The Mostly Disappointing Dating Scene
Oct 17
6 min read
“What’s the dating scene like?” It’s a question I've received countless times from friends who ask safely from the confines of their marriages. My go-to, short and sweet answer? “Mostly disappointing. A little bit fun.” Not a lie, but not the whole truth, either. How do you explain being dropped off in what feels like a foreign land, with none of the tools needed to thrive there?
When I got married, Tinder was just becoming the next big thing, and I felt like I had been swept off my feet away from the battlefields of love and finding “the one”. I remember a genuine sense of elation knowing I wouldn’t ever have to experience the mess I heard that app was. I want to cup my younger self’s face in my hands and kiss her on the forehead. Not out of condescension, but out of genuine care and compassion because we would, in fact, be wading through the murky waters of the dating world, and the apps that come with it, one day, much sooner than I ever would have thought.
The first time I downloaded “the apps” was about 6 months after the separation from my children’s father. He pissed me off, so I said screw it. Yeah, not exactly the mental state you want to be stepping onto the minefield that is modern dating with. Some of you are probably thinking, “Wow, that’s soon.” While others may remark, “Waited longer than me!” The truth is, there is no right time or right way to do things like this. You hear some people meeting the love of their life a month out of a marriage by happenstance, or you hear how amazing a year or five of solitude is for personal development. Over eight billion people in this world, over eight billion ways to handle something. Personally? I could have waited, but then I wouldn’t have this juicy little anecdote and accompanying epiphany.
My first match would also be my first lesson on how male-centred I was still thinking and why I needed so badly to decenter men from my life. This lesson would be hard, a little ego-bruising, but so necessary. When his name and photo first popped up, I thought he looked familiar. I read through his profile and put it all together; he was a guy I went to elementary school with. He was a soccer player, popular, and a total asshole. (Why are those things always synonymous?) I dyed my hair one time in elementary school, jet black with hot pink streaks. A statement, for sure. One perhaps too bold for soft-spoken, nine-year-old me. In line for the pencil sharpener, I heard someone behind me ask him what he thought of my hair. I turned around, all too hopeful that the cute boy in the school would approve of my choice. “I think it sucks.” He sneered. I turned and looked at the floor, my cheeks probably flushing a similar pink to what the hairstylist put in the night before. Assumedly, I sharpened my pencil and went back to my seat. As an adult, I know violence is never the answer, but part of me wishes I sharpened that pencil and…. Another part of me looks back on this small, seemingly ordinary elementary exchange and makes me realize that my conditioning to stay sweet or stay quiet was already well underway.
This memory comes flooding back as I look through his photos. “We were just dumb schoolkids. Everyone grows up.” I thought. Oh, sweet summer child. The tattoos and the facial hair and overall good genetics probably made that concept easier to swallow. What is glaringly obvious to me now and would be inconceivable to me then is that I was still looking to be chosen. Going after the guy that stung your little self so bad you’re literally still writing about it twenty years later while actively healing from a man who stung you repeatedly for years was… a choice. What I really needed to do was stop poking in wasp nests and expecting a warm welcome from its inhabitants.
I can’t tell you which way I swiped because I refuse to learn which way means what; much like the way an elderly person may refuse to learn a certain aspect of technology so as not to be tainted by it. I did hit “match” though, and thus began my first venture out into the dating world. For our first date, we decided to go for a walk. I’d find out later that it is my go-to for first dates because sitting across from someone performing what felt like an interview was just too awkward for me to entertain. We realized we knew a lot of the same people and probably went to school together, but I was saving our little throwback pencil-sharpener episode; I thought it would be funny to share with him. On our walk, he held my hand. I thought it was a little forward, but mostly cute. He guided me to a lookout and stood behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and taking a deep inhale. “Wow. He must really like me.” I thought. As I write this, I’m back to cupping my younger self’s face again while simultaneously cringing. I know now that that is what they call “fuck boy behaviour”; an entire category of men and their subsequent behaviours I had never been versed in. We kissed goodbye, which again had me thinking it was a little forward. I was a mixed bag of emotions; butterflies swirled in my stomach the same time a tornado touched down. In hindsight, and as advice to any woman moving forward: those two feelings coming from the same man are an advanced warning of how things will go in the future.
After that date, we texted a lot. Too much. What project he was doing at work, what I was doing with the kids. Selfie requests (another red flag, in my opinion), inappropriate innuendos from him, half-hearted replies from me. I could feel myself getting burnt out, and we hadn’t even been on a second date, but I was still operating from the belief that I needed to contort myself to fit in whatever box a man came with, no matter how small or uncomfortable it made me feel. Plus, there was the added layer of a second rejection from the same guy who burned me years earlier. (Why the fuck did I do that to myself?) For the second date, I got ghosted - another new term I was becoming familiar with. You think, “Oh, that’s the rejection. Well, it sucks, but she got her answer.” Now I’m cupping your face in my hands, because you think my freshly separated, make-a-man-love-me self would make it that easy? No. When I need to learn a lesson, I make sure it is so hard-hitting that I don’t soon forget it.
The texting picked back up, and we had a second date. After about a beer and a half, I was feeling just mischievous enough to bring up the story from grade school. His response? “Oh, man. I’m such an asshole,” with a light chuckle. I need you to read that verbiage again and take note of the present tense used. I assured him it was okay, the way I assured every man who had ever hurt me that “it was okay”. “Just dumb schoolkids,” I recited in my head again, as the butterflies fluttered to safety and the tornado grew stronger. In the name of being real, raw and vulnerable, the idea that I could come out of my marriage and sleep with the popular kid (asshole or not) that I had a crush on in school was a concept so iconic I wasn’t willing to give up so easily.
After many a pep talk from my bestie, we decided that the next time he came over was going to be the day. You know the one. I was freshly showered, shaved, and ready to take the ribbon for most triumphant return after a marriage. The plan was that he would come over and I would cook him dinner. I know, I know. But it would be the last time I cooked for a man for a very long time, okay?
I sat on my deck a little while before he was set to arrive, hoping I could time drinking the beer right, making me a little extra flirty by the time he got to my house. The time went by, and so did the beer, but no date would come. No “heads up I’m gonna be late text”, not even an “I can’t make it.” Just silence. Thank god for that silence. Because sitting on my patio, cracking another beer, I really started to analyze my actions and the feelings that drove them.
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