Stranger Danger
I'm getting older and I'm still single. I'm a body-positive fat woman, which means I sometimes have to do some creative guessing to figure out why people interact with me the way that they do - would they be doing/saying this if I were thin? Mostly I don't know.
I like dating. I like meeting new people, and I meet a lot of nice people. Mostly women, really. Men seem to be a bit more bashful. But I do meet men, sometimes in person and sometimes in digital spaces. I'm equally as comfortable with either.
Some men my age have grown impatient. I am also impatient, but about different things. Men crave emotional intimacy, and our cultures have starved them of it. They are so hungry for acceptance and validation that they become heat-seeking missiles for any woman who is warm or welcoming.
Twice this week, men I barely know have shared things with me that our friendship does not warrant, and that I am not strong enough to carry. These men have given me knowledge that I did not need, cannot use, and struggle to tolerate. My roommate believes (rightly, in my opinion) that they are looking for a shortcut to emotional intimacy. These men are practicing a radical kind of candor that normally I would embrace, and that I sometimes practice myself because of my academic training, but that is out of place in the type of relationship we (don't) have. Perhaps they are also boundary-testing.
These men are not bad people, despite how people might react to their respective burdens. These men understand the rules of consent, and make a genuine effort not to take anything you aren't ready to give them. But they don't understand that to me, anyway, the emotional is as valid as the physical, and rushing to intimacy by disclosing things I'm not ready for is emotional assault. And sometimes I don't realize that I'm not ready for it. Sometimes I'm just naive. I won't be naive for much longer.
I am not a licensed therapist. If you pay a therapist, then they will listen to all the things about yourself that you desperately need to disclose. They will help you contextualize it. They are trained to carry these things for you. You don't need to spare their blushes or be careful of their opinion. You pay them. You tell them things. They listen. They give you help. And sometimes it doesn't work for you and you have to shop around a bit for a counselor who's more your style. You just do.
I am a woman in a dating pool. The kinds of intimacy these men crave aren't for sale in my gift shop. They are buried under mounds and mounds of time. They need to be carefully and very delicately uncovered, as if they were archaeologists, or paleontologists (if they're into history or dinosaurs, whichever). There is no shortcut, and the faster you dig, the more of me and our delicate young friendship you will destroy.
And that's okay to some men. They get what they need from wanton haste. But there won't be any of me left to find when they get there.
(photo is A looter's pit on the morning following its excavation, taken at Rontoy, Huaura Valley, Peru in June 2007. Several small holes left by looters' prospecting probes can be seen, as well as their footprints.) from Wikipedia.
I like dating. I like meeting new people, and I meet a lot of nice people. Mostly women, really. Men seem to be a bit more bashful. But I do meet men, sometimes in person and sometimes in digital spaces. I'm equally as comfortable with either.
Some men my age have grown impatient. I am also impatient, but about different things. Men crave emotional intimacy, and our cultures have starved them of it. They are so hungry for acceptance and validation that they become heat-seeking missiles for any woman who is warm or welcoming.
Twice this week, men I barely know have shared things with me that our friendship does not warrant, and that I am not strong enough to carry. These men have given me knowledge that I did not need, cannot use, and struggle to tolerate. My roommate believes (rightly, in my opinion) that they are looking for a shortcut to emotional intimacy. These men are practicing a radical kind of candor that normally I would embrace, and that I sometimes practice myself because of my academic training, but that is out of place in the type of relationship we (don't) have. Perhaps they are also boundary-testing.
These men are not bad people, despite how people might react to their respective burdens. These men understand the rules of consent, and make a genuine effort not to take anything you aren't ready to give them. But they don't understand that to me, anyway, the emotional is as valid as the physical, and rushing to intimacy by disclosing things I'm not ready for is emotional assault. And sometimes I don't realize that I'm not ready for it. Sometimes I'm just naive. I won't be naive for much longer.
I am not a licensed therapist. If you pay a therapist, then they will listen to all the things about yourself that you desperately need to disclose. They will help you contextualize it. They are trained to carry these things for you. You don't need to spare their blushes or be careful of their opinion. You pay them. You tell them things. They listen. They give you help. And sometimes it doesn't work for you and you have to shop around a bit for a counselor who's more your style. You just do.
I am a woman in a dating pool. The kinds of intimacy these men crave aren't for sale in my gift shop. They are buried under mounds and mounds of time. They need to be carefully and very delicately uncovered, as if they were archaeologists, or paleontologists (if they're into history or dinosaurs, whichever). There is no shortcut, and the faster you dig, the more of me and our delicate young friendship you will destroy.
And that's okay to some men. They get what they need from wanton haste. But there won't be any of me left to find when they get there.
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