Have you ever felt like you just failed a test you didn’t even know you were taking? to me, this is dating.
It doesn’t matter if you’re meeting someone randomly at a conference and hit it off and start dating, or if your are dating via an online dating service, or if you’ve been set-up on a blind date. In every relationship that doesn’t quite make it, there’s a failed test.
Sometimes it happens on your first encounter. The chemistry test.
Sometimes it’s on your first date. The pucker test.
Or date two. The “easy” test.
Maybe it’s after a few dates, when you fail the compatibility test. Or maybe it’s the absence test when one or the other isn’t able to make it to a significant activity.
Sometimes we’re failing the expectations test.
I’ve known people to fail all of the tests and yet still keep dating, until someone better comes along. I think that’s the measure up test.
I don’t like these tests. I don’t like all of the uncertainty. There is no way of knowing what the criteria is, or often even what the ultimate goal of the test might be.
Take the “easy” test for instance. Is this potential looking for an “easy”/”good time” or are they looking for someone with strong moral fibre? Sometimes I don’t even think the parties participating in or conducting the test know what they’re looking for.
One thing about online dating, is you can discuss a lot of these things beforehand, if you so choose, but then that still leaves you to the Truth or Lie test. However, that test seems to be ongoing in every scenario.
Ultimately there is a lot of risk involved when it comes to dating. I often wonder how many times and at how many stages my heart can be broken before I throw in the towel. All I do know is that I can’t experience the full wonder of loving completely if I am not willing to risk getting hurt, or broken.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some sort of product testing reports that could be accessed? 😀
About Trish
Oh I so get this! Thanks for articulating it so very well as usual, dating is such a mix of joy and heartache, no matter what our age, I hope that I am always open to it but there are times when I just want to shut the process down.
I don’t think I could date again, especially after being married for 26 yrs so far. I didn’t like it way back when, I wasn’t very good at it, and it is far different nowadays.
I don’t like it at all. Wish I could skip the dating part! 😉