Don’t Ever Date a Blogger.
We have too many feelings. People become bloggers because they have an abundance of feelings, opinions and thoughts. We’ve been this way our whole lives and it won’t change. We loved Show & Tell in elementary school and always brought something we were emotionally tied to. In middle school, we had 17 pages in our diaries dedicated to the trials and tribulations of unrequited love. When we made it to high school, we spent our nights on AIM, discussing the complexity of our relationships while simultaneously acing creative writing class. Then we went to college, realized writers don’t make money, and switched to a more lucrative career path while secretly pouring our heart out on our Livejournal accounts. We have emotions and damn it, we want to express them.
Our inability to contain our thoughts and emotions, means that if you date one of us, we will write about you. Some of us have blogs dedicated to dating. We will give you nicknames, such as I did with The Politician’s Son (we all know how that one ended) and we will tell everyone about you. Others are more private about our personal lives, and while we will overanalyze our entire relationship, it will never leave our hard drives. If you break our hearts, we will pick up the pieces, listen to a lot of Adele and start writing. Be aware that if you date a blogger, whether it works out or not, you will be written about. There will be a Macbook in a coffee shop somewhere with a one-sided story about your torrid love affair. Augusten Burroughs, author of Running With Scissors, has admitted that after dates he would run to his computer, frantically type out every mundane detail, and then psychoanalyze the night’s events over and over.
Bloggers do not like distractions and when you are dating a blogger, that is exactly what you become. We need two things to be able to write: privacy and time. Privacy can be an empty apartment, a glass of wine, and Radiohead on a constant loop. Privacy can be the patio of our neighborhood bar with a constant supply of bottomless mimosas on a Saturday morning. Privacy can be a coffee shop, the jitters, and headphones. When we write, we become neglectful of others. Neglecting people makes us feel guilty. Then we need to write about this guilt and how it affects our interpersonal relationships. Do you see how neurotic we can be? All of this writing takes time. We have to think about our feelings, dramatically pace back and forth, then write. Then we have to get annoyed at how terrible our writing is, metaphorically burn everything we’ve ever written (hit delete a bunch of times), and pace some more. Then when we finally compose something of quality, we need time to edit, edit, edit. The more OCD we are, the longer the process.
I’m not saying that all bloggers should die alone or that our need to write will keep us from having a successful relationship. I’m not throwing this out there as a “please don’t ever ask me out” post. I’m not saying that if you run into Eric Wang at a bar, you shouldn’t let him buy you a drink. I’m not saying that I would rather be single and have time to write than go on an endless cycle of great dates. I do, however, honestly believe that bloggers should be required to wear a massive “Use With Caution” warning label.
If you need more proof from a male perspective: read So You Want To Date a Dating Blogger by Brett Hannons. He explains it better than I do and says “fuck” much more.
- Suzie Robb
@suzierobb