Putting “Hope” in a Hopeless Romantic?
are they bright enough to start a new day?
Or too deep and gloomy,
for the leaves to just wither away…
I recently matched with a super compatible woman after one year of mediocre experiences on dating apps, we’ll call her M, and started talking to her. The chats soon turned into phone calls and then video calls in just 2 days. There was a bond forming, at an emotional level, which most people crave and struggle to create even after years of togetherness.
This was one of the best matches I have had so far, if not ‘the best’!
I don’t mean I was falling head over heels for her or something of a similar utopian magnitude, but it was comfortable. It was probably one of those instances where I was the most comfortable with someone, including the time I had spent in a 6.5 year relationship before this adventurous dating spree.
My belief system all these years, without any experimental proof, said that I cannot get physical with someone unless I have some emotional connect. I spent a taxing year of questioning it and tried almost everything, a one-night thing, dealing with a stalker, dating people who were in it only until commitment was out of the picture, going out with people who had no idea what they were doing, and also one person who just wanted to stay behind a screen and keyboard for months as meeting in person would, in their world, just lead to the murder of either one of us.
With all this, I could clearly see only one thing that had surely happened — the hopeless romantic in me, lying on a deathbed.
M, however, in that short span of time, felt like an elixir for the dying. Based on the converstions so far, we could notice in us a combination of both, emotional maturity and romantic alignment. After 5 days of jokes, compliments, ideas and some fantastic conversations, we decided to meet. To put it simply, it was a meet-cute. The emotional compatibility meter was showing the best readings ever and hence, it led me back to my original belief system!
All of a sudden, towards the end of the meet-cute, something happened! A slight misfortune that had the potential to put out this spark. It took a week, but this potential manifested itself. The magic of the elixir was short-lived and the dying was back on the deathbed, this time accompanied by a life support. The situtation and the timing are to be blamed here, just like they are, in most near-perfect cases. Not one of these two were in my control!
All I am left with now is to decide… should I put more hope in the hopeless romantic, or simply remove the life support?
