Saturday, October 31, 2015

A Week in the World of Online Dating Made Me Listen to Myself from May (So I'm Glad I Blog About Some of This S$%t)

I don't even know how to start this hot mess. Just know you're in for some oversharing. But I hope it's going to make you feel better about what you thought was a hot mess in YOUR  love life. Or that you can relate and be like oh man. Jen is RIGHT THERE WITH ME. Or basically you're just watching me have therapy, right in front of you guys. Because this is how I do it at the moment even though we all know I could really benefit from some couch time.


Men. I like them. I sometimes want to associate with them. But I haven't in quite a while (which is, I know, a relative thing to say, because at one point in my life "quite a while" was four years and now it might be more like four months and everyone else has numbers somewhere in there or more or less or whatever because that's how we wacky humans are), and part of the reason for that is the multitude of reasons for that include: I'm lazy; I don't want to clean my house and womanscape myself; I don't want to get a babysitter; it's summer and it's all about me and the kid and vacations; my hormones are all over the place and it's next to impossible to plan ANYTHING; I don't want to not be at home with my kid; I don't want to not be at home on my couch with my DVR; I don't want to take time away from time I hang out with my friends who are AWESOME; I don't want complications in my life.


Because no matter how you slice it, at some point, men=complications. At least in my life.


There was the one guy I met in a "normal" way who on the outside was all that and then I was sort of interested then not then I was then they really were and then I was NOT. And there's the guy who seemed interested one minute and then not the next and then again and then not and then DISAPPEARED. And then there is the completely emotionally and logistically unavailable guy who wants to do x, y, and z, but not a, b, and c, and I'm like yeah... I was looking for the whole alphabet, actually, but thanks for the offer of those three letters. And then there's the young guy... why am I not interested in the young guy? Let me get back to you on that because I'm actually forgetting why it is I'm not calling him...


So with that hot mess of a paragraph OF COURSE I decided I should put myself on an online dating site or two. So that I could feel annoyed and rejected by more than just my limited pool of men. Well, that's my take a week later. Initially I was like, oh my gosh, these men in my circle, there are more men in the world, I need to widen my scope and see if I feel like dating at ALL because I'm feeling like I don't AT ALL, but maybe it's just this pool of folks, right?


Didn't that totally make sense? It made sense to me at the time.


Well, what has transpired is that nothing has transpired. I think I found four people interesting enough to send them a message. So then it's like I'm getting rejected on three fronts. If no one picks you up at a bar it's because you don't look like their type. If someone doesn't replay to your message you don't look like their type, your profile blurb is not interesting, and the message you thought was so witty that there was no way they wouldn't reply, also did absolutely nothing for them. So it's like boom. Boom. Boom. And then of the gents who messaged me, I was not interested in any of them. One of them LOOKED like my cup of tea but seemed like an arrogant ass. And then on both of these "free" sites you can't see a bunch of stuff if you don't pay. Apparently there are like forty-seven men who like me on one of them but I have no idea who they are because I refuse to pay for this shit when I don't even know if I want to leave my couch. If they can't be bothered to send a message their "like" for me can go fuck itself.


So add my ever steady stream of flowing hormones and there have been a couple of times where I'm just like man, I'm going to go ahead and cry right now. I didn't, but I kind of wanted to. And this morning I was saw this post on Facebook and the headline was, "109-Year-Old Woman Said Secret to Long Life is Avoiding Men." And I was just like THIS IS A SIGN. And I should write about how I've come to the conclusion that men are not for me. I've loved a couple of them and those experiences turned out to be disasters. EXCEPT that with the first guy I wound up with the greatest thing in my life, my kid. So I feel like I just need to shut up about this. Because I. Have. An. Amazing. Kid. Do you know how many people would love to be where I am? I have a job, I like my job. I have great friends, I love them, and I love my family so much. And then on top of it, I have this beautiful daughter who keeps me entertained and amused and I love her with all my heart and then some. And I co-parent peacefully with her dad. So why should I care if I'm at the high school dance all over again and no one wants to dance with me? It DOESN'T MATTER. At the end of the day, I will sometimes feel like this really matters. But it DOESN'T MATTER. It just doesn't matter at all. If my lot in life is that boys don't know I'm alive, but my life is all wonderful and great and filled with love, then that thing about boys DOESN'T MATTER. Would I rather a full dance card and not the other stuff? Of course not.


Maybe one day it will fall into my lap. Out of the sky. Basically someone from another planet because I'm the right "type" for an alien. Maybe that will happen and until then I'm going to remember that I already covered this back in May. And I read the post below (I'll italicize the whole thing so you know that this is me talking all the way back five months ago) and was like, "I already know this. I've known this. I know it down in my soul." And I instantly felt okay-er about everything.


So at the end of the day this is not about how I lose at love and sex. It's about how I win at the rest of it. Because I have won and I do win, daily. And my glass is half full about this and my heart is all the way full.


Friday, May 22, 2015

Acceptance Might Look Like Pessimism But At Least I'm Very Okay

I'm trying to think how I can do this post and not sound totally pessimistic. Truth be told, with regard to this subject matter, I have been made amazingly pessimistic. I started out like anyone else, full of hope and dreams and ideas of how perfect things would be, eyes filled with stars and rainbows and unicorns and heart emoticons.

