Ich Bin Noch Ledig

On my desk at work I have a living language daily calendar. Each day I get a new phrase to learn in German which might possibly come in useful someday. Or not. Today however, I can see ‘I am still single’, which of course happens to be true. And I’m actually ok with that right now. Partly because it’s an unequivocal statement of fact. Its not an ‘I think..’ or an ‘I suppose’, or even an ‘I suppose I think…’. I must say that I am quite familiar (as are my friends) with sentences that begin with those words at the moment, as I have been rather undecided about a few things recently.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been flirting with the idea of becoming shall we say un-single. Although one step forward and two steps back may be a more accurate way to describe things. Since finding myself in certain situations, I have been asking myself all sorts of questions like what do I want, what do I need, what would I like, am I being fair, am I being neurotic, do I think too much and of course, what am I going to do? Which all seems a bit over the top really when you take a step back, but there you go.

I’m not necessarily proud of my apparent need to over-analyse everything but at least I can recognise it. And now having taken a step back, I’m not sure that I can actually answer all of those questions anyway. It almost takes the fun out of it really. There are a few things however, which have come out of various discussions that I found interesting. Some people for example are quite happy to jump right into a relationship with people they don’t already know. They are comfortable exploring the possibilities within the bounds of that relationship whereas others would definitely prefer to get their feet wet first. My history tends to indicate that I am the latter.

Another thing I noticed is the different ways people approach uncertain situations. There is one school of thought that says you’ll never know unless you give it a go and what have you really got to lose. The credo of the explorers among us who perhaps value variety and experience (within one relationship or many). Then there are those who would swear by their gut. Regardless of what you think might (or might not) be a good idea, the ‘butterfly’ battalion believe that if you don’t feel it, don’t go with it.

I believe there is some ground in the middle of these two but I guess each of us has to (and will ultimately) decide how we would like to live our lives. And I guess I shall go on as I have been, that is of course until I find something better.