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Daydream Dating
I have not had a boyfriend at the “introduce-to-my-parents” in five years. And I’ve really only had strong feelings for one person since then. What I have done though is developed a thousand crushes, infatuations, flings, etc. in that time.
Sometimes these crushes are for less than a minute — walking down the street, I might see a good-looking man driving. His trimmed beard tells me he has a real job. His nice but modest car tells me that he is interested in something stable like a girlfriend. I can surmise all of this information in just a few seconds; it’s all I need to tell myself ‘he could be my boyfriend’, as he drives away and I never see him again.
This is different than casually being attracted to a stranger. I look for clues to tell me that he is right for me. He will be the answer to my loneliness.
Most of my crushes are more elaborate than this. Usually, it starts with meeting a man at a bar. When talking to him, I think to myself, ‘This guy is funny, smart, and cute’. Eventually, I identify a handful of more specific things I really like about him, i.e. ‘He’s liberal and kind of a feminist, he loves dogs, and he has a cool job like graphic designer’. That’s when I decide that I like him. We hang out, two or three more times (usually at a bar, usually not a date). After that second or third time, we have sex.
