At the beginning of the school year, when asked “What was I looking for [in a relationship]?” I answered with what felt like an appropriate choice of words: “a semi-romantic casual relationship.”
I chose those words because I knew I wasn’t looking for a fully romantic serious relationship, one leading to engagement and marriage. I’m not yet at that stage of my life, and I’ve abandoned previous theories that imagined meeting one person with whom a multi-stage relationship should could gradually blossom into marriage. I don’t think the process of falling truly in love is gradual at all. It isn’t instant, perhaps, but it is a rapid process nonetheless.
Those logical considerations made, I thereby arrived at reasoning about love while sounding like a mathematician. Perhaps not the best tone or perspective, but it is one I am familiar with and relatively comfortable with. I like having things defined and understood, and relationships have a tendency to be very undefinable and difficult to (ever) understand. In essence, I mentally made consent to the point that one can “date” someone without being in love with her. That said, I’m not sure if I’m actually comfortable with that point, nor am I sure what I precisely mean by “being love with her,” as I can’t say I’ve ever experienced the romantic facet of that emotion.
So what, precisely, did I intend to have in this theoretical semi-romantic casual relationship? Ideally it would fall into something that would not take too much time (spending over 40 hours a week with someone is no longer casual), that would not become overly emotionally involved (not even sure if that’s possible, considering strong relationships for me start from emotional ties), that would perhaps involve some cuddling and maybe kissing (newbie territory for me) and would involve doing things together for fun, i.e. eating dinner or going for a movie, or to a formal or to the park, or sailing or whatever, in short, relaxing together.
Whether that definition is realistic within the modern world, and specifically within the microcosm known as MIT, remains to be seen. Thus far, it has not been realistic. Many relationships here involve sex in one way or another, and sex for me is something that is firmly set within the context of marriage (it doesn’t make sense anywhere else within my intellectual and spiritual framework). Finally, I’m not sure how to instantiate such a “semi-romantic casual relationship.” One cannot simply walk up to someone and say, “Hi, I like you, you seem to like me, want to have a semi-romantic casual relationship?” (Granted, I haven’t tried that, but I strongly doubt it would work — though, perhaps at a place as nerdy as MIT it might, but even then it is far too nerdy to fit into my style — I may think like a geek at times, but I like to think I have at least some social graces).
Finally there is the issue of mutual attractiveness. I don’t think I would be comfortable cuddling or kissing someone who I’m not physically attracted to, mentally attracted to and spiritually attracted to/compatible with. I haven’t run into many people who meet those stringent qualifications (stringent as compared to some of my friends’ mere requirement of “recognizably female;” though I think/hope they said that at least partly in jest) and even when I do, I’m not particularly good at telling if mutual attractiveness is there. If I like her, does she like me? And even if she does like me, most of the time she’s taken already, and I’d rather not start a semi-romantic casual relationship by destroying or attempting to destroy another relationship already in place, even if the relationship is a so-called “non-relationship relationship.”
And so I find myself 4 weeks into the semester (already, wow), without a significant other, decently happy, well-fed, classes going well, and not a cloud on the sky aside from an occasional passing thought of “hmm, it’d be nice to hug/cuddle/kiss someone beautiful from time to time.” I’m content proceeding under these circumstances, and am determined that education trump any semi-romantic casual interests, but I’m certainly open to creating something, but am not exactly sure how to proceed.
As always, your comments and constructive criticism are most welcome.