Here’s a laugh riot for you…this was written by me in Los Angeles on March 31, 2004…
8 years later, I’m hilariously finding not much has changed — I still find myself a sarcastic writer when it comes to areas of the heart, still trying desperately to understand and psychoanalyze the meaning behind the meaning of what it means to be in a relationship (and getting exhausted doing so!)…but I am also pleasantly surprised to find myself realizing that above all else, I am still a hopeless romantic at heart…8 years of life adventures have not stolen that away from me.
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03/31/04: Ah, relationships. Whether you’ve been in one or are currently in one, they are the driving force behind our twenty-something lives. Since I am in the passenger seat of my non-existent relationship, I instead live vicariously through others. Case and point: my roommate is having trouble with her “pseudo-boyfriend”, a new thing in this millennium where you have all the rules of a relationship, but do not define it, for fear of all the baggage that comes with the title. Seems like a perfect relationship, right? You can’t sleep with other people, date other people, but you also can’t have a title for the other person. Does anyone else NOT see the logic in this?
Anyway, she’s having an argument with her “pseudo-boytoy”, about how he was unavailable for a commitment that she already had, and she commented that she would have to find another date. Seems simple enough, right? He takes the word “date” and defines it in his own terms, which means “fuck buddy”, and becomes upset. He cannot understand why she would tell him that she would get another “fuck buddy” because he was unavailable, and she doesn’t understand how having another “date” is so detrimental to their “pseudo-relationship”. And I am wondering, maybe this whole “pseudo-significant other” is getting everyone confused.
Have you ever noticed that when you are talking on AIM, there is no “emotion” button to tell what emotion you are typing? I have encountered this numerous times…ok, almost anytime I am online…to the point where I literally put the emotion in brackets to make sure I have gotten my point across. Technology has ruined our ability to read emotion. AIM makes every sarcastic comment meaningful, and every meaningful comment sarcastic. Never have a fight online…the emotional confusion of not knowing what emotional tone a word is said will drive you nuts. Did he mean “I love you” as <I’m in love with you> or did he mean <I love you like I love my dog>?Trying to define these terms while you are having a meaningful talk online just confuses everyone. Sure it’s nice to save these conversations and use them as blackmail for another time, but is all that typing and emotional confusion worth it? I have had many a conversation where I spent half the time crying about something someone wrote, to find out that they meant the opposite meaning of what I was interpreting. I spent the whole rest of the conversation trying to figure out if they were being genuine or fake. And the only way to find out if that AIM buddy is being fake is to have another person read the saved IM conversation. Only then, with your misinterpretations, your realizations, and a third parties opinion, can you come to the truth about one stupid statement that probably means nothing to you anymore.
But all this misinterpretation and different definitions and titles makes us who we are…lunatics of love. If we never misinterpreted a look, maybe we wouldn’t have hooked up with that friend who turned out to be something more. If we never defined our definitions, maybe we wouldn’t be able to have the great “makeup sex” that everyone talks about. And if we didn’t have titles, we wouldn’t be able to feel that feeling in our heart when introduced to the boyfriend’s parents for the first time as “girlfriend”.
Does the semantics of a relationship define that relationship? In my opinion…only if it defines something great.
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8 years later — the roommate’s gone and texting has replaced AIM, but nothing’s really changed, has it? 🙂
