After a year of actively trying to make women friends to date, but getting nothing but rejections, I suddenly managed to land dinner dates two Saturdays in a row. It is amazing how much better the world feels already.
Both of these were the result of contacts from Match.com - and amazingly, both of them live in my neighborhood, within 3/4 mile from my house, but I had never met either. One of them drives a white convertible like I do, and has two beagles like I do.
This comes on the heels of my daughter confessing that "I met a boy". That was the biggest news when I visited her a couple of weeks ago in Houston, where she is a graduate math student at Rice University.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Back after a break
When I started this blog almost a year ago, I had a clear storyline in mind. I was going to tell the story of how a middle-aged man re-enters the dating scene after a 22-year absence, and slowly but steadily learns how to navigate this treacherous territory. I started telling the story, and then took a break when I got busy with the holidays, and did not have time to keep up my "production" on the dating database site (match.com).
But after the holidays, I could never muster the energy to operate in the "production mode" again. It was simply too depressing to note that whether I was "pumping hard" or I was "slacking off", the result was the same: Zero!
I tried to get comments from friends and acquaintances to determine if I was doing something obviously wrong, but I never did get the kind of "engineering" advice I wanted. Instead I got moral answers:
"It is way too early for you to try to date again; you need to finish grieving and feel good about yourself again before you can even think about dating." - Maybe so, but if I just go home and sit in the dark at night, alone with my dogs, I am for sure never going to feel good again - ever!
"You are not going to meet anyone interesting by purposefully trying to. At least it never worked for me. You should just do things that are interesting to you, and then pay close attention to the people that you naturally meet in the process of doing that." - There is undoubtedly a great deal of wisdom in that, but it so happens that the things I like to do are either solitary or require you to go WITH someone that you already know. Like going to the theater, movies, concerts and lectures. Going out to dinner. Reading great books. The closest thing to practical advice I got out of this was a suggestion to sign up for a poetry writing workshop in my local municipal night school program.
"You are going to church, and your church sounds like a great community. Many people find their life's companion at church." - Yes, I want to believe that, too. Two problems: (1) Our congregation is intentionally reaching out to the LGBT community, and many of the apparently single women there are lesbians. It is quite embarrassing to make a pass at someone, only to be introduced to "my partner Beth". Also, a fair number of married women attend our church while their husbands do not. (2) At any given time, most of the interesting women that are actually both single and straight do have a boyfriend. The windows of opportunity are fairly narrow, and you need to be plugged into the rumor mill to know when these opportunities come up. Still, this may in the end be the most productive path.
Nevertheless, I did make one change to my MATCH profile that seems to have made a small improvement in the response I get when I contact someone. I replaced "now separated" with "divorced", and the week after that, someone actually agreed to meet me for lunch. Of course, this was someone visiting from a foreign country and leaving two days later, so it did not go anywhere, but it WAS a step up from NO success at all.
But after the holidays, I could never muster the energy to operate in the "production mode" again. It was simply too depressing to note that whether I was "pumping hard" or I was "slacking off", the result was the same: Zero!
I tried to get comments from friends and acquaintances to determine if I was doing something obviously wrong, but I never did get the kind of "engineering" advice I wanted. Instead I got moral answers:
"It is way too early for you to try to date again; you need to finish grieving and feel good about yourself again before you can even think about dating." - Maybe so, but if I just go home and sit in the dark at night, alone with my dogs, I am for sure never going to feel good again - ever!
"You are not going to meet anyone interesting by purposefully trying to. At least it never worked for me. You should just do things that are interesting to you, and then pay close attention to the people that you naturally meet in the process of doing that." - There is undoubtedly a great deal of wisdom in that, but it so happens that the things I like to do are either solitary or require you to go WITH someone that you already know. Like going to the theater, movies, concerts and lectures. Going out to dinner. Reading great books. The closest thing to practical advice I got out of this was a suggestion to sign up for a poetry writing workshop in my local municipal night school program.
"You are going to church, and your church sounds like a great community. Many people find their life's companion at church." - Yes, I want to believe that, too. Two problems: (1) Our congregation is intentionally reaching out to the LGBT community, and many of the apparently single women there are lesbians. It is quite embarrassing to make a pass at someone, only to be introduced to "my partner Beth". Also, a fair number of married women attend our church while their husbands do not. (2) At any given time, most of the interesting women that are actually both single and straight do have a boyfriend. The windows of opportunity are fairly narrow, and you need to be plugged into the rumor mill to know when these opportunities come up. Still, this may in the end be the most productive path.
Nevertheless, I did make one change to my MATCH profile that seems to have made a small improvement in the response I get when I contact someone. I replaced "now separated" with "divorced", and the week after that, someone actually agreed to meet me for lunch. Of course, this was someone visiting from a foreign country and leaving two days later, so it did not go anywhere, but it WAS a step up from NO success at all.
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