Again....my life is destined to be a romantic comedy. I've seen these things happen before and even as I'm writing, I feel my hands trying to withdraw from the keyboard.
In light of a recent post on wanting my writing to beneficial and encouraging, I'm not going to rip apart my date and tell you everything he did wrong--in fact, I'm not sure if he did anything wrong. He was himself, he was nice, and I had fun. I actually wish I could go back and watch the date to see what I did wrong. Maybe then I would actually learn a thing or two. However, I shall relay to you the details of something I did learn:
Be yourself.
A couple days after the date, I was telling some friends about it and one of them said, "Why were you nervous? Nobody is themselves on a date! Its dating!"
But I beg to differ. If you can't be yourself, even a little bit, then you're not going to have very much fun.
In their book, Boundaries in Dating, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend make the remark that you should always know yourself before you get into a relationship.
"Maybe you will use dating to figure out who you are," they say. "But be sure you know who you are before you get serious."
Otherwise, you will lose yourself in the other person which will cause all sorts of issues.
I've done this in a lot of relationships in the past--both romantic relationships and friendships, and I think its safe to say that I'm not the only one. If you don't know who you are...that's okay! But don't just stand there, go figure it out! There's a whole world out there waiting for you to discover and if you just sit on your butt and do what everyone else does, you'll never get to see it. Once you figure out who you are, the world of dating is a lot more fun and a lot less intimidating.
Less intimidating, that is. Its still intimidating and scary, but a lot less if you know who you are. In fact, it will actually be fun. Yes...I left this date thinking, "wow...that was fun! I want to go on more dates!" And not just for the free food.
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