Change that channel

7th Nov 20237th Nov 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

If you read last week’s blog, then you’ll already know that at the minute I’m on a getting-to-know-myself moment. (I was going to say journey, but I was a little bit sick in my mouth as I started to type it, so we’ll stick with the slightly less cringey, ‘moment’). Within this, I’ve decided to take a break from the world of romance and dating, but I’ve approached this break differently than I have before.

Like many of us who experience tedious, stressful, intermittently exciting situationships rather than healthy relationships, I’ve had times when I’ve told myself and everyone around me that I’m ‘so done with it’, I’m ‘not interested’, and I’m ‘just not going there’. And then I’ve scrolled on Hinge. Or had those wise words of ‘it’ll come when you’re not looking for it’ ringing in my ears, thinking I’ve now told the world that I’m not looking for it, so does that mean that it’s right around the corner? Therefore, I’ve not been taking a break at all, I’ve just done the same thing in a different font.

However, this time I decided to take a measure that quite a few people viewed as a little bit extra when I told them about it: I chose to stop watching any TV programmes that are based on falling in love and relationships.

Normally, I’m the type to watch the Netflix reality dating shows, like Love is Blind, Perfect Match; a little bit of Love Island here and there, then some Married at First Sight in the mornings whilst putting my make-up on. And even though many of these shows highlight how horrid relationships can be – with lasses crying their eyelashes off and lads losing the will to live – they also pump out the idea that romantic love is what everyone is always looking for and that without it, we’re lacking. Whilst I do believe that pretty much everyone wants a healthy, loving romantic relationship, when you’ve struggled to find one, having these programmes constantly remind you that you don’t have one can really impact your self-esteem. So I turned them off.

‘How’s that been going?’, I hear you ask. Well, do you know what? The effects have actually been really noticeable. Most obviously, I just don’t think about my not being in a relationship anywhere near as much as I did a few months ago. I’d never been kept up at night about it before, but I’ve definitely had fewer moments of sinking into sadness or loneliness on those evenings when I’ve been tired and my mind has begun to wander toward the sad girl playlist. In fact, I’ve begun to passively assess what kinds of things I’d been privileging over the past couple of years when it came to dating, and how it’s been a little bit off.

For example, I told my friend how as I was driving into work, a thought crossed my mind where I realised that I hadn’t dated or texted a lad who has made me properly laugh since I was a teenager. Yes, I’d laughed with them, or they’d laughed at something I’d said once and fed off of that, but nobody has properly made me giggle in a really long time. And I’ve always considered humour as a really important thing for me – or at least I thought I had. Also, I haven’t had really interesting conversations with these men about books, or art, or music, or anything that is actually important to me. So honestly, I’m wondering what we really spoke about.

I’m not saying any of this to suggest that all the lads I’ve been interested in have been boring – they absolutely haven’t, because I’m not one to waste my time with somebody who has nothing to say – it’s just that with all the popular culture in the world telling me that I need to be in a relationship ASAP, so I can be validated, I’ve been forgetting what actually makes me excited about people. Too often we privilege the story, or the text notification, or the sex over what we really love to do or talk about – sex is obviously still included in the ‘things we love to do with a romantic partner’, don’t get me wrong, but you know what I mean: it’s not as fun if you’re not emotionally invested in whoever you’re doing it with.

Maybe you don’t resonate with the things I’ve said here, but if you are the person who’s bored of feeling lonely on a Friday evening, or forever the third wheel to all their friends’ relationships, then try turning those shows off and see what it does for your state of mind. I’m not saying I’ll never watch a rom-com or a reality dating show again, it’s just that allowing yourself a break from the constant reminder that you’re single might show you that there are lots of far more interesting things about yourself than your relationship status.

Forget your troubles, c’mon, get happy

26th Sep 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Love or hate it, I’m the type of person who can get very emotional about things. In fact, during a conversation with a good, but not super close friend a few months ago, she described me as a very ‘all or nothing-type person’ and although she wasn’t to know how much that small phrase would make me feel understood, it really hit home.

Over the last year, when I’ve been hyper-focused on my work and career, there have been numerous times when in the more quiet moments of my day I’ve sunk into feelings of loneliness and confusion. I’ve felt that because everything has been so go go go since I moved to London if I spend an afternoon doing absolutely nothing then I’m wasting time. And the guilt sinks in. So I get up and do something else. Or I start to criticise myself.

