I WOULD BE MUCH BETTER AT DATING IF I WERE A MAN

My best friend got engaged last weekend. When she called me with the news, I was with a mutual friend. We shrieked into the phone like little girls waiting outside a Justin Bieber concert. Bar after bar we toasted our friend’s fortune, her gorgeous 3 kt. emerald cut diamond and the JD/MBA/Investment banker she reeled in using tips from Kanye’s workout plan.

This was not a decision either of them made lightly. The couple dated on and off for four years. While her beau is charming, fun and successful (albeit a little short for my taste), I have to admit that I was slightly surprised to hear the pure bliss and excitement she felt over her impending nuptials. I mean, my thought in her situation would have been, ‘Eh, four years. Might as well.’ But she talked about her fiancé with the fervor of an amazing first date or a sultry first kiss. I just don’t know that a four-year relationship and lifetime of monogamous sex will elicit as much genuine joy for me as it has for my dear friend.

I am an extremely passionate and emotional person. I experience life with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I have the greatest day of my life about once a week because I get ridiculously excited by minutia. Fortunately, I don’t experience lows nearly as often, but when they happen, I feel it burn with the flame of a thousand suns. Yes, I know that was horribly cheesy. But I need for you to understand that it is real.

I have the same intensity with my relationships which make for incredible first dates, but which has also contributed to ending every relationship I’ve ever been in.

I recently had a first date that was perfect – beginning to end. Great food, flowing wine, lips that made me want to jump across the table. We talked and laughed for hours until we actually closed the restaurant down. I got up to use the restroom. Knowing he would stare at me until I was out of view, I walked with a bounce in my 4-inch-heeled-step and a subtle switch in my tight-fitted-jeaned-hips. With all of my effort to be sexy and graceful (and for me this is never a good idea), my heel slipped and my foot flew straight into the air. I landed flat on my back. Not on my well cushioned bottom. On. My. Back. I was completely sprawled out on the floor in front of a man that I was so pleasantly smitten with. Still, it was one of the best dates either of us had ever been on (which, consequently, did end at my front door, thank you). Though we keep in moderate contact, there was not enough there to get us past the initial spark.

Conversely, I tried stand-up paddle boarding on let’s say a 10th date with Chaz Michael Michaels.* If on any day I tweeter between a hot dog and three cardio sessions and a celery stick, I landed on the hot dog side that day. Tyrone would have been ‘bout it – ‘bout it, but I imagined CMM was less so. By the way, I adamantly believe that you should be dating for a minimum of six months and have met each other’s parents, and maybe picked out a china pattern before you go on a date in a bikini. Even so, the sentiment was quite lovely. He knew I liked to be active and try new things, so this seemed like the perfect fit.

We met two of his friends (male and female) for our excursion by the lake. They both had fantastic athletic builds. But the other female in the group was wearing board shorts and a tank top that she had refused to take off. I, on the other hand, wore a floor length sarong that I could not paddle in. I begged her to wear her bikini, and honestly had visions of wrestling her to the ground and forcibly removing her shorts. But I don’t think there was any possible scenario where that would have ended well for me. Instead, I undressed and felt more self-conscious than anyone had ever felt in the history of self-consciousness. I mean, I am a triathlete, after all. And I have a self-proclaimed triathlete body, right? Well, a couple of pounds either way makes a huge difference. It was as if I could feel all three pair of eyes judging me, picking apart my imperfections and looking at my gargantuan misshapen body. My shoulders slumped inwards. My head fell downwards. And at that moment, I became instantly less attractive to myself and everyone else on that lake.

So I paddled, focused on my insecurities, irrationally afraid of falling in the water. Then my bikini top came undone. Like, first it was holding my junks together and then it was accessorizing my waistline. You may be wondering how things like this repeatedly happen to me. The answer is, I don’t know. I felt pure terror as I tried to figure out how I was going to re-tie my suit with an oversized paddle in my hand and remain upright -bonus points for not drawing attention to myself. To this day, I am hoping the reason I never heard about it was because they didn’t notice, and not because they were being kind to the whale on the paddleboard.

It is really easy for me to be super cool and confident in beginnings – no matter the situation. I have no stake, so it’s just not a big deal. But I either get bored (because a man is too eager, available or nice) or become so entranced (when it turns out that the man is neither too eager, available nor nice) that I psyche myself out. It is a game. It’s challenging, exciting, calculating and strategic. Despite my bouts of mischief, mayhem and slight insanity, I am still a first round draft pick. Of course, my issue is that while I know the rules in theory, it takes a while to get used to them in practice. Inevitably, I end up catching the ball just as I realize the game is soccer.

I do picture my future with a family – including a husband. But marriage actually terrifies me. It didn’t work out for me the first time and I don’t know if it was because it wasn’t the right person or because I’m just not cut out for that kind of commitment: the kind that comes after the butterflies; after the sultry kisses; after the quirks and insecurities are revealed. But seeing my best friend happier than she has ever been makes me want to believe that it is possible for me too. Maybe I could learn to kick a soccer ball, throw a football and hit a baseball in proper form. Or perhaps, like a man, I will figure out a way to change the game and play on my own turf. | Swim | Bike | Run |. Either way, I’m sure a 3 kt. emerald cut diamond would be a huge motivator for me to master any game I play. Matching earrings never hurt anyone either.

*http://lonelli.blogspot.com/2010/07/red-beans-and-rice-didnt-miss-her.html