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Forty-something and single, a tail of desperation

Dec 15th, 2011 by Mike

In the book  Marry Him, Lori Gottlieb outlines her theory on why women in their 20’s and 30’s think they’re too good for most men.  Actually, her claim is that many women feel that there’s something wrong with the men they date that makes them not good enough to marry.  Women tend to be too picky and will dismiss a perfectly good man because he’s too hairy, too bald, too short,  too serious or not serious enough.  They become so afraid of settling for someone who is not their perfect match that they end up forty-something and still single.  Then, after years of being too picky, they realize that when they come home to an empty house, the sound of loneliness is deafening.

Now, the journey from being a hot commodity in the dating world to becoming the cautionary tale of that crazy old lady with 30 cats and not a single suitor begins with a puppy. You see, when no man is good enough to settle down with but you still can’t stand the thought of being alone, a puppy is clearly the answer to all of your problems.  Unfortunately, you still have to go to work and you can’t just leave the puppy home alone because he would be lonely. So, you start collecting cats. Two at first but then those cats make kittens that you simply can’t bring yourself to get rid of because, “the more the merrier”. So, now you have six cats, a dog and a ferret that you bought just to keep yourself company while the cats were pregnant and you were waiting for the pet store to get another chinchilla in. By the way, the pet store called and you can pick up the chinchilla next Tuesday.

Now, when it’s still too quiet around the house, you’ll go out and buy a pair of birds and a couple of fish. Not that fish make any noise but they’re something for the Iguana to look at so he keeps his eyes off the hamster. Before you know it, you have an entire pet store in your house and you’re no longer looking for a boyfriend, you’re looking for a zookeeper.  The problem is that every guy who was too short, too bald, too hairy or too serious is now too married to date.  Which doesn’t really matter because you’ve gone from being too picky to being too busy buying pet food and scooping litter boxes to even entertain the thought of going on a date.

Photo courtesy Olkaprill@sxc.hu

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Single in a Small Town

Sep 12th, 2011 by Tiffany

I’ve often heard friends (and strangers in online forums) complain that dating in a small town is almost impossible.  That makes sense in the abstract:  in a small town, there are fewer people, and you already know more of them.  On top of that, I suspect that people in small towns might be more inclined to stay married, cutting the available dating pool even further.  But I never gave those complaints much thought.  I love small town life.  And I’ve never before experienced it as a single person.  The first time I lived in a small town, in my twenties, I was engaged.  The second time, in my thirties, I was a married mother with a young child. My life revolved around story time at the library and Girl Scouts and running behind a two-wheeler.

Recently, I moved back to the small town where we lived when my daughter was little, and I couldn’t be happier to be back.  In fact, I was so happy to be back that as soon as I secured a place to live, I went around updating my town everywhere I could think of, including the online dating service I signed up with nearly two years ago and have visited perhaps a dozen times since.

I happily updated my city…I was so excited about the move that I was actually a little bit open to meeting someone who lived in the area…and got this message:  “Not enough matches in your area.  Defaulting to statewide search.”

Huh.  Since then, I’ve started getting messages from men in other small towns that I wouldn’t consider especially close to my own–apparently, they’re not getting any local information, either.  This was almost enough to make me believe the rumors I’d heard about how there was just no one to meet, let alone date, in a small town.

Then my Internet went down.

If that hadn’t happened, I might have gone right on believing the mythology.  But I had no Internet at home, and my new hometown isn’t the kind of place that has a Panera around the corner, so the only place I could come up with to get my job done was the local library.  I worked there for portions of 7 or 8 days and then I had to stop because I kept getting asked out.

Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration.  But to me, getting asked out by two different men I hadn’t met previously in 7 or 8 visits to the library seemed like a lot.  Not to be a geek or anything, but thus far I’ve been asked out on at least 25% of my trips to the local library–doesn’t that seem like a lot to you?

So, women:  if you live in a small town and you think there’s no one left to meet and you have no dating prospects, go to the library.  You’ll be amazed.

Men:  I guess you’re out of luck.  Given the number of men hanging around the library waiting to ask me out, I have to assume there are no available women in town.

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Is Facebook depressing, Really?

Aug 24th, 2011 by Mike

Last week, as I was washing dishes, I heard a story come on the news talking about how Facebook is causing depression for some people.  Now, I didn’t doubt this for a second because I know that there is a certain segment of the population that will look for any reason to be depressed.  I admit that sounds a little harsh and it is.  However, it’s really not going to do anyone any good to write a post titled, “Be sad, it’s not your fault, blame Facebook”.

