Do you want to know why I drink alone at bars? Of course you do.
It’s not so you can come over and “rescue” me. I’m not trying to send the signal that I’m available.
The chances are if I’m alone at a bar enjoying a nice night and live music I want to keep it that way. Me, myself and I.
Maybe you can’t wrap your head around the idea that I like to be alone but I’m going to do you a favor and tell you exactly why I like to be alone before you ask a very well-meaning girl out on Hinge or Tinder or approach someone at a bar next time you’re out with the guys.
Just hear me out, please.
When I’m Not Writing, I’m A Therapist
I had just moved back to my hometown a few weeks before I started this gig as a therapist.
I had gone out to dinner with someone I was close to and didn’t mind making myself emotionally available for on a beautiful weeknight and thought it a good idea to clear my head afterwards.
The sun was setting, I took a nice drive downtown and took a seat at one of Greensboro’s newest bars, enjoying a drink. Blissful people-watching commenced.
The bartender began to talk to me here and there, and even asked if he could sit down next to me after his shift was over. It was a little innocent flirtation, but he seemed nice enough.
What could go wrong?
30 minutes later, I was defending why I wouldn’t be breastfeeding my children.
A list of topics we blasted through includes:
- children
- marriage
- my childhood
- his childhood
- his unhappiness at his job
- a lot more complaining I’ve since blocked out
Women are not an emotional dumping ground. We are not therapists. I own the fact that I cannot tell someone to go away, or say, “ I would like this conversation to be over now,” or simply, “ I’m going home, I’m tired.”
I’m working on my people pleasing tendencies so while I’m doing my work… please do yours. With a therapist. ‘
Why Is Every Man In Love With Me?
Kidding. Every man is definitely not in love with me. One man definitely thinks he is, though. The real kicker; we’ve been best friends for 6 years.
Our senior year of high school he professed his love to me, and I thought, you know what, we’re 18. We’re going to college. Our friendship will survive this.
Survive it did, until a few weeks ago.
Suddenly, I was uninvited from a 4th of July event I had purposely made myself available for. I could have been on a boat in Florida(okay, I don’t like Florida, but it’s a free vacation and boats) or in the mountains with my aunt and uncle, but I had kept my schedule free for months thinking I was being a good friend.
I was racked with guilt even thinking about cancelling our plans, which was exactly what he did the day before.
What’s the old adage? God laughs at plans? Yes, God or whatever you believe in, does indeed.
I wasn’t simply uninvited, I was told by my friend that I no longer had the capacity to be a good friend and was just doing things out of obligation.
Were there super mind reading skills my friend had developed and forgotten to tell me about? Because I don’t remember thinking I no longer had the capacity to be his friend or that I was just spending time with him out of obligation.
It turned out he was just in love with me after all of that time and let it get in the way of our friendship, projecting his insecurities on to me and then apologizing and saying “I understand if you don’t want to be friends anymore” to try and guilt me into coming running back.
Please start taking accountability for your emotions. Men, specifically.
It’s exhausting to be your therapists, to take on the emotional weight of what you’re feeling(especially under the guise of friendship) and put up with all of the stories you spin to avoid whatever is going on in those tiny brains(no offense-women’s brains are scientifically bigger my a smidge and develop sooner).
Why am I justifying a sarcastic comment on your brain size? Exhausting, this is.
We all reach a breaking point. Well, most of us. Do you really want to drive someone important to you away because you aren’t mature enough to know how to deal with how you feel?
Take Your Insecurity Elsewhere. Preferably To A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Dating has been hard, to say the least. It’s not fun.
I meet this really nice guy on Hinge. We hit it off. He’s not a serial killer. Maybe I changed him for the worse.
He likes cats, and Monty Python, and books and has a dry sense of humor and cares about things like climate change and politics. He checks many boxes.
Today-this day, July 15th, 2021-we went on our 4th date. That time when you’re really thinking, should I keep seeing this person? Should I keep investing time and money in this person?
