Relationships require honesty

I went to an all-boys school in Sydney, Australia, my whole life before entering college. At 15, the only girls that I really talked to were my mother and my sister. My mom is my mom, and well, my sister was 7 at the time. I did not have a lot of experience with girls.

I remember every single time I talked to a girl I would get dinosaurs — no, not cute, sweet little butterflies, but huge, tutu-wearing dinosaurs — prancing around my stomach. I was absolutely horrendous at interacting with girls.

All until the fateful day that I met “Mom.” She was three years older than me and picked me up and “adopted” me as her son. Mom was a player. She got free dinners and free things all the time. And not in the way that most other people would acquire material things. Mom was conservative and she never had to, as the young, adolescent, grossly indoctrinated boys of my city called, “put out.” When I first met her she pointed to various clothing articles she had on. I met her scarf, jeans and designer heels: John, Vince and Tony respectively. They were the names of the boys that bought her those things, spoils from the battlefield she played on.

She wanted to mentor me on how to be a player. So I started studying. Things I now take for granted as obvious like playing hard to get, being emotionally unavailable, push-pulls and eye-contact durations. For a 15-year-old boy whose last date was a tea-party with his 7-year-old sister, this stuff was legendary.

Manipulation and luring tactics ranged from simple things like always doubling the time taken to respond to messages to being rude all day and then slipping in a “sweet dreams” at night because then at least she’s thinking about you all day. One of the maneuvers I am not proud of talking about is the one called the “coffee-to-dinner conversion.” When meeting a girl who would usually not want to get dinner with a stranger because it was too forward, the coffee-to-dinner conversion entailed choosing a time to meet for coffee, waiting for said time to arrive and then texting said girl that you are terribly sorry you cannot make it — insert excuse related to 7-year-old sister crying and demanding you watch her ballet recital (yes, even when your sister didn’t even do ballet) — and promise to make it up to said girl. “Let me get you dinner, okay. I’m so sorry.”

I got pretty good with these lessons from Mom. But with all these people desiring my attention, it left me with a question: Did these people really like me for me, or because of the fake persona I had created?

And honestly, I started to realize that the person I was presenting was not me at all. I was scared to enter anything long-term because I knew that once these flings became real and they got to know the real me, they would soon realize that I was a fake.

And that’s when I stopped. Well, tried to stop. Withdrawal symptoms were very present for the next few years but over time I did begin to let go of the fake Samuel that I put out into the dating world. 

Which leads me to the gospel I wish to share. I have a pretty radical idea. Here it goes … When it comes to dating, we should be who we really are.

Being catfished through Tinder is definitely no fun. But why do we catfish people with our fake personalities?

You know what I’m talking about. That thing you do when you slowly let your weirdness out over time, after you’ve trapped your prey with enough history so they can’t turn back. While you may think that someone might not be interested in you if they knew who you really were, I want to say that that’s okay. They just aren’t meant for you. Do yourself and your potential partner a favor early and move on without the 2-year-old drama. Avoid hearing the “You aren’t the person I fell in love with” line. 

I challenge you to go about dating #nofilter. You will thank yourself when you find someone who loves you for you, and not who you pretend to be.

Samuel Sunito is a junior majoring in business administration.  His column, “Love and Other Things,” runs on Fridays.