the world of dating

My views and beliefs on dating have undergone several stages of painful metamorphosis before shaping up the way they are, but it appears like there are still miles to go before I sleep.

My first view on dating which took shape as I finished graduation was about a life with one man in it. You meet him, love him, marry him and the rest is history. There are no options, no second guesses. You deal with whatever life throws at you but stick on together to the end.  That’s as simple as it gets.

When my first relationship with my then boyfriend fell through, that was when I had to learn my first hard lesson on love. You fall in love, but you could end up with a broken heart, endure pain and suffering before you fall out of love and fall in love all over again. While I started to accept this side of love and making my peace with it, I was introduced to casual dating. Having always migrated from being good friends to lovers, this was a new concept to me. Casual dating, where the guy I’m having a pleasant dinner date with is probably having many more such pleasant dates with other women until he zones in on one.  The thought that I’m just another pea in the pod was disturbing. But this was the only way forward, so I took it in my stride to start casual dating so I don’t get left behind.

Close behind casual dating came flings. Although I knew of flings and I knew of a lot of people who were having flings, I always maintained a distance because I didn’t think I was wired to be a part of a fling, what with my old school thoughts and the speed at which I got attached to the men I liked, which is a complete red signal for the flingers. But life had other plans for me, and before I realized it, I was with a guy who was treating his time with me as a fling while I was thinking up of possible honeymoon destinations. The realization came sudden and quick and I had to bring in damage control as soon as possible before I lost more time on a cause which didn’t deserve it.  The only plausible way was the hard and long route of accepting it. Accepting that people could want only ‘fun’ and no commitment from one another even though we had a great time together, accepting that it didn’t mean I was any lesser but that we were in different phases of our lives, accepting that the guy I thought was probably the one, isn’t the one and will never be the one. This experience did not make me any more open to flings than I already was because I still believed that I wasn’t wired for one, but it did make me wiser to know one when I see one and make careful choices.

And now, when I think that I have reached a comfortable position in the how’s and what’s of dating, I see myself facing a new problem. The new-age problem, the problems technology bring into the dating world. With apps like Woo and Tinder, where a bunch of similar people are all looking at the same subset of potential daters, there is a high chance that my very good friend could be dating/meeting/progressing with the same guy that I’m pondering about. All the casual dates and flings a guy was having in the background was fine as long as I couldn’t attach a face to it, it got worse when I could see who it is with and now it couldn’t get worse when I know who it is with.

I’m yet to accept this new turn of events, yet to accept the thought of sharing a potential with your friend before either or both of you zones in or out of him. So I find myself yet again in the process of metamorphosis. It’s scary to think where all this would lead to, to wonder what’s the next thing that would spill out of the cauldron.

I think a lot of this is to do with the in-between generation that we are a part of. We are shifting from a loyal society of our parents to a promiscuous one of the coming generations and as the generation bridging the gap between the two there are unfortunately no short cuts but to look at the truth straight in the eye and to flow with the change.

quotes that inspire me

Your destiny lies in the path you resist most. - Kung Fu Panda

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.

"There is a time for risky love. There is a time for extravagant gestures. There is a time to pour out your affections on one you love. And when the time comes - seize it, don't miss it."
--Max Lucado

this one says it all!

don't postpone joy!

fernweh

fernweh (n.) an ache for distant places; the craving for travel

I didn’t know a word existed that could express the desire and the mad rush I felt whenever I thought of a place I wanted to visit until I stumbled onto “fernweh”. It’s a German word which means - when you feel like you have to leave your familiar surroundings to discover new places. And this hit the nail on the head.

Not being the lone traveler sort of a person, I usually make travel plans with my friends, most of which fall through, but this in itself is like a path to discovery wherein we research on one destination and fall onto so many others that we want to go to that the list is endless. So I started to maintain a list of sorts and the top three of these currently include: Rio de Jeneiro, New Zealand and Japan.  And not to forget the many other local places that I want to visit within the country.

When I’m not travelling or making travel plans or planning to make travel plans, I follow many travel blogs, shows and websites and live my dream through them.

Why I like to travel is a thought that has crossed my mind many a times because travel comes linked with so much effort - to look for places to go to, to plan an itinerary, to think of an economical and yet a fun route, places to stay, things to do, to consider individual concerns and wishes, en-route toilets, the local weather and currency and it goes on. I have done this routine time and again for every travel of mine but at the end of it when I set foot onto the new land and experience what it has to offer, all the effort that I put in is justified. I have always come back from my trips - a happy and contented soul, ready to go through the grind of planning another trip all the way again.

What I enjoy best about travel is the experience that it brings which in a sense is the expansion of the mind and its horizons. Meeting new people, discovering their ways and their culture, realizing how different and at the same time similar they are to us, adapting to their food and habits, seeing new places and learning about their history, are some of the things that no amount of reading or browsing would give me. It is all about being there and soaking it in and making it a part of my own fabric which finally re-defines who I am.

Travel also has an underlying reward; it helps to forge great relationships be it in the form of new friends or strengthening what you already have with your companions.  Sharing new moments, and riding the same wave of excitement and anxiety with someone, puts us at a higher level of synchrony than any common get-togethers would.

Signing off with a quote that completely resonates with me and with other travel lovers – travel is the only thing that you can buy which makes you richer.