No More Blind Dates; Dating Is Fine, Marriage Is Not

If she hadn't sent me a text today, I wouldn't have written this piece, because I want to forget that stretch of my life, even though it did teach me something. She said she wanted to talk on the phone. I didn't think there was anything worth talking about. She called while I was asleep. When I woke up and saw she had called, I blocked her number so she wouldn't call again.

In July, my family arranged a blind date for me. She works in Beijing, and her hometown is very close to mine — the same county. I wasn't very enthusiastic about it, because I don't think there's much chance of meeting the right person through a blind date. I got her phone number on a Saturday, and I spent half a day plus a whole evening thinking about it without working out what to say. By Sunday afternoon, I decided to just give it one call and see, but as it happened she was busy then. Later we added each other on WeChat, and in the evening we had a voice call — a simple opening self-introduction, how our families got connected, and so on. She also recommended that I watch the movie《给阿嬷的情书》, and in that post I wrote:

Writing used to be only for myself, because I'm a nostalgic person — when my best years are gone, I want to have something to look back on.

Now I've found that I can truly share my feelings with someone else, let her feel what I feel and experience what I experience. I think that's a wonderful thing, and I want to keep that wonderfulness forever.

Sadly, this relationship only lasted twenty days. She rejected me; the reason she gave was that she felt our age gap was too big — she is five years older than me. After being rejected, I wanted to cry. A day later, I wanted to write a short story called 《二十日谈》, to record this experience. But I never wrote it. At that point, we hadn't deleted each other on WeChat.

During those twenty days, I wrote several love poems for her. When I was tidying things up in September, I found them and put them together into a blog post. After I published it and shared it on WeChat Moments, she voice-called me in the middle of the night. I didn't know what she wanted to say, and at that moment I was busy directing an AI to write code, with the phone away from my desk. The next day, I found that she had sent a message at two in the morning. The gist was: the love poems I published contained her private information, and she hoped I would delete them, along with any other content about her that I still had. I was both angry and aware that she was right. I deleted that post right away, deleted her on WeChat, and cleared the chat history.

And then today, she said she wanted to talk. What is there to talk about? I'm not good enough for her. Better hunt for the next one as soon as possible — the next one is always better!

My reflections on this

During those twenty days, I was like someone lovesick and out of my mind. Apart from the last few days, I think I was very happy during that time, and we talked well together. I had more drive at work every day, too. Once evening came after work, I wanted to chat with her. Until she learned my age, and I learned hers. That feeling started to change. After that we both stopped talking about it; we still shared our lives with each other. Getting to know each other slowly like that felt good to me as well. I even thought about buying a plane ticket to go see her.

Right now, looking back: the promises and the words back then were all very idealized. Let me list them:

• We live so far apart — how would we maintain the relationship?
• Whose city would we move to in the future?
• I have very little savings right now, not enough to support the expenses that marriage brings.

I ignored so many difficulties, and these are the things one cannot avoid thinking about if a relationship is to keep going all the way to marriage.

So marriage is hard; dating is doable.

Hello, girl I've never met — if you'd like to date me, you're welcome to email me

I don't have a handsome face, but I might be someone who can understand you.

I hope you're in Shenzhen, so that we can meet in person.

The email is on the About page.