I’m a pretty simple woman in the fact that my way of thinking is relatively black and white (I’m a triple earth sign, it comes with the territory – pun intended). I’m either all in or not at all. I may be picky when it comes to picking men, but that’s simply because if I don’t feel it, that intangible thread – then I’m not going to waste my time.
In that vein, modern dating can be quite exhausting for me. With terms floating around like “love bombing” and “breadcrumbing” and “satellite dating”, it seems pretty dire out there – and this is something I can confirm, from experience.
As we get older, we get more confident in who we are, and less likely to settle for something that doesn’t feel worth our time. We have better and more exciting things to do than wait by the phone for someone who didn’t kiss you goodnight after that date, or (controversially I know, as a feminist) didn’t pay for dinner after inviting you out and then asking you exactly zero questions about yourself the whole night. I could be fucking bouldering instead! Or drinking wine at my favourite bar! I’ve given up my time to meet you as a courtesy!
It got me thinking about passion, and how love should make you feel like you’re skydiving out of a metaphorical feelings airplane. When I like someone, I let them know, so in reciprocation, I want to be literally blown away by how many feelings you have. I want to be paragliding on the strong wind of your infatuation for me. If not that, then what are we even doing here?
Recently I read an excellent article that you should absolutely read by Emma Garland called, “Let’s Face It, Being Horny Is Fundamentally Embarrassing,” and in it she writes the following passage:
“No matter which way you slice it, sex is about power. How much you are willing to concede, in what ways and to whom. I, personally, would never respond to a sext that didn’t sound like the writer was tying their shoelaces ready to run across burning train tracks for a shot at it.”
Now this of course applies to sex, but it also applies to dating too. When it comes to sex, is there anything hotter than someone who in return finds you hot? Isn’t one of the best things about sex is that you get turned on by other people being turned on by you? If a man isn’t goggle-eyed, tongue-hanging-out-of-his-mouth desperately trying to get with me, then what’s the point?
I take this same resolve with dating. I’m so jaded with this teenage, can’t-be-bothered, can’t-let-people-know-I’m passionate-about-something way of dating. I don’t want you to play it cool! I want you to play it red-hot! I want you to want me!
I don’t want someone who’s lukewarm. I want to date someone who tells me they like me. I want to date someone who tells me when they think I do something cute, who can’t wait to text me every morning. Simply speaking, I want to date people who have an overwhelmingly embarrassing teenage crush on me – and surely that can’t be so hard to find?
Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time, I was an avid member of my school dance team, and we were selected to travel to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to compete in an international dance competition. Now, let me make this clear: we were an extremely amateur group – none of us were going to Julliard, but we enjoyed it and that was the main thing. When we arrived in Florida, it turned out that we were being hosted by a sports school, and all the teams that were there were expert-level dancers – like this was their high school CV ticket to their career as one of Beyoncé back-up dancers. We were young, and so intimidated that when we finally got up on stage to do our dance routine to ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ (which we discovered from the Twilight soundtrack) after a week an extreme bootcamp – where I finally made the achievement of touching my toes for the first time – and had travelled halfway across the globe to perform… we half-assed it. I have never felt so awful as I did up on stage nonchalantly crumping to Muse. Let me tell you, the creative spheres are not something you can half-ass – it’s either all or nothing. Landing somewhere in the middle is highly embarrassing and only leaves you with a sense of burning shame and a future regret of missing the boat. Love, I feel, is like dancing. You have to dance to the ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ soundtrack with all your heart, and you have to date me just the same way.
A wise mountain man named Ron Swanson once said, “Never half-ass two things, whole ass one thing.” Men, if you’re reading this, hear me: I need you to whole ass dating my ass. Being lukewarm is boring.
Feature image via Paris Vogue June/July 2021