in the end, she did find who she was looking for.

i know that life isn’t a romantic comedy and i know that you can’t expect to have a fairytale love story, but it isn’t so much that i want to have all those things as much as it is that i believe that that kind of love does exist. i believe that movies may idealize love, but it is based on life. and it is those kinds of movies that give me the hope that something greater is to come.

i haven’t really talked about this much in public, but i guess it’s safe enough to say that most people close to me probably already know by now. i’m a single man again. it was rough for a bit, but things are better now. i’m not shaking my fist up in the sky and damning the world. i’m just kind of seeing where my life will take me nowadays. i think that my belief in one true love hasn’t been shaken. sure, i’ve been wildly unsucessful when it comes to the whole dating thing, but you know, the thing with relationships is that you only have to get it right once in your life and as soon as you do get it right, you’re set for life. the odds may be stacked against you, but if you only need to get it right once, surely it can’t be that bad.

i was talking to a friend over the weekend and we were relating some of our dating experiences to each other and she asked me about how a guy would hint disinterest in a girl if they had gone out on a date.

it’s funny because i’ve seen situations where the guy was crazy about the girl but the girl couldn’t stand the guy. the guy thought the date went fabulously, but the girl thought it was a disaster. how does the girl convey to the guy that she’s not interested? what if the situation was reversed? what if the guy wasn’t interested in the girl, but the girl was interested in the guy?

apparently, it’s pretty common practice for the guy to just not call the girl up anymore. or rather, to say that he’d call her back, but not. to just ignore their calls and not answer the phone or to delete messages left with them. chandler in friends was employing this technique so that he wouldn’t have to call rachel’s boss back after a boring date.

i don’t know. even if i was not interested, i wouldn’t just delete voicemails and let them go off into oblivion. i think that i’d just feel too bad. i don’t think that i’d be able to just ignore them. it just seems so callous. i’d probably rather try to hint that i’m not interested, but if push came to shove, i’d probably tell them politely and nicely that i just don’t see it working. i think the direct, honest way is the better way to go. it’s probably the best way that i could deal with it without feeling bad about it afterwards.

not that this really matters to me, anyway. i’m usually the one who needs to convince/bribe/kidnap the girl to get her to go out on a date with me, anyway. ahhh, what a luxury it must be to be pursued by a girl.

—–

Remember the first time I told you I love you –
It was raining hard and you never heard –
You sneezed! and I had to say it over
I said I love you I said… you didn’t say a word

i was listening to this song when it reminded me of a time in a relationship when i would profess my love to my significant other and they would just sit there, frozen, as if they had never heard it. i was mortified. did i say too much? did they not feel the same way?

Remember the last time I told you I love you –
It was warm and safe in our perfect world –
You yawned and I had to say it over
I said I love you I said… you didn’t say a word

i remember that i had opened up my heart to another. i had left myself vulnerable and open. i had done all that i could, but was met with nothing. no acknowledgement, no reciprocation…nothing. as if you had never heard. so later, i had to say it over, i said, “I love you” and again it was met with silence.

probably any kind of sign would have been better than none at all. “i don’t feel the same.” or “i’m not sure i’m ready.” or “woah, nelly, you’re moving just a little too fast there, buddy.” something. just so i knew. it is probably one of the worst feelings i’ve been through to expose myself and for it to be ignored.

i think that when you do come to those crossroads, it sort of defines the relationship. it either brings you closer or starts to set you apart. it’s happened to me a couple of times in a couple of different relationships over the years and i have to admit that there’s some amount of anxiety about it. it’s not every day that you profess your love to another, and when you do, it should be a happy, joyous occasion. it shouldn’t be met with a loss of words. it shouldn’t be met with discomfort. if it is, maybe you just aren’t ready as a couple to take that next step, but you should at least acknowledge that you aren’t ready.

—–