For those that know me, even in the slightest, can recognize that I largely live my life by a set of rules – strict guidelines to keep me grounded and from floating off into the fancy-free realities that often befall writers.

To where my spirit would wander off to, if not for these personal ley lines, for the longest time was a subject of awe and delectable mystery for me. And yet, it has grown to be shown that the limitations of living a guarded life now acts less as a means of self-preservation and more as a limitation of engaging a full life.

Let me preface this by first saying, I do not perceive myself to be a love poet, as a documentarian of the heart, or as someone that really believed in soulmates after learning that the term was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1822.  And in so, I used to believe that romance boiled down to a set of simple ideas:

• Find and be with the “right person”, not your ideal person.
• Enter with zero expectations and harbor no personal desire.
• Become the person that you want to be with.
• Being okay with being “okay” is enough.

That is, I believed all of this up until I met B.

Times are changing in dating. If you have never participated in online dating before, or you are just getting back into the swing of things, know that the general consensus shows that using a virtual platform has become the new standard, especially right now during the “age of Covid”. As convenient as it may be, the limitations become immediately apparent and can be often disheartening to even the most seasoned of love hunters.

It was only a few years ago that meeting people virtually became less of an eyebrow-raising stigma and more of a social norm. The rise of dependency on mobile applications gave birth to programs like Tinder, Bumble, and OKCupid. These platforms have made the dating scene more accessible and capitalize off of the desire for convenience. Consequentially, it has also made the dating scene much more complicated. In a sense, it is not so different from using opportunities like speed-dating to meet people. The rule of thumb still holds true – to attract attention you need be charming, exude allure by being intriguing, and (of course) it does not hurt to be physically attractive. However, the main drawbacks of a virtual platform is that you lose the nuances of physical interaction and a sense of organic chemistry that can only be experienced when initially meeting in person.

Despite its shortcomings, people have shown that there is an unwavering faith that you still have the power to find love online from the comfort of your phone. According to a 2017 U.S. national poll of 1,042 respondents through Statista (ages 18-29) shows that about 30% to 31% of Internet users frequent online dating sites and are gradually increasing in number.  Whether or not these people are successful, however, is dependent on the type of people that they project themselves to be and on those that are seeking.

There are many factors that go into creating the perfect profile – a soulful biography, sharing your personal interests, the perfect photo with the perfect angle and lighting, etc. – but success, in the end, is determined by the volume of high quality encounters that actually develop into that special, profile-deleting relationship. Despite as much work and heart that you may exude as you put yourself out there, the results can be wholly dependent on the personal preferences of your potential partners.

It may sound like a no-brainer, but dating online has little difference to when meeting someone naturally in person. When looking for a partner you will typically want to present your best-self both physically and in spiritual disposition. However, no matter what amount of time and thought that is put into your profile, you may soon find yourself feeling jaded at the effort and disappointed with the results. Like in real life, sometimes people will even lie to land a date.

For me, my very first exchange with a dating app was a match with a rather attractive girl, but it was after a short exchange of messages and some analysis that I realized I was being catfished – I was lucky to already have the knowledge not to open suspicious links sent by strangers. But what drew me into talking with this stranger? Let alone, what led me to give her the stamp of approval that led to the mutual ‘matching’ on the application’s interface?

A study in 2012 by Tobii Technology, a company that specializes in ocular tracking technology, teamed with AnswerLab to study and map the ways that men and women “study” dating profiles. Not surprisingly, the results showed that men spend considerably more time studying the photographs on a profile, while women spent more time reading the autobiographies on the profile. That is not to say that women do not pay attention to looks and that men are not interested in personality, but it does seem to reaffirm those points in a way.

However, consider this – another study by researchers at the University of Connecticut surveyed 300 heterosexual volunteers in a similar kind of sensory test. Among the expected findings that physical traits influence physical attraction, they also caught onto the idea that it can also influence perceived trust. In a nutshell, they found that women feel a higher level of trust when encountering attractive males, while men felt more distrust toward women that they found more physically attractive.

