Dating, or whatever

As far as I can tell, dat­ing is trash for every­one, in this, the year of Oh Lord, not again, two thou­sand and one less than a score. I took about 9 months off of dat­ing when my last rela­tion­ship end­ed, and the last 9 months have been a dif­fer­ent kind of lone­li­ness. Choos­ing to be monas­tic is lone­ly, but it’s a choice ful­ly with­in your con­trol, and you can rest, assured that if you want to switch it up, you can.

Try­ing to date is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent kind of lone­li­ness. It feels extreme­ly futile. The advent of online dat­ing has, at least anec­do­tal­ly, caused a lot of choice paral­y­sis for women — they lit­er­al­ly have hun­dreds of guys to choose from. That’s why I said try­ing to date, not dat­ing, because it’s extreme­ly rare that any­thing goes past a first date. I have gone on some dates with nice women where there just was­n’t any chem­istry. No harm, no foul. That’s to be expect­ed. Then there’s the haystack.

The Haystack

A short list of online dat­ing pro­file types:

  • The thirst trap with noth­ing in their pro­file but “Need a sug­ar dad­dy” and/or “Try­ing to sell my nudes” and/or their Ven­mo address.
  • The pro­file where all the pho­tos have Snapchat fil­ters on them. For all I know they could actu­al­ly be a cat wear­ing round glass­es.
  • Women who are just a “Pam look­ing for her Jim!” Pam & Jim’s rela­tion­ship in The Office is one of the all time worst.
  • Only group pho­tos. I have no idea which one you are. The same peo­ple are in all 6 of your pho­tos.
  • Bor­ing, obvi­ous shit.
    • I love to laugh
    • I love Net­flix
    • Fam­i­ly & friends are very impor­tant to me
    • I love dogs/cats/food/wine
  • High­ly spe­cif­ic require­ments
    • Look­ing for some­one to trav­el with me (all the pho­tos are from dif­fer­ent trav­el loca­tions)
    • Look­ing for some­one to work out with 6 days a week (all the pho­tos are flex­ing at a gym)
    • I’m an extreme­ly long list of labels & adjec­tives and you need to be an extreme­ly long list of labels & adjec­tives

Here’s my cur­rent pro­file:

I love being a dad & have my kid every oth­er week. I’m com­pe­tent, empa­thet­ic, respect­ful, and 100% ready to be a great part­ner to a great part­ner.

To para­phrase Chris Rock: I want to meet the real you, not your rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

Try­ing to meet some­one inter­est­ing in per­son is way bet­ter, in my esti­ma­tion, but it’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly gauche to do that & still comes with one main obsta­cle — men­tion­ing I have a kid & watch­ing their face go blank and unin­ter­est­ed. I’ve had bet­ter luck engag­ing with sin­gle moms, but I’ve yet to meet one where sched­ul­ing can be worked out or they live less than 25 miles away.

So it’s a huge hur­dle to get a date in the first place. I don’t meet any of the require­ments sin­gle women have these days. I think I’m a pret­ty god­damn good part­ner too. Still, I do man­age to get a date here or there. Then that’s a whole oth­er ball of wax.

Here are some of the things that have hap­pened to me on the oth­er dates — the ones that are more fre­quent than just the nice but not going any­where ones.

Dates that don’t happen

You arrange a date, and they ghost you or bail on you for shit­ty rea­sons.

  • “I’m not feel­ing well” is the most com­mon excuse. I make a lot of women sick.
  • “I fell asleep and my alarm did­n’t wake me up.” Prob­a­bly sec­ond most com­mon excuse.
  • Just straight up no show, and you nev­er hear from them again.
  • “I picked up a shift because we are short­hand­ed at work.” I usu­al­ly fig­ure this is legit­i­mate, but I bought Indi­ans tick­ets for a first date, got can­celed on 3 hours before the game, and then saw pho­tos of her at the game with some­one else.*

*This same gal hit me up about 6 months lat­er to try for a date. I told her to pick a day since I know how quick­ly her sched­ule can change and nev­er heard back.

Immaturity Red Flags

  • Went on a date with a veg­e­tar­i­an who was unable to iden­ti­fy a red pep­per. Turned out she sub­sists on cere­al and ice cream.
  • Went on a few dates with a suc­cess­ful busi­ness own­er. Nice con­do, but lit­er­al­ly noth­ing to eat or drink in the place except a tub of Skip­py in the fridge and bot­tled water.
  • First date with a woman in her late 20s with no kids. Dis­agreed with almost all of my par­ent­ing deci­sions and told me what I real­ly need­ed to do through­out the date.
  • Uncount­ed first dates where I ask ques­tions and keep a con­ver­sa­tion going for an hour or two, but nev­er once get asked any­thing about my life.
  • Women dat­ing because they’re bored. “I just want­ed a few drinks and a meal.”
  • Women dat­ing even though they “don’t know what they’re look­ing for right now.” 🙄

Liars

A great first date with a beau­ti­ful woman who said all the right things & seemed awe­some. Found her Twit­ter. Full of thirst trap pho­tos and tweets about run­ning game on guys. Asked if she had a Twit­ter & she set it to pri­vate. Asked about that in a curi­ous, non-con­fronta­tion­al way. Blocked. This hap­pen­ing actu­al­ly trig­gered a reac­tion in me from the last time I dat­ed a woman who said all the right things but lied con­stant­ly behind my back. Thank­ful­ly this time I fig­ured out what was hap­pen­ing and got my head out of that zone. I don’t need anoth­er tat­too reminder.

Yeesh

So, all that bull­shit is why active­ly try­ing to date feels even lone­li­er than being monas­tic. The amount of emo­tion­al effort need­ed for the high­ly like­ly chance that you’ll have a trash time is enor­mous — then I’m out $40-$100 dol­lars & prob­a­bly have to wait a cou­ple of weeks to try and line up anoth­er one.

The added com­plex­i­ty here is that I now have to fight an addi­tion­al front of the men­tal war of dat­ing. I’m active­ly try­ing to reduce how jad­ed all of these ter­ri­ble dates have made me (see every­thing above) & remain open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of meet­ing anoth­er some­one I’d like to mar­ry. It’s a lot of emo­tion­al labor.