Every few months someone will ask me how the dating is going. Every few months some well-meaning person will tell me that there’s someone out there for me, that I shouldn’t give up, it will happen for me. Every few months I spin up a profile, make a few matches. I might go on a date but it’s more likely I won’t.
I recently found two things that landed hard. This NYT piece on why women aren’t getting married and this Instagram Reel about why we don’t want to. I might have watched that reel about 9000 times. TLDR, partnering sucks for women, in general, and dudes are not bringing enough to the table to make it worth it.
I’ve read a fair bit about how online dating is damaging to your self-esteem, the constant rejection and objectification can really bring you down, but I’ve read less about how dispiriting it can be to continually think, “This is it? This is all that’s available?” It’s the same tired buffet, the overcooked broccoli, the sauce hardened to the edges of the tray, the scratched plastic plates, the forks with bent tines.
Don’t do that thing where you say, “There are good guys out there,” as though my lived experience trying to date right now in 2023 hasn’t shown me otherwise. Do I think the planet is devoid of decent single men? No. Have I encountered any of them? Also no.
Let me tell you about three recent interactions via the dating apps.
A psychiatrist who divides his time between the San Juan Islands and Hawaii. Sounds good on paper, right? This guy told me I was “exactly what he was looking for” before we’d met. This is not flattering, it makes me feel like a commodity, like I have a sunroof and plenty of gear storage with a standard roof rack and surround sound. I try not to be too critical out of the gate because the ice-breaking process is awkward. But when I asked this guy what he’d read recently that stuck with him, he sent me a syllabus. A whole freaking catalog. I’m still trying to figure out why that annoyed me; I think it’s twofold. The first is that it’s a fairly straightforward question that he did not answer. The second is that it felt like he was trying to impress me with his literacy. “Look at the size of my bookshelves!”
A guy whose opening line was to call out a typo in my profile. I do not love that I had a typo in there, yeesh. I fixed it, but I’m not sure I should have because it feels like a potential character check. Was that guy negging? I considered replying with “Are you calling out my mistake as a pickup tactic or because you have nothing interesting to say?” I didn’t respond, though, I just blocked him and moved on.
A guy who told me we had lots in common and we could talk about it when we met because “we will meet.” Vaguely threatening, no? I asked this guy, who did not have much on his profile, what we had in common, exactly, and he listed some things but he still didn’t tell me much about himself. Then I asked him for his recent read. I looked up his answer. It was a weird new-agey bullshit, dinged consistently for being racist and homophobic. So, no.
I take responsibility for my consistently negative reactions. Perhaps the psychiatrist deserved another chance. But I don’t want to be impressed. I want to think, “This guy is interesting. He pays attention. He isn’t performing, he’s just being himself.” This is not a high bar.
Recently, I saw a woman I hadn’t seen in a while. She is a force, incredibly smart, a woman who makes things happen. She just bought a house with her new partner. I asked her where they met.
A party hosted by mutual friends.