This is for the next time you’re hovering your thumb over the ‘send’ button of a text message to a dude and fretting about seeming ‘crazy.’
Today it struck me how many times that word pops up in the dating world. Frankly, I’m over it. How often have we heard our guy friends tell stories about the ‘crazy’ girl they’re seeing, merely because she migth’ve texted him first suggesting they hang out, or even (gasp) drunk texted him. How often have we stopped a friend wanting to call a guy for clarification after he went cold for whatever reason, out of fear of her appearing crazy? How often have we stopped ourselves saying something too forthright to a guy we’re seeing, because, ya’know, to send a ‘hi’ text to a human who has seen you naked is pretty fucking crazy.
It needs to stop. Guys need to break the habit. And girls need to, frankly, stop giving a fuck about it at all.
Let me just say straight up here that I’m not saying girls can’t be dicks when it comes to dating. Especially these days, where it seems less like dating and more like a competition of ‘who can give the least of a fuck’ out of the two. But in this instance, a male dismissing basic normal human reaction from a female as crazy is a deeply ingrained habit. In fact, one journalist suggests it dates back before the 19th century in which leader of century sexuality studies Henry Havelock Ellis suggested women were just as “reactive, nervous, violent and emotional” as a child, much more emotionally unstable thus less viable to be taken seriously “than your average lovely white man”. Guys, you have your work cut out of you, breaking a deeply ingrained habit thousands of years old. But I’m sorry, in this case we have it much worse.
Male writer Dr Nerdlove (can we find his actual name Hayley? Ahah) says “ [I realized] when my friends and I would talk about our crazy exes or what-have-you, more often than not, we weren’t talking about ex girlfriends or random dates who exhibited signs of genuine mental health issues. For the most part, crazy meant “acting in a way I didn’t like.”
And aint that just it. Case in point; enter Mr-Jet-Ski. Mr Jet Ski was a man my friend was seeing and, as the name suggests, was very proud of his jet ski. He spoke of taking friend out on jet ski, no fewer than seven times. He showed her jet ski, even let her sit on jet ski… parked in the garage. Thrice, he actually set a date for said jet ski outing, all of which fell through due to work, weather, ominous signs in the tea leaves etc. When my friend decided to ask when they actually were taking said jet ski out you know, like, in the sea- the guy was taken aback by her forthrightness. She was acting pretty crazy man, re; she called him out on his flakiness, and he didn’t like it.
Second case in point: Mr-Straight-Up.
Named thus on account of him priding himself on always being, you guessed it, ‘straight up’, was bewildered to find, when he went cold on my friend out of the blue, she ‘crazily’ thought she could seek a straight-up answer as to why. Dude, you lost interest. You met someone else. You weren’t in the right head space.
Or maybe you, as one friend helpfully suggested, dropped your phone down a long dark well. It totally happens (perhaps not so much the latter). It’s life. You’re not a bad person because of it. However, if you pride yourself on ‘owning’ everything you say and do, the girl ain’t crazy for asking why you’re not ‘owning’ the fact you treated her like your girlfriend in front of your friends, talked to her as though you both had a future, had sex with her and then never called her again.
Girls, here’s my message to you. Don’t shut your feelings down out of fear of appearing too keen, or crazy, or whatever. I see it so often and it breaks my heart. I don’t mean to give you full licence to let your freak flag fly and knit that winter scarf out of his pubes you’d been slowly collecting in a box under your bed. But you aren’t crazy for expecting some basic common courtesy in return if you send a damn text.
So you appear too keen? Fuck it. If this past year has taught me anything it is life is short and it turns on a pinhead and you don’t know how long you’re here for. I for one am not going waste my time being anything less but raw and authentic. I’m not going to hide behind smoke screens and extended pauses between text replies to appear like the mysterious chilled-girl I am not. I like you, I clicked with you, I want you to get in my life. No? Right. Next.
If that makes me crazy, I’ll take it.
