on singleness & online dating//why i did it & why i'll never do it again

I always wondered when the day would come when singleness would suddenly become an awkward or uncommon thing.  I wondered if there was an age when singleness turns one into some kind of pariah.  While I don't think that day has fully come, I am beginning to feel it is well on its way.  Singleness becomes a weird identity marker when you live in a world where you are the only one who is.  If all your friends, family and co-workers are married, suddenly you are an outsider that doesn't quite fit into their worlds.  There are conversations you cannot rightfully contribute to and experiences that you have that they can no longer relate to and have somehow lost memory of what it was like. 

I think one of the greatest issues with singleness, particularly singleness and the female is that society, the church, our families, and even our dearest and most trustworthy friends don't quite know how to handle it or how to accept it.

Singleness never seems to be an acceptable life choice, rather it is something that unfortunately befalls you, that many would suggest could be easily remedied if you just opened yourself up and let it happen.  Many well-meaning friends and acquaintances often question if there is a guy on the horizon, or how I am going about meeting someone.  Any lack of effort or uninteresting tales are not what they want to hear.  Sometimes I find myself embellishing the truth to escape the conversation quickly.  Here are some of things that have been said to me and similar sentiments that have been repeated quite often as of late:

• If you just stop looking, I promise that is when he will come along.
• You're so beautiful, I just don't understand why don't you have a husband.
• Take this opportunity to do all the things you can't do once your married.
• Work on you.  Be the best that you can be, then he'll show up.
• Hey, I know this guy who just happens to be single too.
• Why don't you give online dating a shot?  I know this person who met someone on (fill in every possible dating site here).
• You have to put out the "I am open" vibes.  Guys need to know that they can have you if they want you.
• AND THE BEST ONES FOR LAST:
• How old are you?  Woah! And you're still single?  Don't you want to have kids? 
• Gosh, it must be hard finding a man when you are taller than most of them.    ***I have failed to add the sarcastic replies that I rarely verbalize in response unless you catch me on a bad day.

These kinds of sentiments more often that not come in the form of unsolicited advice.  I know that many people in a variety of life situations suffer from the same kind of unwanted input on how they choose to live their lives if it differs from societies norms. All this to say, as I make my way deeper into my thirties, I find more and more that singleness suits me.  And as I grow and continue to build a life of my own, I find that I am also navigating a strange path that not many can shed light on or provide wisdom for.  It is a unique road in which I am trying to confidently forge my own way, while remaining open to possibilities outside my realm of thinking and believing, and maintaining boundaries and a guard over my own heart so as not to give way to living a life contrary to my values and prayerfully never ever settling for what feels safe. So I work to remind myself why my life as it is now is a really good one.

