Dating Auditions and Try Outs

I've been wanting to write about my experiences in the dating game for awhile. Being single for over two years, it has been full of them good and bad. All are great learning tools for moving forward. Head held high. 

For me, dating takes an incredible amount of courage. More so than when I approach a stage about to hoop in front of x amount of people. What is it about about that intimate conversation, the small table with the tiny candle in the corner of the restaurant....where there is so much possibility, including rejection.

Dating can be like hosting or attending auditions. Depending on how you meet your date, may have been through a friend, from a show, from a bar, or from OKcupid where their photos seemed to pass the "attractive enough" test. Either way, the first date always seems pretty neutral. That moment when I'm about to pull the door open and step inside the very location decided on. The electric butterfly feeling is flowing through the veins, palms are so sweaty the door almost slips from my grip. Big. Deep. Breath. Sometimes I even tell the hostess I'm there on a date, to help relieve the nerves or something. Cluing someone into my emotion, now I suddenly feel like I have her rooting for me. And the first date begins. Neither party knows what to expect. Good conversation? Awkward moments where you slurp your drink down? Or do you have so much to talk about the server just gives up coming back to ask you if you're ready to order. No, you have yet to even glance at the menus. 

Regardless of the numbers of dates you have been on and how successful you felt they went, this is when the "auditions" begin. On the drive home....you begin to analyze. How was your performance? How did you present yourself? Authentically? Where you funny enough? Witty enough? Did you talk about your ex too much? Why do you keep doing that?!!  Will you get that call back?
Or you are on the other side, you are doing the curtain call. You've got your list of traits and qualities desired in a partner and you were just going down the list, check, check, check.... and you'll be giving the call backs. 

In my journal recently, I've also come to another analogy in my head. I am treating dating like trying out for a sports team. Its all about your mental prep going into the experience. So I may wear my brightest jersey, my strongest protective gear and I may be the fastest, smartest, prettiest player on the field. Regardless of all that, its the mental strength of surviving the process of being selected by another. Knowing you may or may not make the team. The essence is in nonattachment of either outcome. The morning of try outs, as you begin your journey to the playing field, the self talk begins. "If I make it, that'll be so great! If I don't make it, I suppose there is something better for me to spend my time doing." That same attitude is the one I carry into the dating game now. I'll show up, with an open heart, positive attitude and my best foot forward, because you know what? In the end. I chose me! In the end, I am the chosen one, I am the star player of my team.