So this poses the question, when can you trust somebody that you have never met? When you share words and the icebreaker is too good to deny? Well, the polar bear is on vacation. He needs a break.

As someone that abhors texting or messaging for anything that requires more than a one word answer, if you have comparatively different texting styles and rely solely on that form of communication, it can be detrimental to the progression of the relationship or even prevent it from even beginning. Which, you know, is true. That being said, my idea of love and romance was completely turned on its head for a brief, dazzling moment in time.

***

We matched on a Wednesday.

I had just ended my umpteenth dalliance with another young woman that I thought was the “right person” for me. Who knows? She could have been, save for the cloying feeling that she was settled in her ways and felt no desire to push beyond her comfort zone and grow beyond what she already knew. It sounds rather ugly when I frame it like that, but it is safe to say that I wanted something more.

As I was getting ready to hang up my dating hat for awhile, my phone buzzed. My finger was literally hanging over the Deactivate button for my dating account as a message popped up in response to something that I had listed in my dating profile.

“I’ll see your Cute by Coast Modern and raise you a song,” she said. I looked on at the message and considered it with a mix of shameful decadence and curiosity. For the curious and seeking, I had placed a song recommendation in my profile as a simple breakdown of the tone that I was hoping for in my next relationship. And here was the first and only response to it.

To my mind, music is one of the most significant languages that we all share. I daydream of laying on the floor and listening to an endless stream of music albums with my significant other – stacks of poetry lining the corners of the room and spent bottles of wine balanced neatly among the furniture. So when I saw that she had sent me a reply in the exact form, I had to check it out.

The song (which I will selfishly keep to myself) was the spark. I hovered on every note and let myself float down the stream of lyrics and bump along with the waves of joy that I felt from that single track. So of course, I had to reply. The next few days were spent sending long walls of text to each other between coffee breaks. We discussed our love of music, swapped stories of oversea adventures and personal anecdotes, and decided that there was an undeniable chemistry between us.

To save you, dear reader, from puking in your mouth, please allow me to put this in perspective. We agreed on everything. A close inspection of our profiles aligned in an uncanny fashion. We both had a penchant of carrying alcohol or weird props in our bags when hiking to share with those that we meet at the summit. We both loved the same authors and books. We even held similar ideologies on spirituality and love of psychology in the same areas. We were so alike that we even had the discussion of how we both suspected each other of copying our profiles off of each other.

What started with me sending daily morning texts as I heralded the sunrise during my morning coffee, gave way to nightly phone calls that would last upwards of four hours at a time. We discussed our fears, our hopes, our dreams. We shared our trauma. We held space for each other in such a way that is to be expected of couples that are together for years, but achieved in a span of only a few weeks. And yet, we would always come back to the discussion of how it all felt like the setup of some cosmic joke.

“I don’t know if God or the universe is just setting us up to be knocked down,” she said.

“I know what you mean,” I replied. “It’s rare, let alone highly unusual to find a connection like this these days.”

“I have a confession,” she paused. “You are the first person that I matched with and messaged on my first ever dating app.”

I was flattered and felt incredibly lucky. Was she lying to sweeten me up? Surely someone this wonderful has to be playing some kind of game. The thought crossed my mind, but it really didn’t matter. I had already fallen into her trap and for the first time in a long time, I truly felt trust. It was nice and I didn’t want it to end.

As I hold an odd attachment to the sun, she hosts a mystical relationship with the moon. Two sides of the same coin.

“I think we should meet,” I mumbled one night.  She paused and requested that we video chat first. “Of course. I’m all for that,” I replied.

We made a plan for the next evening.

And so, we saw each other for the first time. She was wearing a green sundress, dappled with white polka dots. Her glasses framed her big, brown eyes, only to give way to a warm smile that danced on the border of bashfully reserved and truly free.

Meanwhile, I was dressed in a burgundy v-neck, blue jeans (classic me), and had a slight sheen of sweat from overheating in a thick flannel, haphazardly flung to the side moments before our videocall. She didn’t mind.

