Perpetual friend seeks life partner
Angela Peters

Why is it that every time I come within a fraction of a centimetre of actually finding some kind of wonderful, it just doesn't happen?

This is, literally, the story of my life - a series of unrequited crushes followed by mass disappointment and inevitable self-deprecating personal evaluation.

Through my extensive experience, or lack thereof, I have stumbled upon various conclusions, and even more precarious questions about the elusive dating game.

Anyone who is self-aware and relentlessly exploratory on a personal and emotional level, is likely prone to bouts of severe fantastic delusion as well as a simultaneously clear vision of truth so as to create one of the most classic and troublesome paradoxes of our time.

Of course, as with any paradox, there comes inevitable and sometimes (okay, most of the time) unanswerable questions. What it all comes down to is, how can someone who is intelligent, funny and even a little spontaneous and neurotic, (who doesn't find neurosis cute?) not only have difficulty attracting the opposite sex, but blatant agony in its pre-requisite angst?

This is a position currently being held and regarded with slight irritation and out-right vexation, by thousands of bright, attractive, ambitious young women (and probably some young men too).

Although I know I share this position with others, it is becoming a personal crusade to find all the answers and come to an enlightened plane of complacency or even, dare I say it: happiness?

When that happens, if it ever does, where will I be? I have this annoying tendency of fooling myself into thinking that it might actually occur for me, constantly met with grave disappointment.

I have recently discovered it is always I who am doing the disappointing. It's not my handful of suitors, it's me. I create alternate paradises in which I say and do all the right things, when the truth is, there is just something quintessentially un-dateable about me.

I have always told myself the reason guys aren't interested in having a relationship with me is because I am intelligent, which threatens them, that I'm not by any means or stretch of the imagination, a cover-girl, or that my snarky witticisms are lost on them.

But that was just a cloak in which to hide what has recently become glaringly obvious. In the simplest of terms, and in the most convenient of definitions, there are two types of girls, those you date and those you marry.

I am clearly of the latter stock, making my life stink for now. I suppose I should just suck it up and be content in the rewards I'll reap later in life. Having said that, I feel compelled to state that I'm a great friend. I've always cherished that about myself.

Now, for the first time in my life, I'm beginning to partially regard that gift as a curse. I will forever be the friend, that really cool girl-friend you can confide in, joke with and maybe even admire a little.

Beyond that, I am largely regarded like the plague and avoided at all costs. There's nothing wrong with being friends; friends are good. But, you know what? I have a lot of friends. I don't need any more.

All of what I know of being in love, or at least of having deep feelings for someone reciprocated, is hearsay and my imagination. I know shit. I think that is a great shame.

No wonder I'm having a difficult time navigating my way through the abyss that apparently I am indefinitely doomed to. I am holding my breath, waiting for the epiphany of a lifetime; all I want is to be able to breathe again.