Guest blogger Moxie on recycling old flames during a dating drought.
Many of us have done The Recycling thing. You’re in the midst of a dating drought, or need to get laid, and you start sifting through your address book or searching for people on Facebook. The plan is to send them a “Hey! How’ve you been?” email. Of course, you have an agenda. You’re not REALLY all that interested in catching up. Dropping him or her a line out of the blue and then ending the note with “Want to get together?” is just too obvious. You might as well just come out and say, “Listen, I have nothing else to do and could use a blow job…or a date to focus on and be excited about because Valentine’s Day is coming up and I’m all weepy and sad.”
Foolishly, we’ll even contact the people with whom things didn’t end well. Maybe the sex was great and you kept their address “just in case.” Or they were always up for a good time. Or you knew they liked you more than you liked them. Whatever the reason, they served a dual purpose in addition to their original.
When you’re in these states – the ones that have you longing, yearning or just plain blue balled – you tend to remember things differently. They weren’t THAT bad. Okay, so you weren’t all that attracted to them. And yeah, they kind of were bad kissers. Oh yeah, they did sort of complain a bit more than you’d like.
“But people change!” you say. You tell yourself all kinds of things to justify dipping back in to that garbage can, sifting for items that could be used to better your mood or self-esteem.
You even start to romanticize the situation. “Maybe it just wasn’t our time! Maybe things will work now!”
The unfortunate thing about being a places like this is that you tend to see what you want and not necessarily is in front of you.
Whenever I’ve received one of these Go Green attempts, I’ve always felt two things. First, suspicious. Why is he contacting me now? What does he want? The next emotion I experience is..annoyed. I’m annoyed that this guy, because he’s feeling a little desperate, would even consider me a welcoming participant in his scheme. Because, see, that could mean he thinks I’M desperate.
The worst is logging on to a dating site and looking through profiles and seeing an ex or someone you went out with. You check the profile because you’re not quite sure it’s them, or you’re curious too see what lies…I mean..ways they are now selling themselves. By the time you click you forget one very important thing. Most sites let you see who has viewed you. Shit. Shitshitshit! Now you feel like you’re in a bookstore and someone you know just found you in the relationship self-help section. You duck behind tables or feign ignorance and pretend you were looking for the Travel section because you have this FABULOUS trip to London planned! There’s no place to hide online.
Then the inevitable email comes. “Hey! What’s up?” Wow. The effort it must have taken to write that. Didn’t you have your penis in my mouth on several occasions? And that’s the best you could do?
That’s when all your insecurities come flooding in to your brain. “Oh God…I’m still single and know HE knows. Ugh. ” Messages from those guys almost feel manipulative. Like, and I’m totally projecting here, they think you’re vulnerable and therefore more amenable to their charm. Or rancid personality. Or that you’ve forgotten the fact that they said they’d call you and didn’t, or magically found a girlfriend mere weeks after your first date. This is one I’ll never understand. How does one ask you out for a second or third date, then a few days later derail that train by telling you they’ve met someone else? To me that screams “You’re the understudy. When the star is out sick or unavailable or not putting out, you’ll do. But you will never take the role permanently.” Any guy who tries to follow up with me after that? Buh bye.
The main reason why I think we try to recycles old dates is this – we’re lazy. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. There’s no anxiety over whether they’ll look like they’re photo or if they’ll be as witty and interesting as that first time you spoke at that party. AND…you’re already one or two dates in. So technically, if you do go out again, it’s the third date and sex is TOTALLY okay!
There were many times last year I felt paralyzed by both fear and exhaustion when considering an upcoming date. I didn’t feel like being rejected again, or judged, or waste my time and money on an arduous conversation. But what I really didn’t want to do was get my hopes up only to have them come crashing down when I get that inevitable “My dog ran away and I just can’t handle a relationship right now.” Which is code for “You didn’t put out last night, and that was why I was there, soo…um..bye!”
I really had to fight through those feelings of anxiety. I had to force myself to go out on these dates and go meet these guys. It was like when I was a kid and my Dad was teaching me how to play softball. Forgetting that I was a girl, not a boy, he threw a particularly hard fast ball my way. He knew I had the ability to catch it, so it wasn’t like he was Great Santini-ing me (that’s a movie, check it out). But, it hopped off my glove and nailed me square in the mouth and knocked me down. I cried and whined and did the wah wah wahs for a bit. My Dad came over and lifted my face by the chin, did a once over and told me to get back up. I refused. He insisted. He stood over me until I got back on my feet. He went back about 40 feet or so. He threw the ball again, this time faster than the one before. Once I was over my little pity party, I grew determined to catch that ball. And I did. Yeah, I ducked once or twice and missed it. But on the third try I caught it. It took me years to figure out why he did that.
He did it because he didn’t want me to feed in to the fear. He wanted me to confront it and accept the possibility that, yeah, I might get hurt. But he also wanted me to experience the exhilaration of succeeding at something that terrified me and know the sense of satisfaction of facing something head on and coming out the other side.
Recycling has its upsides. The attention is great and it feels nice to think someone is thinking of you. But you threw that particular item away for a reason. Either it wasn’t what you wanted or it had served its purpose. Or it made you sick.
Somethings should stay in the trash.