the fossilization of effort

I am no longer dating. It was a very conscious decision I had to make, one that took days and nights for me to be able to conform to my condition. I am a lover-girl at heart, I love love, I love to love, and I love to be loved. It has only been a few times on this blog where I have opened the windows of my love life to you—usually to substantiate a point—and those few times are not sufficient to showcase the magnitude of trauma I’ve had to endure.

Fear not, I won’t suffocate you with tales of failed romances—we would be having a never-ending conversation otherwise. Today I wish to dwell upon the essence of what these experiences have left me with. There will be no talks of dinosaurs of past lives or of lovers whose faces I can no longer remember, no. I am hoping to share a troubling phenomenon in dating that I’ve noticed throughout the years and which has become a source of great concern to me: the fossilization of effort.

Earlier I spoke about my “condition.” It seems almost clinical, I know, but I’ve had to firmly distance myself from the fantasies and hopes in my head, almost surgically, in order to see my love life clearly and make logical decisions. It was a necessary feat because, as I grow older, the more I am sure of what I like and what I don’t—and in the same coin, what I choose to tolerate and what I don’t. And that was a problem. Dating had gotten so bad that I merely survived on tolerating people rather than actually being around those whose company I enjoyed—I keep promising this, but I swear one day we shall unpack my abandonment issues.

It was not until recently—after yet another failed situationship, that caused me to turn to Hinge for brief moments of validation—that I realized one of the biggest problems I was facing was the lack of effort put forth by these so-called men I had to interact with. I will refrain from, yet again, going on and on about intersectionality and multitudes—we’ve done enough of that. However, that is a major contributing factor to how people see me, hear me, and, ultimately, love me. With that in mind, I could not help but pick up on the fact that a lot of men, nowadays, cannot be bothered to even pretend. Yes, I would much rather know your true intentions from the get-go but when did we throw decorum out the window?

It was during a two-day, hardly consistent conversation when I had my great epiphany. I’m well aware that the dating scene is much different for my generation, and that most people are looking for meaningless, temporary, and carnal connections. This isn’t about the one-night-stand warriors who desperately dodge any signs of intimacy, no. This is for the things that are a bit more complicated to label—the situationships, the entanglements, the “going with the flow,” or whatever an unofficial relationship may be for you. And, notwithstanding, this is about men—mostly because I have not ventured out to my dating journey with women, yet.

Throughout the Lo. Lee. Ta. essay, I expressed how often I felt as though people merely craved me due to a projection of their desires—a desire that was completely detached from my being. Men would try to interact with me in any form possible (physically, virtually) if only that meant that I would provide the sexual gratification they longed for; and when I would impose a boundary these men would either disregard my limits or disappear completely. And that was exactly what happened during that two-day, unremarkable conversation—he just wanted sex. Throughout the ordeal, I did make it a point to mention my demissexuality, to assert my boundaries, and I even told him that even though I won’t dismiss the possibility of a friendship with benefits, I needed to take things slow. Only for him, the next day, invite me to his house at ten a.m. to “watch a movie”—because that’s when he had the house all to himself.

Perhaps I should not call this a fossilization but rather, a metamorphization of effort—or even both.

The fossilization  

I could not think of a better word than fossilization to describe the untimely death of effort. And now, I am having difficulty finding the words to paint this catastrophic moment without, in turn, painting myself as a bitter, lonely woman—because I am not.

With a ridiculous number of dates under my belt, I have met different flavors of men from different economic, academic, and social backgrounds. One thing this cluster of males had in common, was the amount of effort they put into our interactions—effort that was often based on how much they wanted to bed me.

Age here isn’t much of a factor because I truly am beginning to believe that men only mature in their forties. I’ve had a thirty-two-year-old man throw a tantrum and call me weird simply because I did not let him have his way with me. He had made very little effort to plan a date. I ended up picking up a bill he had offered—but ultimately couldn’t afford—to pay. I had to sit with him in a car and watch him call his mother for McDonald’s money—and still, he expected me to “reward” him.

I can tell you of many more tales such as this one, and a handful that were much more traumatizing, but I run the risk of becoming overly repetitive. If I may return to the two-day fellow from Hinge for a brief instance, I can tell you what that interaction made me realize: I was putting in significantly more effort than the person on the other end.

Because their ultimate goal is to get me out of my clothes, the effort put into conversing is minimal. So, I’m left picking up the weight of tedious conversations. Because their ultimate goal is to get in bed with me, I have to put up with being treated as if I do not matter as a being, as if my only purpose is to provide sexual favors. Because their ultimate goal is to deflower me, I have been misled into thinking I’m going on a date with a decent fellow, when, in reality, he wants to shove his tongue down my throat, and his hands up my shirt.

As I write this, another thing is becoming abundantly clear. The metamorphization of effort. What if this effort I keep going on about, is not really calcifying into nothing? What if it’s transforming into something unrecognizable, something hollow or distorted?

The metamorphosis 

Here is when I finally elaborate on why I am no longer dating. The condition I found myself in was one where I no longer wanted to put up with shallow men, and I no longer wanted to feed myself delusions that the next guy would be decent—not great, not outstanding, solely decent. With that, I realized that my standards had been too low, and I was creating too many exceptions for people who would not spit on me if I were on fire. I thought of how my father was actively setting the standard of how I should be treated by any man, and of how I was allowing less than that into my life—I was allowing leeches to suck on my energy for their own enjoyment. No more.

I refused to change who I am to fit into dating schemes that did not fit with my being, to fit into a character that did not align with my person. I refused to keep putting my heart out on a limb, knowing well and good that it only ever led to disappointment.

And because I refused this change, I refused to date. I like to believe that I am a hopeful romantic and that my love knows no bounds, but there does come a point where enough is enough—and I’m at that point. The effort I’ve been longing for belongs to a generation before mine. My generation’s efforts seem different. It’s a twisted nightmare made to crush the will of a lover’s soul.

I got to see the metamorphosis of said effort: the poor communication, the lack of genuine interest in the other when sex isn’t on the table, the intolerance, the aggressiveness, the entitlement to another’s body and time. I only ever see effort on steroids when it comes to the pursuit of sex—and that is no good to me, it is disingenuous.

I’m well aware this piece has been mostly negative because that’s how it is most of the time. Negative experiences. As a person craving meaningful connections—for whatever purposes they may be—these negative experiences needed to end. Thus, I buried my love life. It was a hard pill to swallow as a lover of love. Knowing that I would not have a conduit through which I could express such deep emotions was heartbreaking, but equally heartbreaking was having to watch myself settle for people I only just tolerated, settling for people who did not like me for who I was—opportunistic people, who saw a way in and took advantage of it.

So, yes. A big part of me had to conform to my condition as an unwilling retired lover-girl. But another part of me is still hopeful. I am not actively searching for anyone, nor for new connections, and although my experiences have been overwhelmingly adverse, I have also seen the good side of things. I have seen the men who want to try, who want to get to know, who want to love. And though they are scarce, I know they are out there.

And if we ever cross paths, I will do what I have always done: love—unconditionally, profoundly, truthfully.