On Being “Honest” With A Dishonest Personal Narrative

I recently experienced an interaction on Bumble where right before a neat woman and I were to set up a phone conversation, she told me that she had recently gotten out of a long term relationship but wanted to be “honest with you (me) about that”. This extremely important piece of information was nowhere to be found in her profile, which is a red flag on top of a red flag. know for a fact had I called her out on it (which would have been a waste of energy) she would have denied it because she would have believed she was being honest with me to begin with. This what being “honest” with a dishonest personal narrative is all about.

Creating A Dishonest Personal Narrative

I’ve met a number of people I thought I was dating who were “dating” because their “normal regularly-scheduled life programming” was interrupted. One was a bike racer in 2010 who crashed and could no longer race. So the internet provided a portal to “do something” while she recovered from her injuries. When she recovered from her injuries, her priorities changed, and our interaction evaporated. She’s still single, from what I can tell, 11 years later.

In 2017 I interacted with a woman who was in the same situation — her “normal regularly-scheduled life programming” was interrupted, I entered the picture, except the difference this time was more flirtation, and making out. However, through my interactions with her, she revealed to me her tendencies to use men — specifically this guy she knew who was into her, and she led him on enough to get him to drop everything to come over to her place and help her out after surgery, all while being entirely disinterested in him.

One of the conditions of her surgery is that it prevented her from having sex. As soon as she was cleared by the doc that she could have sex again, she said she didn’t feel anything for me romantically anymore, and that “we could be friends”. I knew this was not a coincidence, and because of the circumstances, having gone out 5–6 times (can’t remember anymore!) I called bullshit on that to which she replied “I am being COMPLETELY honest with you.” This is the point I really learned about how people are “honest” with their own dishonest personal narratives.

It was egregious because the reality was that she was only interested in me as short term entertainment and the offer of “friendship” was not genuine. She claimed to be “honest” with this dishonest narrative to make herself not look like an asshole. To quote Frank Zappa: “Ladies, you can be an asshole, too.” There was a neat article on the net around that time I came across written by a woman who wrote that men should never except an invitation to friendship from a woman who broke things off romantically because not only is it not genuine, but accepting such an invitation will result in a further lack of respect. I’ve taken that to heart.

In the dating world, the word “friend” (and it’s associated phrases) takes a beating. The “friend zone” is a myth. From a loved/hated NBC sitcom. Nobody is “friend-zoned” — if you think that’s where you’re at, you’re not there, you’re in social purgatory, and you need to figure out how to get out of it. People who think they’re putting someone “there” have their own dishonest personal narrative, as do the people who think they’ve been put “there”!

“Friends first” is also social purgatory. You can’t make a man/woman/person develop a friendship before the relationship develops. Humans are not wired that way, unless you’re 100% Puritan and God/Buddha/Zeus/Satan help you if you are. “Friends first” is what people to keep themselves from getting hurt or investing emotionally in another person, and it’s its own dishonest personal narrative. The only way you can be “friends first” in a relationship context is if the person was already a friend organically in the first place.

Then there’s “friends with benefits”. I feel like this is honestly what most single people over 40 really want. Someone to bone from time to time, hang out with, and do stuff, and not invest emotionally at all. This doesn’t work ever, because one personal invariably falls for the other emotionally and it crumbles with potentially devastating results. (See: almost relationship) On paper it seems like the perfect “relationship” solution, but it just doesn’t pan out because humans aren’t wired to be devoid of emotional attachment. The real challenge here is that too many people think a relationship is a perpetual exotic vacation. Maybe not as much in rural areas, but in urban centers, most definitely.

All of this applies to men who do the same lame/shitty things to women, too. The pandemic has made dating worse because like our own political extremes, it’s gotten extreme, too. People are jumping into relationships faster than they normally would, trying to fill voids left by destroyed relationships while omitting key information up front(!), and then just being completely nonplus about dating thinking that an emotionally reconstituted Anthony Bourdain/Robin Williams/Tawny Kitaen(?) who can afford the time off, the plane tickets to Bali for 3 months, while also fitting in the overhead bin of the aircraft — will just magically appear without them having to do anything.

It’s bad out there, but if we can create honest personal narratives, we stand a much better chance of connecting with people in very disconnected times.