1. I enjoy the freedom and power of decision that my one wild and precious life holds.  I enjoy handling my own affairs and deciding how my place will look, how I will spend my Friday evening, when I work and when I take pause and for what.  If this sounds selfish, in some ways it probably is.  I recognize their are elements of selfishness that are cultivated in living as a single person.  The more comfortable I grow with my life station, I often joke that I am too selfish for marriage or parenting.  The greater truth is that I relish the freedom this season of life allows me to be for others and do for others what my married friends sometimes cannot. I fully recognize that marriage requires bending, accommodating, seeking permission, and ultimately deciding as a team what will happen and when.  None of which is bad, and I imagine with a good person whom I love, I would be quite willing to enter into a contract that involves such cooperation.  And while I strive to remain absolutely open to the idea of meeting someone someday with whom I am willing to compromise and accommodate, if/when that day were to come, I certainly would want to know and remember in the season of singleness I am in that I fully relished the unique freedom this life affords me. I do not believe marriage strips one of freedom, however, from my vast observations, marriage would significantly alter the life I am currently living.  Therefore, I am so thankful for this season and the life I can build for myself (and my dog).
2. When I was in my early twenties, I think that some part of me fully expected to be married young.  Mostly because I had met someone when I was twenty-one who I thought I would marry.  When that didn't work out, I fell into a deep depression.  It was a depression that had actually begun while we were together, because I think something in me knew, I was trying to hold onto something that wasn't good.  Regardless, I thought for a long time after I was missing something.  I thought that I would not find true joy apart from marriage.  I am thankful for the season of singleness which followed.  I am thankful that I've learned to weather heartbreak.  I am thankful that I have seen that things don't always work out.  I am ultimately grateful that I know marriage and a man is not the answer.  I have found joy in so much else because of the freedom singleness has allowed me. I've explored places with open eyes that are purely focused on what is before me, not who is with me. I think I experience nature, pets, friendships, work and writing in way that would look different if I were not single. And ultimately I think there is a unique intimacy with the Lord that is cultivated that  I don't think I would have necessarily delved into had it not been for being single. True joy, real, authentic, deep-seated, unshakeable joy goes much deeper than my relationships and how they unfold.  And I am so thankful to discover this, so that when and if marriage comes about for me, it will not be my end all, be all and if it is taken from me, it will not destroy me.
3. Here's the thing, I cannot speak for others in this.  I only know what I see and how I feel, so my take on this idea of "true appreciation" is extremely biased.  That being said, this idea was first introduced to me through an episode of 7th Heaven.  In the late 90's, when I was an avid watcher I can directly recall an episode that depicted a specifically poignant conversation between all-knowing father/reverend Eric Camden and his second daughter Lucy.  Lucy was feeling quite miserable about not having a significant other while all her siblings/friends seemed to (I think she was 13 in this episode, which is utterly ridiculous, but also beside the point). Kind and patient father Eric pointed out that in the waiting Lucy would find when the time did come for her, she would appreciate it that much more than those it came for so easily.  Trite and banal as this scene may seem, it spoke volumes to 14 year old me who too had never had a boyfriend when it seemed that everyone else in the world did.  A lot of my life has been about waiting.  I am accustomed to waiting...when it came to getting my driver's license, having my own car, my first date, my own place, a real job, a decided career...all of it seemed to take a bit longer than my respective peers.  Sometimes I would resent and bemoan the waiting, wondering why it was me who couldn't have what seemed to come so easily for others.  But in the same, I still have deep appreciation for those things that took a bit longer or have yet to come.  All that to say, not being married and for that matter not having children puts me well behind my peers...but if it does happen, when it does happen, I can tell you one thing is for sure, I will appreciate the crap out of it. 

So, with these top three reasons shared, I hope it is clear that while I cherish my singleness, I also maintain hope that someday I may meet someone who is worth sacrificing the "full freedom" for, who isn't my answer to deep-seated joy, but is someone who I can create something I truly appreciate with.  I definitely don't plan to be single forever, but in the same I can live in contentment if that were my life's journey.

To the greater point of this post, it needs to be documented why I tried online dating and why I'll never do it again.  Today my subscription to eharmony ended and I did a happy dance.  I've done online dating twice in my life.  The first time was in 2011, at which point in my life I was fresh out of grad school, a mere 26 years old, ready in my own estimation to settle down.  I was little freaked out at the time because it was mid-August and I still hadn't landed a teaching job for the 2011-12 school year. The prospects looked bleak.  A friend of mine and I had agreed to give online dating a go with the reasoning of "what the heck is holding us back now"?

So we did.  I created a carefully crafted profile on a Christian dating site intended to show off my best self and I paid for one month.  One month seemed reasonable to meet my future someone.  Oh, how naive I was.  I did end up meeting S within a week.  He wrote what is by far the sweetest and most intriguing message I have ever received in my limited experience in online dating.  What carried on from there was about a week of online communication through the dating site, and then eventually sharing personal emails, to phone numbers, to meeting in person.  S was the only person I communicated with during my month on this dating site and I would proceed to date him on and off for the better part of a year.  S was very clear from the get go that all he was looking for was friendship and to take it slow and to see where things go.  I agreed, all the while, half-expecting him to fall head over heels for me and propose within the year.  Again, what a naive 26 year old I was.  S was a bit older than me, divorced, with two kids and in the end he definitely was not the guy for me.  While he had the height thing going for him, it eventually became clear that our chemistry pretty much ended there.  What I discovered through that experience was the disservice of online dating, though I did not realize it at the time.  What I found with him was that I was constantly required to defend my worth.  I had to live up to the parameters of the profile, and while I believe I presented an honest portrayal of myself, for S, and his idea of who I would be as a result of the profile, I never seemed to measure up.

