(no subject)

[darkluna]

Which is the better way to live one's life: by cherishing a dream—say, the dream that I might someday find someone to fall in love with—or to admit defeat and give up?

I feel I've given the first option more than a fair try. I've kept my eyes open. I've tried to be in places where I might meet someone interesting. I've read the damn books with the titles like Dreaming the Life You Desire and visualized my little heart out. I've sat in the circle of hell that is the southern bar and watched drunken frat boys abuse the elevated handslap. I've descended into the special pit of hell that is online dating, where grammar goes to die and no one is even in the same zip code as remotely acceptable. I've gotten excited when I've met someone who seems like he could be right, and I've gone from feeling actual sadness when it doesn't work out to feeling pretty much nothing at all. Lately I don't even get as far as thinking someone might be right.

Despite this being the sort of attitude the universe is supposed to love contradicting, The Boy For Me has failed to appear.

He has failed to appear so steadfastly and for so long that at this point, if he does exist, I'm kind of pissed at him. "Fuck you," I want to say to him. "Fuck you for not showing up when just a little extra income in my household would have been enough to let me stay in my favorite city in the world. Fuck you for not being there when I was in despair because I had screwed up and needed someone to help me and comfort me. Fuck you for letting me down."

The romantic in me sometimes still insists he'll be here Any Second Now. "Hang in there," she says. "Keep living your life the best you can, and when you're both ready, there you'll be in the same place." But I'm becoming more and more certain that the last few years have been the world hitting me on the head with a baseball bat saying, "Nobody's coming, nobody's coming."

Which is worse: false hope, or no hope?

Comments

[bardiphouka.livejournal.com]

The question itself assumes things that are not always the case though. Setting aside the fact that my concept of time and yours are obviously going to be different, there is still a third choice. You talk about finding someone or giving up. But what of them finding you?

I have found, oddly enough, that sometimes the best way not to find someone is to look for them. Why this is I have no idea, but generally speaking not looking but allowing an open attitude anyway is the best way to meet someone, if that makes sense.

[rosetiger.livejournal.com]

I agree. I looked and looked and he never appeared. I stoped looking and caring about finding a "relationship" because I started thinking he'd never show up, and then he found me.

Stop looking, be accessible, and live the life you want to live. It sucks for a while, and it's lonely for a while, but you can make yourself override the lonliness by filling it with other things. He (or she) will show up eventually.

And for the record, I believe that no hope is worse.

[darkluna.livejournal.com]

I have long since given up on him finding me.

[lablemming.livejournal.com]

In my experience, the "fuck you, I don't give a shit" method of dating is the only means of achieving a success rate greater than zero.

[belgatherial.livejournal.com]

I found mine precisely when I stopped looking. Having said that, I'm not sure that the world always works that way. *sigh* The best I can do is offer to hope for you for a while if you need a rest.

[piratejenny.livejournal.com]

I'm sure all this "I found him when I wasn't looking" isn't that cheery right now, but it does seem to work in a lot of cases. Personally, I had become completely resigned to a life as a crazy cat lady (granted, I only had one cat, but that could be worked on) when I started dating Tony. Not only that, but he was someone I knew and had been friends with for quite some time. Then one day, something just clicked. I blame IM. We mostly knew each other from larping, which isn't always conducive to non-game conversation.

So anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that weird things happen when you least expect it.

But I'm not sure if no hope or false hope is worse. Both can be crushing.

Just live your life the way you want, become happy with yourself, and the rest is just icing on the cake.

[bardiphouka.livejournal.com]

And I think you have hit it on the head as it were. I think if one is happy with themselves more people will be attracted...be it friends or relationships?

[hochopepa.livejournal.com]

Interesting question. I suppose it's case-dependent. Do you get any positive things out of hoping? If either hoping or not hoping could lead to success or to failure in equal likelihood, which I suspect but don't know, then it doesn't really matter, and you can do whichever you want. Most of the time hoping is fun and time-occupying, and helps prepare you for when IT might happen. Not hoping can help avoid periodic let-downs, but it seems less engaged with potential realities to me.

Maybe there are more complexitites to consider. Type of hoping, for instance. It's possible that when you hope for the ideal, you fail to fully consider the lovably (or at least tolerably) flawed? Oftentimes our ideals are ill-informed or unrealistic anyway - we picture a superficial representation of what we think we want, when real experience can change that. Maybe when most people "stop hoping", really what they do more of is trying new avenues that depart from their predetermined ideal, and then they realize that there are other ideals that will work.

Or, less ideally, maybe when you "stop hoping", you just realize that if the dream isn't happening then you may as well come to grips with the fact that you're bored. And we all know how fun something stupid and different can be when we're bored. I don't play board games in my ideal world. Don't really care for them. But when the alternative is awkward silences or an early night, and alcohol is involved, I'm not sure there's anything better. Apart from sex of course. I have always assumed that this was the thought process for some people settling down. And I don't think they are any more likely to fail than a pairing of "ideal" people. I bet living with an "ideal" can really be depressing sometimes - no one is ACTUALLY ideal.

[darkluna.livejournal.com]

It's not just that the dream isn't happening. Nothing is happening. Keeping my eyes open, actively looking, and wishing and hoping have yielded absolutely no results. So I decided to expend my mental energy in more useful pursuits.

I also have just about zero hope that this attitude will cause the universe to suddenly hand me a date just to be perverse, but I don't even care enough anymore to be annoyed by that.

I mean, I am angry. I'm angry at Chattanooga for sucking so hard, and at myself because I really should have known better than to come back. But I don't think the anger is driving me to give up. Realism is.