Mine is not an unusual story.  At 39, I find myself standing again at the edge of the dating pool, after seven months of singledom.  Before then, I’d been with a wonderful man for eleven and a half years.  Our relationship was comfortable and easy, but as happens, the flame of romantic love had burned out, leaving only a friendly love. We are still friends.  We recently spent a day together, which was almost indistinguishable from a day we would have spent together as a couple.  I think that says a lot about where we had gotten to in our relationship. We let it go, and it’s ok. 

Now that the grieving phase for this relationship has passed, though, I find myself wondering if it wouldn’t be nice to have another man in my life.  As a friend recently pointed out, though, things have changed. At this age, in this place in life, the likelihood of meeting a man in my daily life and having him ask me out on a date like in the good old days of my twenties is slim.  For one thing, nearly all of the men I know in my age bracket are married with at least two kids.  Strangely, I feel unchanged from when I entered my last relationship. We weren’t married, we didn’t live together, we didn’t have children.  I became uncoupled and remained the same in every other regard, except now I’m getting ready to exit my thirties.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that evidently people don’t meet each other like they have my whole life.  

I’ve been told numerous times that I need to try out the dating sites.  That’s the way it’s done these days, my friends say.  I’ve got at least three friends who met their current significant other through a date site.  I remain hesitant. Maybe I’m being old fashioned, but I’d like to just meet a person and feel a spark. I can’t seem to approach dating like a job interview.  Tell us a little bit about yourself, the sign-up pages read. Tell us what you’re looking for. Tell us what you enjoy doing. It just reminds me too much of a job application. Being low on confidence, I find it very hard to come up with anything that doesn’t sound completely pathetic when I read it back to myself. 

But where do you meet people, my friends ask. Online.  We’re back to that. My approach doesn’t work anymore.  My potential pool of dateable men is virtually non-existent when all I do is go to work and head back home. 

I did meet somebody at work, though.  A single, never married, no kids, handsome, put together, heterosexual man.  We work for the same company, but not in the same office.  Our relationship has slowly expanded to being something like actual friends and not just work mates. We go out for drinks, chat about life.  

I make that sound very smooth and grown-up.  A perfectly nice adult, platonic relationship.  The truth is that I am incapable of not acting like a fool when I’m around him.  Though I’ve repeated to myself a list of things that is wrong with him, things that I would find annoying and not the least bit charming were we dating, I remain enamored of him.  I spend our infrequent evenings at the bar gazing at his perfectly imperfect appearance, wanting to touch him. 

He keeps me at arms-length, though.  Not being one to keep my feelings to myself, especially under the influence of alcohol, I have, more than once unfortunately, attempted to convince him that we should date.  I have simply been rejected time and again.  His vague responses of just knowing that he only wants to be friends with me were of course, not enough.  I knew there had to be reasons.  I was finally given three, two of which I will share.  

Reason number one, I am a little overweight.  We all have our ideal body types, I understand. That I am not currently my own ideal body type is beside the point, I guess. Right there I should be mortally offended, rightly thinking that if someone likes me at 150 but not at 190, I don’t need that person in my life.  Still, what I do is translate that immediately to he doesn’t want you because you’re fat. Put down the fork.

Reason number two, I have depression.  He told me he’s been with a person with depression before, and he just can’t do it again right now.  I don’t know why he added the right now part.  All it did was give me hope for the future. Again, my reaction should be to run the other way.  As much as I hate it, my depression is a part of me that I fear I will never be able to excise.  I treat it, I see my psychiatrist once a month to make sure my medication is still on track, but anyone who struggles with depression knows that it is always just that; a struggle.  I still have my bad days, but more than not they are good. Still, it’s there, lurking beneath my surface.  I need a partner that will, at the very minimum, understand that there is virtually nothing that can be said or done to make me feel better on a bad day, except to hold me close and quietly support me.  If he can’t handle that, again, I don’t need him in my life.

Still, I can’t not want him.  His damaging words rattle around in my brain like heavy stones, making me feel unworthy and intensely flawed. Perhaps part of it is the pursuit of that which I cannot have.  There is a big part of me that thinks that maybe if I did get him, six months down the road that list of not at all charming personality traits would be all too real, and getting under my skin just as firmly as my desire for him does now. I have a strong feeling that even if I did get what I want and dated him, it would end in heartache, which would feel far worse than this childish crush.  The signs all say this.  I almost never come away from a meeting with him feeling good. More often than not, I spend the drive home crying. If only I could pluck my desire for him from among my feelings as though it were a weed among the flowers. 

The stay single / find a boyfriend struggle within me is also an issue.  When I look at my day-to-day life, I have very little time to devote to a relationship. During the week I am consumed by work, maintaining myself, maintaining my house.  On Friday nights I just want to go home and decompress on the couch. My weekends are full of catch up household chores or lazing about in the sun. I need a great deal of alone down time.  Would I really be willing to devote my limited time to someone else? 

The part of me that wants a boyfriend, I fear, is simply under the influence of that need for validation by the opposite sex.  I don’t feel pretty until a man tells me I am.  I don’t feel sexy until a man wants me.  I don’t feel like a woman until a man makes me feel so.  Whether this is a result of societal teachings, or that it is simply an inbred trait, I don’t know.  I do know it’s wrong.  After my breakup, I told myself that this year was a year for myself.  But we’re almost halfway through the year and I’m no closer to feeling like a free-standing person, comfortable with my life as a whole, as a single person taking care of herself than I was last year.  I do take care of myself, I’ve got my life together, but I know that, given the chance, I would run into my crush’s arms and finally feel complete. Which is the precise reason that I need to stay away from him, and every other man, for a good while. I have to fill myself so that I don’t get filled by somebody else. 

I know that given time, this crush will fade, as they all do. After all, I’ve never once gotten a man that I’ve desired this way.  All my major relationships have been with men who chose me, who had almost to convince me to date them.  I know in my soul that I’ll never be with this man. I’m just waiting for the emptiness I always feel in the wake of seeing him to fade, for the desire to be replaced with ambivalence.

One day I’ll look at him and wonder why I wanted him so much. I’m waiting to feel confidence in myself, completely independent of someone else’s view of me.   I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’m not like that now. All the good feminists validate themselves. 

I’m not ready for the dating sites.  I’m going to back away from the pool, maybe take a chair in the sun.  I’m going to keep a hold of the idea that maybe fate will cause me to collide with the right person when I’m ready. I’m going to work on liking myself a little more, flaws and all.