Overview

Dating is equivalent to sacrifices,
Sacrifices means tolerance.
Can a successful dating life survive without these two virtues?
Where exactly do we strike that balance?
Welcome to my dating life and be the judge of that...

After a series of hanging out and doing fun stuff together the big question finally pops up. This is one questions that terrifies us as men, “what are we?”

I’ve never really understood why we find this question scary, is it because of its ambiguity? The timing of this question perhaps? (Because this question always find men unaware) or is it that we just don’t like committing or rather we are afraid of commitments? This is a research that is yet to be done.

When she finally brought up the topic I was so confused, I mean, who would bring such a topic after an adventurous afternoon we had spent swimming? The idea of swimming was simply to relax our minds and bodies, why then would she put my mind under so much pressure?

One thing that you should understand is that this question can either make you the happiest man on earth or spoil everything for you, it just depends on how you’ll answer the question.

“I think we are friends who enjoy each other’s company a lot”, I answered. I could feel the tension building up to a point you could even touch it (yeah, It was that serious) “just that, friends?”, she asked with a tone that read anger and disappointment, I had to save this conversation before it got out of hand, “but I’ve been thinking about this issue and the thing is I feel that we could be more than just friends”, I added. “You think so?” she asked.

This question confused me even more because she said it without any emotion so it was kind of hard to tell whether she was excited or still disappointed, but I was already deep in the conversation so there was no option of backing out. “Yes, I think so. Will you be my girlfriend?”

I will make it clear that I was not coerced into a relationship, the true story is that I liked this woman a lot but the courage to ask her to be my girlfriend was the problem and so I took chance and spoke my heart during the most critical stage of a relationship , the ‘what are we’ stage.

I was so happy when she accepted to be my girl, I remember clearly that evening as I sat on my bed thinking about the future. One thing I was sure of is that my life wasn’t going to be the same again.

Sacrifices have to be made in order to experience growth and progress and this wasn’t any different in my dating life, I had to regulate or even do away with some things I used to do often. First I regulated my ‘boys’ club time’ , this is one of the things that we as men hold so dear, a day with your boys just hanging out drinking and competing in FIFA PlayStation 4! I could miss out on some of these experiences just to hang out with my girl. I also made peace with the fact that I had to spend like a minimum of two hours on my phone just chatting with her talking about nothing, at first I had a hard time but with time I found it easy and fun.

Another thing that I didn’t know could be affected by having a relationship was decision making. As a single person the decision making process is very easy, it is characterized by the word “I”, I want to do this or that, simple! But when you’re in a relationship that “I” is replaced by “WE”, this means that any decision made must come from the two of you and so you’ll frequently find yourself using phrases like “…babe should we do this” or “honey I think we should….”

All these changes can be challenging at first but as you move on you get to find out that one can learn a lot while in a relationship than when you’re single, for example, if we all decided to make decisions on the basis of “WE”, wouldn’t it be a perfect world? It would simply mean that any decision I make I’m putting others into consideration. Think about it, all wars and conflicts start with everyone trying to fulfill the “I” in them.

It’s been one year of dating for me and if you ask whether I made the right decision then a big YES would be my answer. Now will you please excuse me because I need to chat with my girlfriend on phone?

WRITER: Mwangi K(IX)