Who is the single guy? Sean West

This week, “The Mix” is auditioning four guys for a new sex and dating column. You decide who gets the job. Vote for your favorite Friday on our Web site.

The writer Annie Dillard once said, “There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.” The same is true elsewhere; there are no shortages of good dates, but good relationships are hard to come by.

We all have experienced the excitement of a first date that fades quickly. Or maybe even the rush of sex that leaves something lacking when examined by the morning light.

Recently a friend, after describing her newest relationship to me, asked the questions that are on everyone’s mind: “Is this it? Shouldn’t there be more?” Although at times I feel like nodding my head in defeat and saying this is all that there is and all there will ever be, I know that it is not.

But having the answer doesn’t stop the questions from forming: What are we to do in a world where sex is mistaken for love and love is mistaken for just an illusion? Is there hope for those who won’t settle for one-night stands or an endless string of flings?

I am looking for something more! I’m not looking for only that great first date, or even for great sex, I am looking for the woman that completes me.

As children, we lived in a world where the prince always rescues the princess and they lived happily ever after, but as we grow older we are told to leave those dreams behind. With words like “realistic” and “practical” we are told such stories do not truly exist.

Is it true that such stories of men cherishing their wives for the rest of their lives and of women finding their princes are just urban legends on the same level as Bigfoot and stories of alligators living in the sewers? Should we be so quick to throw such ideals into the same box in which we toss our G.I. Joes and jump ropes?

No, our world is strewn with such examples, but more often they are overshadowed by the all too common stories of heartbreak and disappointment.

And maybe the biggest myth here isn’t that such relationships don’t exist but that everyone doesn’t deserve such a relationship, that they are somehow reserved to those special individuals smiled down upon by the gods. If such a thing were true, then giving up the fight would be reasonable and we should settle down and be happy with whatever we can scrape out for ourselves.

There are many people around us who are doing just that, selling themselves short, because of their need for someone, any warm body, to fill the vacancy in their lives. Loneliness isn’t your greatest enemy in the single life; it’s how you respond to it.

Both men and women will settle for less than they deserve when that loneliness and fear drives their life. And to avoid being confronted with that fact we seek to shelter ourselves from any possible pain. We try and forget that there was ever anything more. This is all that is and all that will ever be.

But it is simply not true; the heart waits pushed down deep but not dead. C.S. Lewis compares us to “an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” He goes on to say that “we are far too easily pleased.”

When we content ourselves with just making mud pies, they do not satisfy and in the end, no matter who you are with, you are left feeling the exact way that you are trying to avoid: alone.

I might never really be able to explain why I won’t be satisfied by anything else. I believe this is what we are all created for, but in the end, when it comes down to it, Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons the reason knows not of.”

But whatever the reason, chemical imbalance or by design, I know that nothing else will do. No one would ever recommend that you put a tiny Band-Aid over a deep gash, and no one should tell you to try and cover over that place in your heart with a brief fling or meaningless sex.

So to answer my friend: Yes there is hope and there is something more, but like all things of great worth, it comes at a price. You have to be willing to let go of what you have and not settle for anything less than you deserve.

Sean West is a junior political science major who uses ridiculous amounts of post-it notes, drinks milk straight from the carton and always opens the door for a lady. Seeking an outdoors girl for star gazing and backrubs.