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The verbal connection
Jul. 9th, 2019 12:58 amOnline dating as an adult - as a real, middle-aged adult - is the mental equivalent of prospecting for gold. It compels you to throw all your time into the search, looking for that lucky strike, and it can easily become an obsession ... and drive you mad.
To keep it from poisoning the rest of my life, I have to give it only a small amount of my time. That creates a time pressure which interferes with having a real emotional response to the people I meet online. Sometimes I make a really promising find, and have a great text conversation with someone new, and feel invigorated and eager to keep going. But that initial connection always seems to fade quickly from one day to the next.
Sometimes I think it's just because the connection is always more tenuous than it feels, because it's with a person who is not integrated with my daily life at all. They can't help but be crowded out by all the things I already do, that don't involve them.
And sometimes I feel as though it's the act of browsing around and looking at other people that kills it; like there is something in our heads that wants to keep us in that more thrilling role of the seeker and pursuer, rather than the harder and more dangerous role of narrowing our focus and investing ... and that thing is encouraged just by the act of logging onto the website and seeing that little grid of new headshots. Like passing by a bookstore on the commute to work, and seeing another row of catchy titles lined up behind the glass every day.
Even more likely than both of those explanations, I suppose, is that when the connection fades it's because I am just not in the mood to actually follow up with people. I know that if I pursued - like, actively pursued - the people I met, I might have the chance to turn a lukewarm first date into something that really comes to life. I find myself thinking that all I need to do is break free of the regimented structure of dating activities, because sitting face-to-face in a restaurant trying to talk in-depth with someone who was a total stranger just days or even hours earlier inspires a lot of tension, and that's a big impediment to a real connection.
That's probably why all of the people I've developed real relationships with from dating sites - people I've seen not just for a couple of dates, but on a regular basis for a good while - were people that engaged in lots of text correspondence before we ever met in person. Sometimes text correspondence followed also by phone conversation, with face-to-face happening much later. It wasn't that we were afraid of meeting in person, it was that we valued those other kinds of communication just as highly, and since they were more convenient, we started there. Even people that I just ended up seeing for the mutually agreeable clockwork purpose of a nice dinner out followed by sex a couple of times a week -- even those people started out with an energetic written exchange.
This is definitely not the way most people operate. So, it must mean there's something weird about me.
I think of all the people who write a dating profile with only a few sentences in it, where they insist that they want to meet in person as quickly as possible to see if there are any "sparks", since otherwise it's just a waste of time. Part of me wants to dismiss them as being too focused on appearance, or obviously trolling for sexual entertainment and nothing more, but then my history softens my impression: Perhaps they're just not very verbal people. People like that need to find love too, and they're not going to find it by competing with life-long wordsmiths like myself, crafting dialogue they don't need or value -- and that's not a comment about intelligence either, since I've lived long enough to meet lots of frighteningly smart people who were just not good with written words. There is nothing wrong with their approach. What if I tried it?
During this recent round of online dating I tested that proposition. In addition to the usual correspondence-led encounters, I arranged a half-dozen dates on very short notice with a bare minimum of online chat leading up to them. One of them happened only about five hours from receiving the "like" message.
They all went like this: I walk up and introduce myself. We both smile. Sometimes I am offered a hug. (The hug always feels a bit forced, and I've started to just turn it down in favor of a handshake.) I observe that the person is physically attractive enough that I would enjoy making out with her, if only we can manage to connect. We sit down and smile and talk and look each other in the eye, and tell stories. I find myself keeping up more of the conversation than I'd like, and begin to feel a bit nervous that the date is going badly. After a little over an hour, she gives some signal that the date should end. Sometimes this is very blunt, like saying "Well it's time for me to go," without any preamble. Sometimes she just stops participating in the conversation and waits for me to get a clue. Either way, I make as gentlemanly an exit as I can, and that's it. She's gone and it's time to forget about her.
To be blunt, all these dates were excruciating strikeouts. Two of them actually went poorly but still led to a second date, and the second date also went poorly.
But eight dates going nowhere is totally normal. That's just modern dating. The interesting part, from my point of view, was how they consistently followed that template -- and that the template was debilitating. For eight encounters in a row, I tried to look nice, I worked hard to keep the conversation interesting, and afterwards I felt like all I did was mildly traumatize a stranger with my gross presence and waste an evening. I went home feeling like some kind of unlovable circus freak.
