It's OK, Cupid

I started online dating in 2012, through Plenty of Fish and OKCupid. Last year, I also moved onto Tinder where there has been nothing of note to report, save for a couple of curiously explicit messages. But I always considered that an idle distraction.

POF was always a waste of time, largely populated by the illiterate and people with profiles so brief as to be completely pointless. I had held out rather more hope for OKCupid. In the past three years, I have dated five woman. I'm still in contact with only one of them on a friendly basis, having ended a long and turbulent association with another a little while ago.

I'm not sure why I'm saying all this. Without going into specifics, I've been single for a very long time. Not really through choice, but I've come to accept that I'm the sort of person who it doesn't happen for. I had assumed that something would have just naturally happened for me by now or that I would have found an easy mutual connection with someone to lead in the direction of a relationship. I know that's incredibly naive. I'm uncertain whether I will ever have the self-confidence to approach someone or mentally handle the potential rejection. The first time I ever admitted I was attracted to someone, I was several sheets to the wind.

There have been various points in time where I've written myself off as being "too fat to date" and I still feel that way quite frequently.  Friends of mine have also said I'll need to sort myself out mentally before I can pursue a relationship. While I can see where they're coming from, it reaffirms to me that I'm not an attractive person and the person I am at the moment is often difficult to be around.

I had held out hope for online dating because truthfully, I'm too socially detached to date in any other way. I don't really meet new people any more. Furthermore, I'm not the sort of person who would make an impression if I did. The obese, socially awkward self-loathing teenager has become an obese, socially awkward self-loathing man. I tend to go through these cycles of being attracted to one of my female friends until I either tell them or the feeling eventually fades.

OKCupid was an interesting experiment. But it's time to knock it on the head. Time to stop flicking through endless thumbnails of women who enjoy drinking tea, watching Orange Is The New Black and reading Kurt Vonnegut novels. It has become an unhealthy fixation. There's only so long you can send out messages to people who are probably messaged constantly by other men. It's difficult to see how I could make an impression. 

They say you'll find someone when you stop looking. Well, I've stopped looking.

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