Dating 101

I think that despite being 28 years old I’m emotionally challenged. To be honest, emotionally stupid probably describes the situation better. But I’m cutting myself some sluck here. Or, as the Sex and the City ladies put it «emotionally slutty». Hmmm...I guess this does sounds better. I’m fairly new to the dating scene for two reasons. I’m a graduate student (for the past seven years) which means that I’ve been spending way too much time in the library. And we all know how great this is for someone’s love life. Also, I used to be shy, as in embarassingly shy, especially around men. At some point, I got over the being shy part (grad school is still going on) and I got in a relationship. When that relationship ended, being emotionally stupid (yes that’s definitely the right word in this case) I was naturally heartbroken and it took me a couple of years to get over it. And then I decided to try dating. Which brings me to the present.


But here is where things get complicated. I grew up somewhere in the Mediterranean where the dating rules go like this: boy meets girl, boy and girl go on a date, boy kisses girl at the end of the date, boy and girl are in a relationship. It’s as simple as that. No need to have «the talk» after a certain number of dates. No need to discuss whether you are dating casually, systematically, or whether you are in an exclusive relationship. The concept of «dating» doesn’t even exist there! Well, imagine my surprise when I moved to the US for grad school, in a city on the east coast, and I realized that there is this thing called dating, with a lot of rules that most of the time make absolutely no sense. Talk about being confused. So, I did some research - because I’m a grad student and that’s what I do. I watched all of the Sex and the City episodes, got a subscription to Cosmopolitan, took notes, etc. And I thought I’d give this dating thing a try.


Despite the research I seem to be unable to get the rules of the game. It’s like I’m missing the necessary braincells to understand American dating. And boy, do I get in trouble! Seriously, someone needs to offer a class in Dating 101. In the meantime I’ll just keep trying. Who knows...maybe one day I’ll get it!