Left Alone With All My Thoughts

If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.

I don't know how many times I've heard my dad quote that line to me. On subjects from fighting with my sister to struggling in a class in school, this was his answer for everything. I don't know that my dad and I have ever once discussed my dating life, but if we were to try, I'm sure he'd quote this to me yet again.

Tonight as I was doing my nightly blog surfing a visited the Elvis Enthusiasts Unite blog (authored by Dainon) for the first time in a long time. His post "Better man" struck a chord with me. Particularly this portion, "My thought was, well, that I mostly likely have a fear of intimacy, which leads me to be in the state that I am at present. The reason for that? Almost every single intimate act I’ve had or experienced so far in my life has been attached to some level of failure. What a revelation, right?"

Which again brings me back to my dad's favorite quote. And reminded me of another thing my dad always likes to say to me, "Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity." Which pretty much sums up how I often feel about dating. 


Going back the other blogger's, Dainon's, point of view. When every act of intimacy we have tried, over and over again, has lead to some level of failure, why would we keep on trying? And really, what does that say about us?


Again from the other blog, "Is it wrong to have this fear? I don’t think so. Is it comforting to have a better understanding of what it is and how it applies to me? Yes and yes. It may even lead me past it at some point."

 I think that is the best any of us can hope for sometimes. To know ourselves, recognize our shortcomings, and move past them at some point. 


I've never met Dainon (although I did see him at a very large party once, but thought it would be creepy to introduce myself as a blog lurker), but from my visits to his blog over the past several years I've deduced that we're about the same age, have a few friends in common, and that he works for a large MLM located about 2 minutes from my house. But none of that really matters. In the end, most never-been-marrieds-over-30 share something else in common. 


We're all afraid, and we're all trying not to be. And we all secretly wish more people understood "the fear." (And that our friends, particularly the ones who married in their early 20s, would stop trying to tell us that we're all going to find someone great someday. Because you know what? When you are in your 30s and single, if there is one thing you know, its that that really might not ever happen. And that the population of great people is dwindling into extinction.)