This is the Way the Best Romance Happens

Lakshmi Rebecca is a filmmaker, anchor and vlogger. She runs India’s first award-winning Youtube channel, is a travel vlogger, runs an audio podcast series called India Startup Chat and blogs about life. She is single girl and a creative entrepreneur. Check out her work at www.lakshmirebecca.com
There are thousands of articles out there that will tell you what to wear to a first date. Forget all of them. Yep, ALL OF THEM!
There are probably many more thousands of articles out there on how to talk to your date, how to judge his or her level of interest and how to proceed to the next date and so on and so forth. Delete all your bookmarks of such articles. Yes, all of them. And, DELETE THEM NOW!
It’s just so unfortunate that all along you and I have been told to dress a particular way, to talk a particular way, and to leave a particular impression at the first date. Gees, it really wasn’t supposed to be so constructed and construed. No wonder we have so many failed relationships around us. People are just leaving the wrong impressions about themselves!
What attracts someone the most to you, is YOU. You being you is the only constant in that potential relationship. And you being yourself is what’s going to truly reveal to you if you are being loved for who you are. Besides, who wants to live a life of pretense and how long can anyone really put on a show for? That’s just a sad and self-destructive effort. And frankly, you gotta have picked a pretty dumb person who won’t see through the pretense soon enough.
I recently went to music gig with a friend’s friend. I mean I’d kinda known him for over a year and originally our common friend tried to set us up on a date, but it went no where. We both expressed true disinterested at the time. Fast forward to now: I ran into him the month before at a friend’s wedding. And that wasn’t the first time I’d run into him in the time since I had been introduced to him. We seemed to have a common circle, and so, on a casual note, we both said ‘let’s hang out sometime’. And believe you me, that first hang out of ours was the most beautiful evening I’d spent with almost a total stranger in a long, long time. There were no games. No one was trying to impress the other. Heck, we weren’t even ‘interested’ to begin with. But we discovered topics that we shared common views on, the kind of life adventures we’d pursued and the kind of strange people we’d dated. Three hours from the minute we said hello, I noticed that we had talked through every single song at the gig. We didn’t recall a single song. Nada! Seemingly everyone else in the club was enjoying the live music. Us: we were sipping water to soothe our vocal chords that had gone on overdrive to talk non-stop spontaneously over and above the high decibel of the live music. And another hour later, the club shut down, and we were still not done talking. The conversation continued over a late night walk in a mild drizzle and over tea at midnight. And after tea, we pretty much forced each to say goodnight and go to our respective homes.
I woke up the next morning wondering if it was a joke. So, I thought to myself, “this guy must have had some good game on! Next time I meet him, I’m gonna watch carefully. That was just unbelievable!”
And when the next “let’s hang out” time came around: baby, four hours later, we again hadn’t stop talking. The conversation was easy. Unbelievably easy and happy. At midnight, we again had to force ourselves to stop talking and laughing to call it a night because it was a weekday evening and at least one of us had an early start the next morning. So now, all I have is a happy memory of two people and that’s a very happy memory. Will I hang out with this guy again, absolutely. Why would I pass up an opportunity for a great laugh and an honest connect?!
So, there, I had an ‘AHAAA!’ moment and that’s what this blog post is all about. The secret to really knowing if you get along is actually just trying to have a great time yourself in the hope of at least making a friend. Throw the pressure cooker and go with the iced tea. It’s meant to be cool, light and mildly sweet… that’s what dating is about.  
I can honestly tell you that neither of the times this gentleman and I met: we dressed or talked or ate or walked to impress. Heck, I wasn’t looking for anything beyond friendship so why was I going to try? So, no, it wasn’t the cool shoes or the red shirt or bread shoulders or sexy stubble or talk about education and employment status: there was almost no talk of that except as a way of poking fun at the whole way people harp on about such things to impress each other.
So, honestly, if what you and I are looking for is real companionship, the kind that lets you comfortably be, why do we all make the mistake of starting otherwise, i.e,. uncomfortably? Who put the stress into dating!? Nope, that’s just not how it was meant to be. The best romance just happens.
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