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good read
http://www.theawl.com/2012/12/my-superpower-is-being-alone-forever-newly-single
"One day I wake up and I'm no longer newly single; just the standard version, with no helpful qualifiers to imply a McRib-style time constraint. At first, there was a novelty. I was back on the market! Possibly in the hands of a no-nonsense realtor with reasonable rates! A few months later, I feel less like any kind of hot property than I do a rustic fixer-upper opportunity, bursting with potential and euphemisms. The mere ability to ask out alluring strangers again—perhaps via pretend dance floor lasso —is no longer enough motivation to do so. Instead, I wait for very particular signals or circumstances, only to discover I've misjudged them horribly. I resume my usual complaints: Meeting people is difficult. Games are stupid but somehow necessary. Dating is a process by which humans determine irreconcilable differences—a verbal Myers-Briggs test administered in the dank corners of dimly lit bars. Spend enough time unattached, though, and it becomes your default setting, rather than a freestyle respite from the well-rehearsed dance of a relationship. Some people are so good at being single that they decide to go career with it, forever freelancers. Others are so eager to be done with the unknowingness of it, they barrel into every date as if playing a version of Are You My Mother?, wherein every prospective person seems like The One. But if planning the end of a relationship feels like plotting a murder, then planning the start of one feels more like donning a suicide vest. There's an element of giving up, and also of a callous willingness to take out a few innocent bystanders. Then again, the sooner you settle for any old relationship, the sooner you'll be resurrected newly single. And maybe you won't squander it this time. Once more into the breach, my friends. Welcome back."
http://www.theawl.com/2012/12/my-superpower-is-being-alone-forever-newly-single
"One day I wake up and I'm no longer newly single; just the standard version, with no helpful qualifiers to imply a McRib-style time constraint. At first, there was a novelty. I was back on the market! Possibly in the hands of a no-nonsense realtor with reasonable rates! A few months later, I feel less like any kind of hot property than I do a rustic fixer-upper opportunity, bursting with potential and euphemisms. The mere ability to ask out alluring strangers again—perhaps via pretend dance floor lasso —is no longer enough motivation to do so. Instead, I wait for very particular signals or circumstances, only to discover I've misjudged them horribly. I resume my usual complaints: Meeting people is difficult. Games are stupid but somehow necessary. Dating is a process by which humans determine irreconcilable differences—a verbal Myers-Briggs test administered in the dank corners of dimly lit bars. Spend enough time unattached, though, and it becomes your default setting, rather than a freestyle respite from the well-rehearsed dance of a relationship. Some people are so good at being single that they decide to go career with it, forever freelancers. Others are so eager to be done with the unknowingness of it, they barrel into every date as if playing a version of Are You My Mother?, wherein every prospective person seems like The One. But if planning the end of a relationship feels like plotting a murder, then planning the start of one feels more like donning a suicide vest. There's an element of giving up, and also of a callous willingness to take out a few innocent bystanders. Then again, the sooner you settle for any old relationship, the sooner you'll be resurrected newly single. And maybe you won't squander it this time. Once more into the breach, my friends. Welcome back."