What was expected to be a short video encounter bled into hours of storytelling, emotional expression, and admiration. Considering my phone records and our penchant for long phone calls, we should have known better. It also led to many more video calls.

We both were waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Too good to be true” was tossed around more than a beachball at a Yoke Lore concert. I think that this is where we both became more conscious of the risk of creating self-fulfilling prophecies. I decided to stow my doubts and leave myself open to chance. I wanted this. I was all-in.

Fast-forward a week or two.

After long discussions about attachment theory in relationships, agreeing that we wouldn’t lose ourselves in each other (remembering that we are individuals meeting for a time), and sharing fears of codependency, we made plans for a date. A date-date. In this age of pandemic and isolation, we agreed to meet in-person for the first time.

As she put it, we agreed to take a risk and “finally put some skin in the game”.

It seemed like we were destined to be together. We matched not just online, but in every aspect of our spiritual, romantic, and practical beings. Mars and the moon literally aligned the night before our date. I took pictures to prove it to her. How can even a denier of destiny, like myself, deny something like that?

The date didn’t start out like we expected. She, living a significant distance away, had agreed to meet me at my place where we would carpool together. Something had her running late, so I spent the time waiting for her by shooting the breeze with my roommates (all three of which seemed almost as excited for me as I was). I was okay with waiting, I had waited ages for something as electric as this. What was an hour or two more?

Eventually she arrived as one of my roommates was leaving for work.

“I think your date is here,” my roomie said. “There’s a woman kind of lingering out front and she is either lost or waiting for someone. Probably you, bud.”

I was actually quite pleased with the fact that our agenda was pushed back, especially considering that we had made plans to spend the entire day with each other. When gambling with love, why not go all-in? But also, a whole day was a long time to spend with someone that you could potentially have zero in-person passion for. Boy was I wrong.

We were both dressed comfortably for a hike. The idea of being outside and truly breaking a self-imposed quarantine for the first time together was a delectable idea. And so, of course, I made a few wrong turns on the way there to set us back another half-hour on our date. We laughed at the free-spirited feeling we shared about our delays, joking that these things characterize experiences in the best of ways. Upon arriving at the ‘trailhead’ for our hike, we were surprised that the hike that she had suggested did not last us the four to five miles that we were promised, but only a mere four or five minutes. It was literally just a walk from a parking lot to an elevated plateau.

We didn’t mind. Claiming the only bench on the ‘summit’, we sipped our water and she rested her head on my shoulder. The sun was well past its zenith and the ground was radiating heat beneath us. And yet, we sat there for what must have been an hour. The coastline of Laguna Beach beneath the hills below us stretched for miles. We watched the paragliders and foot traffic that dotted the horizon before us in giddy blissfulness. We were high upon a hilltop, watching the world unfold in front of our eyes together. She joked that we were less like a king and queen gazing over our people, and more like a Mayor and Sheriff sharing imaginary secrets about our townsfolk. How scandalous we felt.

It was a good moment. It also turned out that she had been thinking of a completely different hike than the one that we had just done. I can’t help but still laugh at that.

The start of a sunburn later, we made our way to the beach. A small, tucked away cove that a friend recommended to me was a short drive away from where we had hiked. Heaving a heavier-than-expected cooler before myself, I grunted my way along the footpath down through a painted tunnel and onto a beachfront bustling with visitors. People were dining at beachside cafe’s and browsing the historical cottages that bordered the shoreline.

“Here?” she would ask. “Oh, this spot seems better. Less out of the way.”

I nodded and was thankful for the mask that hid my gritting teeth as the weight of our lunch became increasingly apparent in my shoulders. We walked for a while before at long last deciding on a secluded patch of sand, out-of-view from the buildings and with only the open stretch of ocean and a handful of families stepping around the nearby tidepools in front of us.

She laughed at my appearance, sweat beading and dripping down my face, and pulled down her mask. “I think that walk was tougher than our ‘hike’,” she chuckled.

