Hello, it’s me -- the perpetually single woman who continues to write about being single. I guess I took a short break, but I’m back at it again! I’ve been single most of my adult life, with a few “relationships” sprinkled in between. My only real, legitimate relationship (as in, he spent quality time with me and called me his girlfriend) came at the age of 30. It lasted only a year and I dumped his ass, which was honestly a first for me.
God, I’ve been online dating for so long. I really am an old slut. I’m one of those old sluts who can reminisce about the good old days of OkCupid. Like, way back before Tinder and Bumble, there was just OkCupid. It wasn’t even on your phone. It was the dating website for young adults. I’m sure this is a classic case of nostalgia brain worms eating away at my amygdala, but I actually miss when online dating was less user-friendly.
Perhaps the fonder memories have to do with my early online dating experiences being a lot more exciting and hopeful than the alternative. I was in my senior year of college at UC Davis. By that time, I had concluded that I was not only over my education and small-town living but also over the dudes. None of whom were really chasing me – except for a skateboarder who was friends with the punks I hung out with. He was older and kind of an asshole, plus he refused to eat pussy and had a micropenis so things didn’t really work out. There was a different punk I was obsessed with, who did fuck me in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven once, but he didn’t want to date me. C’est la vie.
OkCupid became an escape from all of it: the fatigue of school, the boring town, and, above all, the shitty guys. I set my sights on San Francisco and took the incredibly irresponsible risk of meeting strangers for dates in an unfamiliar city. It was a two-hour Amtrak ride, and often that Amtrak ride was the most enjoyable part of the date. I was barely 21 and largely winging-it, in terms of my travel schedule, especially when it came to where I’d be staying if I missed my train. My brain wasn’t fully developed and thus my impulse control was still, technically speaking, a work in progress. Fun fact: underdeveloped impulse control is the real reason our twenties are considered the wildest years of our lives. Our brains are more willing to put us in harm’s way just for the hell of it. Today, I can’t even bring myself to ride a rollercoaster if it has too many loopy things because, for whatever reason, my body has now decided that my life is precious, and too many loopy things might lead to an abrupt end to said precious life.
Anyhow, I got into a semi-regular pattern of matching with guys in the city, planning a day date, and then seeing where things went. Usually, I ended up crashing at their place for the night and heading back home the next day. One time, my date and I had to return to Davis because he was living with his parents in Walnut Creek and didn’t tell me. We were incredibly high on mushrooms and I had to have a friend drive two hours to pick us up. The following weekend I was given an “intervention” of sorts because my friends were worried about my safety. God, I miss my twenties!
Irresponsible antics aside, I think I also miss the effort of OkCupid. All those survey questions you could answer that would then calculate your compatibility with someone when you clicked on their profile. The profile itself could be like your very own Vogue interview. Of course, you could also half-ass it on OkCupid, but that was rarer. Now, all dating apps are designed for people who want to do the bare minimum. In fact, to work “too hard” on a dating profile reeks of cringey desperation. Like, oh what a LOSER, you really think you can find love on here? How embarrassing! Earnestness has become cringe while a more chill and/or sarcastic vibe is better appreciated and better received. This is actually very bad for legitimate dating and yet we accept it. By the way, I know OkCupid still exists, but it’s lost its “cool” factor to a point where no one I know has been on it for years. The dating prospects are a lot bleaker there. So, despite my fondness for online dating of the past, I eventually acquiesced to Tinder, Hinge, and some stupid app for Jews a friend convinced me to pay for (I really couldn’t care less about dating a fellow Jew, but whatever). I acquiesced all those years ago, and guess what? I’m still there. I hate it, but I still swipe. Why? Because I have to.
I recently had an acquaintance over to my place. This is someone I had a brief romantic fling with, years ago. They were just over for a drink, but who knows what else might have happened? I wasn’t anticipating anything, either way. This person sat down on my couch and basically told me I was their exact type, and that they admired me immensely, and then separately we both spoke about how we are both looking for love. An hour or so later, they just...left. Just hugged me goodbye and went home. In my semi-drunken state, I decided to ask them why they don’t think we could work as a relationship? If I am what you’re looking for, why not just...try it with me? The excuse was vague, something about wanting to find someone “new”. Obviously, that’s a sugar-coated attempt to spare my feelings but that’s ok. Not everyone is down for brutal honesty like I am. I have gotten responses like this many times in my life.
