Over the course of the spring semester of my junior year, I had been interviewing The Hoosier. He was someone that was the polar opposite of me. I was organized, he was dysfunctional. I was uptight, he was loose. I was awkward, he was charismatic. I approached relationships traditionally; he slept around and had a roster. I found our differences, especially in romantic relationships, to be so drastic that I had to understand where he came from. How could anyone have such a wild view of relationships?
I must admit, however, that this wasn’t an idea that just popped into my head. I had spent a great amount of time reading David Foster Wallace’s short story collection, “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.” It was one of the funniest, and yet most touching things I had ever read. Naturally, I wanted to give it a real world try. This began with the Hoosier but grew to include another one of my close friends, who I will refer to as The Coloradoan.
Interviewing myself isn’t an option, but interviewing someone similar to me is. The Coloradoan is someone who had a very similar upbringing to me, especially as we lived within fifteen minutes of each other for nearly our entire lives.
The Coloradoan grew up in a house with two loving parents, several dogs, and seldom a worry about anything monetary. He is also currently an engineering student at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Of course, he can’t have it all, and for much of his life, like me, we have struggled in the romantic department.
Did a lot of that come down to playing too many video games and shutting ourselves inside? Yes. Did we have the maturity to recognize this when we were in high school? No. It was easier to blame women anyway; we didn’t really know any.
One key difference is that the Coloradoan had a longtime girlfriend for a time. This significantly shaped the way he viewed women. I am pleased to inform you that he is not nearly the sexist that he was in his adolescence.
To give you a sense of the type of person the Hoosier and the Coloradoan are in more detail, here are some of their paraphrased answers to various questions below.
Your partner cheats on you and you find out. Which hurts more? An emotional tryst or a physical fling?
Hoosier: Sex. When you give up your body to another person, that is cheating. Someone else was inside of you while we were in a relationship. You, as the person being cheating on, were outcompeted.
Coloradoan: An emotional tryst would hurt significantly more. I think I would cut it off either way, but the emotional tryst would leave a worse and more significant impact.
Do you feel like you approach romantic relationships sincerely? Why or why not?
Hoosier: Yes. I know what I am doing. My goal is never to cause harm or have them resent me. I don’t ever think about harming someone who might like me or want more from me. I don’t hang out with them if I am not interested.
Coloradoan: Not so much recently. There’s only been one girl who I’ve been interested in in the last year. I feel that I want the image or feeling of a relationship rather than a person. I can imagine myself in a relationship, but I have a hard time imagining the other person.
What is the first positive romantic experience you can recall?
Hoosier: I was sixteen. We bonded over playing baseball together, playing catch. Unfortunately, around that time, my acne was so bad that I took medication for it. It caused me to become irritated. I blew up at her a few times and it was over as quickly as it had started. It was a learning experience. I became a fucking whore after. I had flings for the rest of high school as I became more physically attractive.
Coloradoan: I had been flirted with, been complimented, all the basic flirtations well before I felt anything that I would call romantic. The first time I had a proper romantic relationship or feeling was with my long-term ex-girlfriend. The first few dates we went on weren’t even properly romantic. Even when I acknowledged that they were dates I didn’t really feel anything. On our third or fourth date we were by the high school tennis courts. She was playing with my hair, and we had some heartfelt conversations as I laid on her lap on the metal bench. That was the first time I felt anything I could call romantic.
I think one of the most interesting things about these two is that, at least from my “research” (I half-mindedly scrolled through social media), when most women complain about the poor relationships and shitty men that they date, the Hoosier seems to embody that to a capital T. Yet, between the Hoosier and the Coloradoan, has more experience? Who ends up in more relationships? Who do women choose more? So, are women shallow and shitty and everything they accuse men of being? Well, not quite.
Now, there are several reasons for this. The Hoosier is a partier and is far more extroverted. The Coloradoan, operating with an engineering schedule and choosing to recharge alone rather than with others, tends to not run into women nearly as much.
Plus, playing the social game can go two ways, and charisma can be used for good and for bad. The Coloradoan only really talks like the sincere, deeply intelligent person that he is once he is comfortable with you. He hadn’t even felt romance between him and his ex-girlfriend until the third or fourth date. A good chunk of my friends would usually have sex before the fourth date. Until that point, he was awkward, for lack of a better word. Believe me, I know him well enough to say that much.