Cultivating a Friendship

So, here lately I have been TRYING my best to cultivate a friendship with a boy. Through this cultivation I hope to grow a potential relationship. The reason that I am trying to make this friendship work is because it has recently come to my attention that I mainly have a lot of girl friends and maybe one guy friend, if that (among other things). I have realized that maybe it is important to know how to interact with boys . . .

I don’t know what it is about the opposite sex that causes nuns to become socially awkward and unable to interact with boys like “normal” humans. It’s like something weird happens to the nun’s mind as soon as she registers that she will be in the presence of a boy. She has a major freak out or some sort of chemical imbalance once she discovers that boys will be around. Her mind starts to race and she tries to think of the cleverest thing to say and the best outfit to wear, all in hopes that one or all of them will like her and want to be around her again.

If the first encounter goes well and there is talk of a second meeting, the freak out process will occur again. This time she will be concerned with being as consistently funny and clever as she was before, but she also will try to spice it up to keep the boys interested to keep them wanting to be her friend. But then, sometimes nuns have off days when they just can’t think of anything funny to say; of course these are the days when nuns find themselves in the presence of boys.

When you are a nun and eternally awkward, making friends with a boy is the hardest thing to do, especially if you like him. My main problem with trying to make friends with this boy is that I always fear that if I show too much interest in him that he’ll know that I like him. But wait, isn’t that the point? I think that there is a line between being a guy’s friend and being all up on him. Why is it so hard to make friends with a boy?

<3 The Nunnery

I Can't Get Started with You

A crush is an intense but usually short-lived infatuation. This infatuation is so short because nothing usually comes out of it. One reason why crushes are so short is because many girls (and even boys) spend too much time gazing at their crush from afar and don’t tell them how they feel. However, there is a moment in every crush where you get tired of sitting idly by and you feel the need to act, to let your crush subtly know you “love” them and do exist. You think that by putting yourself out there that in a couple of days or months, a love match will finally occur because you broke the ice. You sort out all of the “tension” between you two that your crush did not even realize existed. Props to you for finally letting your crush know that you’re interested.

But, WARNING, the act of putting your heart on the line can have two results:
1. He realizes that you’re an interesting and cool person that he really does want to get to know. This response could lead to a DATE, the ideal.
2. Your over-eagerness sufficiently creeps him out. This response could lead to you moving onto your NEXT CRUSH and trying not to be as creepy this time.

I think that result #2 stems out of the fact that as Nuns we may not be sure of how to interact with boys/crushes when we want to let them know how we feel. This uncertainty then makes us nervous and may cause weird sentences to leave our mouths. These sentences may make you go home and ask yourself “Why did I say that? What’s the matter with me?”

But does it ever occur to Nuns that maybe the things we said actually weren’t that weird, but we just think they’re extremely awkward. We didn’t get the reaction we hoped for. I think it would help if Nuns and all girls for that matter start trying to understand how guys think. Go spend time with your brothers, or your friends who are boys and observe . . . I think that guys really don’t see some situations as being as awkward as girls do. I think that everyone gets a little awkward when it comes to true feelings and I think that’s ok. What’s most important is that you were brave enough to express how you feel. Your act of bravery should tell you something about yourself; you’re brave enough to handle your feelings even if you know you might get hurt.

Once you’ve told your crush how you feel it’s up to them to handle what you’ve said. Based on the way that they handle this new information will tell you whether or not you truly want to be with them. People are entitled to say yes if they like you and no if they don’t. With each response you need to respect their decision and then move on from there. But what about the crush that totally ignores your act of trying to get something started? How should a Nun handle that? How can she move on with no sense of closure?

<3 The Nunnery