Dating is hard; it’s messy and confusing and you'll almost never get the answers you’re looking for. It’s a genuine challenge and, as corny as it might sound, dating takes strength. You learn to accept life’s uncertainties. You learn to accept perpetual confusion. You can grow as a person from these experiences, and that’s exactly what I’ve tried to do. But the problem is, when you’re single for as long as I’ve been single, people want to make it about you. They surmise that you must be the reason for this perceived failing. I guess, in a way, that gives one something to aspire to. If they fix the problem within them, love will make its way into their orbit. The clouds will part and a perfect romantic partner will reveal themselves–complete with a rescue puppy you can name and an offer to split the rent on a moderately priced one-bedroom apartment in an “upcoming” neighborhood you’ll refuse taking culpability in gentrifying.
I’ll be real with you: I’m sick of looking inward and changing my attitude and behavior and still not getting any results. I think at this point I reject the theory that my lack of dating success has to do with my attitude. No, I’ve come to understand that most men I encounter in Los Angeles kind of suck. A strong majority of them don’t meet even my most basic standards of either having a fun and interesting personality or being emotionally available enough to date more seriously. When I do eventually meet someone who I believe just might be “my type”, they tend to be in the emotionally unavailable camp. They don’t want to be in a relationship, or they don’t want to be in a relationship with me, specifically.
Go ahead and make your own assumptions about what that means, but I have settled for many, many men based on what you might be thinking. I too thought, maybe I’m too picky? Maybe my expectations are too high? Maybe I’m intentionally sabotaging my own happiness by not lowering my expectations? Maybe I’m only attracted to men I subconsciously know won’t be attracted to me as an act of self-loathing? Maybe I’m a pretentious narcissist who thinks she’s better than everyone? That last one might be true but, again, after years of dealing with dozens upon dozens of one-dimensional oversexed men from dating apps (who are also narcissists because that’s the law in Los Angeles), I feel like I’ve earned the right to be worthy of a higher caliber of suitor. I know what I have to offer, and it’s a lot more than what I’ve seen from the men I supposedly “have a chance” with.
I have friends who have more choice in their singledom. When they choose to like someone, that person almost always likes them back. They get into relationships with so much ease that it pisses me off. They don’t acknowledge how fortunate they are to be in such a position. I see the qualities they have (conventional hotness and/or public adoration from their peers), a sort of je ne sais quoi, as the French say (though, honestly, they probably don’t). After a disappointing date, I sometimes think to myself that I must have whatever the opposite of je ne sais quoi is.
You can call me a monster of my own making, for choosing to be so publicly open about my feelings and frustrations. I’m aggressive in a lot of my comedy, and yet, I know other aggressively honest women who have somehow found quality romantic partners who are in it for the long haul. Again, I am left not knowing what the fuck is wrong with me? Could it really be that men think being with me is some sort of display to the world that they’re submissive (which I guess is embarrassing)? You know, because I went viral for a few articles back in 2015 about having sex slaves, and publicly demanding men eat my pussy and also letting men know I don’t want to be choked during sex, so don’t fucking do that. My therapist says that’s a reach, but I don’t know. Are you wimps too scared to date a bossy fat slut? Well, I hit the keyword: fat.
Something my therapist revealed to me, which seriously blew my mind, was the reality of how people, particularly men, find someone to be funnier, smarter, cooler, etc. because of physical attraction. Of course, I’m speaking in total generalities here, but women often attest to the complete opposite when it comes to attraction. We usually say someone becomes more physically attractive to us the more we get to know them. If they exhibit desirable personality traits, we eventually find them hotter than our initial assessment. In general, for men, it’s the other way around. The physical attraction must be there first and the other stuff comes later. If the physical attraction is strong, there’s a greater desire to find that person extra-talented or funny or interesting or whatever else draws us together. Something my therapist and I both agreed on was simply the truth: these men won’t see me that way if they’re not attracted to me physically. Being outspoken and confident is less of a turn-on and more of a who gives a shit?
