Juggling or Genuine

What is with the nonchalant circus act that is otherwise known as dating nowadays? Somebody is going to have to tell me what the new rules and regulations are or perhaps there’s a website that I can go on which gives some sort of online tutorial?
I know I am going to sound old-fashioned but whatever happened to boy meets girl, boy and girl find that they like each other, then agree to spend time getting to know one another, after unspecified time and all things being well, boy and girl decide to make a go of it and actually have a “relationship”? I have had to write “relationship” in inverted commas because it seems to have become taboo and totally uncool to use that word about any kind of romantic dealings you might have. It’s a form of labelling and absolutely no one wants to be labelled any more, that was so two decades ago.

I watched this modern rom-com the other day and it was looking at the way in which people conduct their affairs with the advent of new communication technologies. The girl had about four men on the go and was able to keep everything organised through the use of facebook, twitter, her online blog as well as text messaging, e-mailing and skype. She hardly needed to be in the same room as any of her men ‘friends’ because she had such a myriad of other avenues with which she communicated with them. The other thing was that all the men she was dating knew about each other and there was no bad feeling because no one honestly had the time for a proper relationship.

Then there was the guy, he also had three different women on his roster and could maintain them through his use of the various communication technologies. Unfortunately he was not savvy enough and all three girls thought they were his girlfriend – exclusively so – even though he never claimed such to any of them. He did however pay for his deception publicly which was satisfying for any girl who has ever been led up the garden path to watch.
Now I know this was just a movie but I find plenty of instances of this kind of thing happening in real life. Take my friend Kehinde, she is seeing a guy who has another girl as well as Kehinde (Kay discovered she was sharing him after he had romanced her good and proper and she had got in very deep). Now he is one tricky customer. One week he’s got a massive case of lovingitis for her and then the next he treats her like she’s got apollo and it’s 1985. I encouraged her to break up with him after he ignored her for a week, when she confronted him he turned on the charm and emotional vulnerability and all of a sudden they’re back on again. The guy runs so hot and cold he puts an Armitage & Shanks sink to shame. The games he plays means he doesn’t have to fully focus on a single girl.
Then there’s another friend, Samia. She has three fellas she’s juggling, one provides the funds, another is married but is a mentor type that she feels she can learn a lot about business from and the last guy is her work in progress. Where people get the energy to maintain these non-relationship relationships from I do not know.

Achieving specific levels of intimacy are usually a good way of knowing whether things are on track or not, when I say intimacy I’m not talking about bedroom antics, more about getting to know a person and getting to know their friends and or family, meeting these people is like the final frontier as far as shared familiarity is concerned. If the person you are seeing keeps entire facets of their life away from you then you are most definitely not their significant other and they’re certainly not worth your time or effort, whatever demonstrations of ‘love’ they might display in the heat of the moment.

When I thought about it I wondered if it all stems from a fear of rejection and getting burnt. If you don’t make yourself completely exclusive to another person then they cannot hurt you because you were never fully theirs to hurt in the first place, but without the hurt how can the joy be fully referenced?
In this circus both guys and girls are perpetrators and those of us who are hopeless at circus tricks like juggling and balancing acts have to keep our wits about us to ensure we don’t get caught and tossed around.