San Fran Voice

Every area of life has its lessons, and if you look closely enough, you’ll see that those lessons can be applied to other parts of your life as well.  Being able to take what you learn and make use of it throughout your life is what makes you a well-rounded person who is able to cope with all of life’s different experiences.  One of the main areas in which many people feel at a loss is in the area of interpersonal relationships (um, yeah, dating).  Smart people who are confident and successful in other areas of life find themselves bumbling through love on a regular basis.  San Fran Voice is here to help, giving you lessons from all areas of San Francisco life and helping you apply them to the world of love.  This week’s San Francisco love lesson is:

Try it, you might like it.  Or you might not, but at least you know.

There are so many facets of San Francisco life that this could apply to that it’s almost hard to decide which one to go with, but I’ll share a personal story that highlights the point.  It’s the story of my experience with sushi.  See, San Francisco is a sushi city.  I’ve met more people in San Francisco who love sushi than I’ve encountered anywhere else in my travels.  And I really, really wanted to like it when I moved here, so much so that I told my first best friend in the city that we needed to have a sushi date as immediately as possible after I’d arrived in San Francisco.

He chose a place that he thought I’d like and ordered a bunch of different things so that if one didn’t suit my palette, another might.  I tried the basic California roll first.  I didn’t like it.  I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t like it.  And that’s not even “real sushi”.  We moved on to the real sushi and the fishy taste filled my mouth and I went from sipping to swigging my plum wine to get rid of the taste.  Then came the sashimi.  I put a slice of tuna in my mouth and the taste and texture both felt terrible.  My friend pointed out a final slice of raw seafood on the plate and told me to try it.  I didn’t know until later that it was eel but I did know that it literally slid out of my mouth and on to my plate because I couldn’t swallow it.  I chugged the plum wine.

So, we didn’t find any sushi that I liked that night and even though I’m a San Francisco girl, I’m still not a sushi girl.  But the experience itself wasn’t awful.  My friend and I created some lasting memories that night.  And I discovered a love for plum wine that I hadn’t known I had.  So, all in all, it was worth the experience even though I didn’t like what I’d tried.

And this is true for dating as well.  You can come up with all kinds of theories about dating and have all kinds of ideas about love, but you aren’t going to actually know what you like … in other people, in dating situations, in the bedroom … until you just jump in there and try it and see what happens.  You aren’t going to like everything, but you’ll broaden your own experience of the world of love, learn a little bit about yourself and probably create some memories to look back on later.