Uncharted Territory

Throughout my twenty-six years, a number of girls and women that I could count on one hand have expressed some degree of interest in me. But for one to go so far as saying she'd want to date me was entirely without precedent. So of course when it happened this past week, I was more confused than excited. Of course I'm going to give her a chance and we hung out over the holiday and I met eighteen members of her family, some of whom are too excited and clearly think things are more serious than they are, but with God as my witness I haven't the faintest idea what I should do.

I've never proactively gone in search of a relationship. I have no interest in dating or marrying for the sake of dating or marrying. There is no woman-shaped hole in my life that I look for someone to fill. (There is a dog-shaped hole, but that's not relevant to this discussion.) What happens, rather, is that once in a while I stumble on someone so fascinating that I want to spend a lot of time with her, and I try to spend a lot of time with her, and if I start to like her more than I hate dating, I ask her out and she makes an excuse and that's the end. I would rather stay home by myself writing or doing a puzzle or watching YouTube videos or almost anything else besides going on a bunch of dates just to "get to know people" or whatever. So, for example, when the local senior missionaries said that if things didn't work out with my most recent crush, "Ask out other girls. There's lots of cute girls in this stake", I was like

Not out loud, of course. I also wonder why people talk like cuteness is the most important prerequisite to dateability. Not "nice girls", not "smart girls", not "rich girls", but "cute girls". When I talked to the one girl who wants to date me one time at stake conference, the older adults who saw me were all like "Who was that young lady? Are you gonna ask her out? Is she someone you would be interested in dating? She's cute." I think cuteness is way overrated, and I think people vastly overestimate how much I like women, and furthermore I think they should mind their own business.

If I'm honest about it, my zero percent success rate with getting a relationship is probably for the best, because I wouldn't know what to do in one and the prospect of entering this uncharted territory, even if it means being loved back for once in my life, terrifies me. And besides, it seems a shame to spoil the perfect record of twenty-six years without one. And besides, if I did get into one I would be constantly aware that the odds of this first relationship leading to marriage were virtually nil, and that consequently the only plausible options would be for her to break up with me or, possibly even worse, me to break up with her. And I'm almost certain that losing love would hurt much, much more than just not being able to get it in the first place. So as hellish and godawful as my sporadic, halfhearted and abortive attempts at dating have been, when I think about them rationally I actually feel blessed in a sick kind of way.