Kindly. (ish)

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Here's just another thing on the Long List of Things That Annoy Me.

Ahem.

The experience of dating as an adult has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything you did while younger than the age of 24 .  So if you met your Someone at an age younger than 24, kindly shut up.

In our younger years, dating is on autopilot.  In high school, you're milled around in a vat of hormones.  Notes are passed, friends get involved.  You dance, you play sports, you get assigned lab partners.  Romance abounds.

In college,  you're still in a vat of hormones, but now you're 'independent' and in a different world.  People are unfamiliar, foreign and sexy.  Alcohol pushes you into the arms/tongues of random strangers you will inevitably see again.  You get internships, you spring break (whoo-hoo!), you get assigned lab partners.  Romance abounds.

By the time our generation emerges from all of that slip-n-slide, over half are Boo-ed up.  This is the half that go on to commit, get married, procure golden lab and subsequent attitude.

Dating As an Adult:

We have been graduated and working for more than a few years.  The letdown is in full swing.  We don't understand where our lives are and why we're there.  We feel like we could still be on the verge of that Something Great we love, but don't know how to get there.  We don't have partners to make sacrifices for, so we live for ourselves.  We want it all, and we have a taste of it.  We have mortgages and phone calls from parents buggin about retirement.  It's not cute to whoo-hoo.  We meet people but have gotten so cool in our adulthood that we don't know what we mean to each other, and can't owe anyone anything.  We're spoiled by our independence.  Free, lonely, confused, unabashed, annoyed, hopeful.

So, how does one find bliss in the mess of that muck?

Hell if I know, but this is my request.  Listen to my stories.  Laugh, commiserate.  Drink wine with me and roll your eyes when I do.  If I'm sharing these experiences with you, I must think you're pretty great and in my corner.  I, however, do nowhere think that you're a dating mentor.

BEING IN A SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIP DOES NOT MAKE YOU AN EXPERT.

It makes you lucky.  So don't be a prick about it. 

I genuinely don't resent you for being in a happy relationship.  It actually gives me hope that it can still work in our whirlwind, messy world.  But still, you don't get to give anecdotes on a world that will remain at-large for you.  Seriously,  you just don't know.

So while I understand you are not living in my mishaps, I absolutely wont tolerate instructions.

"Just relax!"

"Be yourself!"

"Try harder!"

Yes, how DOES one TRY to fall in love?   I'm fascinated at my lack of effort toward acquiring a deep feeling of affection toward another human being.  Please, regale me.

I'm being an asshole.  I won't be regaled.  Just drink your wine and listen to this latest horror story.