Plus, as is the case with every year, there have been times so far in 2023 when some really unpleasant things have happened in my life, and even though there has been plenty more good than bad, everybody knows that the effect of the bad things tends to stick around longer than the good. Then with my life consistently changing and by working in a space where I need to be conscious of what others think of me – rather than ignore it and #notcare – I’d started to feel like maybe I didn’t have such a solid sense of self as I’d once thought. I began to wonder what on earth I was doing, what I was supposed to be doing, how I’m meant to feel at this age, and why am I finding it so difficult to just relax?

And why do I now have these stretch marks everywhere when I haven’t grown since I was 17?

To remedy feeling lost and overwhelmed at times, I’m the kind of person who needs something to look forward to. A sense of direction. So I put a lot of my focus on the recent holiday I had with one of my best friends, where I went to America. We’d had such a brilliant time last year and felt so at home in the Big Apple, so surely going again will do the job to help me reset? And it did! But not in the way I’d originally wanted it to.

I found myself on the other side of the world, still waking up confused – sometimes kind of sad – and sitting in bars or restaurants waiting for something exciting to happen. Therefore, I put far too much pressure on situations to supply me with some kind of narrative I could use to entertain my friends to make my life sound fun and exciting; I lost sight of just having a nice time. I needed something fabulous and complicated to happen because for some reason my already fun and exciting life didn’t feel like enough.

To beat even less around the bush here, what I’d pinned a lot of my enjoyment in that trip on was receiving attention from men. One man in particular in one place – and I don’t mind typing this, because I’d eat my shoe before I believe that he’ll read this blog. Basically, to cut a long story short, last year I met somebody who I really liked and who really liked me but then I went home from holiday and that was that. It was the first time in a very long time that I’d actually felt excited about someone and even though I then dated someone else here in London who I also really liked months after meeting this man in America, the fact that the one in London didn’t work out and the trip back to the states was looming, reminded me of how exciting that first one had felt last year. And I’ve never done well with what ifs or maybes: I’m far too nosey.

It’s funny how the lacklustre nature of the dating game at the minute gets us so hung up on situations though. Because truly, I barely know this man. I met him for a short amount of time and whilst I will stand by the fact that that thing the movies, books, and songs talk about was definitely there in some capacity, we never had the chance to properly get to know each other. So who knows if that thing would’ve remained? Still, the what if stays in your memory and it’s pushed to the front of your brain when dating someone else who made you feel a similar way doesn’t work out, your work situation is too confusing and stressful to want to think about, and, would you look at that? You’re going right back to where you met him. But his experience of dating in the last year didn’t go the same way as mine; he met someone and it’s worked out. I wasn’t too upset about it (disappointed for selfish reasons, but no tears or anguish), however, it did make me reassess how I’ve been approaching aspects of my life recently.

I’ve focused so much on work for the last year, that I’d started to believe the only way I’ll achieve an emotional escape from its intensity and judgment is through being in a relationship. So dating has been a really important thing for me. If I wasn’t going on dates or talking to someone, then I was watching trash TV centered around relationships, keeping my head filled with an arsenal of reasons why I’m lonely and lacking because of not being in one.

Therefore, to cut out the opportunity for self-criticism and knocks to the self-esteem for a few months, I’m wholeheartedly not going anywhere near the dating world. At the minute, it either bores me or just makes me feel like sh*t, so I’d rather watch TV and colour in my colouring book. Maybe that’s lame, but I want more space in my head to be creative right now, and sitting around seeing if someone has replied to me on Hinge is not a vibe.

I don’t want to feel like I need to focus on a holiday to run away and find some interesting story to report back to the girls. Don’t get me wrong, long may the funny debriefs continue, but if I’m always searching for one then nothing will ever seem good enough. And where’s the fun in that?

Too much what?

7th Jul 202311th Jul 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

I didn’t realise I was so awful to be around. Didn’t know that it was such a chore to speak to me. Well, if I’m so annoying and intense, then just tell me that, nobody forced him to spend time with me.

Unfortunately, these are all things I’ve said to my friends in the last few months because I felt stung by tedious ends to the few romantic situations I had been bothered to give my time to. And I’ve wondered recently whether I should be so frank on this blog about what’s going on in my life, for fear that it might turn future partners off, but then I recalibrate and I think, well I’ve tried numerous methods when it’s come to my approach with lads and it doesn’t seem to matter how cool I play it: if they’re going to do something annoying, then that’s inevitable.

