desperate for change

Last night I went to see the Snowball Classic with my non-dancing friend. I wasn’t planning on going but we were just talking one night and I casually mentioned it to her as something that is pretty big in the  Vancouver dancing community. The next day, she called me up to tell me that she wants to get some tickets for us to go together.

For my dancing friends that read this blog, you may (or may not) have noticed my reduction in my dancing activity. I mean – there was a time when I was doing ballroom and/or going to salsa classes multiple times a week. Honestly, I was in a bit of a burnout of going so hard, nowhere fast.

In a way, it was starting to have a similar feel to my startup-attempts a while ago: a lot of grind and energy spent without much results or much to show for. I was starting to feel like a robot shuffling from class to class and not having as much fun as when I started.

I still enjoy the friendships that I have made throughout my dancing activities. And most absolutely, I will go out for the occasional social outing. I mean, aren’t you dying to go dancing at Robson Square this summer? However, I won’t be pushing myself just for the sake of pushing myself. I am just going to keep it fun for myself.

I mean, there are so many other things to try and do right?

A friend of mine sent me an email with the following questions, regarding my previous post:

“what’s wrong with a strictly platonic relationship? and so what if it leads to something more, if that’s what both parties want??”

There’s nothing wrong. And indeed if something more happens, it is a legitimate outcome of an initially platonic relationship. The tricky part, of course, is figuring out the “what both parties want” clause. This is basically managing each others’ expectations.

I came across yet another excellent article, this time from Psychology Today. The article talks about the challenges of having such a friendship; the first item on their list is “Defining the Relationship.” When a single guy indicates that he wishes to be “friends” with a single attractive female, there is a non-zero probability of the guy actually wanting something more than a platonic relationship. Ask any guy. Only when the friends get to know one another for a while and have an invested interest in maintaining the status-quo, then we will really be in an honestly legitimate platonic relationship.

My friend’s other question:

“do you sit down with every female friend you have and discuss your expectations/intentions?”

I think that myself personally, it has taken me a while to develop the emotional maturity to manage my own expectations as well as being able to more openly discuss these issues. But in a lot of cases, we typically don’t do a sit-down; we just go with an interpretation of the interactions. For example: are the interactions becoming more frequent and go more in-depth than usual; are there deliberate efforts to get together; are there flirtatious innuendos? These are all hints and desires of the friends wanting to take it to the next level. I think that people’s interpretation of “friendlier than average” vary quite a lot especially in our multicultural society. It is important to normalize interactions in light of a person’s background and operational parameters.

But back to the question – in all the times that a sit-down or the equivalent happens, I am grateful for the clarity and the honesty. (This typically is initiated by the female friend who notices that my expectations are starting to get out of wack.) It is one thing to rationally try to manage one’s own feelings and try to keep things under control; however, we are only human, aren’t we?

The age old question: can men and women be platonic friends? I came across this article on a very excellent blog, which tries to break it down, addressing both views as properly as possible. Speaking of which I have never seen “When Harry Met Sally…”

In the ever-classy Urban Dictionary, the platonic friend is, shall we say, something we break out of a glass jar in case of emergency. Perhaps this explains why the platonic friendship feels kind of unsatisfactory or lacking. Nothing like being a benchwarmer waiting to get in the game.

What are my views? I think that the explanation from “When Harry Met Sally” is the most honest view of this type of situation. Even when your so-called rational thinking mind declares that this is a strictly platonic friendship, there is dark-side of the brain that tells you to take it as far as you can go. All those m4w listings on craigslist’s strictly platonic section? You’re either fooling yourselves or you know the truth.

What about the female friends of mine that might be reading this? If I am keeping a more-than-a-metaphorical-arms-length away from you, it is because I actually do like you in a platonic way and it gets complicated if we get closer than that.

For those of you in the know, I’ve been single again since the beginning of February. At the time, I wondered how I should go about adjusting my “In a Relationship” status on my Facebook profile. It didn’t seem right to keep it that way so I did a careful quiet removal of that field from my profile (plus removing the generated news feed item). The last thing I wanted was 20 people posting on my wall asking why I am single again.

The fact is – any breakup is awkward. Your friends ask you “how is so-and-so doing” or “how come so-and-so isn’t here today” and my nervous eyes pretty much gives myself away even as I am giving a dodgy reply. After a couple of weeks, the awkwardness wears off and it’s much easier to fess up.

In my recent soul-searchings, I came across this:

One who has loved truly, can never lose entirely. Love is whimsical and temperamental. It comes when it pleases, and goes away without warning. Accept and enjoy it while it remains, but spend no time worrying about its departure.

Of all the places to read about love, it’s from a book about making money (Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich). I am amused immensely by the irony of it and most certainly I am uplifted at having read this.

So how am I holding up? I’m doing well, keeping busy. Who knows, I just might put up my “Relationship Status” again on my profile; but it’s gotta be just “Looking for: Friendship” for the next while.