So why haven't you been in a relationship?

I’m realizing from a friend that “I’m too busy” is a pathetic, pathetic little answer.

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So, I haven’t kept folks updated on my love life (or lack thereof). It’s something I used to be pretty candid about, but somehow I’ve been less willing to talk about it (online and in person) maybe because I feel like the pressure has increased in these last few years.

Nowadays, I usually give folks one of two answers when asked about my love life:

1. “You know, I think I'm actually doing good now. I'm growing as a single guy, and I'm pretty satisfied on what God is doing now.” Some days I’ll really mean it. And some days I’ll fake my best smile.

2. “Soon…” I’ll give you a vague smile to make you think like I am a man with a plan with this girl I'm going to ask out in the next few days or weeks or years. I just won’t tell you specifics.

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“Oh, you’ve never been in a relationship before?” People will usually repeat this aloud to themselves (maybe they don’t believe me?), then they tend to stare at me in this quizzical, critical manner like I’m a gazillion miles behind in the EQ Olympic Sprint/Marathon.

Rewind a bit to a story slightly tangential to the point I’m making:

I was painfully awkward in elementary school leading into 7th grade. I covered this up with a smiley nice-guy persona. Totally harmless. Totally spineless. Kept to himself but pretty darn shy, especially around girls. I theoretically knew they existed. They even seemed to be in my classes and around the playground areas. Too bad I never really talked to any of them, much less made friends with them. My first conversation with a g1rl was towards the end of 6th grade. It lasted about 10 seconds and I was so proud of myself.

High school was better, but not by a whole lot. Through church fellowship, I figured out then that girls aren’t so intimidating after all. I even made friends with a few, and had crushes on a fair share of them.

But let’s pair this still-awkward, more-or-less robotic interactions I have with girls and let’s couple it with the “don’t date in high school-or-else” mentality that’s pretty prevalant in the Asian church (that’s a another story) and you have a recipe for the “let’s be friends but keep our distance so that we won’t raise the chances of developing feelings/become codependent/be distracted from studies/fatally fall in love/make babies/drink from the flask of heartbreak too soon” mentality.

Hmm...more on this for another day...=)