Apparently, one of the causes of this “Facebook Depression” is that some people compare their lives to others and feel they don’t measure up.  Well, I first heard about this while I was washing dishes and I can assure you that my Facebook status at the time was NOT, “I’m washing dishes”. I’m very sorry if this post has stripped you of your illusion that I have a maid.  People have a tendency not to post the very mundane aspects of their life on Facebook, even though we all have them. Okay?

Now, if you feel like you just don’t measure up because you only have 47 friends but you see that some of your friends have 1,427 friends keep your chin up.  You could always delete them and then they would have one less friend, that’ll teach ‘em.  But, the truth is that people who have that many friends may just need to step away from their computer a little more often.

The icing on the cake for me was that I saw this same story in Cosmopolitan magazine and it wasn’t the April 1st issue, I swear.  That’s right, in the midst of pages lined with super-models raving about their amazing sex life and super hot dating stories is a cautionary tale of comparing yourself to others.  What? The magazine notorious for giving people unrealistic expectations of what life SHOULD be is now pointing the finger at Facebook.  In next month’s issue I expect to see an article titled, “How to be beautiful, live like a star and take responsibility for nothing”.

I’m a middle-aged single dad on the verge of foreclosure. And, while you probably won’t see that posted as my Facebook status, rest assured that when it comes to feeling like life is a little anticlimactic at times, you’re not alone.

Photo courtesy, Marinka van Holten (Mrinkk@sxc.hu)

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Posted in Life | 1 Comment »

Choosing Where the Day Takes You

Aug 6th, 2011 by Tiffany

As Mike pointed out, it is true that most of us form relationships with people we come in regular contact with.  That’s not just romantic relationships, but friendships and business relationships as well.  There are many reasons for this:  familiarity breeds comfort; often we’re in the same place as others on a regular basis because we have something in common; it’s simply easier.  This plays a significant role in the organic development of relationships that I’m always talking about, and you know I think that’s far and away the best way to develop a romantic relationship–or any other personal relationship.

But if, like Mike, you spend your work days on a construction site or hanging out in the probation office, there might indeed be limited social opportunities–or at least, limited desirable ones.  It’s hard for me to see online dating as a solution to that, though, because in my mind a dating website–especially a free one–is a lot LIKE the probation office when it comes to the likelihood of meeting someone you might want to spend time with.  The person looking for love on an online dating site obviously hasn’t connected with any of the people in her real life:  that either means that she doesn’t play well with others or that she’s hanging out in the wrong places and surrounded by the wrong people.  Neither possibility is very promising.  And that might be why, as Mike admits in his post, shopping online dating services hasn’t been much more successful than trawling the probation office.

Sure, a lot of us might have jobs that don’t bring us in contact with single people and most of us who are parents encounter a lot of married folks at school events and volunteering for the middle school dance, but those aren’t the only places available to us in life.  And the places we choose to be, the people we choose to surround ourselves with in life, say as much about us as potential partners as they do about our chances of meeting the “right person”.

Yes, life is busy.  But isn’t it a little silly to say that you have time to date and form a relationship, but not time to go places you might enjoy where you might naturally encounter people you like and want to spend time with?  If you have time for a personal life, have a personal life and be open to what follows; if you don’t, the whole issue is moot because you don’t have time to date.

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Meeting people outside your routine

Jul 28th, 2011 by Mike

One of the disadvantages of working in construction is that you don’t tend to meet very many people who are single. The majority of my customers are married couples, the bulk of which are retired. However, my job does take me to new locations and expose me to many environments. Today’s new venture was the probation office where I had to go to bid on a job. While I was sitting out front waiting to meet with the property owner, a beautiful woman sat next to me and asked me if they drug test you while you’re on probation. This created a confrontation in my head. Half of my brain was saying, “Marry her” while the other half was saying, “A woman who’s on probation and asking about drug testing might possibly be raising a red flag or twelve”.

This is a classic example of the propinquity effect, the people we are bound to meet in day is directly related to where we go in a day. Under normal circumstances the propinquity effect works well, people with like interests or similar backgrounds tend to pair up. If you like live music, you’ll probably make some new friends at a concert. If you like art, you’ll make new friends at a museum and if you’re on probation, you’ll probably meet a cop.

