DAY 1
It’s October 22nd, 2018. I know. Another. Fucking. Blogger. Get OUT! No one wants to read your blog, Nancy! I feel like such a loser already and… That’s the problem. The point, really. I’m literally starting my first fucking blog judging myself for blogging. This mean little voice in the back of my head is telling myself to put down the laptop, be cool and stop being so insufferable. But that’s not gonna happen because I’ve made a rather out-of-character decision last night, and I think it warrants some documenting. Blogging just feels like the best way to vomit all the thoughts I have about what I’m about to do. I DID sleep on it. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going insane, and you know what? Sleeping doesn’t really change that possibility, but HEY! At least it’s not the most impulsive decision I’ve ever made. The most impulsive one was when I went vegan after watching a single documentary at 1AM like 6 years ago. But this particular decision came to me at 12:30AM so.. It’s fine! At least this one is something a lot of people can get behind and are less quick to judge. You know? (By the way, the veganism thing only lasted 5 months… Ya quitter!)
So what did I decide to do? It all stems from a hashtag.
#NOTDATINGCHALLENGE
How did I come about this? Well, I follow a lot of instagrams about the horrors of dating. A LOT. I happened across this rather unusual hashtag with exactly 8 instagram posts associated with it, all created by the username @thisisnotdating and I wondered… Is that a real thing? Or just this one person, using this one hashtag’s thing? So I Googled. It is apparently a thing.
First: 10 things that happened when I swore off dating for a year
And: 6 people reveal why going on a dating hiatus may be your best tool in finding love
And: Why a year of no dating was the best thing I ever did for myself
(I made sure to avoid the religious version of this challenge because I am an dirty rotten heathen I really don’t want God to think this is about him.)
So it’s not a viral thing. Just a small pocket of a thing, and I was intrigued! Dating these days is fucking awful, you guys. If you’re single, you know. If you’re polyamorous, you know. Fact: The only men I’ve ever loved did not come from a dating app. Not one. And here I am. Swiping, on every God damn one, hoping for the next great love to just drop onto my lap and be awesome, and funny, and genius, and hot, and whimsical. And when several hours of swiping goes by and I’ve done nothing productive with my nights, and no one replies to my adorable Bumble openers? I quit. I fucking quit.
And it’s not just the apps.
I’ve gone speed dating this year. A total of 5 times. I know. I’m ashamed. I’ve gone enough times to endure multiple re-encounters with my rejects, and it’s awkward. REAL awkward. One guy even showed me all the blocked messages he had been sending me for the past several months since we’d matched and I ghosted. I know, ghosting is mean, and I shouldn’t do it--BUT I feel pretty justified now that I’ve seen what he’s been sending. He even had a fucking screenshot of my Bumble profile. CRINGE, DUDE! I was honest, I told him, I’m picky. He didn’t actually seem hurt, just snarky.
I am picky. It’s bad. I swipe left on “wants children someday” and “spiritual” and “doesn’t smoke weed.” I swipe left on guys who don’t smile, or guys with bad smiles or guys who didn’t smile enough. I swipe left on men holding fish, holding guns, holding women, holding weights. Left to long beards, to too long of hair, to too little hair, to too little eyebrows. To men who are too hot for me, too ugly for me, too sportsy for me, too geeky for me, too hippie for me, too preppy for me. You’re an avid golfer? Byyye, golf sucks! You go to the mountains every weekend? Ugh, what about sleeping IN?! You hate cats? GTFO. I am allergic but like, men who hate cats are just broken, I’m sorry.
So when I do get a match, I demand a lot from them. I ignore “hey”, “hey how’s it going”, “hey, how are you?”, “hey, what’s up”, “how was your day” “how was your weekend” “how was your summer” “how was your holiday” because, I am not your God damn coworker. Chit chat is basic, it’s boring, and it shows me that you’re basic and boring. And I’m looking for extraordinary, not Steve from HR.
That’s why I Bumble. Bumbled. I’d control the initial conversation, send something enticing, with what I thought was the best question in a list of interesting questions that I had spent 5 minutes Googling to find. I put some effort in. Rare, I know. I feel like I’ve gifted you with what could very well be the most interesting and fun conversation you could have on a dating app, cause not only are my pictures kinda cute enough for a right swipe, but, I’m deep, playful, funny, smart... What any guy would want out of a first message. You’d think.
