Looking for Love: The Stories We Create in the Gaps

I have been thinking about how much of modern dating seems to happen in the imagination.

Not because people are delusional.

Because texting gives us pieces.

A sentence.

A short response.

A photograph.

A little flirtation.

A personal story.

A moment of warmth.

And then, without really noticing that we are doing it, we begin connecting those pieces.

That is where the story starts.

Imagine you have been talking to someone you like.

You say something warm after a date, something as simple as:

“I really enjoyed tonight.”

He responds:

“Really?”

One word.

Now you have information.

But not very much of it.

And your mind immediately wants the rest.

Maybe he is pleasantly surprised.

Maybe he had a wonderful time too but wasn't sure how you felt.

Maybe he is shy.

Maybe he does not receive compliments easily.

Maybe that little really? means more than he knows how to say.

And if you already like him, those explanations can become very attractive.

Without realizing it, you may begin adding qualities to him.

Sensitive.

Humble.

Guarded.

Deep.

A man who likes you but is careful with his feelings.

None of those things were actually contained in the word really.

We put them there.

But the mind can travel just as quickly in the opposite direction.

Maybe he is surprised because he did not feel the same way.

Maybe he is questioning why you liked the date.

Maybe he is pulling away.

Maybe he is not nearly as interested as you thought.

Maybe you completely misread the connection.

Same message.

Different story.

And suddenly the man in your head has changed.

That fascinates me.

Because neither version necessarily has anything to do with the actual person.

We are taking something ambiguous and trying to make it make sense.

And depending on our hopes, fears, past experiences and feelings about the person, we can build very different explanations from exactly the same information.

Texting makes this especially easy because so much of the information we normally use to understand another human being is missing.

There is no tone.

No facial expression.

No body language.

No smile that tells you someone is teasing.

No softness in the voice that tells you they are touched.

No awkward little laugh.

No look across the table.

You have the words.

Then your mind supplies the atmosphere around them.

And once it does that often enough, something interesting happens.

You are no longer only interpreting individual messages.

You start constructing the person.

A few thoughtful texts become evidence that he is emotionally intelligent.

A vulnerable conversation becomes evidence that there is something deeper between you.

He remembers something you said and suddenly he is attentive.

He sends a photograph while he is away and perhaps he is thinking about you.

He is slightly reserved and maybe you decide he is cautious because he has been hurt before.

Perhaps all of those things are true.

But perhaps some of them are simply reasonable-sounding stories built around very limited information.

That distinction is easy to miss because the stories rarely feel ridiculous while we are creating them.

They feel logical.

We are not sitting there thinking:

I am now inventing a personality for this man.

We think we are understanding him.

That is what makes it so interesting.

I think this is one of the ways we can turn someone into a fantasy without meaning to.

Not necessarily some enormous fantasy involving marriage and matching bathrobes.

Something much quieter.

We fill in his character.

We decide what motivates him.

We explain his hesitations.

We give meaning to the things he says.

We imagine the emotional depth behind his behavior.

Piece by piece, the person becomes more complete in our mind than he actually is in our life.

Then we begin responding emotionally to that completed version.

And sometimes the version we create is better than the man himself.

We give him depth he has not demonstrated.

Intentions he has not expressed.

Emotional awareness we have not actually seen.

We take a handful of promising qualities and unconsciously build the rest of the man around them.

But we can also do the opposite.

One odd response.

One sentence we cannot quite interpret.

One message that feels slightly different.

And now perhaps he is losing interest.

Maybe he regrets something he said.

Maybe there is another woman.

Maybe we have annoyed him.

Maybe the whole connection meant more to us than it did to him.

Again, there may be absolutely no evidence for any of it.

But the story can feel convincing because it explains the uncertainty.

I think that is what our minds are really trying to do.

Close the gap.

We do not like unfinished information.

We want things to make sense.

So when somebody gives us half an answer, we quietly supply the other half.

Sometimes with hope.

Sometimes with fear.

Usually with a mixture of both.

And I have started wondering how much emotional confusion in modern dating comes from reacting not to what actually happened, but to the story we created around what happened.

Because once a story takes hold, we begin filtering new information through it.

If we have decided he is guarded but secretly very interested, his distance may start looking romantic.

He is afraid.

If we have decided he is losing interest, the same distance may become proof.

I knew it.

That is the dangerous part.

The story begins producing its own evidence.

And eventually we can become very attached to a person we only partly know.

Or deeply disappointed by someone before we actually understand what happened.

Not because the feelings are fake.

The feelings are completely real.

But some of them may belong to our interpretation of the person rather than the person himself.

That has made me look at dating differently.

I do not want to stop imagining.

I do not want to become suspicious of every nice interaction or analyze people like laboratory specimens.

I like being hopeful.

I like noticing little things.

I like wondering about people.

That is part of the pleasure of getting to know someone.

But I have become much more interested in noticing the moment when curiosity quietly turns into certainty.

When:

Maybe he meant this.

becomes:

This is who he is.

Or when:

That response felt a little strange.

becomes:

He is not interested in me.

Those leaps can happen remarkably fast.

So I have been practicing something much less dramatic.

Leaving some things unfinished.

Maybe he is shy.

Maybe he is not.

Maybe he meant something lovely by that message.

Maybe I read too much into it.

Maybe something has changed.

Maybe nothing has.

I can notice all of those possibilities without choosing one simply because uncertainty is uncomfortable.

Because eventually, the real person usually gives us more information.

Not through the story we wrote for him.

Through consistency.

Through behavior.

Through what he does when there is nothing left for us to interpret.

And perhaps that is the challenge of dating through a screen.

Not learning how to decode every message perfectly.

Learning when to stop writing the parts we do not actually know.