i wasted a decade on a rule nobody told me was optional. | musing no. 118
talk about money, sex, and expectations early. not because it's efficient. because everything after gets easier.
***earned is live on Kindle.***
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the architecture of self → musing no. 101
the architecture of trust → musing no. 90
the architecture of control → musing no. 74
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i met my ex
17 years before i met her.
so when the divorce ended
and dating started again,
i wasn’t re-entering the game.
i was entering a different game.
one i didn’t know the rules to.
—
tinder first.
i swiped the wrong direction
more than once.
everyone looked young.
everyone felt unserious.
it felt less like dating
and more like a waiting room
for something else.
—
then hinge.
different disappointment.
same result.
walked away from that one too.
(that’s its own story. you can read that here.)(subscriber link)
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by then
i wanted one thing.
no performance.
no guessing.
no three weeks of texting
just to find out
we wanted different things.
i thought i was looking
for efficiency.
i wasn’t.
i was looking for clarity.
i just didn’t know it yet.
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so i tried seeking. (premium review link.)
and it was the first time
dating felt like it does
in your late 30s
instead of your early 20s.
people said
what they wanted.
plainly.
here’s what i’m looking for.
here’s what i need.
here’s what i won’t do.
no script.
no slow reveal.
no performative getting-to-know-you
disguised as romance.
it stripped away
all the places
people usually hide.
and distilled everything down
to the only two questions
that actually matter.
what do you want.
does it match
what i want.
—
i used to think
asking the important questions early
would ruin the magic.
that mystery
was part of romance.
that if you talked too soon
about what mattered,
you were somehow
forcing things.
what i learned instead
is that the magic
survives honesty.
fantasy doesn’t.
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then came dab.
we met at a lululemon of all places…
we didn’t ease into it.
we laid it out.
what we wanted.
what we needed.
what mattered.
what didn’t.
and found out
almost immediately
we were already in sync.
that wasn’t where
the relationship
got easier later.
that was where
the relationship started.
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if you’ve never had that conversation this early —
the one that lays everything on the table
before either person has a reason to perform —
that’s the whole mechanism behind red room no. 56.
what to say. when to say it. what it exposes.
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looking back,
it wasn’t seeking
that changed me.
it simply removed
all the places
i used to hide.
it exposed
the code i had been running.
the belief
that compatibility
was something you discovered
months later.
that romance
needed ambiguity.
that clarity
killed attraction.
none of that was true.
it was just old code.
—
i’ve done dating
both ways now.
the slow reveal.
and the immediate truth.
one of them
wastes months
finding out
what the other
tells you in a week.
because attraction
isn’t the hard part.
alignment is.
chemistry can make
two people
feel inevitable.
clear coding tells you
whether they actually are.
from here on,
i’ll choose clarity
every time.
— author
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