For the past year and change I’ve been telling you guys about the chronicles of my and my friends’ dating lives (all with their permission) in hopes of relaying some lessons, rules and guidelines. After all, life’s too short to make all the mistakes yourself. Learn from those that other people make. And then sometimes… all those lessons, rules and guidelines need to go out the window.
Lemme give you an example. You know how I feel about long distance, right? Well, it’s still a little early to tell the outcome, but a good friend of mine managed to meet somebody at an event who lives a good 7 hours away. By plane. But they clicked and they’re working at it. And you know what? Even if it doesn’t work out, my friend, after having been put through the emotional wringer by shitty guys before this, has a whole new take on what it means to be treated right and how it should feel to let somebody in. Emotionally, I mean. Pervs. And she never would have experienced this had she not broken the “rule” of long-distance dating.
So how do you know if someone is worth breaking the rules? That’s the thing. You don’t. I mean, you can never be 100% sure about someone. This isn’t high school when you have all the answers to everything in the world. We’re grownups now and (should) know we don’t know everything.
One benchmark you can use is how many tingles someone gives you. Remember the tingles theory? Alright. That’s how my friend in the previous story decided to go for it. Got another story for ya about what can happen if you don’t have enough tingles.
Remember when we discussed if dating your colleagues is a good idea? So a while ago a friend of mine felt a little bit of chemistry going on between him and a coworker. Direct coworker. Sharing a desk kinda coworker. Anyway when he told me about it, I asked him how many tingles he got from her. Two outta three. I warned him: “Look, this can get messy as you guys need to be able to work together. Personally I wouldn’t go there unless you’ve got all three tingles. And very strong tingles at that.” He took it into consideration. Then went out with her anyway. Let me not get into too many details, but summarize it like this: it blew up in his face. Horribly. Blood on the walls. To be fair, it turned out she wasn’t really single, which was an added factor of messiness. Probably even the core of it. And now his colleague is playing hot and cold, sometimes acting like they’re the best of friends, followed by a period of complete ignoration and giving him the cold shoulder. At work. Like I said, messy.
For me, I like to go by intuition. It hasn’t failed me yet. If something feels off, it probably is. But if the possible outcome of it seems worth it, hey… After all, rules wouldn’t be rules if there were no exceptions to them.