But many people, like me, don’t have circumstances that are normal. Some of us have jobs that don’t expose us to like minded people or we have kids who expose us to other parents who are probably married. We’re busy and just don’t have time to meet the people who are also busy and don’t have time to meet new people. Enter Online dating which allows people like me, who have fallen into a loophole in the propinquity effect, to meet people outside of their routine.

Now, I’m not saying that I’ve had much luck with online dating, I haven’t. But, it’s nice to know that the chance of meeting that special someone still exists and could even take place while I’m discussing urinalysis with a lovely prospect at the probation office. On the other hand, Tiffany has made many an argument in favor of meeting people organically and the probation woman sounded like a big fan of anything organic.

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Posted in Uncategorized, online dating, relationships | 1 Comment »

It’s Not Where You’re Advertising…It’s WHETHER You’re Advertising

Jul 9th, 2011 by Tiffany

All people. Many of them worth knowing. Not ONE labeled "SINGLE AND LOOKING".

In Mike’s recent post about online dating, he argued that advertising that you’re single and looking on an online dating site really wasn’t all that much different than advertising that you’re single and looking by getting dressed up and going out to a bar to “try and get noticed”.  I actually believe there are some significant differences, but that’s another argument for another day. Because “this idea is no dumber than another really dumb idea” is not a very compelling argument to begin with.

Mike says that it’s not all that easy to meet people, but what he seems to mean is that it’s not all that easy to meet people who are single, of the opposite sex, looking to get into a relationship and physically attractive enough to catch his attention before he knows anything else about them.  That narrows the pool quite a bit.  We argued this out via email a long time ago, when he shocked me by suggesting that it was important to know whether or not someone was single before wasting time getting to know them.

I work from home, homeschool my daughter and don’t consider myself a very social person, but I don’t find it hard to meet people at all.  I think it’s because I’m not looking for the “SINGLE” label or sizing someone up as a potential mate before I decide whether or not he’s a “cute bachelor” worth talking to in the grocery line.

For me, “meeting people” isn’t just a euphemism for “scanning for potential dates” and I don’t consider it wasted time to talk to an interesting man who turns out to be married or to an older woman or a child or whomever happens to be standing next to me.

I can almost feel the “biological clock” faction yelling “but that won’t help me MEET SOMEONE.”

Maybe.  But maybe it will.  Interacting with people makes interacting with people come more naturally, so when the person in the grocery line behind you is a “cute bachelorette”, you don’t have to think up some forced way to begin an artificial conversation–you can just talk to her the way you’d talk to anyone else in line behind you.  And you’ll have a lot more to talk about if your life is full of other people and interests than if you’ve narrowed your world to the desperate search for a mate.

Besides, the more people you know, the more people you meet…which increases the number of people you know, which increases the number of people you meet…

I’ve talked many times before about how I don’t think mate shopping works, but in this context I think it goes beyond not working: I think it’s counterproductive.  I think the single-minded focus on finding a date keeps people out of the places and interactions and friendships and interests that might lead to meeting someone they’d actually want to be with.

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Posted in Uncategorized, dating services, online dating, relationships | 4 Comments »

This won’t end well but that won’t stop me

Jul 8th, 2011 by Mike

This won't end wellI can look at a woman and just know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would be a miserable person to date. I’ll know that her life is out of control and she’s wildly unstable and prone to massive mood swings. I’ll know that she’s manipulative and an absolute master at telling lies and being deceptive. I’ll know that she’ll be needy and possessive and will actually make me lose myself in order to stay with her. I’ll know that she’ll be jealous, abusive, controlling and unfaithful. And yet, in spite of all of this, I’ll still think she’s perfect for me.

But I won’t just think it, I’ll try to make it happen. Sure, I know this won’t end well so the trick is to make sure that, this time, it doesn’t end. I’ll see her gleaming red flags as a personal challenge and know that I can constantly adapt to be who she needs me to be at any given moment, I have that skill. After all, I can get her to love me enough and appreciate me enough to see the error of her ways. And while everyone around me is shaking their heads and wondering why I put up with it, I’ll know that they just don’t understand how good things are during her rare and fleeting moments of sanity.

And it’s not just me, there are plenty of people out there who have this same gift. Bands have written songs about it, so it must be okay. How many movies are there about that guy or girl who goes chasing after someone who’s completely wrong for them while the one who’s right for them sits, quietly by their side? There’s a reason for that, people who are needy and unstable get our attention. They don’t just get it, they command it. They stand out in a crowd because it works, it gets them the attention that they crave. You’ve heard the old adage that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. But the truth is that what attracts the most flies is manure, rotting garbage and almost anything else that should be kicked to the curb.

