by Four examples laid out chronologically make the pattern harder to argue with than the defensive first ten minutes suggested
The Group Chat Staged an Intervention About My Dating Patterns and They Were Not Entirely Wrong
My three closest friends sat me down this week, over what was billed as an ordinary catch-up dinner and turned out, about twenty minutes in, to be a genuinely coordinated intervention about a pattern in my dating life that apparently every single one of them had independently noticed and had, until this dinner, been quietly not saying anything about, presumably out of politeness or fear of exactly the defensive reaction I did, in fact, have for the first ten minutes before I actually let myself hear what they were saying.
The Pattern They’d Apparently All Clocked
The observation, laid out with what I have to admit was fairly compelling supporting evidence once they started listing examples chronologically, was that I have a consistent habit of losing interest almost immediately in anyone who is straightforwardly, uncomplicatedly kind and interested in me, while remaining considerably more engaged, for months at a stretch, with anyone who is inconsistent, occasionally distant, or generally a bit of a puzzle to work out. Laid out like that, across four separate examples spanning the better part of two years, delivered with genuine love rather than judgment, it was harder to argue with than I would have liked.
My Initial Reaction, Which I’m Recording Honestly
I got defensive first, obviously, because that is apparently how I process most uncomfortable truths about myself, insisting that each individual situation had its own specific reasons for not working out that had nothing to do with any broader pattern, that I was simply unlucky, that the kind ones had various other genuine incompatibilities I could list if pushed. My friend who works in something vaguely therapy-adjacent professionally, and who I suspect had been quietly building toward this conversation for a while, gently pointed out that “unlucky, four separate times, in the exact same specific direction” is, statistically, beginning to look considerably less like luck and considerably more like pattern.
Where I Actually Landed, Once the Defensiveness Wore Off
By the second bottle of wine, somewhere around the point my other friend brought up a specific ex I had genuinely forgotten I’d dated, I had to admit, uncomfortably, that they had a point I did not particularly want to sit with. I think there is something in me that has, somewhere along the way, learned to associate straightforward kindness with a lack of challenge, and a lack of challenge with a lack of genuine interest on my part, which is, when I actually say it out loud like that, a fairly obviously unhelpful thing to have internalised, and one I’m apparently going to have to do some actual work to unlearn rather than simply intellectually acknowledging over dinner and then continuing exactly as before.
What the Wider Reading Says About This
I went looking, slightly self-consciously, for anything that might help me actually think this through properly rather than just feeling briefly chastened and moving on, and found a genuinely useful piece over at The London Prat discussing attachment patterns in modern dating, which put language to exactly the dynamic my friends had clocked without any of us knowing the technical framing for it, the idea that inconsistency can, for some people, register as more emotionally engaging simply because it demands more active attention and interpretation, while consistency, paradoxically, can start to feel like something you can safely ignore precisely because it isn’t going anywhere.
What I’m Actually Going to Try
I have, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to actually message the perfectly lovely, perfectly consistent person I matched with a few weeks ago and had already, if I’m honest, mentally filed under “nice but not exciting enough,” specifically as an experiment in noticing my own instinct to deprioritise exactly the kind of connection my friends spent an entire dinner telling me I actually need more of. I am not promising myself, or this diary, a happy ending here. I am promising myself I will at least notice the pattern in real time rather than only in retrospect, months later, wondering why yet another situation didn’t work out.
My therapy-adjacent friend has also, helpfully or unhelpfully depending on the day, offered to check in with me weekly on how the messaging is actually going, which feels simultaneously like exactly the accountability I need and exactly the kind of scrutiny I would normally run from. I have agreed to it anyway, mostly because the alternative, continuing to quietly repeat the same pattern for another two years while telling myself it’s just bad luck, has started to sound considerably worse than a slightly uncomfortable weekly check-in.
A Genuine Thank You, However Uncomfortable the Delivery
I was annoyed at all three of them for about half the dinner. I am, genuinely, grateful now, in the slightly sheepish way you’re grateful for feedback you needed and did not particularly want, and I have told them as much, which felt considerably harder to say out loud than the actual defensive arguing did.
More of my ongoing chronicles live at my author page, and the piece that finally gave this pattern a name is over at The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
