Fuck Yes or No

If you’re in the grey area to begin with, you’ve already lost.

Let me ask again: Why would you ever be excited to be with someone who is not excited to be with you? If they’re not happy with you now, what makes you think they’ll be happy to be with you later? Why do you make an effort to convince someone to date you when they make no effort to convince you?

Calling All Those In The Dating World: Read This Article Now. And then if need be, read it again. But really listen…for real. Love yourself enough to really take a look at what this author is saying.

HWMMS and I had our first date two weeks before I turned 37. Trust me, I had my share of 27 Shades of Grey and a whole lotta history with people saying “Fuck No” to me, and well, a few times me saying “Fuck No” to a few people too.

My advice isn’t quite as IN YOUR FACE as the article above, but this is what I learned personally and share with others.

1. If you are dating someone and you have a backup plan or an escape plan, you haven’t found the right one.

2. If it feels hard or complicated or you are talking or thinking things over to death, you haven’t found the right one.

It’s ok to date someone who isn’t the right one…that’s how we figure out eventually what we want, but my goodness as hard as it might be to admit, the following statements were true to the bone for me. When I found someone really right for me, I didn’t think about those other “likes or past loves who could be someday again.” Before HWMMS I did this with every single man I dated or even liked and didn’t date. I always kept possibilities in my mind, even if just fodder for my imagination before falling asleep at night. Before HWMMS I questioned and went in circles thinking and wondering and discussing and trying…only to find out that once I found someone right for me—and wanted me in the same way—NOTHING was complicated, it just was.

I’ve had two relationships before HWMMS that I thought could lead to marriage.

The night I met DCJohn for the first time in person, I wrote in my journal that night that my gut was telling me it wasn’t going to work, we would never be. How many years later did I listen to myself?

The week before Mark was moving to Buffalo and we were moving in together, I wrote here in my blog that I could hardly breathe…And yet again, I dismissed that gut feeling as nerves because I FINALLY found the right one….how many years later did I listen to myself?

Honestly, without DC John or Mark, I wouldn’t have dated HWMMS.

Without the few sweet guys I dated after Mark, wonderful men who I’m still friends with today, I wouldn’t have dated HWMMS.

A lifetime of learning.

In retrospect with every single person I dated before HWMMS, I had a backup guy or innocent flirtatious crush or usually one of the previously mentioned exes in my mind. And oh, so many shades of grey, questions, games, wondering, endless conversations..

I didn’t even love myself enough until Mark and I broke up to realize I was worth the FUCK YES. With the help of a very good therapist, as soon as I realized I was worth it, I started dating in a whole different light. Men who actually, have a lot of similar qualities to HWMMS and are now his friends too, but at the time, I knew I needed MORE

Of course relationships take work and compromise it’s not always going to just be…(See this post: On Choosing My Husband Daily) but in the beginning, when everything is supposed to be tender and exciting and butterflies and rainbows, it really should be just that. Everything else is a shade of grey and time spent not loving yourself and finding someone who loves you right back.

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