The boys of Europe will each warrant their own post. I’m working on it, I promise. Stephen, if you are reading this, you just wait for your day to shine. 🙂 You’ve been warned!

As far as the boys (we will call them boys because it still feels weird to say men; am I that grown up?) since Europe (and some previous), there have been a few. None of these really warrant their own post, except maybe Lance, but I plan to leave some things out simply because he shouldn’t have that much “air time” so to speak.

Lance — Lance was very short lived, but impactful. We met because I ran into my brother’s BFF from middle school, Jordan, and they are really good friends. Lance actually went to my high school as well and knows my brother. He’s known for being the guy who got a DUI by leaving a strip club, getting mad about hot dogs and running his car into a hot dog stand and driving away a couple years ago. High class, I know. I pick winners! Anyway, he tells me all these wonderful things the day I meet him, like “Where did you come from?” looking into my eyes completely mystified, and other adorable things. He especially fell in love with the booty, but I mean, I squat for a reason. 😛 Kidding… not really. #sorrynotsorry 🙂

Anyway, so back to Lance. He was so wonderful all day, and absolutely adorable when we went to eat with Jordan & Tracy and he forgot his wallet and I had to pay. He was so embarrassed. We sat in his car for a while, just talking and holding hands. We made out in the pool. There was other things, things you don’t need details about. Let’s just say, it was perfect as far as a drunken day/night can go. The next day, I woke him up and he drove me to my car that I’d left at the festival the day before. We texted briefly Sunday, and then agreed to go to dinner Monday. Monday comes along and I meet him at Cowfish. We had a really great date, everything seemingly going well. We go back to his place, watch a movie, then I stayed the night since it was so late. Everything seemed really positive. Then he started not really texting and finally said something about not wanting a girlfriend and not wanting to lead me on. At this point, I’m like WHAT THE FUCK. This dude had been saying NON-STOP how much he liked having a girlfriend and how much he liked having someone to come home to. I had actually given him a TON of shit about dating anyone since he got out of a long-term relationship only a couple months before and anyone now is just a rebound. He denied this relentlessly saying that it wasn’t true. Even saying that I, myself, was not one. So to hear this made me pretty pissed. I’m fine with casual dating, but don’t lead up to it making the girl think you are down for the count. Set up correct expectations or you look like an ass.

So I didn’t plan on seeing Lance again, but because I made friends with some of his friends, I ended up seeing him that Friday night as well. It was definitely weird, and I could tell him and Tiffany* had some kind of thing going on, even heard that he had slept with her not too long before. I confront him about this, because: EW. I would go into detail about why that is gross but I’m hoping you can figure that out from context. Lance and I end up together at the end of the night and things go well physically. I also promise myself this CANNOT happen again.

Thankfully, it doesn’t. I left it alone. I got my lipstick back, which was part of my reason for going that night. I am now wearing my favorite shade of lipstick and wondering why I keep going after guys who tell me nice things but don’t mean it. It’s my biggest flaw, but oh well. He is definitely on the list of guys that is not attractive enough to be with me, but I thought his personality would have made up for it. I was TRYING not to be shallow, but apparently even nice guys can be ugly on the inside too. Who knew! #friendzoneforareason??

Marty — Marty is an absolute sweetheart. I really can say nothing negative about him. That is what makes this confession so hard. Marty was another tinder date. He was really cute in his pictures, and he is in person as well, just not exactly my “type” so to speak. He and I have the travelling thing in common, and he gets my parks & rec references which is just wonderful. We went on a couple dates to comedy night at Tir Na Nog and he even got me one of the Raleigh Budweiser beer glasses. He did nothing but respect me the entire time. But there wasn’t a spark. It makes me so sad to say this, because I can see him making someone very, very happy but it just wasn’t there with me. I’m all about the magic and there was no magic with Marty. I’ve told him this, and he agreed, so we are now going to be friends, which makes me really happy because I need friends like Marty in my life!

