Fireworks

Why some amazing dates lead to dead-ends

Everyone I know can recount the details of an incredible date that didn’t go anywhere. Mine happened last year in the nook of an Italian restaurant where, for the first time in years, I felt a real romantic connection with another person.

There were fireworks, literally, they started going off while we were kissing on the walk home, something that felt so on the nose that I suspected I might unknowingly be living inside a Richard Curtis film.

There were all the surface-level hallmarks of a memorable date: candles, fireworks, handholding, eye gazing, kissing in the rain (this evening somehow managed to embody all of the trimmings of a Rom-Com). But what was also there under all of that, from my perspective anyway, was a genuine connection.

We met up a few times but this one night was separate from the other occasions, a date which had the distinct and rare feeling of beginning a new chapter. And when that feeling snuck away as quickly as it had appeared, I spent months wondering why it had left.

When reflecting on a memorable date, I think it’s important to separate the chemistry you had from anything external. I call the external stuff the icing. Candlelight, a romantic restaurant, fireworks, a sunset – that’s all icing. Those are all things that can make an evening hold a level of artificial significance that may trip you up in the long run.

When my mum lived in France in her 20s, she once had a crush on a friend who lived in Paris. She used to stay at his when visiting for work and she has, on several occasions, told me the story of one night when they were on the balcony of his apartment and as he snapped his fingers, the Eiffel Tower lit up right in front of them.

I imagine my mother in her youth viewing the interaction as a sign that maybe they were meant to be, rather than the reality that he had repeatedly watched the lights turn on at the same time every night and perfected an impressive party trick. Sometimes it’s easy to take intense or memorable moments such as these and place meaning on them that isn’t there in the first place.

One of my best friends Laurie had an incredible date around the same time as mine last year – driven into a frenzy by this man’s silence and in a bid to check if he had blocked her on WhatsApp she accidentally added him into the girl’s group chat, something which never fails to make me chuckle no matter how often I remember it happening. 

Laurie and I banded together in our torment around the inconclusive endings of our situations and shared indignance that despite being intelligent, thoughtful and perceptive women, these men had made us feel like children.

The main thing that stuck with me wasn’t that my time with the man in question had been a dead end, but that I never got any confirmation that it meant anything to him at all, causing me to question my perception of reality and the truth. 

Often in these situations where one amazing date leads to nothing of substance, there must be some kind of barricade preventing it from going any further. That could be the headspace or situation one of you is in, such as being freshly out of a relationship; planning to move away; or in love with someone else. 

Or, and what I think is most often the case, one person has dug beneath the surface and seen something the other hasn’t yet. Either, one of you found a golden nugget of potential that the other had not yet discovered. Or, one of you could see the cracks below that the other did not yet have a view of. And it’s important to remember that if one person knows it couldn’t work for them, that means that, in the long run, it wouldn’t work for either of you.

I would like to say that self-love is all you need and other people don’t complete you. But most of us have a deep desire and need for a romantic connection, and I know that the memory of this situation will continue to sting ever so slightly until I meet someone I feel equally as strongly about.

Until then, I’m endlessly grateful for the deep connections I have with my closest friends. I often think about who my friend Laurie will end up with – how smart, brilliant and big-hearted they’ll need to be to deserve her. And whenever I think that about her I try to extend the same feelings of warmth and affection to myself.

Laurie once sent me a book with this message scribbled inside: “I had intentions of writing a quote here from Laurie Lee, a poet. My namesake (unfortunately a misogynist) but I can’t find it so I’ll paraphrase… something about how all of us have so many stories and experiences and insights within us that our bodies/minds/souls are like libraries, housing all these books yet to be written. I’d read your library.”

I think about that concept often. All the times our volumes will be perused and skimmed through, which lines others will commit to memory, and which pages will be folded down then never revisited.

No matter which chapters are dead ends and whose collection she eventually decides to combine with her own, I’ll be there to read every new page she writes.