After this experiment/experience, I decided to let life happen, and let dates and meeting men a natural unfolding of experiences and places. From 2011 to now, my non-online dating life has been an odd smattering of men who I either met randomly (and by randomly I mean grocery store parking lots, Starbucks lines, Barnes and Noble aisles) and of course, there are those dear friends or co-workers who can't understand why you are still single and believe they know just the right person for you, so you agree to a few blind dates along the way.

Fast-forward to 2017.  

When I walked into 2017,  I was feeling a little lost in my way in life.  At the end of 2016, I met a really wonderful, truly nice guy who a dear friend had set me up with.  On paper, he sounded great.  And in real life, he was equally great.  This was a first in a long while for me.  He was truly, in many ways "the whole package".  But I had no peace.  I can't explain it any other way than that.  I just had no peace.

I came to a clear conclusion.  I was okay being single.  I really was and am.  I never wanted to nor do I want to settle.  I never want to get to a place where I am with someone who is good, but I don't have peace about it.  And yet, I was plagued with a certain longing that had been brought to greater life over the last year because of new friendships and introductions of what I deemed to be examples of good marriages, marriages that I in turn longed to have.

So, with the encouragement of a dear friend, I embarked upon a journey on Eharmony.  I am grateful that I did, because how else would I have realized that online dating is soooo not for me.  The basic breakdown is this: men and women get to create profiles that must follow what the dating site dictates. Eharmony was an intentional choice for me after researching dating sites because of the length this site goes to deem you psychologically competent to enter into a dating relationship.  The emotionally/mentally unstable need not apply.  At first it was kind of a running joke with myself: will the site allow me on to create a profile?  All emotional baggage aside, yes, apparently according to the parameters that eharmony lays out, I am fit to pursue a serious relationship.  So I proceeded.  And all was fine and well to begin with.  The profile set-up in some ways ends up backing you into a corner.  One example of this is without knowing said person who maybe matches your profile preferences, it is hard to decipher whether tacos in their top 5 most important things in their life is serious or written in jest.  And maybe I am reading too much into this, but if they put "Christian" as their religious affiliation, but nothing else on their profile seems to be demonstrative of this truth, I admit, I am a bit skeptical.  I know it's not perhaps fair, and I probably fall victim to similar assumptions, but I digress.

What it all boils down to is this: you get the gist of a person.  You know their religious affiliation, whether they like to smoke or drink, and if they are into dogs as much as you are.  You like his profile, or he likes yours and a conversation may unfold, and then you meet, and then you hold each other to what was written on the profile.  And we get used to this kind of meeting and this initial cultivation of the possibility of a relationship.  It works for some people.  I mean, I've seen the commercials.

It doesn't work for me.

There is so much more that I demand. Online dating seems to become a last resort for many.  Or it is something that we blame on our technological age.  The running line being how can we expect to meet people authentically face to face when we are always on our devices?  The experience of online dating actually deterred me from wanting to date at all.  It led me to question myself more and tapped into insecurities I didn't even know I had when men would send me messages asking to know things and understand things about me and my profile that I have never even shared with my closest friends.  Men on these sites tend to expect that you are willing to hook up upon first meeting.  I soon realized a month into my online dating journey that I had lost sight of and faith in who God was growing me to be because I was starting to try to be the woman these men who were contacting me seemed to want.  It led me to wonder more than ever if it is even a remote possibility to meet a decent man.  It led me to question if every initial meeting with a man would ultimately be a let down because he demanded to know my worth as he saw fit. 

I am glad I did it.  I am glad I saw what I saw and I learned what I did.  I don't think I'll be meeting potential dates in the online dating world.  Instead when pressure to find someone seems the heaviest, I am taking a step back.  When I feel uninvited in the world I am living in, I am choosing to walk with the Lord in faith that His plan is better than mine and anything I can dream of conceiving.  I am choosing joy in the freedom of singleness.  I am choosing to appreciate what I have in front of me, and in the lonely, in the feeling less than everyone else and left out of a bigger picture, I am praying to set an example with my own life.  That single or not, we can all fully participate in the world and in this life and have access to the same joy and hope as any other human being.  I want to make way for deeper acceptance for one another, no matter what our lives look like in terms of status.  I am going to rest in the quiet of a single life not bombarded by the noise of what society says I should be.  I am going to walk with the Lord and strive to listen closer and follow in obedience to who He is calling me to be.