Plus, most situations blur so much into one – whether they be relating to me or my friends – that it’d be difficult to tell who I’m talking about anyway. Dating at the minute feels so lame that I don’t need to be explicit with details to make it relatable.

I’ve been told by multiple lads, in different ways, that I’m too much. Some have literally said those words to me, whilst others have hinted but no matter the method, I heard them loud and clear. It hurt me for a while, I won’t lie, and I tried to hold myself back in situations by talking less or giving less of my personality to the moment for fear that my confidence, outspokenness, or lack of insecurity in showing my interest in a person might come off as ‘too much’. I’ve spent hours talking to my friends, stressing about whether I look crazy, simply because I want to see the guy I’m dating or I want to ask him what’s going on. After all, god forbid a woman be put under the ‘crazy’ umbrella.

When I wonder if I’m crazy, often all I’m doing is texting the person I’m interested in to ask to do something or to try to make them laugh. I’ve got no anxiety about saying what’s on my mind and I don’t care enough about the games (nor do I have the patience) to play them. If I’m interested, then I’m straight up about it; I’m not getting down on one knee or blowing up someone’s phone with a million texts or calls, but I’m clear. If I like a person then I want to do spontaneous fun sh*t; I want to hang out, go for a drive, cook food, find a cool exhibition, or go have some drinks at a place where we can play arcade games. I hold back my feelings for a while, and I don’t trust for a hot minute, but I don’t enjoy the dynamic where someone is chasing somebody else. It feels pointless to me.

So I have come to accept that maybe I am a lot to handle – as these young men have told me. I’ve got a big personality, I can be forward, and I’m very ready to give my all to a person if after we’ve spent time together I judge them to be worth it. But I’m tired of stressing about whether I’m ‘crazy’ just because I’m being myself, and it disappoints me to hear so many of my female peers saying the same thing about their dating experiences.

I’ve felt like recently, every time I date a lad, the second I start to ‘let my guard down’ and show myself as a person with complicated emotions, opinions, ambition, ideas, and imagination, that’s when I’m too much. Before then, when I’d shown my quieter side by listening to the person across from me and investing time in their lives, thoughts, and feelings, I was easier to handle. I was a face they liked to look at, a nice person to make them feel good about themselves, and someone they might want to sleep with. But when I began to want the person to get to know me, I’ve been told that I’m falling in love with them too much so they’re going to have to step away. Only, I don’t remember knowing them well enough to make that decision about my feelings.

I don’t like someone else thinking they know me or how I feel before they’ve taken the time to notice me as a person. One man, a few months ago, showed this so beautifully when after a month of properly dating each other he called me Beth. He’d spent hours and hours with me, slept in a bed with me, and spouted all the things about me he liked, only to get my name wrong as he told me he knew I could fall in love with him, but that he couldn’t with me. You know me so well you know my feelings, but you don’t know my name?

You have to laugh.

I’m a good person, I’d make a great partner, and I deserve to be shown the same respect I show these men. It’s not about having bad taste because my experiences aren’t unusual for the dating world at the minute – in fact, some have had much worse. And I’m sorry, but we can’t all have bad taste.

I don’t have a solution, I just keep moving and reminding myself that my friends and family think I’m great, so I can’t be that jarring to be around.

Who are you dating? Me or my feet?

14th Jun 202314th Jun 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

Recently, a stranger left a comment on my TikTok asking me when and how I tell people I’ve dated about my disability. At first, I saw the message and thought well that’s a great question, let me give it some proper time and attention, rather than fire my camera up right now as my housemate and I eat another snack one of us found in the reduced section. But then this is such a nuanced question for me that even after filming a 2-minute video, I don’t feel like I properly answered it. So here I am, not slumped on the sofa with a biscuit in my hand, giving it some focused thought.

I find introducing my disability to new people very complicated – for lots of reasons. Although I had to give plenty of explanations of it to friends as a teenager, I also went to the same school with the same people pretty much all the way through. Therefore, whilst they might not have known or particularly cared to know the details of how my condition can affect me, they did see me in a wheelchair at points when blisters or footwear had caused me some issues. They had also spent years growing up alongside me, so they knew me way more than just as a physically disabled person. In fact, half of the time I had to remind them of my Spina Bifida because even my closest friends would often forget that it was a thing at all.

