You're Not Special

by Meghan Rienks

  You bring in what you put out. Not that kind of “put out” (or, yeah, that kind of “put out”—get your sexual consensual needs met!). What I mean by this is derived slightly (slightly) from that crystal healing kind of stuff. Now, I don’t fully subscribe to that mentality of destiny and fate and the “secret,” but I do believe that the kind of energy you put into the world attracts a certain kind of person. Let’s say you’re jaded, angry, and standoffish. You’re going to attract like-minded people. So when you suddenly start complaining that every person you’re dating is an asshole, take a step back and evaluate the kind of persona you’re giving off. I am totally 100 percent guilty of being a little more than closed off. I’m way more insecure than I let on and I compensate for that with building 40,000-foot brick walls around myself. It’s taken me years to stay aware of when my tone slips far from who I really am beneath the surface. When I first started dating in LA, I portrayed myself as this cool-girl, confident, black-leather-wearing thing who drank vodka sodas with lime and laughed at jokes that weren’t funny. No surprise when every guy I’d start dating was boring and too cool to laugh at a fart joke. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad people or that dating is fucked. It just means that the energy I put out into the world that I claimed as my own attracted somebody who could relate. I’m not expecting you to walk into a bar in sweatpants and admit you haven’t washed your hair in four days. But try letting your nerves slip away for a bit and let your real, honest, and true personality show. If you’re one of those cool girls behind closed doors as well… I’m sorry, but we just can’t be friends. I don’t relate to anyone who sleeps in a bra. Mostly because I don’t have tits.

  Someone can be perfect without being perfect for you. Oh, holy hell, I wish somebody had told me this one hundred times over. For some reason I find that, despite the fact that my generation has so many opinions on so many things, we fall incredibly silent when it comes to the people we date. Some part of me wants to blame dating apps for this, but I think it dates back to Rory Gilmore and her pro-and-con lists I’ve sworn by since the sixth grade. In the current surge of dating digitally, we’re supplied with an abundance of prospective partners, and suddenly we all feel like we’re on The Bachelor. Someone can be unbelievably great on paper or in a profile and we assume that they must be great for us. I think we forget that feelings aren’t rational; we don’t make logical decisions or choose who we fall for. If that were the case, fuck boys would be going extinct. But alas, they’re terrorizing our minds and DMs like there’s no tomorrow. I find that so many of my friends end up dating these guys who are perfectly nice and genuine, but they’re just not right for each other. And that’s okay. It’s okay to meet someone awesome and great, and then look at them and not feel that feeling in your stomach that makes you blush. It’s okay to hold out for somebody who feels like they were made just for you (which still might not work out).

  Character traits are not mutually exclusive. What I mean by this is that the good qualities someone has aren’t possessed only by them. I find so often that we’ll spew out a list of positive traits to counter the obvious negatives of the person that we’re dating, and those positive traits are not only vague, they’re not special. Being a “nice person” shouldn’t be a pro; it should be a prerequisite. To praise and cherish these character traits as if they’ll never occur in another person ever again is ridiculous. You’d never become friends with somebody who didn’t support your career and your future, so why are you settling to date somebody with those same issues? The number of times I have found my friends liking guys just because those guys like them is insane! Just because somebody likes you, doesn’t mean you should like them. Their feelings shouldn’t sway you if you didn’t feel it to begin with. We need to drop the idea of a pro-con list and instead think of it as a scale. Ten pros and eight cons don’t fall in favor of the positive if those cons carry a heavier weight. Let’s say the pros consist of the fact that they’ve got a sense of humor and their use of emojis is never overkill. Then, in turn, the cons are that they’re controlling and have a temper. When you write those down on a list, they cancel each other out, but put them on a scale, and their favorite emoji skills weigh far less than their possessive nature. I think the idea that love is hiding right under our nose sends us into a hide-and-seek frenzy where we try to fit any person handy into that mold. We’re scared that if we don’t give everyone 101 chances, we might miss the one. Honestly, I find that notion to be bullshit. Dating and love isn’t a multiple-choice test; there is no right combination of answers to check off. Just because someone is nice and finds you funny doesn’t mean that they’re the only person in the entire world who will be nice and find you funny. You’re nice and you’re funny! Stop praising and rewarding people for something so standard-issue. You don’t applaud a fish for swimming.

