Part of me just wants to say to the author: lower your standards.
But more seriously: people can wind up in a category that makes it very hard to find the person they think they want. My sister - married at 38, which is about 10 years later than she would have wanted - had this problem. She's brilliant, successful with respect to her career, fit, active, but in DC, where everyone is career-focused (as she tells it) and she's also a religious conservative in the radtrad mold. She probably voted for Trump. The problem: guys she'd meet with similar values aren't interested in an accomplished independent woman (oh, they want an educated future mom, but one who isn't quite their equal and certainly not their age), and the guys likely to be interested in a mid-30s career girl don't share her politics.
Anyhow: she met her husband at her martial arts gym, and he is a) younger than she b) vegetarian c) atheist-but-apparently-game-to-go-to-weekly-church and my new niece is really cute and a baby designed to blow up all expectations about how easy being a mom is if one has read all the right books.
Part of me just wants to say to the author: count your blessings.
Very relatable, and yes, I think it's largely about luck. While I fell into a very pleasing relationship about a year and a half after my marriage ended, everything she says about dating apps resonates.
There's a real gender asymmetry here, where for straight men who are perpetually single you can just say "It sucks now, but if you can just hold on until your late 20s, everything will get much much easier." Whereas for a straight woman in her early 30s (actually I'm not sure if the author is straight or not?) it's only gotten more difficult, and not having had the practice of successful dating and relationships at ages when it's easier is going to be really difficult.
And particularly the difficulty of lowering one's standards. "Lowering your standards" doesn't so much mean saying yes to people who are pursuing you but aren't exactly the sort of person you were envisioning as a partner, it's figuring out how to revamp your personality and presentation to appeal to people who wouldn't be interested in you behaving as you usually do. That's not necessarily categorically unreasonable -- there are certainly things that it's reasonable to expect from a partner (manners, basic grooming) and if you're not doing that sort of thing you should change. But once you get into acting like a completely different kind of person, that's awfully difficult.
Like - did my sister lower her standards? Well, if I'd told her ten years ago to be open to dating vegetarian atheists she would have scoffed. She used to write guys off because they weren't what she wanted on paper. (Me: but you don't date the paper.) I think dating apps exacerbate it a little - here is someone's love resume, which is either bland or full of reasons to rule them out.
Maybe it's more like "allow yourself to be surprised."
I firmly believe that the right approach to online dating is to make your goal just to line up dates. You want to do as little weeding out before the first date as you reasonably can (some caveat here about privilege and some people needing to do more weeding than others). It's just easier to be open to a real person than profile. And at least that way you're getting experience going on dates and learning how to make connections with people.
That was so painful to read I only skimmed the last half. I wish I could tell this woman that there is absolutely nothing wrong with her, or if there is, it's still probably not why she's single. I was a deeply flawed human being at the beginning of my 30-year marriage, and I still am. So are most of my married friends.
I think her real problem is her shallow dating pool. The easiest place to meet dozens and dozens of single people is in high school or college. If you miss that window for finding a mate, your pool has shrunk dramatically to those your are able to find and meet one by one. If you are a Black woman, mass incarceration has reduced your pool of marriageable Black men as effectively as an active world war, and some unknown percentage of white men don't want to date Black women, so that's a reduced pool also. Looking at my single female friends under 50, nearly ALL of them are Black, and I don't think it's an accident.
Her being a Black woman raised by a white family is probably another pool-shrinker. A friend with a similar background told me she never had any luck dating Black men, they thought she was weird and not Black enough. Another strike against the author is smoking. She's clearly from the educated class, and as a rule college-educated people do not smoke and think smoking is kind of scummy behavior (people are always a little shocked when I tell them I used to smoke, it's like I'm telling them I used to be a meth head or something).
The only thing she can probably actually do is quit smoking and try to meet more upscale white men (the friend I mentioned earlier is now engaged to a white man), Maybe she could take up climbing or hiking or something, or some other upper-class white guy group hobby with a slight female shortage.