Then I went traveling and onto university, where I experienced intense but very short friendships with people; an exercise in distilling myself and my disability into words to try to gain understanding in a very short period of time. Some individuals were amazing and I felt more listened to than I had even within my childhood friendships, and others were very dismissive. But the thing with my disability is that I put so much into maintaining the condition of my feet to ensure that I don’t have that many problems, that this can lead to it seeming like I don’t actually have many problems. Therefore, I’ve often felt that in order for people to believe that I’m not exaggerating, they need to see it get worse. But, as the one who’d have the bandage on their foot, I’d rather not go there – I’d still like to feel understood though.

So in the context of dating, it’s really tricky. I’ve definitely never opened with it because unfortunately, people have preconceptions and make very silly assumptions about disabilities in general, let alone about dating somebody with a disability. For example, one of the big assumptions is that if we’re together, the lad’s going to become my full-time carer and ultimately end up sobbing next to me when I’m in a hospital bed. Like babes, maybe ask me some questions about it first before we jump straight to a Hollywood catastrophe. But I also can’t not mention it because you have to know about it to know about me.

***I’d like to specify here that a lot of the time, individuals don’t even acknowledge that they have these preconceptions about disability; these aren’t things anyone ever says out loud, it’s just a narrative that’s knocking about society which we rarely address. I mean, some people say it out loud, but that’s just because they’re —–

Honestly, I think that I still don’t really know how to tell someone about my disability because I don’t think it can be effectively explained using words. Yes, I can give you the rundown and list off my operations, but those tales sound like catastrophe after catastrophe and don’t always feel like an accurate reflection of my life. Plus, were you actively listening when I told you? Like with anyone, you have to invest time in me to get to know me and you’re only going to understand how my Spina Bifida impacts my life if I let you see it.

Without a shadow of a doubt, in any relationship I’m in, it’ll probably come as a bit of a shock to the lad if the condition of my feet goes south because it’ll highlight just how much I do on a day-to-day basis to avoid that. However, you’d hope that if we have to go there, we’d be into each other enough for him to be more than happy to drive me to the hospital, pick up my antibiotics, and help me hop around the house until my foot heals. Just like you would if your girlfriend randomly broke her leg.

If society didn’t think of physical disabilities as life-destroying and a huge burden on people’s lives, then I wouldn’t hesitate to tell a lad about it on a date because I’m not ashamed of my body, or how I have to take care of it. But that’s not the world we live in. So I cover my shoes until I work out whether it’s relevant to the conversation because it’s not always helpful to share everything about yourself all at once. And like everyone, I’ll be able to work out after the first few dates whether you could potentially be right for me, and that’ll include whether I think you’d have an issue with being with someone disabled. I might not always be right, but I do think it’s sensible to give it at least a few hours to feel everything else out before we workshop the medical history.

I’m not boring, I swear

7th Nov 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’ve been humbled this month, because it’s now painfully clear to me that I’m a lot of talk when it comes to romantic relationships and not a lot of walk. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the girl who sits there and reels off the relationship advice to my friends when they’ve come to me with problems – not to mention the blogs I’ve written on the subject – without ever really knowing what I’m talking about. (But to be fair, I must be pretty decent at this agony aunt role, given that my friends keep asking me for help…)

Like most, I’ve had my fair share of mistreatment in romantic situations but I also haven’t reeeaally put myself fully out there since I was a teenager, so as much as I talk about this topic, I’m more of an observer in this world rather than an active participant. And I’ve cemented this as a part of my identity, by having a tendency to latch onto situations I know aren’t going to work, simply because the inevitability of it never really going anywhere means I don’t ever really have to put myself out there. So basically, I’m just really scared of falling in love, and the world of dating kind of freaks me out.

Honestly, I just find it strange that you’re meant to go to spend time with someone you barely know, present yourself to them, and then at the end of those few hours spent together, decide whether ‘there’s anything there’. And yes, I acknowledge that I do think about these things far too much and should just let it be, but you only have to watch one episode of First Dates to be reminded of just how stress-inducing this type of human interaction is. It’s as if the idea that this is the time when you should get to know a person sucks every ounce of relaxation out of the moment and just transforms it into one hundred and one ways to say something you’d probably never say if you were with your friends, but you’re saying it now because you’re across from someone who’s expecting to get to know you, but what do you actually mean when you ask me what my hobbies are? What even are my hobbies? Do I have hobbies? I swear I wasn’t this boring when I was texting my friend before I arrived here.

