My Expectations Are Too High?!

It's snowing like a motherfucker right now. Enough to make a wampa die from fright. And yet, I needed dinner, so I tromped out to my car and headed to Wal-Mart. Because, in my neck of the woods, Wal-Mart is virtually the only place to get what I needed. And I also wanted to see what movies were new on Blu-Ray (Nothing too interesting except for Arrival).

Whilst I was perusing the frozen foods, I ran into someone I knew years ago and haven't seen since Batman was still a Tim Burton flick. I was confident that with my beard and my hair all long and shit, this dude wouldn't recognize me, but I was dead wrong. I should've worn my Stormtrooper helmet. Of course, that may have given me away even faster.

The dude approached, and after I got over the shock that I'd been recognized, we exchanged pleasantries. His next question: "Don't you love it when our wives send us out in this kind of weather?" I laughed it off and explained that I was still single, and for all intents and purposes, retired from the dating racket.

What followed was a sermon about why I shouldn't give up. It was filled with the usual cliches like "It'll happen when you're not looking for it" and "It's not about finding the right person, it's about being the right person". I hate this shit and I'm pretty convinced that couple-ized folk say crap like this just so they feel good about themselves.

Anyway, I shot down his points one by one until he got to one that made me mad enough to beat him to death with a stack of frozen pizzas. "Maybe you want too much. Maybe your expectations are too high", the guy says. MOTHERFUCKER. I was so pissed I had to cut him off and leave before I went nuclear.

"Maybe you want too much. Maybe your expectations are too high." That must be it. You know me so well, despite the fact that stars have formed and burned out in the time since we last saw each other. Wait, no. All you know about me is Jack and Shit, and Jack left town. (Any Army of Darkness fans reading?) Allow to enlighten you a little bit...

1. I expect to be alone for forever. FOOOOOOOOOREEEEEEEEVEEEEEERRRRR, like Squints would say. I wouldn't think your expectations could get any lower than that.
2. You don't know what I want. Hell, I don't think even my closest friends know what exactly I'm looking for, and I've talked about dating with them a fuck ton more than I've talked to you about it. If they don't know, why the fuck would you?!
3. I'm 98% sure this would've ended with him offering to set me up had I let it run on. Yeah. I've met women through friends and other people, and I've decided that they're even worse at picking dates for me than I am. I'm pretty sure that couple-ized folks just see two single people who are lonely and they think "He's alone and sad and she's alone and sad. They should be together." They don't put much more thought into it than that. And that's a recipe for failure.
4. I hate being lonely, more than anything there is. More than the the DCEU. More than Donald "Orange-Face Whinypants" Trump. More than the motherfucking New England Patriots. (I'm a Dolphins fan. what did you expect?) Well, almost anything. The one thing that's worse than loneliness: being stuck in a relationship with the wrong person. I've been through that, and it's the most hatefully soul-crushing thing I've ever experienced. That includes my brother being murdered. I can NEVER put myself through that again. I won't.
5. Therefore, I'm lonely by choice. And since I only seen to attract women I'm not interested in, I see no use in trying to date. If you only attract the wrong person, what's the use? 

As for what I'm looking for, I could give you a big, long fucking laundry list of qualities and personality traits I find attractive: smart, funny, creative, beautiful (at least, I need to find her beautiful), and so on. But even that wouldn't really encapsulate it all that well. In the end, I'm really looking for two things:

• The first thing is I need to feel a pull, a compulsion that drives me to want to want to get to know her better. Something that fascinates me about her. Call that infatuation if you want, if I don't feel a pull toward a person, there's no chance I'll remain interested. I get bored with people really fast.
• The second thing is something I've only ever encountered twice, but now that I know this exists, I'll be damned if I'm ever gonna get into a relationship if I don't feel that. I'm not sure what exactly you call it, so I'll try to explain it. It's that feeling that when I'm with someone, no matter where we are, regardless how many other people are around, she's the only person there with me. It's like when I'm with her, everybody around us just disappears. She and I are the only two people in the universe. I love that feeling. I need that feeling.

The problem is that I don't attract women who make me feel like this. I tend to attract women who aren't smart or funny or anything else that might spark my interest. Nobody who makes me feel that pull. Same with the ladies people set me up with. I either get women who feel like they can mold me into something I'm not (and don't want to be) or women who bore me to tears. And, at the risk of sounding like a narcissist, I deserve more. I deserve someone who captures my imagination and fills every one of my needs. We all do. And I guess I'm not afraid of loneliness enough to settle. That's about all there is to it.

Anyway, now that I've nattered on way too goddamned long, I'mma close this up. To the guy at Wal-Mart: Thanks for the fucking sucky-ass advice. I promise it won't stir me to action. And if wanting to be with someone I feel compelled to spend time with and who makes every other woman in the world (figuratively) disappear is too much, I guess I'm up Shit Creek in a leaky toboggan. But then again, loneliness is really all I expect.