Maybe if I was around 50 pounds lighter, all these traits would be greater celebrated. It sounds stupid, I know. It’s so reductive. There’s no way that can be all of it, especially since there are so many fat women who are in happy relationships… But there is something about dating while fat that is more challenging. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I am saying that, as a fat person, I must face the fact that this shit is more difficult. There are unique obstacles and greater risks of being rejected before I even introduce myself. Greater biases are at play too that make certain, more celebrated, characteristics in others, less appealing in me. Luckily for me though, I know plenty of men who are attracted to what I’m working with. For every one IRL man who tells me I’m not his type, there are 30 online men DMing me from various parts of the midwest (and select parts of the UK) letting me know they would be honored to impregnate me (note: please stop saying that), or that they wish I could sit on their face for hours on end (you can keep saying that).
So yeah. I don’t need all men to want me, I just need to find someone among those who do want me to be someone I want too (and lives in Los Angeles). It’s equally difficult having high standards as a fat person. Fat people are encouraged to settle. Take what you can get. Even if my standards are the same as my friends’, it’s implied that I’m being unrealistic, delusional even. I want men that most of society deems “too good” for me and I know this is probably why I’ve stayed single longer.
Look, it’s okay. I’m okay. I go through the pains of rejection constantly and don’t want to firebomb a gym, or whatever, because of it. I haven’t sworn-off men (jokingly I do, but not really). I know I am tougher and more resilient than my friends who can’t seem to avoid stumbling into monogamous relationships, even if they swear, they really were ‘trying to do the whole single thing!’ Still, I persist. I keep online dating and I keep pushing past all the little heartbreaks. And I get to fuck along the way, sit on some faces, and have a few laughs. I sometimes even make a deeper connection. The more I go through the agony of dating, the more I know what I want from a partner: I want a partner who celebrates my body at any size and can see past the bullshit social implications of what they might think it says about them to be dating someone like me. That person may be harder to find, but it’ll be worth the wait and all the years of bad and boring and sometimes even frightening, first dates.
You might think it’s sad to still be online dating after more than a decade of being mostly single, and sometimes even I think that too, but really when I look at the person I am, I don’t see someone sad. I see someone who can put up with a lot, and still power through. I see someone who believes in herself and gains strength from her failures. I feel like a complete person and I am done feeling like there’s something wrong with me because I have yet to find another complete person to pair up with. So, I’m going to keep doing this shit and feeling good about myself along the way… And you should too.
I don’t know if I should be pissed about Donovan Sharpe and his incel bullshit about you or laugh.
Alison, As one of your fanboys I find it hard to believe that you have trouble finding a bf. It does seem like you should get out of LA and off Tinder. Like you I'm nostalgic for the olden days. I'm dating myself.. My golden age of dating was Yahoo personals on a dial up modem. It was text based as pictures would take over an hour to download. As a nerdy introvert who didn't do single bars, this tool was a godsend. I met many interesting and smart women who didn't fit the ideal body type and some became friends and a few lovers. I agree that things have changed for the worse with the highly visual dating apps with the expectation of instant hook up. I know that it isn't easy for you in that sort of market and wish you well in your pursuit. I would urge you to persist and see yourself as an educator looking for guys who are open minded and willing to text and speak with you for extensive periods of time. During my time on Yahoo personals I was open minded and learned much about women and myself from the process of meeting a series of lovely plus sized women who I would not have met otherwise. So keep believing in yourself and proceed with care and stick to strategy that gives you some better options. Maybe that means Bumble? Whatever you do, pay attention to early warning signs and don't bother with guys that make you uncomfortable or want to talk sex right away. I would be happy to be your pen pal with no expectation of a date. I recognize I don't meet your criteria and am at peace with that.