Photo courtesy: asifthebes@sxc.hu

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It’s just not enough

Jul 6th, 2011 by Mike

I guess just one move can change the way people look at you, it happened with Tiffany and her brief fascination with Sean Bean. I suppose that all a guy has to do to get noticed is get stabbed and then calmly go back into the bar and order another drink. Which makes sense for reasons that she neglected to mention, women love bad boys. Stubborn men who refuse medical attention because their blood alcohol level is higher than their I.Q. are all the rage with today’s sophisticated ladies. And yet, Tiffany argues with my theory that we have a primal instinct that draws us towards certain “types” and away from logical decisions.

I’ll admit that there’s something about an orange jumpsuit that makes Lindsey Lohan seem a little more sexy but it doesn’t make me want to be her cell mate. I think that was just because she became an adult and dropped a few notches on the class scale st the same time. It takes a little more to get my attention, maybe I’m just too picky. I mean, it’s just not enough for a woman to show that she had a momentary lapse in judgment, I need proof that it’s actually who she is. I’ve been tricked before, it’s far too easy for a woman to put her worst foot forward just to get her foot in the door and I don’t fall for that. Nope, I’m smart enough to look for a long history of indiscretions and insanity before I’m willing to commit to anything. Which very well may be why Tiffany got over Sean Bean so quickly.

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The independence of not being a dependent

Jul 5th, 2011 by Mike

IndependenceThis year, the fourth of July had new meaning for me as I am just a few months away from celebrating my daughter’s 18th birthday. Every teenager knows that this is the birthday that marks their independence from their parents. While it may be a small step in maturing into adulthood, it’s a giant leap in the eyes of the law. It’s the legal aspects of turning 18 that make me think that it’s actually the parents who claim their independence on this occasion.

It’s a liberating feeling for me and I’m not exactly sure why. She will always be my daughter but, for some reason, knowing that she is reaching the age to legally care for and be responsible for herself feels like a giant weight has been lifted off my shoulders. In a way, I feel like a kid again, free to do whatever I want without having to worry about how it will affect her. I could move to a different state and not have to pull her out of school and take her away from her friends. Not that I plan on doing that but knowing that I could feels very freeing. I’ve actually decided to go back to school and start a new career. You see, I have the luxury of being able to take a chance rather than feeling obligated to stick with what I know works.

I feel more free to date even though I suppose I am still a single father since I’m still single and still a father. But the stigma has changed, staying out all night while leaving an adult daughter at home doesn’t sound as bad as leaving a “minor child” home all night. In fact, it doesn’t sound bad at all. And the age difference from 17 to 18 is only a year, it’s subtle. But, like I said, in the eyes of the law it’s huge. Of course, being out all night would be irresponsible but only because I’m a student and no longer because I’m a parent.

Photo courtesy: jmkark@sxc.hu

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Online dating, covering all the bases

Jul 4th, 2011 by Mike

online dating distractionsI suppose it isn’t the most romantic story, telling your friends and family that you met your new spouse online because it was more convenient for you. But, I also think that it’s better than starting a collection of cats because you don’t want to be alone and meeting someone in person doesn’t seem to be working out for you. And let’s face it, for many of us, it’s just not that easy to meet new people with our busy schedules and our biological clocks just don’t have a pause button.

My recent post about how social networking is sometimes hindering our ability to be social reminded me of why I decided to try an online dating service to begin with. It’s so convenient for our friends to send us a text message or an email, post something on our Facebook wall or call us that we are spending more time responding and less time engaging with the people who are around us at the moment. Which might be a good thing if you’re at your annoying uncle’s house and trying to avoid conversation and a bad thing if you’re at the grocery store and inadvertently avoiding that cute bachelor or bachelorette who’s standing right next to you.

Of course, Tiffany argues that online dating sites are basically just a way of advertising (sometimes falsely) that you are single and looking and that may be true. But that’s really not all that different from getting dressed up and going to a bar to try and get noticed. If you want to advertise that you’re single you post your relationship status on Facebook, go out to the bars and join an online dating site to cover all the bases. I’ve even been thinking about printing up some t-shirts that say “Single” in big, bold letters; I think they’d be a big seller. The only reason I haven’t is because people would have to look up from their phones long enough to read them.

Photo courtesy nota@sxc.hu

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