It was always such a surprise to me going to unfogged events how many smokers there are here. It's basically the only situation in my adult life where I interact with smokers. Maybe she just needs to go to unfogged meetups to meet people?
Squirrel Cage is a good place to meet people who will tolerate smoking.
is to make your goal just to line up dates
Someone called it "throughput" and that's how I've thought of it ever since.
8: this does not help people who aren't religious, but church can be a good place to meet people in their 29's and 30's. I had a large church with a 20's and 30's crowd. We'd have weekend getaways, o out for lunch every Sunday, play softball. Some of those people are close like college friends.
Professional school and Certain structured work settings also seem to help - management consulting, medical residency. The latter is educational (cheap labor too, but officially educational) and structured with lots of social events.
I do know people in the second half of their 50's who met on match.com in their late 30's. No kids, if that's what she wants. Not sure what they wanted. She had a miscarriage but didn't go all out to try to have a kid, because of the stress of juggling everything.
8: Yeah, she seems fine. But if you think of dating filters as a bunch of Venn diagrams, not only does Black + highly educated + smoking rule out a lot of people*, so do whatever her preferences are (presumably educated, she mentions the young/artist thing, etc.)
Sometimes it hurts to think about, but then I just write another book, masturbate, cry, complain on Twitter, write another book.
Seems like maybe she reads Unfogged. Do we have any single male commenters in LA these days?
After this, her friends should feel like they ought to be setting her up.
So I'm single again. Not actively looking since nearly all of my needs are met. But out here in the not-internet, there are hints of appropriate single men. My friends mention someone; there's a neighbor; one of the trade guys who has done work here has a Ph.D.. It is surprisingly plausible that I might just ... meet someone.
The thing I notice? Every last one of them is divorced. I was absolutely right. When I was looking in my thirties, they were all married. They were not available then.
12.2: What you want is some kind of adult "summer camp." 50-100 strangers thrown together all day having an intense experience. It's hard in the US for people to get off work long enough, but it's be fascinating to try to do this with the aim of dating coming out of it. I guess this is already what Birthright or Taiwanese love boat.
One potentially tricky thing about the article writer's situation is that as you say she's entering the range where most of her dating options will be people who are divorced, and the dynamic of one person having had a whole marriage and the other person never having been in any serious relationship is weird. I could be wrong, but it feels to me like someone who is divorced isn't looking for someone who doesn't have any dating experience but also isn't inappropriately young.
I'm not sure -- I think divorced and never-in-a-serious-relationship might work okay for matched levels of narrow-eyed suspiciousness.
From my very small sample of friends I watched do it, widowed dating divorced is weird, if the widowed party had a happy marriage before their partner died. If your experience is that relationships just kind of work fine, you may find divorced people puzzling.
50-100 strangers thrown together all day having an intense experience
Someone must have written a "we met at the insurrection" piece.
My first response was that I wanted to post a link to Kate Harding's "On Dumb Luck", but her old wordpress blog is no longer available. That was a really great piece of writing.
My first response was that I wanted to post a link to Kate Harding's "On Dumb Luck", but her old wordpress blog is no longer available. That was a really great piece of writing.
19-20 -- That's actually a pretty accurate description of me and my wife. (I was divorced.) We met 26 years ago. I can say that it has worked out well for me.
Montana is an excrutiatingly lonely place to be a deaf woman with a phd who cares deeply about open, honest communication in ASL.
I didn't read the whole thing but maybe I'll finish it later when I'm in a more cheerful mood.
50-100 strangers thrown together all day having an intense experience
A reality tv show!
My grandmother always complained that no one in the family communicated. She was widely considered correct in this, but nobody ever tried to change it.
I believe that if people can't communicate, the very least they can do is to shut up.