Out of breath, all I could do at the time was nod and shoot her my most charming smile. Although, to be honest, it must have looked more like a grimace than a how you doin’ look.

We explored among the tidepools for ourselves – less enthused by the hidden creatures beneath the rocks and more just happy to be in each other’s presence. We sat and talked more about our worldly perspectives and a myriad of subjects that I struggle to remember now.

We then retreated back to the blankets that we had brought and I laid out the all-vegetarian picnic that I had packed the night before. We spent the remainder of our date whiling away the time by eating mixed berries, finger sandwiches, and sipping on sparkling strawberry lemonade. The food was divine, the moment was otherworldly.

We watched the sunset. As the pink sun dipped below the horizon, we watched carefully to see if we could witness the green flash, a brief phenomenon that occurs only at sunrise and sunset – a theme that we attributed to our connection. We must have missed it, because I can only remember being on the beach, the look on her face, and dwindling sunlight.

She was older than me. Not by much, but enough to where her life experience exceeded my own. Perhaps that is something that can be attributed to why it didn’t work out. Then again, that is part of what attracted me to her to begin with. I don’t necessarily believe that age determines personality traits. As much as I am in the game for the hope of it, I am in it (begrudgingly) to learn in many aspects.

In the end, our connection fell apart after our date. There was an undeniable connection and we had confirmed our in-person chemistry, but our anxieties regarding intimacy and codependence reared its head and won. I had grown so accustomed to being okay with being okay, that I subconsciously push aside worries and moments of disconnection, even in intimate moments – and she noticed. I think that this is where her own undiscussed past traumas may have came into play, but the long and short of it is this:

Passivity no longer serves as a means of protection when vulnerability is the true way of knowing someone.

My failure to be vulnerable and to let go of my own past traumas and experiences – my rules, values, and strict dating-ethics – got in the way of one of the shortest and most magical relationships that I have ever had.

Despite all efforts to be forthright, honest, and true, she saw what I could not. I was not being fully open and vulnerable with her. Despite my efforts to see it for myself, I just could not identify it.

“Just let her in, you big dummy,” my best friend said to me after telling him my story. A point that was truly driven home after he sent me the following drawing:

Something that I had overlooked was that even though Samuel Taylor Coleridge may have coined the term “soul mates”, his expression nodding at the requirement of spiritual connection is true, regardless if it is an immortal idea wrought by one entangled with the mortal coil. However, that can only go so far as the bearer allows it to be.

Despite my request for her to let me have another chance, she had to be true to herself, which I respect immensely. Sad as it makes me, I still look at the experience fondly. I would be lying if I said that I was not left heartbroken by it all, but it is just one of those things that flavors the experience of love in life – much like taking a wrong turn on a drive or running late for a date.

And so, with my own personal Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, my perspectives have changed once again and yield my new ideology:

• Seek to be with someone that makes you love the parts of yourself that you already admire.
• Willingly lose yourself in the experience and let your souls intertwine and linger.
• Embrace the fear that comes with things that are too good to be true, because all too often they really are.
• Be with someone that makes you believe in magic, no matter how small it may be.

Even in my heartache, I cannot help but smile at the things that I learned from her. To quote how she explained our connection: “The attunement that I seek and feel with someone that you just know will be significant in your life, is like two people reading the same novel. You read at different speeds, pull different meanings from the text, and close the cover at different chapters every night. But you are still reading the same book.”

As I write this, there is no moon in the sky tonight. And yet, Mars is still there – hanging in the night as a dazzling red dot.

Given time, I’m sure that this wound too shall heal. And hopefully, by then, I will be ready for the next good thing to come.

Dear reader, I hope that we can all strive to find not just our ideal and right person(s), but also someone(s) that you can feel and know that you have removed all plates of rusty emotional armor, have let your fears fall away, and have shed the shroud of your past. So that you may let them see you for you, scars and all, and become lost in love. And with them, you can scribble in the margins of your own life story.

Onward ❤

To B, if you somehow find this:  You were the the moon to my sun. Thank you.