When you feel like you “click” well with a guy, when you feel like you are extremely compatible, when your time spent with him is the most treasured part of your day—and he doesn’t want to date you, it’s a tough place to be. That situation gets even tougher when he insists that you’re an awesome girl, and when he makes you feel like he’d end up with a girl just like you. However, despite all of this, he’d prefer to remain single, leaving you completely and utterly confused.
In reality, the story is such a cliché. A beautiful girl with a genuine, original personality to boot embarks on a “friendship” with a decent-looking guy. Third parties suggest that the two really need to date. The girl gets used to the idea the more she ponders it, and although she insists she’s not interested, that she doesn’t care, she falls for him– hard.
They hang out all of the time, open up to each other, and he says words that would easily make ice melt in the midst of winter. However, when she brings up the dating idea, he balks. Instead he insists he’s not ready for a girlfriend, he’s scared of getting hurt, he doesn’t want commitment to bog him down, and he’s graduating soon– whatever. He then goes on to say at the end of this endless ramble, however, that if he were looking for a girlfriend, he’d definitely date her. Whether he says it or not, he insinuates that when he is looking for someone to be in a relationship with, he’d want to date someone just like her, except he doesn’t date her.
It is a painful scenario all too common to women of all ages. We let someone in. We open up too them. Yet they persist on keeping us within arm’s reach without bringing us too close to feel the warmth of what it would actually be like to be in a relationship.
One of my friends has been dealing with this issue for months. It hurts me to watch the pain she has had to deal with in attempting to play it cool with a guy who she used to think of as “just-a-friend.” She has given so much to a guy who has hurt her continuously, and who isn’t even worth her tears.
It’s easy for outside parties to judge this behavior, to tell the person to move on and find a man who really cares about her.
But what happens when feelings get involved?
Should we hang on to someone, even the wrong someone, because we care?
And what if it is the other way around?
As women, we engage in this unfair behavior as well. I have met a couple of great guys, good-looking, good students, even the guy that is serious textbook boyfriend material. The kind of guy I’d want to bring home and show my parents as a sort of “look what I found in college mom! You’d be so proud of me!” guy. They paid for dinner, opened the car door, and texted me the next day, but I’d find a reason, something minuscule usually, as to why we shouldn’t date.
He’s too old for me. We didn’t click very well. I’m not attracted to him. I found myself telling a guy once, “I like you. You’re great, but I’m just not ready for a boyfriend. I want to get to know different people, and just be single. I’m scared of getting hurt.” He took it pretty hard, and for once I felt like I knew what it was like to be the bad guy. And for the record, it doesn’t feel good.
So for both parties involved, the lines blur and it gets uncomfortable fast when feelings get thrown into the mix, whether you started out as friends or have been dating casually.
I’ve been on the receiving end of that talk as well…a couple of times. It’s painful. It makes you feel like there’s something missing, like you’re almost the ideal girlfriend, but obviously not because otherwise he would be dating you. And whether or not you’re successfully able to “turn off” the feelings part of your heart, it’s still a jab at your ego and that can take its toll on you if it happens often enough, no matter how thick your skin is.
Why then? With a plethora of college guys to choose from, why do so many of us fall for the wrong guys? Why do we insist that the nice ones are missing something? Letting someone lead me to believe he’d date a girl like me, and yet not me, is a sticky trap to fall into. Sticking around enables him to get exactly what he wants, while compromising what I want. It lowers my dignity, and in the end, it’s a waste of time.
No doubt most girls on campus either already have, or will be on both ends of the plight at some point in their lives. Most everyone has experienced the whole “just like you” argument on behalf of the forever-single men. Most everyone will question why he or she isn’t good enough, why not them? They will wonder what the other girl has that they don’t. The bitter feeling can leave even the warmest of collegiette’s cold and bitter, scared to open-up to others in the future.
So I just have to ask, on behalf of all of the single women at UCF, whether you’re dating casually or falling fast for a friend—why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we constantly give men that upper hand? Why are we surprised when men manipulate us if we give them that power in the first place?