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Are you the girl he thinks you are?

My most recent experiences and non-dramas have left me feeling rather shallow.

I’ve realised it’s quite fickle how much exhilaration I sometimes allow myself to feel before a date. Although my unbound creative inventiveness cannot alone be held accountable.

There is an over-expectation that inevitably arises from this whole virtual world that now characterises the dating foreground. I was out to dinner with a guy a few weeks ago and we got to talking about days past, the old days (you know the days from like 1998-2000).

This friend is from Cape Town and is only a few years older than me, yet his first early experiences with dating were totally dissimilar to mine. He was at dating age in the pre-cellphone era (can you even handle!). The consequence of this for him? He now knows the physical addresses of every one of his camp (bnei obv) crushes from Joburg.

 Not because he stalked them on Facebook or Google. But simply because he used to write to them. Real actual letters. On paper. In an envelope. With a postage stamp. And a supplementary physical address.

This no doubt created a good amount of ambivalence for the receiver. The whole notion of receiving a love note in the post is romantic and would fall into my list of the beautiful little things one can do. However what did we grow up with? Texts and Mirc. Lucky us!

This inclination to be somewhat emotionally aroused by a text from someone we barely know, kind of blows my mind. My sometimes enthused responsiveness reminds me of how I feel when I come across a potential job spec online for a position that seems like it was posted just for me to find.

To such a great degree that I start planning my resignation letter and I start fantasising about everything I am going to splurge on with my new pretend salary.

Only to then find out the job required 10 years’ experience (weighted against my 1 and a bit years), the remuneration was less than desirable and the benefits were fictional. For me, the prequel to a date produced through imaginary happenings in text and other social mediums has the same outcome: delusional disappointment.

I went on a date with a guy. Actually two dates. But who’s counting anyway. I actually really kind of wanted it to be three with this guy. Why? Well, honestly, I don’t know why. Maybe I just needed a distraction. But for whatever reason I got myself so hyped up before these dates.

This guy, he called me before we had even gone on date 1 (and before that we had been engaging in essay-length-texting-dialogue, which only added to his build-up). But yes an actual phone conversation (and I hate phone conversations. Seeing my phone ring literally gives me anxiety. I’m sure there is an official phobiatic-term for it – I’ll google it and revert soonest).

Anyway it was an actual phone conversation. That went on for almost an hour and a half. The flirty banter produced prodigiously visible evidence in my cheeks that I was liking this boy. And all from one call. I really felt like there was a reciprocation from his side too.

So much so, that by the end of our coquettish conversing I had become the perfect girl and he had become the guy that was allowed to chase – yes these words came out of our mouths.

Bizarre I know. Don’t judge us. This type of behaviour is dangerous. Dangerous for both factions. It raises our expectancies and it may (definitely) falsely elicit excitement. So either you feel let down that the actual date didn’t live up to what you were anticipating.

Or it’s the case that you come across so eager beforehand that when you don’t accept a second date, the person ends up thinking you’re explicitly suffering from bipolar.

Raised and then shattered expectations are the worst. This definitely happened on the dates with the boy who would (should) chase. I don’t think I lived up to his expectations of the witty, cool, easy-going girl he hammered out pre-date conversation with.

I felt too much pressure to impress and it made me awkward and uncomfortable (in my opinion anyway). This was a new experience for me. I’m usually the one who is disappointed cause I over-indulged the guy in my imagination. And it threw me. It really shouldn’t have. But it did.

There was no fantastic chemistry or dynamism between us. Maybe if the affliction of dating was removed, in some other anxiety-free-world, me and the chaser probably would have had a decent enough energy, to at the very least be friends (cause let us not kid, I am the girl that everyone wants to be friends with – a guy who I quite liked a while back even told me I’m like a friendly dog that everyone just wants to pat (god as my witness).

He vehemently maintained that was a compliment. But this particular boy is a story for a whole other blog post, so moving on).

I genuinely believe no one seems to live up to the idea I fashion in my head because of fore-texting and pre-talking. It’s almost like we’re spoiled for choice – by the delusions we create in our craniums – of guys that genuinely do not exist. No wonder we end up frustrated and jaded after most dates. 

That said, I sadly do feel like I am spoiled for choice when it comes to an influx of 'Davids', being a part of the last single girls will do that to you. Too bad none of them are who I want to be spoiled by. Here’s yet another case in point – I got a fairly nice (although most backwards and misguided) compliment from a friend who passed this comment onto me.

One of her friends said, while looking at a picture of me, “I guess she’s a pretty girl but I just don’t get why every guy in Joburg is obsessed with her”.

The obvious arrogance of including this aside, let’s dissect what this means. My immediate response to my friend was utter flabbergastation. Firstly, who are all these obsessed men? And why then, am I still single? Secondly, um, it’s not hard to be at the point of a guy’s obsession when you’re like the last single girl.

Jokes aside, single-Jewish-late-twenty-something-females in this town have become somewhat of a rarity. I like to think of myself as a unicorn. Yes a unicorn. Ok, fine. You’re right. More of a rhinoceros these days. But either way both are special, and unique, and rarely seen.

And are at risk of falling into obscurity either because people refuse to believe in their happy existence as a single (the unicorn) or because they are being hunted out of their single actuality into the marital one (the rhino – and btw married friends this is NOT me calling you fat) (does my analogy denoted in written form carry through to an understanding in your brain? I’m not certain I’ve done a good job with this one).

Anyhow the point I’m poorly attempting to make is that it’s not hard to get attention from guys when there is no one else left for them to direct it at (you’re all already matched to your perfect sticks).

So they message the single and engage the single and create some idealized version of the single in their heads, that’s based on nothing more than some mis-read and mis-toned texts. This is the hazard of dating through whatsapp. The exposure of dating in the post-2000 era.

Check out Jenna's blog, STICKMEN

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