Pleased To Meet You; I Want You.

Despite all our planning, thinking, wishing and dreaming, the reason we're attracted to one individual is a mystery. It just happens.

I found myself with that feeling of mysterious attraction recently, in an ordinary day-to-day circumstance. The woman and I made a small business transaction, but from the moment I came close to her, that magical, unexplainable interest filled me. The animal...thing, whatever it is, lives outside of logic in a special compartment to which only a few special people have a key. It's wild. Untameable.

Civility requires that whomever feels this way about someone keep it to themselves. Professing instant desire about a stranger falls well outside normal behaviour. Explaining an unexplainable visceral attraction to someone might even be illegal: who knows thesedays? Which means that the only course of action is to flirt a little, try to figure out if she's feeling the same way and attempt to communicate by thought rays what's going on inside your head.

Yeah, that never works.

Which is unnerving, because in the moment, desperation is the binding emotion. It's essential that this thermonuclear emotion be validated somehow...and of course, it cannot, unless you have the chutzpah to ask her out. That is a long shot, but as long as you're prepared to jeopardize whatever reason you met the person in the first place, is about the best you can do. When you leap the creek into romance with zero back-story, you will most likely end up with wet pants. Be so advised.

So I took my own counsel, and did nothing but indulge in a little mild chit-chat and departed. The large, frustrating residue of one of these encounters is that you'll never know if she felt the same way. Maybe she was hot for me in equal proportion, or perhaps she was wondering why this guy was hanging about with googly eyes making dopey small-talk.

Analysis in the light of day doesn't help. I've turned this thing - as with all previous instances - upside down and around about in my head, and come no closer to finding a common thread or even a strategy to deal with them. It's an all or nothing deal; either invite them out on a date then and there, or walk away.



Bottoms Up, Instant Desirables.

Dating Options

I can make a case that our internal life, our consciousness, is an endless series of decisions. Today I attempted to write a diary of all the decisions I made, but after ten minutes the number was ridiculous enough to prove my point. Try it for yourself, when you're doing anything but sleeping. (Hard to make a decision when you're asleep, which is why it's called being unconscious.)

Decisions imply choice. One either takes this course of action, or that one, which smells suspiciously like the binary language that runs our digital universe. Evolution has taken away some choices; breathing, for example or digestion. Bonking is a choice, but with a large uncontrollable element.

Take that concept one step further, and one can say that that the more advanced the organism, the greater the range of choices one can see into the future. Einstein, I guess, was great at understanding the spread (width?) of choice that a string of decisions might create. I, on the other side, am happy to limit my choice breadth to beer from the bottle or beer from the tap.

Dating decision-making is more fraught than choosing beer because it oozes into all areas of our life. Dating decisions are emotional. Dating decisions are logical. Dating decisions are practical. Dating decisions are even sometimes out of our control (see reference to bonking, above.)

I happen to think that decision-making is a skill. Skills improve with experience and practice, but they really improve when we set out to consciously make them better. Would our dating decisions benefit from some light work-outs? Is there a need for Dating Decision Coaching?




Bottoms Up, Deciders!