Life is great; all is going along just swimmingly. You are a strong, independent, young woman and nothing is going to undermine that.
Well, I’ve got news for you: something will, and when it does it usually turns out to be one of your nearest and dearest friends – regrettably through nothing more than her good intentions. Because in the eyes of others you are not ‘single and ready to mingle.’ You are lonely and this must be remedied. Fast.
‘Oh Emmm Geee, so you know Jake’s friend, Sam?? The one we met outside the Rad Cam?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Well, Jake told me he really fancies you. Exciting huh?’
Let’s just step back for a reality check here. This ‘Sam’ barely saw you, he definitely can’t remember your name, and Jake has clearly run out of things to say to his girlfriend if you’re becoming their topic of choice.
So what do we do with this precious gem of information? We’ve all been there before. At first, it gets brushed aside:
‘Oh no, that’s ridiculous. I’m far too busy to even care. I’m not interested at all; in fact, I’d rather die than go there.’
Blah, blah, blah. Great, good. Get on with your life. Power to you.
But then one day when you’re alone with your thoughts it creeps up on you, and despite having had absolutely no further contact with Sam, you begin to reconsider. He’s really not as bad as you thought. He’s quite nice actually. And you DEFINITELY shared some great eye contact outside the Rad Cam the other day. Maybe you could be interested after all?
OK, let’s step back from the situation again. You’ve just convinced yourself to like someone off the back of (at tops) an 8-second encounter. This bodes well.
While the self-inflicted mind-fuck is going on, your dear friend is still adding fuel to the fire at a rate that would make a pyromaniac proud…
‘Oh, Sam was talking about you the other day.’
(Yeah, that’s probably because I waved at him across the street like a loon on meds and he’s now concerned for my mental health.)
‘Has he added you on Facebook yet?’
(No! But now you’ve mentioned it let me get on that straight away. What did you say his surname was?)
While you wait for the golden moment of having your friend request accepted, you may as well take a quick glance through the profile pictures, they can tell you so much about a person. Compatibility checklist here we go…
There are a couple of girls in some of the pictures but they’re probably just his cousins so nothing to worry about there. He seems to have travelled a lot too, which your parents will LOVE. And he’s sporty too! Table tennis is such an underrated sport these days but he pulls it off completely (Note to self: ask mum to send up that racket from home. It’s never too late to take up a new hobby).
This Facebook stalking period is inevitable and usually lasts as long as it takes for you to see him again, which, with all the preparation you’ve been doing, should go very smoothly. But while knowing your subject in other circumstances is an advantage, it never seems to translate as well into social situations:
‘Oh my god, what happened to your moustache? I thought you were doing Movember.’
‘Uh… no, I did that last year.’
Great. Just fucking fantastic.
At this point, it is probably best to just admit defeat, crawl home and rip the shrine down while you wait for your friend to fabricate another potential lover to cheer you up with. The circle is oh-so-vicious.
