My Darling

I will finally have a girlfriend

It is a beautiful thing to have someone who loves you. Our parents love us, we have friends who love us, our mentors love us, and God loves us. But I think men, most men at least, need the love of a woman. I also suspect women need the love of a man. Is it that that love is greater or better? Certainly not. For one thing, I am sure no lady in the world, no matter how perfect and incomparable her love could ever be, would be able to love me as my mother does. But still, I want her to love me. I long for such love.

Right now, as I am writing this, I don’t have a girlfriend, but pray for me, dear reader, for I hope the circumstances will be different soon enough. Is it that I am a bad guy? I don’t think so. I should probably defend myself. I go to church, I don’t drink alcohol, neither do I insult people. So why don’t I have a girlfriend? Or maybe I am not so good-looking? Okay. I certainly don’t have great biceps, nor abs for that matter, but I think I look pretty decent. Or I want to believe so. So why don’t I have a girlfriend? Oh! I am not yet stable financially. Well, it isn’t a wife we are talking about here, is it? So what’s with the financial stability? A man needs to have his pocket right before anything else, right? Okay. Who made that rule?

It’s clear enough that not having a girlfriend, has nothing to do with my looks or my pockets. I believe it has everything to do with my attitude and personality. I have told you I long for a person who asks me how my day was, and that not for the sake of mere formality, and I also long for someone to ask me if I have eaten. I have a few friends who are dating, and when they do all this small talk, we make fun of and burst in laughter at the whole thing, yet deep down we know, or is it I, we want to be cared for, and minded in that same way.

Men, good men, who don’t have girlfriends yet, have very diverse reasons for why things are so. One likely reason is they have been unlucky. But two probable reasons could be choice and simply immaturity. There are many single men who are so by choice. They feel they are not ready to have a woman in their lives. There could be something they feel is more important that they are trying to get done. Most men want to believe that that’s the reason why they don’t yet have a woman in their lives, when the truth is that most of them are simply immature. And clearly, immaturity here has very little to do with age. So what is it really all about.

First, it is the unwillingness to take risks. By now, I think I have an idea of what I look for in a lady, and I think I have seen many such ladies. So what’s the issue? The fear of being rejected. The fear of being turned down. Most of my friends are good guys, but they are still single, why? They are afraid of approaching a lady and asking her out. Maybe they just feel they are not yet ready to make such a commitment. The problem is that we give all these suggestions that we are obviously in love, but then we leave the poor sister as she tries to figure out what our gestures mean. We probably want to make sure it is completely safe for us before we make any commitments. That’s the problem, we want it to be perfect. And we want to be sure that she will say yes. So we wait to be sure. For how long? Six months? One year. Now looking back, the way I see it, we are just working against our own goodwill. It is never going to be safe. No matter how perfect we are before we get into a relationship, or no matter how perfect the other person is, it is never going to be completely safe. There will always remain to be something frightening about committing yourself to somebody. You need to be able to face that fear, and approach that beautiful lady, and tell her how you feel. And be sure that the worse she can say is not no, she may even insult you for being so impertinent, for imagining that you would ever stand an chance with her. Does it matter? When you take your no with grace, when you don’t whine and curse and complain, then you are a man. A real man.

The other thing is carelessness. I think many of us young men, especially those of our number who say they are born again, and appear to have lofty ambitions and life goals, are just careless. We are careless about how we treat ladies, about how we speak, and about how we carry ourselves. It is not as if we are rude or coarse, but we play insensitive towards our sisters. That carelessness is revealed in our being too cautious to be sincere about how a lady looks, and to complement them about their nicely done hair, or their pretty dress, for example. Most of the time, we are saying so many irrelevant things we do not mean, or are playing safe by keeping our complements to ourselves. Yet we can never get anyone angry because we complement them too much. We are also careless in those moments we choose to see ladies like our fellow brothers; something they can never be, even if some of them want to call themselves a bro. A lady will remain to be a lady. So when we laugh at ladies the way we are used to laughing at our brothers when they are having it rough in some area of their lives, we are just muddying the pool. If we are unable to properly empathize with a lady friend in her plight, will we ever be able to be emotionally available when our partners need us?

This can serve as a start, something to get us thinking. There’s of course some little oversight in these two claims, but I think one or two people will agree with me. So why don’t I have a girlfriend? I want to tell you that I have chosen to be this way; I want to tell you that I am working on myself, that I am growing and learning to be content with being alone, that I am still striving towards financial stability. Or I will say that I haven’t found the right woman. But the great ladies with whom I have blown my chances will tell you that that’s me being untruthful. Because they know that I have been been nothing but an immature twat; afraid to own and speak out what he feels, and also very careless and insensitive towards their feelings. I am doing my best to grow up as fast as I can, but meanwhile I hope God will give me one more chance, and maybe I will finally have a girlfriend. Or even better, a wife. Is it too much to ask you to pray for me? Well, I guess not.