In a world of swiping and DMs I hoped to be able to put myself out there more β but it turns out the comfort zone is really comfy. Last December, after consuming a few red wines, my friend Hana and I set ourselves the new year resolution to ask someone out in person each month. With Hana visiting Melbourne from Canberra a couple of times a year, it was typical for our boozy biannual catch-ups to end in questions about our dating lives.
This night was not much different. We also agreed that asking someone out in person would be the ultimate test of courage. How comfortable were we to put ourselves out there and potentially face rejection, delivered to our faces? These stipulations, I quickly came to realise, would prove rather difficult. But every time I envisioned swallowing my pride and handing out my number, the dreaded doubts would rear their ugly heads. Did he have a partner?
Would he feel embarrassed by my expression of interest? Was he even into guys? A month later, at the end of February, we reconvened. Each exchange of messages began to serve as a monthly reminder that we were, in fact, flopping.
I would eventually go on several dates over the subsequent months but all of them were either initiated over Instagram or dating apps, or with guys I already knew. Take boy 1, for example: he slid into my DMs after a friend of his suggested that we should meet. Boy 2? Boy 3? All of these instances, albeit great dates, obviously failed to qualify for our resolution. But in instances when someone did catch her eye, she admits, like myself, that a fear of rejection often held her back.
We talked about potentially shifting the goalposts to make the challenge more doable: asking someone out in person just once this year. Just once. Can I blame my phone addiction for making me unable to converse with strangers in person? Can I still play the pandemic card? But I hope to eventually embrace vulnerability, put myself out there and express my interest to attractive people IRL. In , or β¦ maybe. This article is more than 4 months old.