After that, I spent a couple of weekends eating ice cream straight out of the container and binge-watching horror movies, and wondering why I was even trying to date at all. In my head, Bette Midler was doing her comedy routine, lamenting: "Ugh, why bother?"
When I have a lively online chat beforehand, this outcome almost never happens. Instead of feeling panicky and uncertain, I feel relaxed and playful. If the date does not lead to a second - which is still par for the course in this online arena - I at least feel okay with myself, and like I have been treated humanely. The rejection from good communicators is more gentle when it's up front, or more stage-managed when it's not: Something like "Let's do this again some time," with a genuine hug, but no solid plan, and then mutual silence. I feel like I've had some quality time given to me rather than taken away.
For that reason alone, it's better for my mental health to filter people the way I do. Just to keep my spirits up as I battle through the dating gauntlet, it would be nice to stick with people who are good communicators.
So was that experiment even worth it? I don't know. If dating for other people is a parade of strikeouts like that, I have a lot of sympathy for them. I do value physical compatibility, and for a while I thought that perhaps I was the one wasting my time with dialogue, when it would be easier to weed people out by just going to a place and... But, no... Arranging a date, dressing up, getting there, negotiating the details like food and entertainment, only to be mysteriously rejected and go home alone... What a pain in the ass. Why not just filter people out in twenty minutes of online chatter from a comfy chair?
Well, because that too is work, of a kind. It can be mentally exhausting. And the connections I spin up with each person quickly dissolve in the intestines of a night's sleep, and often need to be rebuilt before we meet face to face, and that takes energy too. Sometimes that energy is needed elsewhere, in friends and family and work.
No wonder I'm taking it slowly. My own life is full of nourishing things, and the cargo cult of online dating is not one of them. And why participate at all, if I can't bring my A-game? Actually, that is the one core idea in this whole adventure that is the most important:
If you do not feel like bringing your A-game, just do not go on the date at all, because you are wasting everyone's time.
My time is limited, but so what? That's not a reason to rush this; it's a reason to savor my limited time. Use the platform to find that great conversation, and verify some useful facts. (Single, likes cats, et cetera.) And then ... apply the brakes a bit. Just have a good time with a nice person. If I find myself drawing them in, volunteering them more of my time, then I should go with it. The little grid of new headshots can wait.
I don't need to collect every cutting in the forest. But I do need to tend to my garden, or the ones I collect won't have a place to grow.
To keep it from poisoning the rest of my life, I have to give it only a small amount of my time. That creates a time pressure which interferes with having a real emotional response to the people I meet online. Sometimes I make a really promising find, and have a great text conversation with someone new, and feel invigorated and eager to keep going. But that initial connection always seems to fade quickly from one day to the next.
Sometimes I think it's just because the connection is always more tenuous than it feels, because it's with a person who is not integrated with my daily life at all. They can't help but be crowded out by all the things I already do, that don't involve them.And sometimes I feel as though it's the act of browsing around and looking at other people that kills it; like there is something in our heads that wants to keep us in that more thrilling role of the seeker and pursuer, rather than the harder and more dangerous role of narrowing our focus and investing ... and that thing is encouraged just by the act of logging onto the website and seeing that little grid of new headshots. Like passing by a bookstore on the commute to work, and seeing another row of catchy titles lined up behind the glass every day.
Even more likely than both of those explanations, I suppose, is that when the connection fades it's because I am just not in the mood to actually follow up with people. I know that if I pursued - like, actively pursued - the people I met, I might have the chance to turn a lukewarm first date into something that really comes to life. I find myself thinking that all I need to do is break free of the regimented structure of dating activities, because sitting face-to-face in a restaurant trying to talk in-depth with someone who was a total stranger just days or even hours earlier inspires a lot of tension, and that's a big impediment to a real connection.
That's probably why all of the people I've developed real relationships with from dating sites - people I've seen not just for a couple of dates, but on a regular basis for a good while - were people that engaged in lots of text correspondence before we ever met in person. Sometimes text correspondence followed also by phone conversation, with face-to-face happening much later. It wasn't that we were afraid of meeting in person, it was that we valued those other kinds of communication just as highly, and since they were more convenient, we started there. Even people that I just ended up seeing for the mutually agreeable clockwork purpose of a nice dinner out followed by sex a couple of times a week -- even those people started out with an energetic written exchange.
This is definitely not the way most people operate. So, it must mean there's something weird about me.
