Where I’ve been…

I haven’t gone anywhere.

I just haven’t posted anything in a very, very long time. And I may not post much after this — at least not about the dates I’ve been on.

Those of you who know me – the real me – know that I can be painfully self-aware. I may phrase something a certain way and then spend days agonizing over how it may or may not have been interpreted. I am my own harshest critic, and I constantly second-guess myself.

I’m getting better, but it’s still there.

I guess what I’m getting at is a bit of second-guessing in and of itself. I’ve looked back at these posts, and even though I changed names and identifying details of all the women involved, I have also realized that you’re only getting one side of the story: mine. And due to the semi-anonymous nature of this blog, I can’t really offer those women a chance to tell their side (although that would be one hell of a website, would it not?) That being said, I don’t think it’s very fair of me to continue posting these one-sided criticisms when, as I mentioned earlier, the common denominator among all these ill-fated dates and failed relationships is me.

I’m not perfect, nor have I ever implied that I was. I am, however, beginning to look at this site from the perspective of someone who may have been written about on here.

No, nobody “caught” me writing about them. None of the women have made any effort to contact me, nor have any of the comments — as far as I can tell — been from the women I wrote about.

I guess what happened was that I went on a few dates with someone – a lovely girl whose name I won’t type here – and we just didn’t click. Sure, she had some quirks that got on my nerves, but she was just being herself. And asking someone to be anything other than themselves isn’t the least bit fair to anyone involved. After a particularly disastrous date with this girl, I thought about sitting down to write about it, but it felt… mean.

I would have been criticizing her for being nothing more than herself. And that’s not right.

Obviously, things didn’t work out between this girl and me. I’m still single. I haven’t given up, but I haven’t found anyone, either.

As you may have guessed from my last post, I’ve been a bit down in the dumps lately. I’m taking some steps to remedy that, though, and have been doing a lot better lately. A lot of this involves – you guessed it – introspection. But not the kind I’m used to. The kind of introspection I had been doing was highly critical, whereas my psyche has taken a much more objective lately. And that’s a good thing.

After all, how do I really expect someone else to love me if I don’t love myself first?

So I’m working on that, and it’s going well. Slowly but surely. And I’m still dating here and there.

What will I write about on here then?

Stay tuned. I’ll let you know as soon as I figure that out.