And then I had life happen to me. And life says, in general, mine is better without a man in it.

Should I be doing this post when I'm hormonal? Better question is, since I will be forty-five years old in two weeks and one day and heavily rely on my Maximum Strength Estroven, how much time do I get to spend these days not being hormonal? So I might as well get this out, even if there's a chance I start crying and I did a bunch of crying yesterday so I really really really don't want to cry today because frankly, that shit is super tiring. Downright exhausting.

But the tears, while partly due to being a little sad, are also part of the cleansing. Part of the accepting. I'm accepting how my life should be, on what I should concentrate, to what I should pay attention, that which I need to make a priority, the things about which I need to care the most.

And finding a relationship or finding some nookie are two things about which I do not wish to care. As they say nowadays, when it comes to these things, I can't even. I just. Can't. Even.

I feel like since I first noticed that boys were cute (and this is going back to about 1975), it's been a struggle. It's been a round peg trying to fit into a square hole, it's been a girl who is too shy to make herself noticed or who has terrible hair and pitiful eyebrows and later, let's throw on a full-blown social phobia that would last more than 10 years. And then there's the fact that at nearly six feet tall, the world of men is smaller than the world of men for my counterpart who is an adorable five-five. Yes, I love you, all my five-five lovelies, and I'm so envious that there are a bunch more short apples you can pick off the dating tree. I mean, we know, my first boyfriend was just over five feet and I made a baby with a guy who didn't reach five-six. But when it comes to dating, it's kind of hard to find guys who are okay with or don't feel weird about their woman being taller, and frankly, as tall as I am, I still have this silly girly want of being able to look a guy in the eye and his eyes are not pointing at my boobs. And finally, let's add to this mix of Mission Impossible: The Dating Version that my "type" when I was twelve was Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck. These were the guys I thought were hunks. And that has persisted, and changed to something softer and nerdier and maybe not as hairy (though give me a hairy chest and I'll even deal with the back hair over someone who looks ready for an Olympic swim team), and those guys are not looking at me... they might be look at thinner and lighter and blonder, frankly. Which is okay, we all have preferences (see Tom and Burt above and please, let's not get confused and think I want Burt today because, come on, I'm talking Smokey and the Bandit/Paternity/Cannonball Run Burt), I'm just saying obviously, when it comes to the stars aligning and I think some guy is cute and he thinks I'm cute and he makes me laugh and he thinks I'm hilarious, you can see, it's challenging.

Don't get me wrong, it's challenging for everyone. I live on this planet, I know you can have the most perfect body and perfect hair and be just the right height and say all the right things and still have a hell of a time finding a guy. Or finding one who is decent. Or one who doesn't drive you nuts. I'm not saying otherwise but I'm just talking about my experience right now.

After my last experience on a dating site, on which I talked to a few nice guys and a few very dull guys and put myself out there and got no responses to some messages and met a sort of confusing guy with whom I had a lovely time but I probably won't see again (long story), I'm fucking exhausted. I'm tired. I am over checking my email to see if anyone "liked" me or messaged me. I'm over getting the email from them showing me my "matches," I'm over looking at the same group of matches over and over again because even when you say oh man, I'm so not interested (that guy looks like a goth Abe Lincoln, top hat and all) and hide their profile, five minutes later it's right there in the group of the same faces you cannot possibly look at one more time.

I'm tired of feeling rejected by someone I don't even know. I'm tired of fishing when I don't even know what I'd do with these fish when I get them. I work at least forty hours each week. I want to spend my down time with my kid, and I'm so selfish of that time but there's so little left for anything else. So why I am getting angst when that guy who was kind of cute and said some kind of funny things in his profile is not messaging me? WHY DO I GIVE A SHIT?

I'm not good at this stuff. I'm just not. I accept that the universe has been trying to tell me for over thirty years that Jen, you are totally good at some stuff. When your head is not up your ass you're a good friend. Your kid thinks you're a good mom. I was a good daughter. I like to think I'm a good sister. Many times I feel like I'm good at my job. People look forward to seeing me and spending time with me. These are the people by whom I should judge my likability. NOT some random guy who thinks he is cool because he likes all these fucking bands I've never heard of. I don't give a shit that you saw X Factor 12 in concert and have all their songs on vinyl. I just don't care. At all.

I was lucky enough to find someone to whom I was able to cohabitate for many years and we managed to create this kid who is AMAZING. The light of my life and a continual source of joy and you already know all this if you've ever talked to me for like five minutes.

And so for now, I'm done. When it comes to looking or hoping or wondering, I am done.

I want to concentrate on being a good mom. A better mom (my kid ate vegetables TWICE yesterday!). I want to concentrate on being healthier. I want to clean my fucking house. Dusting and all. And I don't want to keep being sad because I feel like nobody likes me everybody hates me guess I'll go eat worms. Because I know I shouldn't internalize that shit and yet I do. And then I eat some comfort food and cry and and that is not energizing, it's the opposite of that. So I'm over it and I'm done and I can't even.

But I'm optimistic about letting go. Writing this down has made me feel lighter already. And I don't know that this will help anyone else but if anyone has been where I have been, I really hope it will.

I've always felt I can be happy all by myself. But it's not even that I'm by myself. I'm surrounded by love. If that does not currently include the love of a tall hairy chested guy, I'm so very okay with that. So very okay.

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