My name is Reluctant Dater.

In talking to a friend of mine today about possible blog topics, she mentioned something that piqued my interest. What if I wrote about what would happen if someone (ie me) put together a list, a la My Name is Earl about all their (ha, my) wrongdoings? Not life wrongdoings (because, lbh, RD is an angel who never does a wrong thing—an asset to humanity, for sure), necessarily, but, rather, relationship wrongdoings.

What have I done to cause the end and/or stagnation and/or failure to launch of my relationships past. Sadly, a lot.

Wrongdoing #1: the demise of many relationships (and something I find to be lurking on the horizon with my most recent) has been an inherent need to overanalyze. Every sentence, every word, every action. Every unspoken word, every unfulfilled request, every unrealized demand. Every kiss, every fight, every glance across the room. Perhaps face value is sometimes all there is to a situation.

Wrongdoing #2: I have a hard time trusting, whether the person with whom I am engaging in a relationship has “wronged” me or not. Where this distrust comes from, I do not know. Looking back, I lived a charmed—albeit sheltered—life. Honesty was always the best policy. If you lied, you got caught, plain and simple. Perhaps I fear the repercussions of dishonesty and distrust more so than I fear the actions and words leading up to them.

Wrongdoing #3: taking what other people say and think about my relationship and those involved (ie me and the boy) too much to heart. As LC keeps telling me, “It doesn’t matter what other people think. As long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters.” She is right. Lately, based on RCB Part I, I have felt the need to keep certain pieces of information from friends, thinking that what I tell them will sully their view of RCB and our Part II. But, you all know me and my inability to keep anything to myself. So it all gets put out there, for the world to know. Perhaps I should just live my life as it comes along, doing and saying and feeling what I want without wondering what Objection or my mother or my cousin Susie or the kid next door will think.

Wrongdoing #4: not realizing what I’ve got til it’s gone. Cliché, yes. But true. Who knows how many relationships I’ve passed up because, at the time, I was either scared or wrongfully uninterested? There are probably hundreds (okay, not that many, but accept the hyperbole and move on) of men out there who tried to get my attention at one point or another and who I, in a state of confusion and/or stupidity and/or fear shooed away. Perhaps this RD could have been married with children by now if she had thrown caution to the wind and relaxed.

Wrongdoing #4.5: focusing on the wrong guys. Perhaps, in many case, this was probably the impetus for the behavior in wrongdoing #4.

Wrongdoing #5: being afraid of the real thing. The attraction to friends, to unavailable men, to those who are unable to commit—it all comes down to the fact that I know I can’t have them, so there’s nothing to lose. Perhaps being afraid of the real thing is compounded by a fear of being hurt, which ultimately comes from insecurity.

This is not to say that I am holding myself fully responsible for every failed (or unitiated)relationship of my past. Luckily (and quite possibly as a defense mechanism), I am a firm believer in the idea that everything happens for a reason and every experience, whether good or bad, leads to the next.

And the next from the last (in other words, my present) ain’t so bad.