Martin — One of my coworkers and I were talking one day and I asked her if she had any single friends to set me up with. This is how Martin came into the picture. I facebook messaged him and we started texting. Over text, he seemed puuuuurfect. We had a great sarcastic banter going, just how I like it. When we met in person, he was cute, and even more so the more I drank – of course. Martin is very intense. He stares at you and you immediately feel extra stupid. I don’t know how he does this because I’m normally really confident but he somehow made me so uncomfortable that literally everything that came out of my mouth was me admitting some kind of flaw about myself. I told him stories you should NEVER tell on a first date. And then, we went too far for a first date in other ways. Martin has been pretty MIA since. I don’t really blame him though so I pretty much didn’t say a single great thing about myself the whole night. Go Katie? He may have been interesting to date, but I wouldn’t want to be with someone who makes me feel so insecure, and he’s in a unit of the Army that deploys like all the time… he leaves at the end of this month for seven weeks. I would make a great girlfriend to anyone who deploys, don’t get me wrong, but to wait seven weeks for someone who treats you that way would never be worth it. Bon Voyage.

Ryan — Ryan is someone who I thought I might have a connection with based on reading his blog and speaking with on tinder and texting. He seemed like a good guy but the more I read his blog, the more I saw red flags. He was desperately still in love with a girl from his past, and he seemed to post about a lot of frustrations with girls he was trying to date. I wasn’t sure how cute he’d actually be based on his pictures, but I was pleasantly surprised when I met up with him downtown one night. He was very nice, but we didn’t find very much to talk about. I blamed it on the fact that I was absolutely exhausted, and hoped maybe that was the case with him as well. When it was time to go, he walked me to my car, but didn’t even touch me. Not even a hug. What kind of guy doesn’t kiss the girl on a first date? Red flag. I did jokingly confront him about this through text and he claimed to be old fashion and acted like he still might be interested. But, it doesn’t seem to be the case after all, and apparently I was the only one willing to see if a second date was any better. Not much lost on this, but still, a bit disappointing as always.

John — John has probably lasted the longest simply because we have spaced out most of our encounters. John and I went to high school together and we found each other on Tinder and started talking again. John is very, very smart which is one of the qualities I love in him. He’s a really great guy. Honestly. Physically, he’s a little smaller than I typically go for, but I’m trying not to be shallow here. My reasons for taking it so slow with John and not being really sure about him is because sometimes, he’s tooooo nice. And I don’t really like the way he kisses, either, but that’s something I’m sure could be worked on with time. I love being respected, don’t get me wrong, but I need a little fire as well. You know? I’m not totally writing him off. I think, if anything, he could be a really great friend to have. But I’m not putting all my eggs in his basket. Yet.

Josh – Oh, Josh. If Josh had a spirit animal, it would be a puppy. I met him at Architect one night and the kissing was on point and he was a little goofy, but he seemed sweet so I thought what the hell, I’ll see where it goes. We went out a few times, I met his roommates, and in hind-sight, I realized they are much cooler than him. He was a frat boy, but the only thing frat boy about him was his obsession with pastels and bow ties. He was a nice guy, but I worried we didn’t have much in common and he’d bore me sometimes. I took him to Kathlyn’s wedding thinking he’d be a fun date, but instead I found myself terribly embarrassed that he was my date. He kept trying to mingle with people even I didn’t know. When Wagon Wheel came on, he went on the dance floor BY HIMSELF and started dancing and singing. I tried to laugh it off but it was super embarrassing. he danced around the whole night ridiculously, like an energetic puppy. When the night ended, I went back to his house to get his car and went home. I knew he wanted me to stay but I was not feeling it. I ran into him a couple weeks later at Beer, Bourbon and BBQ fest. He tried to talk to me and even tried texting me to hang out after. Dude just couldn’t take a hint.

So, in the end, it seems that I’ve done what I’ve set out to do pretty well. I’ve avoided a relationship for over eight months… technically about ten if you count part of last year. My new years resolution was to not get into a relationship in 2015, and for the first time, I’m keeping this goal.

While I wouldn’t completely stop one from forming if I thought it would be healthy and improve my life, I’m not actively looking for it. I go on dates, I meet new people, I make new friends. It’s not a total loss of time when you think about it.

Maybe I’ll find my forever someday… but someday doesn’t have to be tomorrow.