Still...

I haven't wanted to write all week because my mind is a bit of a broken record and I don't want to send you all into "compassion fatigue". Yeah, he turned me down, rejection sucks no matter how you slice it. Now what?

Well, I have a date with someone else tonight, so there's that.

He is a very nice single dad I met on a website I won't even mention here because I don't want you all to think I'm nuts. We've talked on the phone a bit and are meeting tonight casually. The only problem is he's very short - like, as short as me, and I'm already short. I want to say I can just get past that, but...I don't know. I don't think I can. But as you can imagine I need a boost right now and this has given me something else to think about. In the end it will probably go like 99% of my previous internet dates in that we'll have a nice time and I'll never hear from him again. And so it goes.

Mostly right now I'm just annoyed. After four years of the hormonal rollercoaster of conceiving, carrying, birthing, and nursing babies, I unfortunately find myself right back where I began - lonely, bored, and longing for a man in my life. Why??? Nothing good can come of it. I was much better off single, celibate and proud. But now the babies are growing up and it's not enough anymore. There are no more babies to plan for. So really...now what?

I honestly thought the kids would be enough. Sadly, they are not. It's time I admitted this.

So, now that I've exhausted all one options in my circle of single male friends, what do you do? You put yourself online, of course. Every night this week I have sat down to sign up and make a profile. And every night I have shut off my computer without doing it.

I did internet dating for nearly ten years during my thirties. I never once got anything resembling a relationship from it. Not once. All I got was this:

You write to, wink at, or "send a flirt" to hundreds, thousands of men. None of them ever respond. EVER. 

The ones who write to you are either: cut and pasters who send an identical email to every woman who signs up regardless of her preferences, perverts who send dick pics or want naked pictures of you, or misogynists who just write to tell you how ugly you are. Just as in real life, the men who want you are men you would never consider dating in a million years, and the ones you like don't want anything to do with you.

Despite all this, at least for the first week or so you get some decent interest and arrange a few coffee dates. Many of the men you meet are older, fatter, shorter and balder than they claimed. But some are not. If you vetted them on the phone at all you know they're not psychos or boring so you do have a nice time with them and would like to see them again. But they never call again, even if you express you had a nice time and would like to see them again. You go online and there they are every day looking for someone else. It wasn't them - it was you.

Most of the men you meet, regardless of physical attractiveness or good personality, have something off about them. Either they're fresh off a break up and are oozing with non-committal bitterness, seem to fall somewhere on the autism spectrum and have no social skills, or have something wrong with them physically (two giant hearing aids for one guy, another one with a horribly misshapen nose he hid with clever photography, another with the crazy eyes, etc etc). Most just want to get laid and lose interest immediately upon learning you're a smart, serious person. 

There is no sound on earth I'm more familiar with than that of the plaintive cry of a penis right as it retreats into a man's body upon encountering a smart, confident woman. I know it so well I could sing along in harmony. I believe I heard it on my porch last week. 

So why put myself through all that hell again? Because I have no other options, like everyone else on there. Because it's either this or nothing. Because of that one in a billion chance I might actually meet someone decent - which is one more chance than I have right now. 

And I hate that I am reduced to this and hate myself for even considering it. But, there it is. I do want a relationship. Ughhhh.

I am not sure how to go about it yet. I do know I'm only interested in single dads. I also know odds are I will probably not even be appealing to them. I mean, for Christ's sake, if I couldn't even generate the slightest interest when I was childless and ten years younger, who would possibly want me now? My guess is nobody. But I'm curious to find out.

So consider it an experiment you can all join in with me. I'm putting my toe back in that pool with no expectations except more of the same bullshit I experienced back in the day, only less volume because nobody wants a woman with small children. One woman on my Smc Facebook group said she had a profile up for six months and didn't receive one message. Not one. So I think I now have a gauge as to what to expect. Whole lotta nothin'. Much like I'm experiencing right now. Still.