I brought it up.
“Are we compatible?” I asked. We hadn’t really been connecting for most of what seemed like an ideal date.
We talked about our differing senses of humor and how I hadn’t been maintaining conversations, seeming to display little interest in what he had been bringing up in conversation.
I acknowledged this-he was right. I had been quiet.
As we dove a little deeper into the conversation piece, I said something along the lines of, “ I don’t want to have to try. It should come naturally.”
“Have you ever asked anyone else if it does?”
This was the question he put forth, or something like it, the implication being that I should ask other people if my conversational skills were what I thought they were.
When I got naturally defensive, he told me no one would be honest with me if this was how I reacted to everything.
Yes, let me go ask all of my close friends and all of my prior exes and really anyone I’ve ever hit on, all of my prior patients I’ve needed to have a rapport with, any past professor, anyone I’ve networked with, anyone I find TRULY interesting, if I have good conversation skills.
I’m sure they can be improved, but I can obviously carry a conversation. I WRITE and all of you read it. I’ve had romantic relationships. I have deep friendships.
Maybe… I actually just didn’t find him interesting. Sometimes, people just don’t click.
I was, to say the least, flabbergasted by this comment about how perhaps I was not a good conversationalist at large. (How could I be terrorizing people with this lack of skill for so long?!)
Obviously, of course, someone that has known me for barely two weeks can tell if I’m a good at carrying conversations. I should get to work on it right away.
Then came the other one.
“I have a strong personality, and I thought they may not be compatible with us,” I said.
“Having a strong personality isn’t the same thing as being rude,” he told me. Why I had bothered with 4 dates, honestly?
I have yet to respond to texts that tell me how thoughtful the toy I got for his cat was(it was thoughtful, because I’m thoughtful) or that say I’m excellent(yes, correct, I am).
I simply can’t be bothered to ease a man’s guilt, especially one who I only went on 4 dates with. If he didn’t want to date me, he didn’t have to take it out on me.
I’m not a person for everyone, and that’s fine. I also didn’t deserve to be treated like the enemy when I was simply trying to have a mature conversation.
I’ll just leave you with this: last week, I was going to write this piece about this guy, entitled “ Did I Actually Meet A Guy I… Like?” with the subtitle “I’m definitely being punk’d” because I thought it was just too good to be true.
It was!
Final Thoughts
Men, I’m going to be frank: I do not need you. But I want you to step up, and do better. I grew up with great male role models. I know or know of a few men that are killing it.
Yet, almost every man I meet discourages my hopes for meeting a future partner.
I know women have been saying this for a long time, and I just need to say it again: I am so tired of educating men.
It is exhausting to open up again and again only to be confronted with unresolved trauma, an unprecedented amount of selfishness or someone that is :
- non-committal
- needs a therapist
- doesn’t understand their own emotions
- takes their issues out on me
- uses me as an emotional support girlfriend.
I’m losing faith over here and ironically, I know this article will likely attract mostly female readers.
I’ll be real: We’ve all got issues. Women cause harm in relationships as well; I certainly have, and I own that.
I’m trying not to do it again, and I do my best to be aware of how I feel each day and what I’m dealing with so that I can handle myself in a way that doesn’t put my partner in a place to be targeted by my own issues.
Can this unintentionally happen? For sure. I snap. I cry. I get angry. I also let myself be human, and I acknowledge the harm I cause.
The level of emotional awareness and accountability I see in people that identify as women is simply not on par with anyone that identifies as a man that I’ve dated in the past 4 years.
I continue to choose myself over settling for anything less than what I deserve any day.
Next time you’re out and you see a girl enjoying herself, all alone with her phone or a book, consider that maybe she just needed a moment alone.
A moment to breathe. A moment when she wasn’t telling anyone her life story or acting interested in what someone had to say.
Give her that moment to just be herself, watching everyone else. It may not come around that often.
Thanks for reading ! Support a creator and buy me a coffee here ❤
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Previously Published on medium
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