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Writer's pictureReed

Reflections, Part 1: Dating

I am not ancient. I am newly middle-aged; so new to it, in fact, that I still have the temerity to rebel against the label. The first time that someone said to me, "Welcome to Middle Age," complete with the capital letters, I startled nearly as badly as I had the first time someone offered me a beer (which was coincidentally well before I was technically legal to drink, because of course it was). I've been reflecting on age lately, and so the first of variations on a theme: Dating at my age.


I entered the dating world prior to dating apps, and never really enjoyed the more traditional methods of finding dates. I've hardly been single my entire life, so I had to figure this out at some point, right? That leads to the question of how people traditionally meet people - hobby groups? bars? striking up a conversation at a cafe? introduced by friends? My past relationships have always evolved from friendships. I met two of them at the same cafe (at separate times of life, of course) - one of them worked there at the time, and the other was very interested in the book I was reading, and both became friends and, later, one became a lover, the other sort of fizzled out into friendship again. I met one online, years before online dating took off, and we did the visit-each-other thing for a while before things got serious, then they found someone a bit easier to reach. One, I did indeed meet at a bar, but that was the outlier.


My point is that I don't date. I make friends, and eventually someone's brave enough to say something, where "someone" is always the other person. I do not understand it when people flirt with, come onto, or generally hit on me until much later, and usually only when told or the situation is spelled out to me in the moment. Clueless to the core, and I don't confess my feelings when they develop because I've been conditioned against that, which is fine because those feelings are eventually able to be ignored and, later, forgotten. I don't go out to the places that "they" tell you to go meet people at, because the idea is terrifying and anathema to me. But the alternative is worse.


A therapist suggested, not long ago, that I try dating apps. It was a disaster. I tried them, briefly, when I was living in the city and every single time I met someone, it was terrible. I swore off casual dating at that point, and I'd since had my heart broken several times and then swore off romance entirely by the time the therapist suggested the apps. It was horrifying, and I fired that therapist because of what it did to me. You see, I have awful self-esteem, and I'd carefully constructed a shell around my heart by then and had sworn that I'd never date again, and I was content with that. Then, the apps, where I chatted with some genuinely lovely-seeming people, but the entire process is cold. It's very much, to me, like a job interview, only you're both each the interviewer and the interviewee, except this time, HR is absent.


The fallout from this has been unpleasant, and tore apart the shell I'd constructed, where I was fine with no affection. I was comfortable.


I am not twenty years old anymore and do not have that twenty-year-old body. Indeed, I have what's left of a depression body, and the self-esteem of a gnat. I am coarse, and crass, and I'm not even approaching "in shape," and even when I was, I was never attractive. And thus, all of those anxieties, all of the shame, and all of the longing for companionship came right back to the fore.


I don't want what most other people want, either. At this point in my life, I am not looking to settle down and have kids, dog, and picket fence - okay, maybe the dog. I don't pine for a relationship wherein someone moves in within a few months or even a year, or a relationship in which we're so far up each other's asses that we have to check in with each other all the time. I don't want someone that doesn't want their own quiet time, and won't give me mine. And that seems to be what most people do want. I find that comes with drama, personally.


I don't know if this is age, or if it's a change of perspective in general, or if it's the result of too many heartbreaks, but I want simple friendship, affection, love, and sex. In that order, if at all possible. That last one - the sex - is a deal-breaker, I find, because it takes me quite some time to trust someone enough to have sex with them (or it used to; I doubt that will have changed in the several years it's been since I had any of my own) and someone would need to be fine with waiting. I want to know that someone loves me, including all of the weird shit. I want to love someone without having to check in with them all the time. And so, I have begun contemplating an invitation to a singles event for people in the 40s-60s age range. At a bar, which I loathe the idea of. Near Halloween, so there will be costumes. I have invited an acquaintance to go as well - we have zero interest in each other romantically, the other person is married and willing to just hang out, and it would be much easier to go and have someone we can each talk to without the pressure of the shit-show the event is likely to be otherwise. It does have the makings of a spectacular people-watching session if things go pear-shaped.


If nothing else, it will get me into meeting people again, but the prospect of dating is terrifying. Not necessarily in that I'm afraid of other people, but I am afraid of what this is going to do to me. The possibility exists that all I will get out of this is deeper into my own morass of self-imposed isolation. Instead of singles events, I should just go take part in events that take place at bars, like dart leagues, or poker tournaments, or something like that. But, again, I loathe the idea of meeting people in bars, because I very much hate hanging out at bars and do not want to invite more alcoholics into my life than are already there (and eternally complaining about their sponsor, or falling into tables).

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