looking for love, likes movies, dinner out

I tried it again, but briefly. Online dating. Someone brought it up again, and even though I vowed I would never try it again, I did, this morning, for like an hour. Jazzed had a free weekend, and so I thought, hmm, what’s to lose?

What’s to lose? Well, this is what’s to lose: my sense of sensibility and my idea, that somehow, if two people are meant to meet, they’ll meet. I don’t want to lose that, and I don’t want to lose hope that there is a guy out there with whom I can hang out with and learn to love. There, I said it and I’m holding on to it. Honestly, the feelings I kept feeling looking at pictures and profiles online was just embarrassment and disappointment. Like really, this is what’s out there? And then, then, I felt mean, judging, like I’m sure all these guys are great guys, but with tag-lines with spelling errors and blatant calls for booty? I wanted to say, “Hello, what are you in fifth grade?” (See, I said I got mean.)

The vulnerability was palpable, and it is not an attractive trait. Someone I know just dismisses all who are online as desperate, and of course desperation is really not something anyone is looking for. But there it is, I’ve said it, I was feeling a bit desperate, too, and I had to talk myself away from the wall. Back off, I said, stand down, relax. I had to tell myself, you will meet someone in reality, in real time, in real life, and it won’t feel like trying to pick out a puppy at the humane society.

I also felt paranoid, probably left over from when I did have a few dates from online matches years ago. One disastrous meeting after another. Picture in the movies when they just flip off calendar months, and imagine about 4-5 dates like this, too self-absorbed, too materialistic, too sketchy, etc. . . On to the one that sent me offline probably forever, the guy who wouldn’t quit calling, and calling me terms of endearments even though we never, ever met in person.

So, this morning, I took down my profile nearly as quickly as I put it up. I felt relieved, hopeful, the universe has plenty, the internet, well, only so much.