Date #1

He's a pizza lover. We chatted briefly on Tinder, he made a couple of lame jokes. "What are you looking for on here?" "Primarily for people to give me free pizza," he responded. The day of the date I showed up 10 minutes early at my favorite spot. We chatted energetically for the first 10-15 minutes until he slowly started deflating. He briefly texted someone, started talking about living with his ex and his ex's cat. He yawned a couple of times. I laughed and said "I'm glad you find me entertaining." He started tying his shoelaces. I got the check and we parted ways with a handshake. I ask the universe to reimburse this hour of my time.

Emotional Reciprocity

Do you know what's important in every friendship or relationship? Reciprocity. And I'm not talking about sex or some ultimately perverted version of quid pro quo. I'm talking about emotional reciprocity.

Some people have this innate gift of empathy. They are able to fill in the blanks without a single word spoken, a singe leaf shaken. They are empaths, a mysterious kind. When you look them in the eyes, there is no dark all-consuming void, there's light and there's a helping hand. When they look at you, all crawled up in a little shaking from an arctic-cold wind gust embryo, dexterously masqueraded by a thousand suits, they see right past that. They see your thoughts and your feelings. Those of us, who are on the other side of this unequal equipose, start shaking even more: limb by limb, falling apart.

So, what do you do when there's no emotional reciprocity, there's no empathic connection? You run, and never look back. Because if you look back, that dark all-consuming vortex in the reflection of their eyes will consume you and turn you inside out.