Every day of our lives we interact with people.
Early on, that interaction is pretty straight forward. But as the years creep by, more and more complexity crawls in. By the time a dozen or so years have accrued, interacting with others gets downright complicated.
Of course, it’s at that point our hormones kick in and we start to daydream about sex, love and romance.
From there on out, there are few simple days to be had.
At least that’s how it’s been for me.
That whole dating thing never panned out very well back when eveyrone else around me was doing it in high school. Things didn’t change all that much in college. Oh, there was dating that went on during both of those periods, but I never really saw what the big deal was.
This, of course, confused me greatly.
See, I’m a hopeless romantic, raised on classic TV and films that espouse the benefits of regular (and sometimes irregular) romantic relationships. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I realized just how messed up our romantic and relationship lessons are.
Fast forward to now. Now I know full well how our culture’s general “want but don’t want” push/pull double standard, double talk about sex gets in the way of relationships. Now I know intimately how deep a relationship you can have without physical intimacy. Now I’ve seen how bad things can get when you don’t know why you do what you do or when you get reality and fantasy confused.
Most importantly, I’ve found that I’m not the only one who doesn’t–and doesn’t want to–fit the “standard” model of relationship practice.
I don’t date. I crush, reveling in the fantasy and possibilities. Then I do the really important thing and separate fantasy from reality.
That process has netted me a whole bunch of very good friends and a small handfull of generally fantastic romantic relationships.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with that.
And I’d like to see more people happy.
In order to do that, I’m resurrecting my Hump Day Crush series where I’ll take one day a week (Wednesday, the infamous “Hump Day”) and focus on relationships–romantic, real and otherwise–and how we can all learn from them. (Especially our crushes.)
In the coming weeks, look for some discussions on film and literature archetypes and how they’ve been twisted and co-opted by our minds and contradictory culture, some personal stories of tragedy and triumph in the dating world and, if you’ll help out, some real discussion about what Love is and why we spend so much time looking for it.
Hopefully, you’ll all join me and share some of your own stories and insights.
We’re an interesting and diverse bunch… among us all, we have answers to share!
