From Her Perspective

If you think about it, the odds of meeting The One are very, very small.  I mean, you have to go through a lot of horrible dates and terrible, sad breakups to end up with the person who is your Perfect Match.  And, to be honest, even then, most people end up picking the wrong person anyway.  The whole mucking through the frogs to get to the prince (or princess, as it were), can be frustrating and lonely, but we all have to go through it to find our ultimate happiness.  I mean, it’s out there.  If I can find it through my Jack-soaked, horrible-jokes-that-I-think-are-funny-that-nobody-else-does-haze, so can you.   

But this isn’t about that (although if the girls out there used my dating techniques, there would be nary a single chick around.  Okay, fine, I’m teasing.  It’s dumb luck I’m not still living at home, waiting for my first kiss.)  It’s about something my friends have been experiencing lately and something I went through many, many times in my life.  I want to talk about what happens, and what we all end up doing, when we’re bored.

It seems that when we don’t have anyone interesting in our lives and there are no great prospects on the horizon, we allow ourselves to become interested in guys and girls that aren’t right for us.  I mean, the chick with the great ass and DSLs is probably a great girl to bring home on a Friday night, but when you start going to the movies during the week and meeting the friends, you have to be honest with yourself and what you are doing.  This person is a Filler, and you’re not treating it as such. 

Fillers are people who are perfectly nice (okay, fine, or perfectly insane), that happen to come along just when you are having a cold streak (read: not getting any) and there’s nobody else who’s actually interesting to distract you.  Fillers often disguise themselves by being super excited to hang out with you all the time, but whenever you do hang out, you find yourself trying to convince yourself that their perfume/cologne isn’t too much, that the shitty way they treat the wait staff doesn’t actually bother you, and that their nut-hugger jeans are actually attractive.  Although these may sound shallow, you should trust these signals.  You’re making excuses because you don’t actually like the person, but are so frantic to not be alone that you say and do anything in order to believe otherwise.  I’ll tell you now, it never works.

Fillers tend to last a couple of months, and usually just when you start telling your friends that you actually do like this person and that it’s something special (and they roll their eyes as soon as you turn your back), the Filler pulls the classic move.  They tell you they’re not that into it.  This is when you fly into your Filler Rage.  You realize that for the past eight or nine weeks you’ve only PRETENDED to like this person, and forced the issue, and how dare they break up with you when you were the one who was questioning it the whole time, anyway?  It’s a vicious cycle, leading to rage blackouts, excessive drinking, and in some cases, going right back out and finding another Filler to hate-f%ck to get over the injustice of the whole thing.

I do not write about this to warn you against falling into this pattern of behavior.  People told me a hundred times to drop the guy that would invite and then un-invite me to parties, on trips and only liked to sit around the house instead of doing fun stuff like, say, going to McDonalds, but I wouldn’t.  I didn’t believe them, because I figured there was no way I would ever actually settle for someone instead of being genuinely interested.  And every time they’d break my heart, or piss me off, I would be completely surprised.  It’s probably because nobody ever thinks they are actually making a bad decision.  I just want you to be aware of how prevalent this behavior is so you don’t end up getting all angry over the fact that you wasted all this time with someone who was pretty wrong for you from the start, and everyone knew it.  Including you.

I guess I’m just saying that if you are going to do it, which you are, just be smart about it.  Be aware of the fact that he or she isn’t The One, and treat it accordingly.  I’m not saying you can’t have fun with someone, because you can.  It’s when we start trying to trick ourselves into believing there is more to something than there really is that we start having problems.  I know you are smart, funny, all-around awesome people that deserve the best.  So go out and get it, okay?  Good luck!