Wednesday, May 26, 2010

My Progression to (or: Procrastination of) Online Dating

After a LOT of resisting, I've decided it's time. 

When I first moved to the city, my friend's little sister tried to convince me that I should try match.com  She even offered me the rest of her year-long subscription after she met her boyfriend (who she's still with today).   I declined.  I didn't have any real reason not to other than I didn't particularly want to.

Fast forward a few months.  My aforementioned friend and I decide to make a pact to join match.com.  I mean, if it worked so well for her little sister, then obviously we, the older, wiser versions of her, should similarly be able to find matches online too.  Plus we thought it would be fun.  Go out on a bunch of random dates, meet new people, flirt, blah blah blah.  So we set ourselves a deadline.  We would join match.com on July 4.  Fast forward to July 4.  Said friend was dating someone (who she's still with today) and me?  I felt like I had finally gotten the hang of the dating scene (slash I had finally figured out how to get a guy to ask for my number AND call AND ask me out).  It was exhausting enough dating guys I'd met the old-fashioned way that I couldn't even imagine throwing online dating into the mix.  So I put it off.  And put it off.  And put it off.

And then came the day that I actually canceled a first date to go over to a friend's house to watch Top Chef.  That's when I knew I needed a little breather from dating.  So I decided to take a nice, long break, enjoy my friends, go on vacation, take my time sifting through appropriate pictures of myself to put online and then, finally, without further ado, get on match.com.  But then I met someone.  Went on a few dates, that didn't work out, went on a few other random dates with guys I met in the interim, those didn't work out, starting dating 'D', that didn't work out and then poof.  It was 2010.  It sort of felt like I had crammed five years of dating all into one.  Excitement, exhaustion, up, down, fun, boring, great, terrible.  Get on match after all that?  Uh, no thanks.  It would've felt so defeatist, so sad, so desperate to try my hand at online dating after all that.

But now, I'm kind of excited again.  I'm ready to go out on a bunch of random dates, meet new people, flirt, blah blah blah.  And I suppose in a way, I have 'F' to thank for my progression back to a date-able state.  For one, he was a great distraction.  But more seriously, and rather ironically, 'F' helped me to realize how much I had been ready to compromise in a relationship.  With 'F', I wasn't constantly worrying about whether he was a potential boyfriend.  And without those could-he-be-my-new-boyfriend goggles, I could see just how much of me I was often willing to trade in just to become part of an us.

Now I'm sure I won't still get carried away from time-to-time and I know I'll still need to compromise when needed, but hopefully, this time around, I will still have the courage to be honest when I need to and not worry so much about losing someone before I've ever really even gotten them.

No comments:

Post a Comment