Last summer, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine who gave me a bit of advice that I didn’t understand at the time. He told me not to ever tell a man in his thirties how you feel about him. He also instructed me to never let him see you cry, no matter how bad you hurt. He said this because at the time, I was dating a man in his thirties and although I wasn’t ready to “jump the broomstick” with him, I liked him enough to want to spend some considerable time with him.

Coming out of a long term relationship and getting back into the dating scene proved itself to be challenging. Back in ’95, there weren’t nearly as many options for dating as there is now. If you wanted to meet someone, you had to go out and hope that you would run into someone that looked good to you. Ten years ago, it was all about being face to face and you were either feeling me or you weren’t.

Now we’re living in an era where hooking up where the nearest man is just a mouse click away. Traditional dating has changed into something that I’m still not quite sure what to call it. I understand that things change, times have changed…and men have changed. It seems to me that what my buddy was trying to tell me was not to put myself out there too quickly because it allegedly gives a man an emotional advantage. I understand the whole ideology of not saying “I love you” too quickly, but I also believe that he was actually trying to take it a step further by also including any feelings of admiration. Don’t let a man know how much you like him even if it’s apparent that you do. And that surprised me because my first response was, “Why”?

If you really like someone and enjoy spending time with him, why shouldn’t you let him know it? Could it be that things have changed that much in ten years? Are we shifting into these non-feeling beings where what counts is who has the upper hand in the relationship? And if that relationship doesn’t work for whatever reason, do you get replaced as easily as you change your socks? I don’t get that.

I always thought that you took your time when you met someone new and that as time passed and you realized that your relationship had surpassed the point of dating, it was okay to reveal how you felt. Although the timeframe for this revelation varies from person to person, the end result should always be the same.

It seems like in this age of “Dial-A-Man”, it appears like we’re treating each other as if we’re some type of disposable commodity and that if our immediate need isn’t being met we move onto the next man in the blink of an eye. It’s easier to find someone new the moment that heavy emotions become involved than to try to find out what the problem is and then fix it. Isn’t it funny? I always thought that doing something like that was called “working at a relationship”. Relationships are complex, and issues aren’t always easily resolved as much as we would like them to be.

Even still, the very thought that I shouldn’t tell the person I care about how or what I feel seems absurd, but then again, no one wants to be vulnerable to anyone else. It seems like along with the advent of modern technology came a certain amount of emotional laziness that no one seems to want to own up to.

We’ve become comfortable, perhaps complacent, and that’s not a good thing. It almost seems as if we want all of the benefits of a relationship, yet we’re not willing to invest any of the work that it takes to keep it going. Or maybe what we’re looking for is just a safer way of loving – or rather, loving without excess emotions which seems like an oxymoron. After all, isn’t love one of the most powerful emotions that exists? And isn’t one facet of being in love entail becoming vulnerable to someone else? I always thought that it did because to me, when you become vulnerable to someone else, that also brings trust into play. And I was taught to believe that love and trust go hand in hand.

I guess that’s why I couldn’t understand what my buddy was trying to tell me initially. But the more I thought about it, the more it began to make sense. He was trying to tell me not to tell a man how you feel about him too soon…or at the very minimum, to wait until you know how he feels about you. As far as not letting the man see you cry, he was trying to say not to show the man how vulnerable you are; that perhaps by doing that, it may take away from their perception of your inner strength. And now that I’ve taken a good look around me, I believe more than ever that he’s right.