Except that… Almost no one replies back! A lot of men take the opportunity to jab me when I mention this to say “Now you know what it’s like for guys on Tinder, HA!” I get it. It’s a lot of rejection. Pick your dating app poison. We are all getting denied here. What was the point in matching me if you were just going to ignore me? Or worse. Unmatch.
Because, it’s a game. A reward system. “It’s a match!” has this temporary, yet powerful effect on my self-esteem. Maybe all we really wanted was some validation from a tiny screen that we still got it going on, before we swipe to the next one. Thousands of options, and I STILL think I can do better. That one perfect guy, he’s still swimming in there. And I just need a good hook.
But, I would get a few replies. And out of every 10 boring conversations, there’s one who manages to intrigue. Do we go on a date? Odds are usually 1 out of 3, but let’s say we do. It goes one of two ways:
1. Unremarkably. Just like the last several first dates you went on. He’s cool, friend material, maybe a fun hook up, but there’s no spark. He has a weird quirk that reminds you of a previous ex-boyfriend and you cannot shake it. He was a lot shorter than you thought. His voice didn’t sound like you were expecting, but in a bad way.
2. HOR. RI. FIC. His picture? Definitely 6 years off. But wait, his eye colour is different… And his nose is a lot larger than the pictures... He definitely just got super fucking baked before the date. His truck has a breathalyzer machine. This sketchy dude just walked into the restaurant and dude wants to throw down because TESTOSTERONE, AGGRESSION, TERRITORY.
Maybe my standards are too high. Okay.... fine, they ARE. But I have had the bars raised. I have dated some pretty great guys in the past. I’m not completely hopeless when it comes to making good choices. It just appears that good choices are hard to come by. Real fire is fucking rare. What’s not rare? Dumpster fires. And I want to avoid that kind.
Okay maybe I need a new metaphor. I want... extraterrestrial. Nope. Not that… Let me think on it.
So #1yearnodates is now officially begun, as of 12:30AM, October 22nd, 2018. I'm giving it my own hashtag because I didn't want to crowd #notdatingchallenge on Instagram with my sassy ass. Plus, I'm pretty sure her challenge is entirely different from mine so I don't want to mess with it.
Many recommendations say that if you’re not going to date, you should not be fucking either. So uh. Celibacy. Yeah. That’s a thing too. That one might be the toughest part, but I’ve sort of torched the potential for any sex again with the only person who might have still been an option, tonight, in a heated argument, so there’s that.
I’m weirdly relieved about it. I’ve decided to give up the notion that my self-worth derives from whether or not someone wants to date or fuck me. I’ve been preaching this for YEARS because I believe it’s true, but it’s hard to internalize it. To REALLY believe it.
If you haven’t noticed from the first paragraph of this blog… I’m hard on myself. I’m far harder on myself than anyone else is. And that sucks. I know every mean thing I say about myself is an insecurity that has been built over a lifetime, so I don’t think it can take a single year to fix all that, but hey, we’re going to try. The point of all this is to start figuring out how to love myself properly. Not in a retail-therapy, buy-yourself-that-giant-tub-of-ice-cream-and-eat-it-in-an-hour sort of way. But in saving money for my future. It’s diving into a healthy productive hobby. It’s running away to the mountains for the day to explore. It’s trying new and healthy recipes that tastes better than sex. It’s going to that movie I wanted to see without needing someone to come with me. It’s inviting friends over for board game nights. It’s apologizing to people when I’ve fucked up. It’s not giving in to my own toxicity. It’s not letting myself get #triggered by mean shit from other people. It’s getting to know people who I keep my walls up around because I find them so fucking cool, and I just want them to like me but I’m scared they won’t. It’s not falling to pieces if it turns out someone doesn’t like me. It’s not ignoring or ghosting anyone who reaches out to me. It’s treating people who’ve hurt me in the past better than what I think they deserve. It’s also sticking up for myself when someone undermines me. It’s asking for what I want, no matter how uncomfortable it might feel. It’s letting go of all the baggage I’ve been carrying around that is burdening, heavy and useless to me now.
And it’s so much more than that. I guess we’ll find out.