And it starts like this ...

My friend Doug told me earlier this week, when we were having yet another of our long phone calls past midnight, that it seems like I'm trying to be too much of a character.

Because I write personal essays (and because one of my bad dates can become, essentially, a stand-up comedy routine or read like someone's worst nightmare in a dream journal), his fear (and a fear that I share sometimes) is that I've become more interested in collecting good anecdotes than meeting good people. I get so busy attempting to create this perception of myself that I cease to recall why I started dating in the first place, the goal being to meet someone who I can be comfortable around who's comfortable around me and stick with them for awhile.

At this point, and I know it's not uncommon, I feel like I've had so many bad dates (and been a bad date to so many other people) that I've essentially given up on the original goal, which wasn't to find a spouse or a great love or someone to "complete" who I am. The goal is just to have a good time and click with someone.

Low self-esteem, again not an uncommon problem, gets in the way of this goal. Worrying too much about it, which I may be doing more of by writing this here, makes things worse, as well.

But those are tangents.

I don't think that I'm actually sabotaging dates and potential relationships just to get a good story to tell at parties. ("Hey, did I tell you about such-and-such, the arsonist I went out with?" or "Oh my God, you're not going to believe such-and-such's deep dark secret! I definitely can't spend the rest of my life ... or even the rest of the week ... with that freak guy.")

I will admit that I'm a gossip, but I don't think, and I have to make this clear, that I go out looking for gossip to spill.

I go out with someone, and I determine, pretty quickly sometimes, whether sex or anything more than that is viable. They determine, at the same time, whether I meet their needs or fit their standards, and it goes on from there.

But it's been so long since anything with me in the romance department has gone well.

I'm 27. I'm less jaded, frankly, than I was at 24. But I still can't tell if it's all going to work out or if I am better off alone.