Four, maybe five, nights ago, and again the following morning, I sat in front of a blank “page” and a blinking cursor. If the screen were blue, this could have been an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D. – except for all that boy genius doctor stuff… and all the other stuff in the show… and the actual writing. Feeling uninspired, I have little more than “reports/updates” to provide: I found work (yay), I still dislike online dating (meh), I haven’t been sleeping well (probably because I found work).
After a long search, I’ve landed a job. In the past year, I applied to over a hundred positions and interviewed at over thirty different organizations – in some cases going two or three rounds deep in the interview process. Technically, the search was much longer than a year – though it only kicked into high gear when I arrived in California after a two month cross-country road trip.
I began playing with the idea of leaving central Pennsylvania in 2021 after an anonymous community member tried to get me in trouble (fired or reprimanded) for disagreeing with how the former president handled the January 6 insurrection. On my personal Facebook page (which, in trying to live a transparent and authentic life, I intentionally keep public), I quoted the president as telling the insurrectionists that he loves them and they’re very special. Along with the quote, I shared the NYT picture of the insurrectionist carrying the confederate flag through the capitol. At the time, I wasn’t connected with anyone from the community on Facebook – so someone had been monitoring me. Not cool. In that job, my predecessor had been terminated for sharing something that intentionally misgendered a high-ranking government official who is trans. What she shared also called the trans official the governor’s little dick. As best as I could tell, notifying my board of my “political statement” was some sort of grievance over the termination of my predecessor’s “political statement.” The incident was one in a series that made me feel unwelcome. This, combined with the bad weather, the lack of entertainment/cultural options, and the dearth of dating opportunities, signaled to me that central PA would be a pit stop. As such, I dabbled in looking for other opportunities throughout 2021 and 2022.
It wasn’t until September 2022, when I had gotten to the final round for an executive role in Seattle, that I knew my head and heart were elsewhere. In that interview process, I began looking at neighborhoods and apartments and getting excited about life in a new city. Seattle seemed cool – though it wouldn’t be much sunnier. Losing out to a local candidate also planted the seed that I may have to become a local candidate somewhere. Without anything lined up, I gave notice two months later. Because my notice included seeing the organization through a merger, I didn’t have a firm stop date for my position and I didn’t fully commit to the job search process. After losing out on a few more jobs to local candidates (Spring/Summer 2023), I decided to pursue a different approach and narrowed my mostly west coast search to one city (San Francisco) where I would move with or without a job. I had been eyeing up the west coast for years. In a previous search (2019), three-fourths of my job applications were in California or North Carolina – and having already done the southern thing for a year, I was determined to head west.
The prologue to finding a job and feeling settled in has been long. It’s a relief to have work. It feels good to have taken a chance on myself and have it come to fruition (at least for now). Working will allow me to get my finances back in order and participate a little more in city life (mostly going to restaurants once in a while). I also suspect that working will, once again, put a premium on my time and give me a little more structure (which isn’t such a bad thing).
I’m tempted to write that with housing and employment secured, all that’s left is dating. But I’m afraid a statement like that over-states the effort I’m putting (or willing to put) into the process. I’d say dating sucks, but that, too, would be an overstatement of feelings. I don’t care about it enough to hate it. The opposite of love is indifference.
Two or three nights ago an acquaintance at a bar told the patron next to me (a young, gay guy) that the goal is to find Matt a date. To be clear, that’s not the goal – or at least that was not my goal at the bar that night (or any night). The gay patron next to me wanted to clarify that I wasn’t gay – he knows a lot of guys that would be interested. I told him that I’m not. I said I like redheads – and kind, warm eyes that look like they’ve smiled and laughed a lot. He said, “duly noted… he’ll think about who he knows.” When friends and acquaintances make it their mission to find me dates, I get the sense that my fellow single compatriots who spend their time cruisin’ bars looking for pickups are projecting their dating/hook-up goals on to me. I’m looking, but not for a hookup and not terribly hard.
At the same pub on a different night, I listened as a guy tried to talk to a woman who wasn’t very interested in him but was humoring him. At various times, he would turn to his friend and complain that he’s trying to be nice to her and she’s not being nice back. He gave up for a little while and started talking to me. This is when I learned that it was his night out. He’s married, but the wife said go out and have a good time. He complained about his marriage and how he’s pretty much forced to go to strip clubs. Then he started telling me, within earshot of the woman he was trying to talk to, that she – this woman he doesn’t know – is being mean to him. I could see she was bothered by this bullshit and I tried to shut it down by telling him that she doesn’t owe him a conversation – maybe she just wants to go out to a bar, have a drink with her friend, and not be bothered.
When the guy left, the woman started talking to me and an acquaintance of mine (kind of a friend, but maybe not really). The conversation started off normal enough and my acquaintance/friend was doing most of the talking… but then she started railing about how the country is going to shit and how she supports Tr*mp because he’s tough and survived two assassination attempts. Despite wanting to stay out of it, I quipped, “were they assassination attempts?” When she started to say that he’s the only politician who tells the truth – I pointed out that it’s well documented that he made over 30,000 false or misleading statements during his term as president. Apparently, lying doesn’t bother her – immigrants do. At some point, she asked if I had an American flag hanging at my place and when I asked, “why would I?” she said I should leave the country if I don’t love it enough to fly a flag. By this time, I was beginning to think the other guy was right – she’s not a nice person. She’s certainly not a tolerant person. My acquaintance/friend asked her what she thought of the electoral college and she said she doesn’t like any college (yes, she thought it was an actual college). My acquaintance/friend repeated the question and emphasized ELECTORAL. She doubled down on her answer – colleges are all woke. I felt like I had stepped into a Jordan Klepper interview with the typical maga supporter.