And breathe.

That paragraph probably made me seem more stressed about this kind of situation than I actually am, but the point I’m trying to make here is that it’s okay if you’ve been in these situations, where you’ve had this outer-body experience where it’s felt like you’re watching yourself act completely differently to how you know yourself to be. It’s likely because (as I mentioned in last week’s blog), you’re in a situation with a total stranger and it’s a lot to expect yourself to be completely open with them after knowing them for a matter of hours. Plus, dating is a skill which we only seem to gain with practice – I for one do not currently possess this skill. Can I flirt with someone in my general day to day if the feeling is right? Yes I can. Do I know how to apply that to a context which has been explicitly labelled as a date? No I do not. Does that makes any sense? No it does not. But we move! As the marines would say: improvise, adapt, overcome.

Short sidenote here as well: it’s a very British thing for us to not get excited about stuff we love, and to talk down our successes when we’re with other people. Don’t do that, you don’t need to do that. If you’re excited about something or you love it, then speak!! Passion about something is only ever going to be attractive and as a nation, we are poor at talking ourselves up because we don’t want to seem lame. So let’s try to not do that.

Dating is a truly foreign world to me, and falling in love high-key terrifies me. However, flirting is fun, dating is fun, and I’m sure falling in love is some of the most fun a person can possibly have. Therefore, to all my friends who’ve been trying to put themselves out there recently, I’d like to say that I completely understand the frustration of ‘how am I supposed to know if I like this person, when I’ve only spent a few hours with them?’.Nonetheless, my best friends have put me in check by instructing me to only focus on the moment, rather than always going for five steps ahead. Treat it like those flow chart quizzes we used to get in magazines when we were little: do you enjoy spending time with this person? If yes, follow that arrow to ‘see them again’ and if no, follow the arrow to ‘don’t see them again’, and take it from there.

We’ve all been hurt by someone at some point – possibly more than we’d first considered- but it’d be a shame to let that past hurt dictate how much fun you can have in the future. So, trust your instincts and if you make a mistake or if you come across something you don’t like, then hey, that’s helpful information too.

Now brb whilst I try to follow my own advice.

Swipe right if you need help

10th Oct 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Now, this blog is nothing if I don’t use it as a way to transcribe and elaborate on conversations I’ve had with friends, and recently, no matter who I’ve been talking to, all anyone wants to talk (or rant) about is dating apps. So, when in Rome…

Once again, we’ve found ourselves in the time of year when it’s starting to get colder, the days are shortening, and all of a sudden everyone’s hot girl summer is over and we’re all starting to feel self-conscious about our relationship status as we settle back into a work or university routine. Then, when we mix all these seasonal life changes with our reliable friend boredom, we end up sitting on the sofa watching tv one night, downloading a dating app to get some attention from a stranger. It’s a toxic tale as old as time.

Personally, I’m not a fan of dating apps. I don’t like trying to pre-empt which photographs best represent what I look like and how I am as a person, and honestly, every time I make a profile it just ends up making me feel lame because I can nEVER think of something witty to write in a bio. All of a sudden everything interesting about myself completely disappears from my brain, so I go for the less is more approach, but now I look boring. Then as the swiping commences, I get more superficial and judgemental than I would normally be as I over-analyse every photograph and bit of text I come across, looking for someone who’s done everything in their profile I couldn’t manage twenty minutes ago. Next, there’s the texting. Oh my god I hate the texting. I just can’t be bothered!!! Which is so silly because by the time I’ve made it to the texting part, we’ve both already established that we’re somewhat interested in each other, so this part should be simple. But nope, something in my brain switches and tells me that I now don’t fancy them at all because I can’t be bothered to small talk, so I probably keep the app for a couple more days until I eventually delete it again.

Although, I’ve not met a single person who loves having these dating apps, so why is it that it’s started to feel like you have to have them if you want to meet someone?

