I was ready to give Anna one more try before I deleted her number.
“Hey Anna,” I texted her, two days after my previous attempt went unanswered. “Just wanted to follow up on my last text. Let’s grab coffee this week. What’s your schedule like?”
No response.
This, unfortunately, wasn’t the first time a girl vanished before we could even set up a first date — that month. But when I first met Anna, I thought it would be different: We shared flirty glances across a cute coffee shop while working away on our laptops. And despite feeling intimated by all the potential spectators nearby, I still managed to find the courage to approach her, start a conversation, and ask for her number.
“Sure!” she said with a grin as she typed in her first (and last!) name and number into my phone. Within an hour, we exchanged greeting texts and smiling emojis like some budding 21st century romance.
But I never heard from her again.
At first, I felt like a job applicant who just wanted to get a firm rejection so I could move on. But without an answer or excuse, I was stuck in dating purgatory, forced to recall every vivid detail of our conversation to see what — if anything — I did wrong. Was I too pushy? Was I too aloof? Was there a piece of blueberry muffin stuck between my front teeth? Or was I so inept with women I should just quit and avoid further frustration?
As a single, 30-year-old male, I sometimes feel anxious when I see so many people my age in serious relationships. Sure, I consider myself a good candidate — I’m a decent-looking guy who prefers an intimate conversation over a long night of barhopping. But the statistics aren’t encouraging: The average male gets married at age 29 and about 60% of women are already married and off the market by age 30.
Yet in my attempt to find Mrs. Right, I’ve encountered years of frustrating disappointments, consisting of girls who never panned out, girls who had abysmal timing, and the increasing number of girls who vanished with such strange coincidence, it seemed a higher power was sabotaging my dating life.
In one head-scratching series of events, I met a girl at a coffee shop on a quiet Friday night and ended up at a nearby park a few hours later, holding hands and kissing each other underneath the moonlight.
“I can’t believe this is really happening,” she whispered with a smile. “I thought it could only happen in movies.”
12 hours later, however, she texted me saying she loved another guy and could never see me again.
Two weeks after that anticlimactic ending, I went on a first date with another girl that went so well, we barely touched our dinner. Instead, we spent the evening laughing, flirting, and eyeing each other like we were trying to win a staring contest.
Later that night, we kissed underneath a gazebo in a quiet park and I even heard music in my ear. Unfortunately, she later admitted she had a boyfriend and called off our budding relationship. (By “later,” however, I mean “that same night.”)
Maybe I should’ve become an astronaut instead.
In the days after I deleted Anna’s number, I browsed a nearby bookstore and bought An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, written by a decorated Canadian astronaut, Colonel Chris Hadfield. As he advanced throughout his career, he knew his chances of becoming an astronaut were low — like “getting struck by lightning” low — and depended on circumstances beyond his control. For example, if his vision was even marginally nearsighted, he couldn’t make the cut.
“How can someone possibly chase their dreams through decades of obstacles and failures,” I wondered, “with nothing more than hope?”
He simply took the attitude he might never go to space.
To him, success wasn’t about becoming an astronaut: It was about enjoying his work throughout the “long, unheralded journey” of his career, doing the best he could, and refusing to put his self-worth, happiness, and identity on his goal.
When I read those words, I saw the perfect analogy to my dating life. I knew my odds of meeting a woman I’d like to spend the rest of my life with were also very low. But that’s not pessimism; that’s realism — after all, many people have to meet a lot of guys or girls before they find the right person.
And just like becoming an astronaut, I’ve dealt with all kinds of obstacles beyond my control. I’ve met girls when they were in relationships. I’ve met a girl three days before I moved to a different country. And in one ulcer-inducing example, I met a girl on a subway train and, before I could even call to confirm our first date, I accidentally threw away the piece of paper she wrote her number on because I thought it was something else.
There’s also the matter of race. As an Asian-American male who measures a hair under 5’7”, I’ve faced a lot of romantic failure in my attempts at online dating. Even after numerous tries at Tinder, Bumble, and Coffee Meets Bagel (and getting professional help on my profiles), I only achieved 6 matches and one date in all my many months of use.
Although it’s not openly discussed, this prejudice creates a fair amount of resentment and disappointment among Asian-American men as they mutter comments like, “It sucks to be Asian,” or the all-too-common, “Girls don’t like Asian guys.”
But I see the reason for their frustration: Judging by dating statistics, Asian men — and short men too for that matter — are relatively undesirable. Our group ranks dead last when it comes to interracial relationships and preferences despite those same statistics saying we like dating outside our race, even more so than Whites.
Since I couldn’t change my race or my height, I weighed my only other options: Should I continue to feel victimized about these uncontrollable issues or should I use an astronaut-approved paradigm to stop focusing on them? Knowing what would happen if I stuck with the status quo, I decided to be a good astronaut — I decided to make success about enjoying the process of dating and transforming it from a “means to an end” to the end itself.
With that, my frustration diminished. Before, I felt crushed with every rejection, bad date, flake, or breakup because I placed my self-worth and happiness on finding a girl. “I’m not hitting my goal,” I would think. Worse, I wasn’t even sure I was getting closer.
But the moment I learned to enjoy the dating game and accept my Vegas-like odds of success, I stopped fixating on the end goal and started seeing the positives where I couldn’t before. Now I wasn’t limited to celebrating only one victory every lifetime; I could enjoy victories every month, week, or day.
As Col. Hadfield explains, no one enters the space program already a great astronaut. They have to become one. At NASA, novices don’t learn how to fly a Russian rocket ship, circling the Earth at 17,150 mph on Day One — they start from the bottom and spend countless hours, for years, to learn things they might never use just for the chance to, one day, arrive at the launch pad. Worst-case scenario? They over-prepare. And that’s not a bad thing.
The same goes for dating. You don’t go from being a guy who could barely ask a random girl, “What time is it?” to being able to confidently talk to an attractive woman in a busy coffee shop with little more than bravado, caffeine, and a house-made pastry. It takes time and many humiliating, but valuable, baby steps.
Maybe my dating life up until now hadn’t been the disaster I imagined. Maybe these failures actually taught me lessons, forcing me to analyze myself and brainstorm new ways to improve. Bad relationship? Maybe I needed to be more open during conflicts, even if it felt unnatural. Awkward approach? Maybe I should be more energetic to generate lively conversations.
I realized I had been preparing all along. And while those lessons might never bring me to the right girl, I’d much rather be prepared for a successful relationship with Mrs. Right than to have to learn on the fly.
I still find it a little annoying when a girl flat-out disappears, but it’s possible they led to something good in my “long, unheralded journey.” For example, what if the girl I kissed underneath the gazebo didn’t have a boyfriend? What if we dated, fell in love, and got married? I might have never started to think like an astronaut.
At the time, I would’ve growled at anyone’s attempt at solace; but now I know better.
That’s why I have to focus on the journey. Because even if there’s no way to know if or when I’ll ever meet the right girl, get married, and reach my love “launch pad,” who knows? Maybe by doing the best I can and concentrating on the things I can control, I might just increase the odds I was looking for the entire time.
And if that happens, I’ll be ready.
Note: Names have been changed. Sorry, folks.
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