  Red flags are blurry stop signs. This is one I’ll admit that I struggled with the longest. When we start to fall for somebody, we tend to have tunnel vision. Our sights are set straight ahead and it’s like we’re speeding at 80 miles an hour and singing along to our favorite song in a convertible with the top down. We’re concentrating on the road ahead when our blind spots might be filled with red flags and pleading stop signs. The difficulty with this is that we only realize we’ve taken a wrong turn down a one-way street when it’s too late. Those warning signs we missed were there all along; we just chose to ignore them to preserve this feeling of happiness. I’ll admit that there was a point in my life where I became pretty jaded when it came to signs and signals. I’d look for those warnings unprompted, just searching to find something terrible because I expected it. We all have skeletons in our closets and things we’d rather not advertise on our LinkedIn page. But those skeletons aren’t always red flags; sometimes they’re just souvenirs of the past. Now, obviously, if said skeletons are, like, actual dead bodies buried under his house, then, yeah, get the fuck out. Find a balance between the two. Don’t be so jaded that you’re wary and skeptical of every moment, just waiting for it all to crash and burn. Conversely, don’t be so blissfully ignorant to the signs for the sake of preserving your pride and this narrative you’ve created. It’s about being cognizant, living in the moment, but taking your time on the drive. Enjoying the journey but referencing your directions and following roadside signals. And, yes, it’s easier said than done. Sometimes you’ll get your heart broken and realize you could have prevented it all along, and sometimes somebody good will slip away because you doubted something really genuine. But that’s the thing with this extended driving analogy: there are endless roads to take you to limitless destinations. You just gotta keep going.

  You cannot change people. Despite that we widely accept this line as a cliché, we’re still under the impression that we can be the one to flip that switch. Every girl (or boy or gender nonconforming queen) wants the bad boy (or girl or gender nonconforming queen) who’ll be good just for them. Unfortunately, life isn’t A Walk to Remember. We all want to be the Jamie to somebody’s Landon, but you cannot change somebody; they can only change themselves. It doesn’t matter how badly you want them to change or how much you love them or how much they love you. The only thing in the world that you can control is yourself, your actions, and your feelings. It sucks. It really fucking sucks but you have to let those people go. Sometimes we talk about the people we date not as humans but as programmable Sims. We’ll say things like “Alex is great; I mean, he says he doesn’t want a girlfriend but he’ll come around,” and we nod and smile like we know the cheat code to unlock Alex’s commitment issues—when in reality the morals or choices people stand by need to be acknowledged as something that’s all their own business. Think of it flipped: you’d never want someone to consider their future with you under the condition that they can change something fundamental about you. My best friend Sydney once dated this terrible guy named David. (I can say this because at this point she has dated four Davids in a row and they’re all terrible.) I could write a separat
e book chronicling all the awful things about David, but the one that applies most in this context was the fact that he also fell for the myth that people can be molded and changed. Even on paper (profile) Sydney and David were pretty different, but with the pool of eligible Jewish bachelors shrinking in San Francisco, she gave the nerdy conservative kid a chance. They went for drinks and I woke up the next morning to a text message play-by-play as she explained that he was smart, cute, a little socially awkward, and way more conservative than his JSwipe bio let on. When I pressed her for more information, she explained that he was a Republican and that their first-date conversation consisted of him asking her views on abortion and gay marriage, and he proceeded to critique her answers and explain just exactly why her opinions were not valid. I will admit that I can be overly critical about the types of guys Syd dates, but to me this was a pretty clear deal breaker. She proceeded to date him for the next three months. She explained to me that while she’s set in her own opinions, she liked that he wasn’t afraid to challenge her, and we’re entitled to have different views as long as they’re respected. David obviously did not feel the same way. He broke up with her over the phone, explaining to her that he looked at dating her as a riddle to solve. He had originally set out to change her views on pretty much everything, and when he realized she was in fact confident in her own beliefs, he was over it and over her. Fuck David.

  Don’t be like David.

  Your feelings are valid because you feel them. This is something I think every kid needs to grow up hearing. Instead, when we deal with pain and heartbreak we’re reminded that we’re young and our emotions are overblown, and that someday we’ll understand what true feelings feel like. This is fucking bullshit. At twenty-six years old I can still remember exactly how I felt in seventh grade when Adam Taylor told me he couldn’t be my boyfriend because Kathy Carmichael liked him, too, and he didn’t want to make Spanish class awkward. Yeah, at this point in my life I’ve been through things that have hurt me much more than that moment, but at the time it was the most pain I had ever felt. The most upset you’ve ever been at twelve is, up to that point, the most upset you’ve ever been in your entire life. You have no fucking idea about the most upset you’ll be at thirty-eight, so that gauge is irrelevant. That spectrum doesn’t even exist yet. Your adolescent feelings are not unwarranted and they are not unimportant. I loved my first boyfriend the most I could love anyone at sixteen years old. Ten years later my capacity to love somebody is much greater, but I can still look back at my teenage self and recognize those feelings as honest and true to the ones I feel today. I guarantee that a few years down the road the spectrum of what I am able to feel will change again and again and again. When I get married, and when I have kids and grandkids, I’ll discover a kind of love that I don’t know about right now. But that doesn’t mean that every emotion and feeling I’ve had prior to those moments has disappeared. Your perspective on life isn’t like drawing a line on a whiteboard and erasing it every day. It’s more like walking on wet cement: your past is permanently preserved but you keep walking forward. You can stop and pause and look behind you and remember those feelings, but once you’ve walked a few miles, those first few baby steps are a distant memory. Sometimes I think adults lose sight of that; they forget what it’s like to be twelve and have your heart broken in a thousand pieces. They forget how your first crush feels like nothing you’ve ever felt before. I hope I never lose sight of that, and one day, when I’m a mom and my kid is going through that, I can flip back to this sentence in this book and remind myself.

