Always a Groomsman, Never a Bride.

I've been battling a bit of writer's block the past few days.  I put a lot of pressure on myself to write in here regularly, but I am also not one to sit down and write unless something gets me all fired up and it becomes necessary to vocalize it.  And this is something so very universal, that I am sure I am not saying anything you haven't all independently thought of over your personal experiences with dating.  But I digress.

I believe human beings are hardwired to want most the things they do not have.  And this becomes difficult when you are trying to maintain a relationship with someone who has the things that you want, and they won't give them to you. The hardest part not being that they have it, but more so that what you have isn't what they want.  At least, it's not what they think they want - because they already have it.

Let me explain. 

A friend of mine recently developed a friendship with a girl who will often express the qualities in him she wishes she could find in someone else.  Which is completely backwards - are you not saying that I am what you are looking for?  And is it merely because I am available to you that you keep looking for those things elsewhere?  Well, he's been down about it.  "I'm always the nice guy - the one they want their boyfriends to be like."  Yeah. Well... that's life.

I have maintained a certain level of friendship with HSF since he has left for college.  And often times he will mention to me the qualities in the girls down at school that he doesn't like.  The fact that they are more like this, and less like me. Or at least that's what it reads like.  And it's a tough pill for me to swallow.  Constantly hearing this description of the girl he is looking for, that on more than one point seems to be a pretty close description of me.  But, guess what? It's still not me.

I have mostly guy friends.  And I have struggled for so long watching them all go off in search of this dream girl that I am pretty sure is a close fit to everything they know I already am.  But I am just as guilty of it as they are.  I have looked at them in a nonsexual way for over 10 years, and when I look more closely at what I want in a man they are the names the first spring to mind.  They are smart, kind, funny, driven, and passionate men.  But because I have always gotten to enjoy these qualities from them with no romantic relationship having to exist - I have never looked to them for anything physical.  (Okay, maybe drunkenly after a wedding, but that's it.)

So I don't have any answers or anything to offer really - at least any more than validating that this is happening to everyone.  All us single people with friends that is.  So what are our options?  We can either move on from the people that we stand in front of, offering what seems to be everything that they are looking for, yet never take.  Or we can sit idly by as they hunt for someone else, within view of our bleeding hearts, and always wonder if walking away could be that one thing to make them see it's always been you.