I can't help wonder what "perpetually single" means. Obviously from context it means she's never been married or engaged. Probably also never had a live-in significant other. Never had a second date? Never had a first date?
I don't know, maybe it doesn't matter. I can't help but think about Cassandane, who turned 39 shortly after we started dating, but maybe it's not a fair comparison because she had had relationships, just not relationships this serious before. Race and a publishing career are further complications.
Yeah, the article is very purposefully vague on this point. It clearly doesn't mean she's virgin. I think it means "never had a relationship where you called each other boyfriend/girlfriend"? The key bit is:
My most comparable experience to real relationships is situationships. So, not nothing. But kind of nothing. I satisfy my sexual needs by waiting around for "hanging out" to turn into drunk, which then turns into "hooking up" -- or, simply put, I have sex with my friends.
It's a little unclear to me what the difference is between a "situationship" and a "relationship that's not serious." Like I'm not sure if it's some sort of cultural shift where people are less likely to call the early stages of a relationship a relationship.
32: I think it means the fling has never been long enough to have social implications like being identified as someone's girlfriend to others, or being able to reasonably expect any motions of partner-like help --- help assembling furniture, help hosting a party, help dealing with a stolen car. Someone you can ask to do something like that and it's not a beg or a perpetual favor exchange. There's a length component ( 7 or 8 dates? More than a month?) And a length component.
I say this like an alien reporting on field notes, having been coupled for 15 years, and having been bad at the market before that. Part of me says, there but for the grace of God go I. If we split up, I think I would embrace celibacy out of sheer laziness. But I am also very pregnant right now and the thought of having to get used to new sex is kind of nauseating, so don't hold me to that.
To me it seemed like there are more guys she'd be interested in partnering with longer term who aren't interested that length or depth of relationship than that she's the one with the very high standards.
I bet the smoking is more of a problem in California for her age group than she really articulates.
I actually have a friend I kind of want to set her up with ....but I am in the Bay Area.
I actually have *two* straight guy friends in the Bay Area I would like to set up with someone ....first early 40s ( Martinez) and second youthful 62. ( San Francisco.). Megan, it's not clear to me if you're actively looking....nor if this is too far? Anyone else?
Oops, first graf in 33 should say intensity component.
Oops, first graf in 33 should say intensity component.
Sorry, Megan I meant to say it's not clear to me if you are actually interested.
omg 33 i adored dating & all the new sex possibly only attractant of new found singledom (this no surprise to franz joseph) but otherwise strikes absolute terror as adore spouse. (open relationship sounds utterly exhaaasuuuuussssting & wouldn't work for us emotionally.)
am sorely sorely tempted to dangle your potential intros at a friend in a dead but not yet ended marriage but no, no i will be patient. super hard tho.
37: I mean, I still haven't gotten back my taste for *olive oil* from the first trimester so.... don't hold me to anything. And, obviously, being heavily pregnant is a suboptimal time to seriously ponder hypotheticals involving a split from an adored and beloved partner. ( Who among other things is crazy talented at making me feel hot despite my so often feeling gross right now.)
Roger not wanting to rush things with your friend. I just emailed you so feel free to ping me if that changes.
alas that's a fake imperial email but if things evolve for my friend i will surely reach out from behind the imperial pseud!
At the moment I am not actively looking. I'm vaguely passively interested, which means nothing is happening.
Which is fine. I'm pretty happily occupied with Steady and gardening and stuff.
31: Never stuck around long enough for a one night stand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fllQTBPDalk
33.1 helps me make sense of a past breakup. She could have stolen the car without my help. She was asking if I was potentially serious about the relationship and I missed the clue.
44: NO, NOTHING GOOD STARTS IN A GETAWAY CAR.
As an example of the downside of communication, I just figured out that the funny smell in the kitchen is a mouse that died under the cabinets or something. According to relationship experts, I'm supposed to communicate that. But if I did, I'd hardly be able to rest until I found the mouse. And I'm really tired.