So she has a boyfriend. Oh welll… Back to square one. 

My meandering thoughts were interesting, on the way home today. As always when someone you’re interested in turns out to be already spoken for, there’s the wondering whether you can win them over to you. 

This is an interesting thought to think about, because it has layers. It is culturally, and by relation morally, very uncool to actively pursue someone already taken. There are very human problems with that, of course: Someone who will leave someone because of you, might leave you because of someone else. It could well be a character flaw. 

Of course, the classic simplified fairy tale story works differently: It’s okay if it’s true love, and it’s okay if the person they’re involved with is a bad person, or an evil prince, or just an enemy. This doesn’t work in real life because people are shades of grey, not black and white. Even in such cases as, for example, prying someone away from an abusive partner, it’s really nowhere near a simple love story. 

And yet… Morals and cultures are mostly artificial: they are artificial constraints, values and lessons to teach and align us into acceptable, “civilized” behaviour. This isn’t to say that barbaric behaviour becomes justified, but rather that one recognizes not only the chaotic nature of the universe but also the longevity of any individual human’s potential experience. 

In other words, life is long, and over the course of it we experience a lot of things. Many lessons will be painful, but we will value them nonetheless. As we get older, we learn more about people and about ourselves. And part of that experience is seeing love come and go, in the forms of our friends, and ourselves. You might be very lucky indeed to find that first love is your only love, but that is either very rare, or you might just not have enough external input to really know that there aren’t others. 

In other words, love can be wrong. We’re human after all. We make lots of mistakes. And when we’re young, oh my, hormones are a very powerful thing. So people can change their minds, and that’s okay. 

What “nice guys” do, typically, when caught in a situation where the object of their affection is involved with someone else, is hang around with them a lot, in the hope that their dedication and faith will eventually win her over. They do this because of the taboo of actively pursuing someone taken, and justify it in their heads that they’re not actively being assholes. 

But is it really any different, if the intention is the same? Nice guys are not actually very nice, if you think about it. They just think they are. They hang out with a girl who’s already taken, lift them onto a pedestal, whine about being put into the friend zone, but think that being the best friend they can will somehow get them sex. 

But it is, indeed, a chaotic universe. Life is more than any love triangle. Maybe that attention would pay off. Maybe not, too. 

At the moment… yeah, I’m a little disappointed. But if there’s anything I’m better at now than I used to be, it’s letting these things go. Life moves on. 

Philosophically, the best position for me to be in is just to wait and see. Something else might very well come my way soon. One way or another, she and I will be spending some more time together. We’re both the only ones we know who are taking the same test, and she did say she wanted to study somewhat with someone following that same goal. 

Maybe it will spark something, and maybe not. She’s good company anyway. If it does, then great, if not, then that’s okay too. But I do have to wonder if even my slight hoping that something does spark is, basically, nice guy syndrome. Because one way or another, our hanging out shapes our friendship in whatever direction it will take. Who knows? Maybe she’ll see in me something she really likes. It’s entirely possible. And so is my hanging out therefore, by default, potentially threatening? 

As much as anything else. And so, nothing to worry about. It is a chaotic universe. Shit happens. And sometimes it’s fertilizer that helps something else grow.