I'm emotional. I'm sexual. I'm evolved.
I'm educated, well-spoken, traveled, career-oriented and sometimes my shirt comes off.
It's become so daunting in today's society to be someone who expresses himself in multiple ways. It seems that we are either meant to strictly be a wholesome boy next door, or a raging sex fiend.
The "Madonna" or the "whore" if you will. I don't know if there truly ever was a male equivalent, but I think you get where I am going with this.
However, if for some reason you start as that wholesome boy next door, which most of us do at one point, but happen to date casually, or have a one-night-stand or grow up a little bit then BOOM, you have crossed over to the "dark side."
But why?
Why is it that we have pushed ourselves into these crazy binaries that ultimately set us up to fail either way?
No one, and I mean no one, is an angel 100 percent of the time, and the same holds true on the flip side.
Personally, I'd like to think of myself as someone in the middle. For lack of a better example, a "Carrie" if you will.
Meredith Brooks sang it the best, "I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I do not feel ashamed."
Just because I love love, and want to find my soul mate doesn't mean I don't enjoy sex, or that I don't date. I just happen to be somewhat pickier when it comes to whom I choose to share my mind, body and soul with.
Personally, I don't think this is a bad thing.
Whether it's super serious, or slightly more casual, I still hold onto the fact that a real connection is going to serve me far better than some form of instant gratification.
I think we need to start reexamining what it means to be in a modern relationship that is all encompassing of who we are as an evolved society. We live longer, we get married later, we have infinite ways of connecting.
However, we seem to be stuck in an ideal that is far less superior to whom we are as people, and if for some reason you happen to deviate from this "old normal" than you are in fact the deviant.
Maybe you will find your one true love, and stay together forever, but statistics state that isn't very likely. Maybe you don't ever want to fall in love, and simply want to be promiscuous forever, to this I have to ask, "Why?"
Either way we're all incredibly different and unique individuals that are searching, cruising, looking for something: a connection.
It's this common idea of a connection, and in what ways are we truly looking for it that I believe we need to start understanding better, so that moving forwards as individuals, and as a society, we can better prepare for the future, and understand ourselves.
Let's be honest, let's communicate, let's change the way we are expected to be. Divorce is rising, less and less people are choosing to have children and we still don't have male equivalents to the Sex and the City women. Why?
Relationships are so complex and complicated, so until we find that magic formula, maybe it's time we started trying something new.
Let's get out of our own way, out of our own head, and out of something that just isn't working.