This blog post stemmed out of all the times I’ve heard guys talking about how reluctant they are to ask a girl out, and all of the times I’ve heard girls talking about how much they like a guy, but are going to wait until he comes to them and initiates. Both of these situations result in the same exact thing...
Nothing.
So, this is my probably controversial attempt to turn nothing into something. Here we go.
We’re all so shy, it’s scary to open up that bottle with truth and feelings, where the vulnerability aches so badly it screams and the glitter falls off your heart to reveal the gooey shades of black underneath. We’re all so scared, it’s easier to stitch on our cardboard masks and smile as we sink deeper and deeper into the dirty quicksand our idleness soon becomes. At the same time, we’re all so loud that our hearts practically jump out of our chests to beat on our arms, staining the sleeves and crying out for someone to hear them and notice them and love them. We’re all so bold, we can march right on into the storm and laugh at the darkness, completely oblivious to the raging lightning until it strikes us with an electric pulse.
For those of you who aren’t catching my drift yet, we are messy.
But a lot of us (myself included) like to think we aren’t. We like to think we’ve got everything under control and that it’s only a matter of time before the right person comes along and cleans all of our messes up for us. Men are princes and women are princesses. That’s the fairy tale girl's dream, right? To twirl around in her satin dress, watching the fabric as it dances and spins around her snow white body, just waiting for her Prince Charming to come galloping to her tower where he’ll hold her and kiss her and assure her that she’s the most perfect, beautiful young lady to ever walk the earth. Meanwhile, his shining armor will still glisten, completely unscathed by the winding path he’s journeyed, slaying the dragon with the flick of his sword and reaching his true love right before she loses hope. He can carry her on the back of his valiant steed, dashing off to his castle of sparkling silver, glowing like the miles and miles of stars he passed underneath to reach her side. Happily ever after can begin.
But we aren’t princes and princesses, and we don’t hold onto the promise of a castle as a future home. We work in dimly lit offices on crowded city streets, sneaking out of the cubicle five minutes early so we can have a slightly extended lunch break at that greasy diner down the road.
Men are not knights; our armor isn’t pure, like silver, but chipped, like the paint on your old neighbor’s house, and rusted over with dents and holes and plenty of places where a knife has come in a little too close. We aren’t superhumans with space on the back of our horses. Superman only flies on paper.
And women are not princesses; their ripped up, scarred dresses aren’t tailored by the fairy godmother. The door to leave their tower is swinging wide open in the wind, all they need to do is walk through it to feel the grass. And happily ever after does not exist; happiness is a state of mind, as fleeting and fading as the stroke of midnight.
So far, we’ve established that we’re human. Not superhuman, and not sketches out of a dusty book of fairy tales. Now it’s time for the gritty details. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy (I hope you caught the differences in “like”). What is the next step?
As a common relationship metaphor goes, men are the hunters and women are the prey. It is the man’s duty to be on the lookout, scanning the area for any signs of movement and then going after it. He initiates. Meanwhile, the woman gets to bat her eyes and send out slight hints that she’s there, cracking twigs and rustling leaves. Eventually, the man will find her and ask her out. The best formula for happily ever after (tick tock tick tock).
But what if the man isn’t hunting? What if he’s just taking a quiet stroll through the forest, completely unaware of the snapping of branches and crunching of dead leaves around him? He doesn’t have a gun and he’s not on the lookout. He just closes his eyes and lets the summer fill his lungs as the leaves continue to fall. If this is the case, it doesn’t matter how many times the woman bats her blue eyes or cracks down on those twigs. She’ll just keep dancing circles around his tracks, floating like a gray haze over his invisible rifle. Yet we are assured this is the best path to happily ever after (tick tock tick tock).
So now, girl still likes boy. But she’s also mad, infuriated that he hasn’t caught onto the plethora of glass slipper hints she’s dropped like bombs in front of his face. They’ve exploded and the dynamite’s sent debris flying all around, but he’s sleepwalking; every bit of rubble seems to hurtle just a smidgen of an inch above his head. So we blame it on the man, for it's obviously always his responsibility to initiate. And just like that, the woman’s problem, something she should be assuming complete responsibility over, has suddenly become the man’s problem, weighing down on his shoulders like a little glass house. But he doesn’t cave and he doesn’t break, he just keeps walking, oblivious as this eye-batting, twig-snapping, leaf-rustling girl carries on in the whirlpool of limbo she’s created for herself. Don’t worry, she thinks. Eventually, she’ll find a sandy shore that leads to her silver castle of starlight, where happily ever after twirls around in the main ballroom (tick tock tick tock).
At the same time, there are also many men out there dawdling along, trying their best to conceal their so-called "hunting" with a vague trail of flirty hints and clues that do nothing but lead the girl on. He's too reluctant to actually make the first move and put his heart out there, and so, once again, the limbo whirlpool continues. And why not? It's so much easier to sit back, play hard-to-get and find comfort in the freedom from responsibility and commitment the whirlpool so generously provides.
We are shy, scared, loud and shockingly bold people; we’re not looking for a human savior, just another rough and jagged soul that doesn’t walk away when we bleed all over the place. And sometimes the truth can make us so jarringly vulnerable that saying it and letting it hang to dry in the open seems absolutely unfathomable. But not everyone can see the whole truth. In fact, most of the time, we’re holding onto a split-second-shard that just barely scrapes the surface before curling back up in its safe straw house.
When one of my close friends liked me, she didn’t wait around for me to initiate. If she had, she would’ve been waiting for pigs to fly, as I didn’t feel the same way about her and had no idea how she really felt about me. Instead, she put her heart out there, slipping it out of the pent-up cage we all construct for ourselves and letting it stain her sleeve. It must’ve been painful, but she knew that it would’ve been even more painful if she hadn’t, if she had kept quiet and played damsel, like so many girls are taught to do. Because of her boldness, she was able to pull herself out of the limbo whirlpool and open my unarmed, oblivious eyes, bringing us both a little closer together, even though the feelings weren’t reciprocated. We are now best friends, a thing that would have been impossible had she decided to sit in the quicksand and wait for a rescue that would never come.
If you still aren’t following anything I’m saying, at least leave with this: if you like someone and are interested in pursuing a relationship, don’t wait for them to come to you. Ask them out. Tell them how you feel. If you’re a man reading this, stop hesitating. Step up and ask her out. And if you’re a woman reading this, stop waiting. Step up and tell him how you feel. Even if a relationship doesn’t follow, at least you’ll know the truth and feel free to move on. Stop wasting time dancing around the edges, playing Ring-Around-The-Rosie, talking about a potential partner with everyone except the actual person of interest and waiting on some obscure vision of happily ever after (tick tock tick tock).
Oh, look. It’s midnight. The masquerade’s coming to an end. Now it’s up to you.
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Click here to check out the first chapter of my work-in-progress novel, Yellowtree!
