Every fall I get a bit of a hankering for a boyfriend. Not a husband, since I’ve never had one of those, but for a boyfriend. I’m not sure I’m really the marrying kind anyway, but a lack of male companionship starts to gnaw at me just the same.
It gnaws at me on nights like last Friday night: I met Stueve and a former student for a bit of “how’s life” time, and I had to drive to the Old Market.
I hate driving to the Old Market on Friday nights because so. many. people. and parking make me break out in hives. I enjoy being there, I enjoy the people watching and the different places to hang out, but I hate driving and parking there. I wouldn’t have hesitated to agree to a meetup if I didn’t have to drive and park.
Maybe I don’t really want a boyfriend–maybe I want a chauffeur or car service. Hm.
Anyway.
In past hankerings for a boyfriend, I turned to online dating, which never turned out good (see my book for more on that) but I don’t know where else to turn, really. It’s not like UPS ships men to my door.
Enter dating apps.
Friends raved about Tinder, but it seemed like a hookup app, and I don’t want a hookup. But then I started to hear scuttlebutt about a different app called Bumble, which seemed like a classier version of Tinder. Hearing about Bumble coincided with my yearly yearning for a boyfriend, so I thought I would give it a try.
Here’s how it works: I open the app and a man’s photo appears. I can scroll down and see more photos (sometimes) and a brief bio (less of sometimes). If I think I might like to meet him, I swipe right. If he has also swiped right on me, a message appears: BOOM! You’re connected! And I have 24 hours to send him a message.
During a swiping rampage, I swiped right on a man who would not be a good fit for me and I saw BOOM! You’re connected!
And I panicked.
That’s when I realized that for three days I’d been swiping the wrong direction. I’d swiped right on dozens of men I didn’t like, and left on a handful of men I did like. And after the aforementioned swiping rampage, I was out of profiles to swipe.
Adding to my failed foray in the dating app world is this: those dozens of men I’d swiped right on–men I didn’t like for one reason or another, men I judged as being not good enough for me–didn’t swipe right on me either.
Later that weekend, a couple more profiles popped up so I looked at them, and this time I swiped right on a man who seemed interesting. BOOM! You’re connected! And I didn’t send a message right away because, well, fear. When I opened the app a couple of hours later, he was gone, which meant he unmatched me.
And then I realized the problem with me and men: they don’t like me.
Stop what your brain is doing right now. Seriously, stop. your. brain.
Stop thinking “Oh, come on, that’s not true <insert trite statement about finding love here>” and sit with me in this truth: men don’t like me. Let it sink in your brain, let it challenge everything that romantic comedies since Shakespeare have taught you, let it fly in the face of “there’s a lid for every pot.” Maybe I’m a lidless cast-iron skillet.
Men don’t like me–and that is okay.
This is a radical notion for some to accept, that I can be okay with the fact that men don’t like me. It doesn’t make me a bad person. It doesn’t make me less than. It doesn’t mean I lack value, doesn’t mean my life is worthless.
It means that I fall into a category of women that, for whatever reason, men don’t like.
Plenty of people don’t like me–as a teacher, this truth has provided me enough callouses on my thin skin, which allows me to say “men don’t like me” without breaking down into a puddle of nothingness. And the more I say it, the more it makes sense and the more normal it feels. The problem isn’t the dozens of blind dates, the money wasted on dating websites, or even a dating app–the problem is that I’ve been conditioned to believe that my life as a single woman is a problem. It’s not.
When I take the time to examine my life, I bask in the following truths:
I have a career that I enjoy, a career that has provided me opportunities that sometimes challenge and frustrate me, and just as often enrich and delight me. I have friends to lean on. I have ten nieces and nephews to spoil and love, siblings and parents who have my back. When I clean my apartment and flop down on my couch, I feel satisfaction, peace and happiness at the space I’ve created as a sanctuary.
Men not liking me seems like such an minor sliver of my life’s happiness pie-chart, that the proportion of time and money I’ve spent the past 25 years trying to make them like me feels like the ultimate waste.
I don’t plan on making the same mistake for the next 25 years. And for that, Bumble, I thank you.
