Humans 101
How to Embrace Uncertainty in Dating and Relationships
Why you want to predict and control the outcome — and how to stop
I finally arrive at work after an arduous, 75-minute commute. After taking off my winter coat, scarf, hat, and gloves, I refill my tea. Settling in at my desk, I pull out my laptop and log in to the network. First, I check my schedule and see that I have back-to-back meetings for most of the day — ugh. I see an email from my boss. He needs information for a quarterly business review. The email has a red exclamation point, marking it as urgent. I start to respond, but then I remember an even more pressing matter that needs to be addressed.
I open up my spreadsheet. Each row represents every day I have seen my boyfriend — ever. It goes back to before we were even dating, when we would meet for coffee after a yoga class. I saw my boyfriend last night, so I put an “X” in the column next to today’s date. We had sex, so the next cell gets three Xs. If we merely kissed, I would have entered two. One X means that we saw each other, but there was no physical interaction. Luckily, this doesn’t happen often. In the activity column, I select what we did from the dropdown. For example: dinner, a walk, a yoga class, etc. I created a dropdown so I could sort it all later — freeform text is…
