There’s a lot of chatter on the interwebs about the travails and dark mental holes of online dating. There’s movements to create opportunities for meeting someone in real-time. There’s discussion of how to be aware of the algorithms as well as the dark side of algorithms creating or gatekeeping choice.
But I don’t think the positives are discussed enough. Yes, it is brutal, yes there is a real shift towards shallow with the emphasis on looks and checking the box and ease of ghosting.
I have RSD. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria. That means that my nervous system, my physiology has a too-easy access to a panic override button.
Not that I love doing battle to create peace with that aspect of who I am, but the process of dealing with awkward, rejection, perceptions, and all that has been a real blessing in terms of figuring out who I am and what I need and what I want from life. It’s been a real opportunity to help re-train all those socialized and conditioned parts of myself that were self-sabotaging. Talking to multiple people at once, the transition from looking at their profile, to chatting, to meeting in person, to going on a date, to making it to 3 dates, to making it to 5 dates, to dating has really forced me to confront myself.
I think it’s a lot easier to blame the system, the game, the rules, for being flawed and inhuman. It’s a lot harder to talk about things like online dating from the inside-out, rather than the outside-in.
Look, I think we can all agree that dating sucks. It’s a grind, it’s a mental marathon or gauntlet. It’s an exercise in misery and strangeness with almost unpredictable payouts of dopamine or success or a sense of reward.
But, in the midst of all that, I am finding myself enjoying the opportunity to practice being genuine. Less so enjoying, but still trying to embrace the opportunity to practice life being about the journey and not the destination. We have so much wisdom in our culture, but we don’t know how to internalize it. Dealing with the tribulations of swiping, deciding, meeting, opening up, falling flat on your face time and again is a real opportunity to cultivate the mental awareness that it’s not personal. To cultivate the mental habit of not making it about flaws, failings, imperfections, self-doubt, self-abnegation, bashing, bitching, etc, but rather the plain and simple hard, thankless grind of trying to be a better person. But more than that, the grind/not grind of embracing self, embracing simple enjoyment, embracing discovery, and so on and so forth.
When I try to find someone to match with, the first thing I do is make eye contact. What’s there?
Then I look for my short-list of no’s: no incompatible religions, no smokers, no one who vibes control issues.
Then, if something’s there, I look at how their personality shows up in their pictures.
Then, I see if based on the words they put down, if we can naturally carry a conversation.
I haven’t had a bad first date after the first 10 dates. I haven’t found my Clyde, as I see so often in the want-ads, er, bios, but I am enjoying life.
Do I think I’m any better at my personal least favorite part of the process where I have to say I’m not interested? Hell no. hell. No. But who cares? Why do I always have to improve at everything? Why can’t the enjoyment of meeting new people, exploring the world and myself, finding the beautiful-me way to chase that dream of a life partner be enough?
What is the story I am creating out of this…and why? Why can’t I absolutely hate every facet of the grind of dating and also absolutely enjoy it all, even the internal whiny-child battle I have with myself every time it’s time to close a door?
Who writes the story?