The Frustrating Nature of the Unnecessary DTR

In thinking about humans, I've come to the logical and legitimate conclusion that we all think we are idiots. And because we think we are idiots, we have this sense of responsibility to define most everything as a means of thorough preparation. I do understand that planning and defining how we should act in certain situations, what we should say when a certain thing happens, and what to do at various times of day, etc. to some extent is a healthy way to maintain organization and in fact sanity. 

But. 

It has occurred to me that when we are entirely enthralled with defined plans, it becomes a form of borderline insanity itself. We define to the point that when an event that doesn't usually happen (and therefore the emotional response and physical action to said event hasn't been planned) happens, we become very frustrated and afraid. Hence, we strive to define what to do when even the once in a lifetime and extraordinary happen. This, my friends, is where the "borderline insanity," ("insanity" in the sense of acting like someone or something that you are not to the point that you become that thing), becomes a concern. 

I bring this up because of some recent events in my personal/dating (yes, I know) life that I should probably explain. A certain special guy in my life is currently serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints—a whole new story/blog post waiting to happen all together. For those of you unfamiliar with this circumstance that I happen to be in, let me explain. Members of our church, generally from the ages of 18-28 or after they retire, have the opportunity to serve as missionaries, preaching our glorious gospel to different parts of the world. Young men, based on if they are worthy and able, are specifically are asked to leave their families, educational opportunities, and everything else in their life—*cough, cough* including their certain special girls—to serve as a missionary for two years. This calling has left me and thousands of other girls writing letters and sending packages to our loves all over the world. Obviously, along with letter-writing and package-sending, a lot of personal assessing goes on during the two years your dearest is away, including deciding whether or not to faithfully not lay an eye on any other young man, or to date others while he is away, with the risk that you will start faithfully dating someone else before his two year service is complete. As you can imagine, this leads to a lot of fake promise making and heart breaking. As for me, I plan on being available when my missionary friend comes home, but not dating anyone else for an entire two years seems a bit ridiculous, does it not?

So.

I've been going on what to me are for the most part very casual, non-committal dates with various young men. Dating is...dating, right? Let's just talk about dating for a minute. I don't want to sound all negative, dating is often fun and always interesting. I’ve met many of my best friends through dates. Getting to know new people and make friends through dating is wonderful. But if we're truly honest with ourselves, does anybody actually like dating itself? Not really. We like the friends, sparkly feelings, lipstick, potential relationships i.e. MARRIAGE, and conversations of dating, but dating itself is mainly just confusing and time consuming. Even if one is entirely in love with the person they are dating, they still want to be done dating and just be married to that person! But still, it appears that the above mentioned benefits of sparkles and marriage out-weigh the confusing time-consumption of dating. 

And so, we date. And really, we learn to love it. Through the conversations of dating, we learn to embrace the charming awkwardness and laugh at the incompatibility of ourselves and literally every single person we date except for one, and we learn to find the beauty in each other despite that incompatibility. Through the time spent dating, we form, if nothing more, wonderful friendships. We learn to love, serve, and respect others emotionally and physically through the romance of dating. And we discover a lot about ourselves as we learn to love ourselves as well as other people by learning to love dating them and dating in general.

We also, however, learn to hate it. We learn this through various heart-tormenting experiences, but the one I’d particularly like to address at this time is the experience of being the recipient of the unnecessary/un-called for DTR, break-up, or unofficial marriage proposal. Having been the recipient of all of these tidings in the last six months of my life, I'd like to express my opinion on the matter, an opinion that I really think should be a given:

You can't DTR with, break up with, or propose to someone you were never actually dating.

That's really not that much to ask, right?

In looking at some recent experiences of mine, it would appear that apparently it is a lot to ask (?). A couple recent random, unnecessary DTR talks brought on to me by boys I was never dating have reconfirmed to me that DTR talks are the actual worst. Regardless of how much you have dated, they are the worst. Yes, it's important to tell a romantic interest, lover, spouse, date, friend, or anyone significant in your life for that matter, how and why you feel about them, and what the both of you are going to do because of those feelings. But if you have to sit down and have an actual conversation in which you define your relationship and what it is you are doing/feeling with a single term such as "just friends," or even "boyfriend/girlfriend," odds are you really don't have that much of a relationship to define. For if you had a relationship to "define," you would already know exactly what it was based on the feelings, moments, conversation, service, contact, and time you have shared together. Previously mentioned terms such as “just friends” and “boyfriend/girlfriend” ideally should be the product of the feeling toward each other, rather than the defined dictator of the feeling toward each other. Hence, generally speaking, I think that only someone who doesn’t really have a relationship with you is the one to propose that you define the relationship with them.

As un-dated boys asked me to be their “girlfriend” or “insert cheesy defined title here,” and I said no due to the fact that I had been on at most 2 to 3 dates with these boys and had in my mind expressed no romantic interest in them, they obviously felt it would be right to break up with me (again: ?). I think that stems from some desire to not be rejected—how dare I say no to being their “whatever,” so they must formally tell me that they reject me so as to win the “breakup” when, again might I emphasize, we weren’t even dating. This is actually a common occurrence in my life, being broken up with by guys I was never dating. It’s happened quite a few times. And every time it does, I get this odd feeling that I guess you would get when broken up with; feelings of guilt and hurt and inadequacy flood my mind for about two minutes and then my heart for about four seconds and then I realize—I wasn’t actually dating this boy, making this breakup absolutely hilarious.

Marriage proposals, on the other hand, really can’t be taken lightly enough to be thought of as hilarious. Marriage and love are the most sacred of human experiences. Therefore, bringing up marriage and falling in love with someone that you aren’t even really dating and therefore don’t even really know is, in all seriousness, quite frankly absolutely immature and incredibly disrespectful to all things Holy, as Love is the ultimate manifestation of Divine Holiness.

As stated at the beginning, people think they are idiots, and therefore want every occurrence to be pre-planned so as to not look like an idiot when it occurs, causing the sparkly feelings of a couple of dates to be confused with love and unnecessary and/or inappropriate actions to follow. For the betterment of experiences with love and relationships for all, I’d like to make my own proposal. I propose that we remember that the best things in life are rarely planned and hardly ever entirely defined, but rather simply felt, earned and intrinsically known. We must learn to trust our Divinely innate capability to know, to feel, and to love.