This is what hanging out at bars is like – sometimes pathetic and a little depressing. This is why I don’t try to pick people up at bars. But if not out in the real world, what are the dating options?
Online (mostly).
I have an online profile or two, but again, I’m not very active. In my experience, the whole scene feels like a lot of work and that most of us are headed in the opposite direction of connecting. By this I mean, that it seems like dating is becoming more superficial and when it’s not superficial, it’s littered with people who are hyper-focused on finding red flags and faults instead of looking for sparks and grace. Everyone goes into it expecting the worst – and therefore they seem keen on looking for confirmation that it’s the worst. Or in my case, I expect to be underwhelmed and am usually underwhelmed (which I suspect is more of a “me thing” than a “them thing”).
There exists, of course, no shortage of advice on how to make the system “work” or how to work the system. I recently read an article about the burned haystack approach to dating. The theory is if you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, burn the haystack. It’s an approach in which women block any man who doesn’t fit their criteria. They’re not just saying no by swiping left or hitting x on their profile. Instead, they’re actively blocking the person so that they never re-appear in their search. To me, this seems like an extreme version of the never settle, never compromise approach to relationships. An extreme version of dating for efficiency as opposed to dating for discovery. Not only does this approach offer no second chances, it offers no room for the personal growth/evolution of the men in the haystack or the woman casually tossing lit matches on anything that will burn. Time and experience changes us, opens us up to new possibilities. Sometimes we become more firm in our expectations and sometimes we soften. Unfortunately, the burned haystack approach is based on certainty as opposed to growth. Moreover, the woman who has been espousing the burned haystack approach also shares with her thousands of followers the linguistic cues to look out for in dating profiles. The verbal “red flags” to avoid. There’s nothing inherently wrong in looking for clues and red flags in how someone presents themself (we all do it), but I suspect if you need someone else to tell you what to look for… maybe a little more self-reflection is in order, maybe a little less certainty in your approach?
And when the advice isn’t emotionally short-sighted and inflexible, it is, sometimes, just vapid and shallow. A week or two before reading about the burned haystack approach I came across a headline touting the 6-6-6 rule. I didn’t know what this was and had to look it up: only date guys who are over six feet tall, have six-pack abs, and earn more than six figures. Well… that’s one way to go about finding one’s “soulmate.”
If people are fed up with dating it’s because it feels like a dumpster fire being washed away down a flooded avenue. Most of the profiles that I read seem to say the same thing. Most people say they’re looking for a genuine connection, some humor and fun, a spark, good conversation, and very little drama. All of which seems easy enough, but when there are hidden qualifiers like the 6-6-6 approach, or a set of linguistic cues over which one should block and never look back – it’s no wonder that people are forever searching and seldom connecting. And to be clear, I’m not blaming women for taking this approach. Men have been awful, shallow, and calculating for decades, if not eternity. I just wonder if we’ve gotten to a point where someone is going to have to compromise or take a chance yet nobody wants to.
And all of those things are what’s happening on the other side of the equation. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out how to overcome my particular brand of ennui and also how to program the VCR. The note I wrote on my phone after listening to one guy or another run their game at the bar or talk about which chick was hot was that I miss what I had several years ago when I was in a committed relationship. No chase, no trying to get someone in bed – just a deep sense of comfort, consistency, and familiarity. A sense of this is who I want to come home to every day, every night, all of the time. That sentiment (knowing what I want, and how it looks and feels because I’ve had it before) began on a walk earlier in the week when I was trying to decide whether or not I wanted to go out. I missed knowing exactly who I’d be hanging out with on a regular basis. What we did or where we went didn’t matter so much as making the time to do it.
This, then, becomes my set of rules and verbal cues, my set of barriers and roadblocks. I am, at times, stuck thinking that I’d like to replicate what I enjoyed in past relationships despite “knowing” a more open and organic approach would be more appropriate. Not being open and organic makes me feel stuck in my ways. By this I mean that I can’t imagine having a good connection with someone who is wildly different than me – and most of the profiles I see online seem wildly different than me. I’m a pretty simple guy who sits on benches and observes the world. I hang out in bars. I like to travel but have never had the means nor the time to do it extensively. I like checking out bands and galleries, museums and street fairs. I want to be challenged and pushed, but probably not too hard or too far. I want depth, but probably not crystal worship in the desert type of depth. My sense of adventure is neither extreme nor expensive. I prefer chill over frenetic and nuanced understanding over confidence and certainty.
And maybe that’s my secret hope when I go to a bar where regular people hang out – to find a regular person who might hang out at a divey and unassuming bar. What I see on dating profiles seems to be extreme versions of people – much in the same way Facebook profiles are usually highlight reels of a person’s life. The people I’ve enjoyed spending time with (in nearly all my relationships over the past seven years) were more like me than not – or at least they pretended to be. This made spending time together fun, easy, and frequently effortless. This made everything (checking out a new restaurant, going to a park, walking through a different part of town) feel like a small adventure.
I have no clean way to wrap this post up – no epiphanies to share. I got a job. I’m still loving life out on the coast. I still prefer my old dating life to my new one – but I seem to care considerably less. Much like the job – with patience, persistence, and some dumb luck, I’m sure something will turn up.