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"When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.”
-Tom Robbins

It's an age old truism that men don't understand what women want, but I think it may be a bit exacerbated in my case. I've always been pretty good at almost everything. When I try something, I have the smarts and natural ability that I usually can do it, and do it well. I don't fail at things. And that's what makes it so maddening to date. Because, apparently, I'm just no good at it.

Athena left me for the arms of the first not-me she could find, and the New Rose has sent detailed emails about how much I suck at this whole thing. And they're both right. If you are reading, I'm sorry. I tried. I failed.

Athena left me with a laundry list of character flaws from which she needed to escape. Of couse her reasons for the split were all lies, but she didn't hold back with all the little things that pissed her off.

And recently, after trying my hardest to make the New Rose happy, I failed miserably each and every time. "F" for effort. I feel really bad about it because not only was I unaware of the things she was unhappy about, but I couldn't bring myself to care about the details that she did. Nothing pejorative here, I'm just not good with the little things, the socially accepted rules and conventions, the things "one does." And it was these signs that she was looking at, which I didn't even know existed. I don't think that makes me a horrible person, just not dating material.

I guess I need someone with more patience and acceptance than it is feasible to ask of a person.

Some people are born with the gift of interpersonal communication. I was not. I had to develop it over years. And as far as I've come (you should have met me in high school) I'm not quite there yet.

Love comes easily for some, and they call themselves lovers. For others it comes through constant effort and eventual failure, and they call themselves lonely.

I'm not a lover, I'm a thinker--and this is my proverbial cross to bear.

I want, I hope and I dream about love; where it just comes easily, without serious effort or lofty expectations, when it's just right, and easy and fun.

Some people can make things right when it's going wrong, but I seem to only make things wrong when it's going right.

Perhaps I'm too infected by the love stories of the past, when love and marriage actually meant something, and not in this brave new world in which we live. The twenty, thirty, or fifty year marriage--one based on a true partnership--has been replaced by the quick and easy, which burns hot and then fizzles quickly. Love is a sham when divorce is the norm.

And so, perhaps my image of what true love is may just be a dream.

I've known for quite a while that I don't need a relationship, but now I'm seriously considering if I even want one. All it seems to bring is disappointment and failure, and I'm not good at failing at anything. And also, it's not fair to those whose feelings have been hurt by my oblivious insensitivity as to matters of the heart.

The only thing I've ever been really good at is the history of ideas. And, I need to be at my best in order to pull a substantial part of my dissertation out of my ass this summer, so I'm most likely not going to have the time that it takes to do all these little things you gotta do to make someone happy. It's too much effort to try when you're just doomed to failure anyway. And it's probably all for the best, since I most likely will be moving to a different area in the next year or two, and it would be unfair of me to start something just to leave it behind.

So, I'm going to take a break from dating. I've been searching for it, but I think that's the wrong approach. Often the harder you try to hold on to something, the easier it slips through your fingers. So, I'm going to go back to the only thing that I am really good at: dead white guys, mostly German.

I'm not used to trying hard at something and not doing well. And it seems that relationships are the only thing that I really want to be good at, and that sadly I am not.

To all the girls I've loved before: I'm sorry.

[Edited for style]