I wouldn’t say that I have had failure when it comes to dating but a lack of success has me ready to take a time out. I decided to take myself out of the race and focus on myself for a little while. It’s easy to get caught up in the chase and focus so hard on acquiring something that you lose sight of what you have. My theory was that I could probably play matchmaker for a close friend because I would know a lot about them. I would have a hard time playing matchmaker for a complete stranger, it would be hit or miss. See, to know who would be a good match for someone, you need to know who that person is. What their interests are, what do they do for fun and what they are looking for. And, if I didn’t know that about myself, or have lost sight of that, how could I be the judge of who would be a good match for me?
When I mentioned this to Tiffany, she said that a good amount of time to wait between relationships was eight months. Eight months? Didn’t you read the title of this post? It’s a race, I don’t have eight months to wait. My plan isn’t to drop out of the race completely, I’m just taking a pit stop. I think that men have a biological clock that ticks too. I was thinking more like a week or so. It doesn’t seem fair for me to be quarantined for eight months because one party involved decided this wasn’t working. What if I was the one who decided that it’s not working, do I still have to wait eight months? That’s like making a cheeseburger and deciding that you don’t want to eat it so you better wait a few days before you eat anything else.
Think about the math on that. It takes a month of dating (minimum) to get to the point where you consider it a “relationship”. Then, it lasts for about three months because that’s when the true colors begin to bleed through the mask. So, if I take eight months to sit on the sidelines after that, I’ve wasted a whole year to find out she’s NOT the one.
In my opinion, once I get beyond the point of wondering what went wrong, what’s wrong with me or what have you, I’m ready to date again. There’s nothing worse than being on a date with someone and all they can talk about is their previous relationship. I don’t want to be that guy and I take every possible measure to ensure that I’m not. On a few occasions, I’ve had women ask me out right after a breakup. But, in those cases, they knew that I was on the rebound so I made an exception. In fact, it may have been their plan to catch me on the rebound. It might have made a difference had they waited a week but life is too short to wait eight months.
Photo courtesy Vinicius1 @sxc.hu
