Lets talk about sex: Love or just waiting for the next best thing?

I had a very interesting conversation this week with a friend of mine. She has been obsessing over this guy ever since he stopped talking to her in early December. To her credit, it ended abruptly and she was pretty upset by it. But this is what I don’t get: She looked at me and said “I don’t know why I thought we could be soul mates; we couldn’t even have an intellectual conversation.”

As she continued to describe him, he embodied every characteristic of someone she cannot stand. Sure, we all know the saying “opposites attract” but what if the only attraction between two individuals comes the fact that it is fun to fit our bodies together like puzzle pieces? Her situation made me wonder: Are we looking for love, or are we just settling for what is served up on the platter right in front of us?

You might remember when I wrote about how we are all trying out different relationships to see which temperament and character we like best. Someone wrote me afterward and brought up a very intriguing idea. He said: “We all want love, but if we are too eager to find it, we will see it in places where it doesn’t exist. And we will fool ourselves into believing it will be forever.” Reading that, I felt like I had finally found a fortune cookie with some applicable wisdom in it.

I wondered: Why do we do this to ourselves? My ever-optimistic heart said, “We are all just waiting until true love’s kiss.” But then my pragmatic mind and its memories of my heartbreaks countered with “people settle for whatever they find tolerable, unthreatening, comfortable, or simply (gasp) available.” Suddenly, I realized I don’t know which is more true.

Honestly, I have watched so many of my friends (myself included) obsess over a person, a coffee date or even just a text, because maybe—just maybe—this could be it. In the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You,” the bartender asks a girl “Why are you obsessing over this date? Was it even that special?” And as she thinks about it, she answers the question for herself, “No, it wasn’t.”

Is it the fear of the latest attempt at love not working out that makes us try so hard. How is that we are willing to compromise our standards in order to avoid being alone? I think we sometimes give up our wants and needs in a relationship to avoid being single, instead of being alone yet uncompromised.

But where we girls develop a not-so-rare case of relationship OCD, guys often find themselves on the “hook” or locked up tight in the “friend zone.”

Case in point, my guy friend and I were chatting and he said: “Every girl always says I’m a great guy, and then there is the ‘but’ at the end of their sentence. I just want someone who says ‘You are great, so let’s do this.’”

His comment made me question if we are willing to risk loneliness to find that person who won’t have a “but-clause” and simply just a cute butt.

But I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer so to insert a little positivity in the column I will say that I think a lot of people will find true love and some people have already found it.

I recognize that compromise is essential in any relationship. But compromise should come equally in a relationship and that very special love we dream about should aid in respecting each other’s wants and wishes.

And when the compromise becomes too much, maybe we let go. When do we let go? How do we let go? I think we figure it out a little bit more after each mistake in our lives. We finally just learn to live.

So, good luck and have a freaky weekend my dear sexy creatures. I would love to hear your opinions on this question, so write me on the BI website, or twitter, or my tumblr blog, or facebook. Phew… can I have enough social media outlets? Not until I find the right one.