by Kate Garbino.
Imagine that you had saved enough money to go travel on your own. And let’s just say that you decided to go to Barcelona. You get out of that cheap hotel lobby, with your summer attire, and you proceed to explore the majestic place. You then decided to go to a small shop that you searched over Yelp that had good reviews, because you know the best way to judge how good a place is by tasting their food, especially their coffee. And as soon as you enter that small coffee shop, you saw this man: 6-foot-tall, chiseled jawline, tanned and muscular — and then your eyes meet. And just like that, you feel like you’re in a movie where two people see eye to eye and then it’s love at first sight.
BOOM! You’ve found your soulmate!
Except that real life romance may not happen at first sight.
I remember fantasizing about my favorite Korean actors doing exactly that during my early to mid-twenties. And then the fantasizing shifted to my crushes. I remember when I’d usually carry a measuring stick because you never know when your “potential” boyfriend might appear. Oh, the agony that I would have every time I looked at my calendar because as time passed I got impatient of waiting and tired of “grading” every guy I meet.
Here’s the thing — every guy is so different from each other. Not all guys will be taller than us, tanner than us, would have a doctoral degree, etc. And if we carry our measuring stick, we miss out on the most beautiful thing we could ever experience, probably better than spending all our money in traveling. You want to know what that thing is? The experience of the other person. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have standards, in fact, I encourage every single woman out there to have a standard. But this standard is not what we carry every time we go out or every time we meet a new guy. The standard should be “taken out” when you start to get to know the person, when he finally asks you if you both can go on a date. And what standard should we look for? I’ll take it from an article from Thought Catalog (as written by Rania Naim):
“Date someone you don’t have to impress because they’re already impressed by you and who you are, by being with you and by loving you…And finally, date someone who doesn’t make you feel like dating them is a race you need to win, that you have to compete for their attention…date someone who thinks you’re overqualified to even participate in these ridiculous games.”
Stop and think about it. Would you want someone to measure you on their “stick”? And if you don’t fit their “standard”, what if they just assume you’re not worth knowing? We all have something to offer, something to give, and that’s worth pursuing, worth knowing. Cut yourself some slack and go out there and break that yardstick you’re carrying! And who knows? Barcelona might just be your honeymoon destination!
Leave a Reply