Love Can Kiss My White Scot-Irish Bahookey

When I was a kid, the grown ladies around me always told me I was going to be a "heartbreaker" one day. The more time goes by - the more relationships I've been in - this seems more and more like some cruel antebellum curse or malign prophecy on their part.

Don't get the wrong impression here...I'm not a guy who gets requests for dates all the time, or even regularly. I'm not bombarded with ladies who want to spend time with the design monkey. But with me, as I'm sure it is with everybody, sometimes the stars line up in a way that seems right enough for further investigation of someone who wanders across my path.

I don't like hurting people, especially women that I let myself get close to. It's starting to seem like after the divorce, my efforts are futile to do anything other than leave a short swathe of hurt or disappointed women behind me.

Why do I keep bouncing from one woman to the next? B/c of this notion I have of a woman out there that is my ideal match. My one, my soul mate, my happily ever frickin' after - whatever you want to call it, she's it.

But I started wondering last week, is this most sacred of quests the noble and worthwhile undertaking that I have always seen it as? Yes, it's just dating, and maybe some ladies fall too hard too fast for me - but if there's nothing really wrong with a woman but I'm just not feeling the "one" vibe or something doesn't feel right and I get out of the relationship...it just seems like there might be an increasingly thin line between my notions of the perfect woman for me and a non-existent fairy tale (or clinical insanity, take your pick.) Could I be happy if I'd just settle down and let myself be?

Let's be honest...prolly not.

Then I'm reminded...my ex and I relied on the initial feelings of love to carry us through, and it didn't. We should have thought through things more before settling. Two wonderful kids, sure. But a true match we were not. So maybe I'm justified here.

Either way, I'm taking a break. Maybe a really long one. I don't know right now. My dad always told me never to say what I'll never do. So I'm not. I'm just saying that love, fate, the stars, Venus, Cupid, whoever or whatever can kiss my Scot-Irish bahookey for a while, b/c I'm tired of dating. Finding the next (and hopefully last) Mrs. Shane McElveen is not a game to me, and it's painful every time it doesn't work out...whether I acknowledge that or not when I'm ending it.

So yeah, I'm out of the dating circuit for a while. I think. Unless someone irresistible and incredibly persuasive comes along. Not that anyone cares, but since when did I ever write these things for you people? LOL.