An Open Letter

I spent the entire day with a today. We started around 11:20, and it is now 10:30 PM. I had fun, and I am happy with today, but I will say that I don’t think I’m interested in her anymore. There were several things that just made me less and less interested. I think the biggest one for sure was she mentioned that she had a dream about a guy that she talked to like two years ago, and so she asked him out next week. And this reminds me of I think the original reason why I kind of lost interest in Her. She had told me she was not really ready for a relationship, and while we were talking and flirting all that she kind of started flirting with someone else at something I invited her for. And I know that the number one thing that turns off a suitor is expressing interest into other people. But I also know that we have been friends for a while now and so she just might not be interested in me like that. But I think past that, there were a couple things that made me kind of feel like her caring about my birthday or me was more of an exception rather than the norm. She mentioned that she was happy. She got to do the stuff for my birthday because her brother doesn’t really celebrate his birthday either. And I kind of feel like in a way I was a proxy for him. And also, she didn’t notice that I had mentioned. I don’t like coconut a few times, as we apparently made a coconut cake. And it mostly just kind of felt like she wanted to bake for baking sake, rather than for me, which is not a bad thing, but just not necessarily a super strong indicator that she cares about me like that. But also we had talked about what we expect out of a relationship, or what we are looking for, and she couldn’t really articulate it well, but ended up, essentially saying that her demand was for the person to be chivalrous. And for her that meant things like opening her car door for her or giving her the princess treatment. And I felt like a bit of the ick from that, but we did talk about it a bit, and I think I kind of isolated my issue with that. I think that sort of stuff is putting an expectation on the man in the relationship, which is fine if there are other expectations put solely on the woman. And this mostly revolves around my belief that a relationship should fundamentally be equitable. Like skill based matchmaking. And when there are expectations like this, it feels like it is because the woman is performing her traditional, gender, roles, or expectations, but that is something that I don’t want in a relationship. I think all of the expectations that I have for a relationship are ones that they also have for me. And so if someone expects me to compensate in certain ways by being chivalrous, for example whether it’s financially, or in these small acts of services constantly, it feels bad to me because it feels like that will never be reciprocated. I can’t really think of anything that I would want my partner to do for me that I wouldn’t be doing for them. And I think that it just ends up feeling like a One Direction service towards this person. And I don’t think that’s what I look for in a relationship.