Kissing Kamal

How many times have you heard someone referred to as “crazy” in the single, gay and dating scene?

You make a positive comment about a guy you see across the bar for the first time and one of your friends says, “oh I went out with him on a date once and he’s crazy.”  Or, “we hooked up once and he’s cray-cray!”  Or when two people you know, who may or may not be independently crazy, date for a quick moment and part ways calling the other crazy.

Crazy seems to be a term that’s thrown around a lot but I’ve yet to see two people define it in the same way.  Yes, someone acting stalkerish or obsessive over you is a bit cray-cray.  Or a guy who literally plans your wedding after one date is a MAJOR red flag of avoidance.

But a lot of times I hear the word mentioned and it makes me wonder if the person truly is, or if it’s just a way for the speaker to quickly dismiss a bad dating situation without any explanation.  A guy not being able to commit to plans or follow thru with you, doesn’t mean that he’s crazy; it just means that he wasn’t that in to you, is too emotionally immature to deal with his feelings, and that you need to move on.

There are other factors that can make for a crazy situation but again, don’t necessarily mean that the person is off their rocker.  For example, I shared a vacation house once with several friends and we were up one morning having coffee.  One friend made his coffee and put the spoon down, and I came up right behind him and used the same spoon to stir my coffee.  My friend looked at me and remarked, “Wow, that was an intimate moment.”  Now take this same scene, transpose it over “the morning after a third date,” and add one fella who is recently out of a long-term relationship.

See my point? Sometimes we do things out of habit, insecurity, muscle-memory, whatever; that can be read or misinterpreted as an action or emotion that wasn’t meant to be conveyed.  This can lead to a further characterization of future actions or an uneasiness with respect to intent, that can lead to a conclusion of “unreal dating expectations” and the label of crazy.

This is the point where you say, “you’re Krazy Kamal” if you think a shared coffee spoon can blow up into all of that craziness.  But whether it’s a spoon or not, the point is that we sometimes make conclusions about people we date that we probably wouldn’t if we knew the full story (they’re stressed out a work, or just got out of a ten year relationship and didn’t tell me, or they’re dealing with family drama), or if we could see the forest for the trees (they’re immature about what they really want, they’re not focused, they’re just plain selfish).