Okay, since yesterday, little has changed: He still hasn’t called. You still have a stomachache. You still are furious at yourself for regressing to this point where a guy, this guy Jason, whom you met once, has power, any power, over you at all.
Relax. Breathe. Try to remember, two weeks ago or so, you didn’t know he existed. I say this because I want to remind you that dating has always done this to women. Re-read Pride and Prejudice. Austen knew a thing or two, and what she knew better than any of us is that dating is a social institution. It’s not supposed to be fun! We’ve tried to make it fun in order to tolerate it, but listen to your Love Goddess: Dating–however much it has changed–still exists to get you to enter a a rigid, age-old courtship ritual that itself exists solely so that two people will meet and enter the even more rigid institution of marriage. Try to be as clear-headed about it–as Jane Austen was–and not superimpose on it a layer of frosting that tries to make dating all about romance, sex, and love in order to glamorize it, lure you in, and make you crazy. Dating is hard work.
Yes, I-The Love Goddess, queen of all things having to do with love, am telling you not to make Dating into a Lovey-dovey thing. It’s not. It’s not even about you, really, although as far as I can tell, it’s the fastest way to make you feel alternately good about yourself and terrible about yourself. But really it’s about timing and readiness; about choosing and gambling; about leaving one world and entering another (notice I’m avoiding words like “commitment” and “adulthood”); it’s about entering a new phase of your life; it’s about all kinds of things that turn out to be more hellish than heavenly–like this waiting for phone calls. Much of dating, even when it gets firmly on the road, is the realization that all that preparation is for someone who then turns out to disappoint you after a few months of trying him out.
So, dearest earth ladies. Realize this is a journey, an inevitable one and sometimes even a fun one, and dating will be easier. Realize that as personal as it feels, it’s actually not. It’s a social institution that, like marriage, like the military or the church, has rigid rules and predictable feelings attached. (Like this stomach ache. You have it because you’re led to believe his phone call determines your worth as a woman. And you cannot BELIEVE you’re actually buying into this feeling at this point in your life, let alone awaiting some guy’s damn call.) Realize your anxiety is old; that this disconnected, unloved feeling, the alone-and-anxious one, is old. Remember that, feel that. It’s about the possibility of wanting something and not getting it. Once you get a grip on this, and on the fact that he will probably call on his own boy-time schedule, But if he doesn’t, you didn’t do anything bad or wrong. Don’t make him more valuable because he doesn’t call. Just let it happen and watch it unfold.
And the best advice that I can give you is this: Feelings are not Facts. You may feel like a high-school reject with acne awaiting that call to the prom. But I assure you, you’re a grown up, glorious creature and probably farther up on the food chain than this Jason fellow.
