Monday, June 9, 2008

That Girl Hates Dating

So, I’m single.

I’m kind of unhappy about that. I went through high school always having a boyfriend, but now it seems like it’s impossible to find anyone that I’m interested in actually dating, even though my dating pool has theoretically expanded since I’ve accepted my bisexuality.

I don’t even know I’d go about meeting someone—I’m doing this internship at a theater near my house, and there are tons of college students there for all sorts of stuff over the summer. Still, it’s quite daunting—what opportunities do I going to have to mingle with everyone, and am just I going to be one of many girls with the same idea?

One of my friends and I were talking earlier (platonic guy friend, if you must know), and I was lamenting what seems to me to be a distinct lack of interest from guys that I meet—they don’t initiate conversations with me, even if we’re acquaintances, and from that I gathered that they’re just not interested. He explained that there was a chance that they were, in fact, very interested, but that I intimidated them.

While he may have just been trying to make me feel better (he has this rather sketchy way of complimenting me that often involves what a knockout I am in a bikini, but his girlfriend also isn’t local and he’s starved for tits, so I take it in stride), I think he may be kind of right. Not necessarily that I’m so drop-dead gorgeous that men don’t think they stand a chance, but because I’m a rather intense person sometimes.

That is, I fluctuate between really intense and somewhat disengaged. When I’m standing alone, my eyes tend to wander, so I look like I’m just completely occupied by taking in the view, when really I just want someone to come up to be and say ‘hi.’ Preferably a somewhat attractive, fun guy with a taste for dark humor, but I’m really not that picky.

And by “not that picky,” I mean “two weeks away from wearing a shirt that says ‘completely desperate, please validate me” across the front;

I just hate it.

So, I signed up for some ridiculous free dating site. I figure, what the hell—I come across like a pretty cool person through text, I can upload a few pictures where I look especially nice, and see what the hell happens!

Well. Things certainly happened.

In two weeks, I found quite a few people who I could totally see myself being friends with, if not dating. There’s even this one girl I talk to daily on AIM, with whom I clicked almost instantly. Even taking out the sketchy forty-five-year-old men who ask me if I want a sugar daddy (the answer is no, by the way), I’m contacting and being contacted by several people who actually seem like real human beings.

Even now, a month later, I’m still finding some people who I wouldn’t mind meeting. That’s kind of cool.

So then I start to wonder why the whole ‘online dating’ thing is such a stigma, while we always expect the worst from a website that lets people contact each other. I may not be normal, but I’m certainly within one standard deviation of the cultural norm, and I’m looking around a dating site. Wouldn’t it follow that other people, relatively normal, would be curious and set up profiles?

I think I’ll have to reserve judgment for once I see what happens if I ever meet anyone off the site for a more-than-platonic encounter, but I have a feeling that if that happens, it’ll be with someone who’s not completely crazy. I’ve got pretty decent crazy-dar, to be sure.

So, That Girl may in fact be foraying into the dank, scary jungle of Meeting People From the Internet.

Wish me luck!

1 comment:

Sofi said...

Hey, I found your site on a Pajiba comment thread, and I really enjoyed what you wrote.

That whole thing about intimidating men? Yeah, I know what that's like. Guys usually keep me at arms length, but as I grow older - and men grow more confident - they actually walk up to me and start conversations.

It was weird reading this entry, 'cause it's exactly how I felt when I was 19. I'm 23 now, and that whole "what is wrong with me?" thing is slowly going away.

I'm glad I found your blog. Oh, and good luck!