  Every relationship ends. Literally every single one. They end in breakups, divorce, or death. It’s morbid but it’s true. I’m not saying that relationships are pointless or not a crucial part of growing up; I’m not even saying that you should only date people who you can see yourself marrying. All I’m saying is that I wish I could tell my thirteen-year-old self that my heartbreak was just the first of many and to learn how to get through it, because it’s a lifelong skill. Think of it like every person you let into your life has a “sell-by” date printed on their forehead in invisible ink. Sure, you can drink the questionable milk after its FDA-approved date, but at that point you’re just asking for trouble. It’s no longer good for you. I’m not a big believer in fate or anything of that nature—I like to think that I’ve got at least some say in where I end up in life—but I also like to believe that we invite people to come into our lives for a reason. That reason may be unbeknownst to us at the time, but everybody plays a supporting role or a cameo in the story of your life. I find that when I talk to my friends about their relationships turning sour, they reminisce over how great it was at the beginning and how they have no idea how they ended up where they are now. Every story has a beginning and a middle and an end. You wouldn’t read your favorite book if the final chapter and the prologue were exactly the same—and you wouldn’t watch a movie with the first ten minutes on a loop for an hour and a half. That’s just not how it works. The end of anything is always unavoidable. It can come after a slow-burning anticipation or when you least expect it. And, yeah, it sucks. It’s like the first time I read the final Harry Potter book, and I so desperately wanted it never to end, so I savored the chapters and the words and I took as much time as I could to feel that feeling that I knew I would never get to experience again. But eventually I was on the last page, reading the last words of the last sentence, and despite that I wish I had more, I was happy that I had what I did. Relationships, even the “failed” ones, teach you something, which I guess doesn’t really even make them failures. If I could go back in time and spare my heart, I wouldn’t even be tempted. Sure, in the heat of the moment you can claim to regret something and write it off as a complete waste of time, but I guarantee you, even if you don’t realize it immediately, you’ve learned something from it. Which I know at a point can be exasperating when it feels like you’ve been stuck in the school of dating for an eternity, but let me just say this: it will fail 99 percent of the time until it doesn’t. It’s all wrong until it’s right. Think of your dating life as a casting call: you’ve been auditioning people for the co-star role in your life. Some people don’t get past the first round, others get callbacks, and some get further and further along but something doesn’t click and it’s just not “it.” So you hold out for whatever “it” is, and it might feel like it’s taking forever with no end in sight, but suddenly one day it just clicks and it’s “it.” But until then you’ll get your heart broken and you’ll break some hearts along the way. And it will feel like you’ll never get through it, but you will because that’s the only option. Find it in yourself to recognize your worth and realize that you’re not alone in those sentiments. Know that one day down the road you’re going to realize that every other crappy relationship and bad date and heartbreak has led you to this moment when you look at this person and realize that everything before them brought you here. Every relationship ends in heartbreak until one day it does not. It all sucks until it doesn’t. It’s that simple. And I know that’s asking you to have a lot of faith in something that seems so far-off and intangible, but sometimes you just have to trust.

  chapter 2 2005 was a great year for dating

  I never once thought boys had cooties. I’m pretty sure I actually came out of the womb thirsty (and not for breast milk, if you know what I mean—heh heh heh). I had my first boyfriend when I was three years old. His name was Gabe. We were neighbors, and our parents were best friends, and I may be biased, but we were seriously the cutest preschool couple ever. Gabe would carry me if my feet hurt, tell me jokes to make me stop crying, and I’m pretty damn sure that three-year-old would have taken a bullet for me (even if it was just from a Nerf gun).

  When elementary school rolled around, I dumped Gabe for a younger man. His name was Brad. I called him “pip-squeak” and he called me “scary.” Brad was my first case of unrequited love. He was blond, played soccer, and had an underbite. I was smitten. I used to chase Brad a
round the playground trying to pin him down and kiss him, which really wasn’t fair, because I was twice his size. And you know, consent. I’m sorry, Brad.