Composting my certainty [in dating]: A learning story.
I write these medium posts weekly, then spread the word(s) via an eBlast.
Weeks later, I post about ’em on my Instagram.
Its a non-logical effort at self-protection; its been said that we write for audiences of 1, or 3, or 5 when we post on social media.
Well — the 1 or 2 people I’m writing for/to/about — they aren’t in the email program. They’re on IG.
Why is this relevant?
Cause yesterday I went to craft a series for IG stories based on an article I’d written 4 weeks ago about ‘saying it all in dating’.
The vulnerability hangover had passed, and I was gonna land the IG stories with a pull thru to an IRL dating event I created later this month.
I re-read the piece to prep, and all I could think was, ‘oh god — so much changes in 4 weeks’.
When I wrote it, there were — what felt at the time like — three diff dating vibes with 3 good men.
Now there are — you guessed it — ZERO.
What felt sad, is that 2 outta 3 (plus a separate third dude that I had been seeing from Feb to May) had faded out or ghosted.
So here I am talking about how my ability to ‘say it all’, my willingness to be vulnerable, my value differentiator as the ‘speaker of hard truths’ →
→ bout how this approach had led to these higher caliber, higher frequency, deeper levels of connection that had generated a new kind of interaction →
→ aanddddd yet here we are in the reality of right now:
Comms Ground Zero.
Putting aside their behavior + decisions, what feels significant is that I didn’t go back and say, ‘Hey — wanna have a (potentially difficult, potentially hard) convo bout this? Wanna be people who’re ‘better’ than this?’
I didn’t say the things that are hardest to say, at exactly the moment they’re hardest to say.
Of the 3, there’s only 1 that feels sad in a deep part of me. I have a story that I’d initiated a handful of hard convos, and w him I’d summoned (more) vulnerability and honesty. His fade out felt indicative of a tell tale, run-o-the-mill, ‘he’s not that into this / he doesn’t have the capacity for this / he doesn’t actually wanna be engaged in this’.
There’s no part of me that feels like I’d be served to go back in and confirm. With him, or the other 2.
And I don’t believe that makes me a hypocrite, or weak, or incapable of having hard convos.
But it does leave me curious + uncertain:
…does the ‘hard convos are critical’ framing always apply, especially if we hold that if the other person stops comms, then its cause they might not have the words for their experience, or have a full understanding what’s alive for them? Put another way — if they don’t even know what’s up — do we really need to?
…am I an asshole for being *so certain* about the value of ‘saying it all’ — and subsequently evangelizing the approach— and then not saying anything once the other person stop’d saying things?
I like the questions, cause part of what I’m aware of here, is the danger of my certainty.
My spiritual teacher Ernest shared this yesterday via voice note and it lands this verbal plane perfectly:
We are not in charge of outcomes.
The truth is that we don’t even know what’s best for us.
We have a story we create pieced together from what we already know,
But we cant imagine what we’ve not yet encountered.
To let life be as magical as it can be, we need to choose not to know.
We have to choose not to know.
—
I’m deeply interested in what you all think / feel.
Email me thoughts / inputs / responses / feedback => allie@equanimityequation.com
Special thanks to my friend Jeremy who encouraged me to pull this outta a rambling 4 min voice note and lay it bare and turn it into a post and pose the question to you all.