We say that we don’t want anything intense and we want meeting someone to be natural, but then we spend time on these apps which encourage us to be picky about literally everything. I mean, I aired someone the other day because he’d texted me asking me about three questions in one go and I felt like I didn’t have the time or the energy to answer. But if someone asked me those questions in person, I’d be all over it, so why did I air him just because he’d texted it?! WhERE is the logic? (The questions, by the way, were about my favourite book, where I’m from, and why I’ve moved here – all lovely questions, so I had literally no excuse to not answer them.)

When I sit and have these types of conversations with my friends, it’s funny really, because we can all identify that we’re acting in totally nonsensical ways just because we feel like we should have these apps and we should be talking to someone. But thankfully, I’m not lonely enough right now to be upset about not dating anyone, so the frustrations which come with dating apps aren’t hitting me as hard as they have before. This is partly because I’m constantly busy, but also because honestly, I – like many young people in this country – have accepted that the world of romantic relationships is a big old mess right now, and that you’ve really got to not let that get to you.

So, keep the dating apps if you want to, but make sure that you do like Marie Kondo says, and you throw them away if they’re not sparking joy.

There’s no shame if you download it again three months later though, we’ve all been there.

Question 1

26th Apr 202026th Apr 2020 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

We all know that horrible (kind of exciting) feeling when you see someone, think they’re fit, and you want to go up to them but don’t really know what to do once you get there. And normally, I’m pretty clumsy about it: I’m probably too loud and giddy, or too flirty or too subtle and then I spend hours after the time I saw the boy thinking about how I should’ve acted, or what I could’ve said, hating on what I actually said…it’s just a big old mess to be honest hahahah.

So I wanted to know, whether the boys us girls are embarrassing ourselves in front of, feel the same way in this situation…

And oh my god they do.

The overriding feeling coming from the answers I received though, was that they’d rather not feel like they have to make the first move. And I don’t blame them. We all know that this is a pretty toxic expectation of our society, but it’s also not an easy one to change. For example, I wrote an entire blog on how when I’ve made the first move it’s often made me seem like a slut…so…

But unfortunately, this huge pressure on young men has made some of them ‘not even bother’ because they ‘don’t know how’. Some boasted confidence with comments such as ‘I don’t approach, I get approached ;)’ but then went on to talk about how terrified they are of rejection. Not only that, they’re extra frightened that other people will ‘find out’ about it. And they’re especially wary of girls and their friendship groups because as they said, ‘once the girl hates you, so do all of her friends’. (*not always true, but fair assumption*)

Many were frightened of ‘having the piss taken out of them’. Or not being able to ‘come up with the most interesting conversation starter possible’. They don’t want ’embarrassing stories’ made up about them ‘failing’. And nobody wants the ‘reputation’ of always being the guy to ask lots of people out because then they look like a ‘f***boy’ and that’s not going to help them much either. Others also spoke about fears of ‘coming on too strong’, or seeming ‘creepy’ and accidentally ‘making the girl feel uncomfortable’.

So first of all, I’d just like to say that the fact all of these things are even thoughts going through your heads means that you’ve all got very little to worry about. You’re clearly decent, considerate, lovely people. A fact I already knew. Still I recognise, that my saying that won’t make the paranoia disappear.

Clearly, many of these boys don’t want to be that hyper-masculine, pushy version of a ‘man’, but they’re also not that comfortable with being the opposite. They fear that if they go in completely the other direction, they might be deemed a ‘coward’, ‘too quiet’, or just plain ‘awkward’. And finding that middle ground is difficult to do when you’re only 20.

It would also be entirely futile for me to respond to them and say ‘just be yourself’, ‘just relax’, or ‘try not to overthink it’. Since telling someone to relax in this situation is about as helpful as ‘where’d you leave it?’ when you’ve lost something.

But if these boys will allow me to give them a little piece of advice, since I’m part of the gender many of them are trying to pull, I’d say that awkward is not a deal-breaker. It’s not ideal, but it’s not a deal-breaker. Pushy and rude is a deal-breaker. So defo lean more towards awkward.

It’s completely unfair and pointless that we still have this social standard where boys are expected to make the first move. So I want to end this blog by making a request to all the girls reading this: do us all a favour and just risk it sometimes. If boys can be brave enough to put their egos on the line when they find someone attractive, then so can we. We’re all going to suffer some blows and experience rejection. It never feels great, but you don’t die either.

So f*** it: ask him out.

An Indelible Friend

Tag: dating