I think of all the people who write a dating profile with only a few sentences in it, where they insist that they want to meet in person as quickly as possible to see if there are any "sparks", since otherwise it's just a waste of time. Part of me wants to dismiss them as being too focused on appearance, or obviously trolling for sexual entertainment and nothing more, but then my history softens my impression: Perhaps they're just not very verbal people. People like that need to find love too, and they're not going to find it by competing with life-long wordsmiths like myself, crafting dialogue they don't need or value -- and that's not a comment about intelligence either, since I've lived long enough to meet lots of frighteningly smart people who were just not good with written words. There is nothing wrong with their approach. What if I tried it?
During this recent round of online dating I tested that proposition. In addition to the usual correspondence-led encounters, I arranged a half-dozen dates on very short notice with a bare minimum of online chat leading up to them. One of them happened only about five hours from receiving the "like" message.
They all went like this: I walk up and introduce myself. We both smile. Sometimes I am offered a hug. (The hug always feels a bit forced, and I've started to just turn it down in favor of a handshake.) I observe that the person is physically attractive enough that I would enjoy making out with her, if only we can manage to connect. We sit down and smile and talk and look each other in the eye, and tell stories. I find myself keeping up more of the conversation than I'd like, and begin to feel a bit nervous that the date is going badly. After a little over an hour, she gives some signal that the date should end. Sometimes this is very blunt, like saying "Well it's time for me to go," without any preamble. Sometimes she just stops participating in the conversation and waits for me to get a clue. Either way, I make as gentlemanly an exit as I can, and that's it. She's gone and it's time to forget about her.
To be blunt, all these dates were excruciating strikeouts. Two of them actually went poorly but still led to a second date, and the second date also went poorly.
But eight dates going nowhere is totally normal. That's just modern dating. The interesting part, from my point of view, was how they consistently followed that template -- and that the template was debilitating. For eight encounters in a row, I tried to look nice, I worked hard to keep the conversation interesting, and afterwards I felt like all I did was mildly traumatize a stranger with my gross presence and waste an evening. I went home feeling like some kind of unlovable circus freak.
After that, I spent a couple of weekends eating ice cream straight out of the container and binge-watching horror movies, and wondering why I was even trying to date at all. In my head, Bette Midler was doing her comedy routine, lamenting: "Ugh, why bother?"
When I have a lively online chat beforehand, this outcome almost never happens. Instead of feeling panicky and uncertain, I feel relaxed and playful. If the date does not lead to a second - which is still par for the course in this online arena - I at least feel okay with myself, and like I have been treated humanely. The rejection from good communicators is more gentle when it's up front, or more stage-managed when it's not: Something like "Let's do this again some time," with a genuine hug, but no solid plan, and then mutual silence. I feel like I've had some quality time given to me rather than taken away.
For that reason alone, it's better for my mental health to filter people the way I do. Just to keep my spirits up as I battle through the dating gauntlet, it would be nice to stick with people who are good communicators.
So was that experiment even worth it? I don't know. If dating for other people is a parade of strikeouts like that, I have a lot of sympathy for them. I do value physical compatibility, and for a while I thought that perhaps I was the one wasting my time with dialogue, when it would be easier to weed people out by just going to a place and... But, no... Arranging a date, dressing up, getting there, negotiating the details like food and entertainment, only to be mysteriously rejected and go home alone... What a pain in the ass. Why not just filter people out in twenty minutes of online chatter from a comfy chair?
Well, because that too is work, of a kind. It can be mentally exhausting. And the connections I spin up with each person quickly dissolve in the intestines of a night's sleep, and often need to be rebuilt before we meet face to face, and that takes energy too. Sometimes that energy is needed elsewhere, in friends and family and work.
No wonder I'm taking it slowly. My own life is full of nourishing things, and the cargo cult of online dating is not one of them. And why participate at all, if I can't bring my A-game? Actually, that is the one core idea in this whole adventure that is the most important:
If you do not feel like bringing your A-game, just do not go on the date at all, because you are wasting everyone's time.
My time is limited, but so what? That's not a reason to rush this; it's a reason to savor my limited time. Use the platform to find that great conversation, and verify some useful facts. (Single, likes cats, et cetera.) And then ... apply the brakes a bit. Just have a good time with a nice person. If I find myself drawing them in, volunteering them more of my time, then I should go with it. The little grid of new headshots can wait.
I don't need to collect every cutting in the forest. But I do need to tend to my garden, or the ones I collect won't have a place to grow.
