Is Dating Dead? — The Six Month Check In; or, My New Dating Philosophy

Six months ago I wrote a post wondering whether dating was dead and if the random hookup was all we could look forward to nowadays. I was also depressed after having a string of random hookups that lead nowhere, vowing that I would not hook up with someone unless I went on a date with them first, and also saying that I would check back in with you in six months.

Well, readers, I failed, as I'm sure you all expected. But like Margaret, who spent a year trying to find the perfect religion for herself, and ending up with only a sheet of paper documenting her failure, I spent the last six months thinking long and hard about my dating patterns and what I have to do to make myself happy. So while the experiment does not come to an end with a girlfriend, it does come with this blog post and a better idea of why I've been single for the past 2.5 years.

What I realized is that I only develop feelings for someone after we've been friends for a long time. "Long time" has ranged from six months to six years, but the point here is that I am somehow incapable of forming any sort of feelings for someone unless I know her favorite book/movie/color/food/animal, where she was born, what her parents do, met her siblings, gotten drunk with her, dissected all her past relationships, etc. And she has to have seen me in my glasses and seen the way my hair looks in the morning, and she has to know about and accept my love for the Founding Fathers and how I think that Sunday mornings were made for classical music. In short, my feelings for someone don't even begin to develop until I know that we're compatible. And this takes time. Though some people figure out if they're compatible with someone else through dating, for me dating has always been an excruciating endeavor. This is because other people have a spark with someone and they pursue it through dating, which is a way to get to know each other. But for me, it just doesn't work this way.

I've gone on many dates over the years, but none have ever gone well, mostly because I don't have feelings for the person. So while I know that the random flings I have will not last, or that I only talk to a girl in a bar because I think she's interesting, I'm unable to communicate this to people. It's why I always get accused of leading people on, and why my friends keep trying to hook me up with people I have no interest in.

And I just can't do it anymore.

So my conclusion at the end of this experiment is that I don't know whether or not dating is dead. I just know that it isn't right for me. Someday I will fall for the right person, who I will probably have known for six years, but had never thought of in a romantic context — until the day that I see her hair fall across her forehead in a certain way and I realize that I've always loved her.

Does anyone else have the problem where they only exclusively date or fall for their friends? Or is it just something that I'm going to have to start going to therapy for?