POF – Back on the wagon.

I am dead set certain that my epitaph is going to read…

It will still have flowers and all the fancy granite but I am certain that’s how it will read.  For all of eternity, the world will know that my dating life was tragic but I was not a fully-fledged failure at life.

Sometimes it’s hard to split the difference.  So much of our existence in our social communities is defined by who we are with.  Are you married?  Don’t you want a family?  Are you too picky?  You just need to put yourself out there a little bit.  All of these questions, and more, are fired at you with regularity and usually from complete strangers. It’s difficult to explain to a complete stranger that yes, I do want a family, no, I don’t need a husband to have one, no, I don’t think I’m too picky and yes, I am ‘putting myself out there.’ 

That last one is a lie.  I haven’t been putting myself out there at all lately.  If anything in the last year or so, I’ve been actively hiding from a dating life.  I made alternative life plans and decided to live without a man.  I made a choice to build a family all by myself after the man that I wanted didn’t want that or me.  Rejection at any time is tough.  Putting yourself in the road of continuous rejection is not tough, it’s bloody soul destroying. 

So, last week, I needed an ego boost.  I needed to know that there are men, real, red-blooded men out there who wanted me just a little bit.  The answer was simple.  I reactivated my Plenty of Fish profile six days ago.  Today, I deleted it, again.

The last time I had logged into POF was 2015.  In 2015 I still had hope that love would find a way and that prince charming, or at least a meek footman, was out there somewhere and wanting to find me.  With a few minor profile updates and a new photo or two, I put myself out there.  Within five minutes I copped a shirtless selfie and a ‘hello beautiful.’  A few messages later and the shirtless 40-year-old (with the body of a 25-year-old) was ready to make a house visit.  I smiled, was grateful for his flattery and I sent him on his way.  My ego was boosted.  I again saw that there are men in the world other than that one and that some of them might even like me.  Both goals achieved.  Five minutes. Done.

The smart plan would have been to cut and run then.  But that’s the problem with a little bit of flattery.  It leaves you wanting just a little bit more.  Let’s fast forward six days.  Six days later, messages from fifteen random strangers and I’m left feeling worse than ever about the state of my dating life.  Once we remove the obvious shirtless players looking for a fetish to tick of their list, we are left with the rest.  We all make judgements about people.  We are all guided by our first impressions, even more so when we are internet dating. 

As I flick through the hundreds of men in my age group I’m dumbstruck by what passes.  Photos of men with their wives, toothless, shirtless, blurry, heads missing, no picture at all, smoking and clearly plastered and a large proportion clearly lying about their age.  35 you say?  35?  Lived a hard life in the sun picking cotton have you?  I think not.

It’s demoralizing.  It’s devastating.  And if I met half of them in a bar, in the line at Coles or at the coffee shop on the corner they’d probably be lovely.  But I’m not and they’re not.  They’ve selected the best side of them to put out into the world on a public internet site and what I can see is a toothless, balding, smoking fisherman who looks like he’s lived four lives instead of his young forty years who is ‘not looking for anything serious’.

Once I’ve sifted through those and checked the rest of the messages, there’s a few genuine hearts in there.  The conversation is stilted and limited and filled with awkward questions about what you’re looking for in a man.  I tried to answer that question at least three times this week, and all that I could come up with is this…

It’s honest – but hardly the answer they’ve been looking for.  Internet dating is not for the feint hearted.  Sifting the intentions, making judgements based on nothing, not being able to feel how the conversation is going – it’s almost impossible to work out what is genuine and who, like me, is searching for the ego boost.

I handed out my phone number to one and let another look at my Facebook profile.  It’s funny that I had no issue sharing my phone number but immediately regretted letting a stranger look at my Facebook page.  I rescinded his friend request after our conversation and took back the only vestige of my privacy that I could.  It’s unfair and his intentions may be honorable but what if, just like me, he’s only looking for the boost and for that I showed him my world.

I am not a shit human to search for validation from strangers.  I am a shit human for not being honorable with my intentions on a site where others are struggling with disingenuine wankers just the same as I am.  What I should have done was head to the pub.  If I needed validation that I was in fact a desirable woman to someone, I should have gone to the bar like everyone else.  I should have paid for the compliment with a beer and a remark rather than hide behind my keyboard and hope that what I was getting was real.

So it’s gone.  I’ve left the shirtless, tiger loving, toothless, ‘35’ year olds to their searches and I wish them well.  I’m going back to the gym, back to dinner out and drinks at the bar.  I’ll find my self worth in a kettle bell and a glass of wine and leave the swiping to the heart strong.  Good luck out there keyboard warriors.  Protect your thumbs from RSI and swipe hard with good intent.