Okay, so right off the bat, I have to be clear that this will not actually be a weekly post. It might be every week, but it also might be every 2-3 weeks or even more. So much will depend on how things are going with dating and whether or not I have anything interesting to say.
I don’t want to get into too much backstory (edit: have I literally ever kept anything brief? Lol no—so strap in!) in this otherwise fun and light post, but for anyone who doesn’t know, I moved back to my hometown (and in with my parents) on March 15, 2020 (literally the day shit in the pandemic got real and only a few weeks after a brutal departure from my job in Montreal). At the time, I absolutely thought I would only be here temporarily. But the pandemic raged on, and my parents seem to be rapidly aging before my eyes. So now, at 40 years old, it would seem that these two people who’ve dedicated their lives to caring for me need a little more of my care in return, and I’m happy and lucky to be able to give it to them. Some days I still feel capitalist-success-shame over living with my parents (a leftover of my new values clashing with my old values), but most days I consider myself wildly lucky. The fact that my parents can help support me in my dream career as a writer while I support them in other non-financial ways is a gift to all of us. The truth is, though I’ve never had (nor wanted) children of my own, living with aging parents is a lot like having toddlers—it’s mostly picking up everything in the house that they’ve dropped and couldn’t pick up themselves, there’s more shit than you’d expect, and everyone ends up in tears when naps aren’t taken on time. On the upside, I spend most of my days making my parents laugh. Nobody laughs harder at the dumb little things I say everyday than my mother. I make a lot of murder jokes, mostly about murdering them and having had enough of their shit. There’s a lot of jokes about the stairs. I never say these things in front of other people because I don’t think they’d find it as funny. My mother once asked why I think that is and I said honestly, I think it’s funny for us to say because my love for them is so beyond that no one could possibly ever think it to be true. I say, other people might actually murder their parents so it’s not so funny. To which, she laughs because I’m funny. Anyway, I’ll talk more about my living situation and being a writer and dealing with aging parents another time—the only reason I mention it here is because my dating life has been so entirely affected by my living situation that it warrants explanation.
I haven’t gone on a date in years now. That sounds so crazy, even just hearing it in my own head. This is the longest I’ve gone without a date since I started dating over 20 years ago. I haven’t had sex—and no, I don’t even mean with someone new, and no I don’t even mean just specifically penetrative sex—I’ve had literally no sexual contact since early 2020 or late 2019, I can’t even remember exactly anymore. It feels like a lifetime ago.
The reason is the pandemic. But also, more than that because though I’m only 40, my parents are over 70 putting them at high risk of covid. The pandemi raged and we shut shit down. Then came the vaccines and we all got ours the second they were available. And then our second shots, and it seemed like things might be okay and then Omicron happened, and it was back to square one. Then we got our boosters but still we waited because my dad had two surgeries (one for a hernia, and one for his prostate) and I had one (ovarian cyst and fallopian tube removal) waiting in the wings. We didn’t want to take any risks in getting covid and our surgeries getting postponed since we’d already been waiting so long for them.
And that brings us to now—my dad has had his surgeries and I’m healing well from mine and we’re all willing to open things up a bit. We’re not going to be irresponsible by any means but if most people have been living at like a 6, we’ve been living at a 2 and we’re taking it up to a 5. Or something like that.
So, in classic me fashion, I’m on literally every app. Actually that’s a lie, I recently deleted OKcupid because it seemed like I was just getting lots of matches that never messaged. I was going to delete Plenty of fish as well until it occurred to me that perhaps I should be pursuing more intelligent men instead of hoping for intelligence from my matches or people messaging me. So, I selected PhD in the search category, read some profiles and messaged anyone that seemed either interesting, attractive or both. I figured at the very least, I might get some more eloquent responses. And I did. The first man to respond wrote an elegant paragraph in response to my opener So what’s the last great adventure you want on. He wove a beautiful story about a going to spa and enjoying the pools and great food and drinks...and then he told me about exchanging oral (ugh barf I hate when people call it that lol) with an ssbbw. Gross. Not only was he telling me about a sexual encounter with another woman in a first message, but he was fetishizing her? Disgusting, and I told him as much. As it turned out eloquence didn’t equal quality. Next!
Another man, this time a medical doctor, messaged back and we’ve been chatting for days. Everything was going great...until he asked if I was okay with distance (red fucking flag!). Turns out he’s in Israel until September, which could be legit but given the extremely high volume of catfish on plenty of fish, my bullshit detector was activated. He said he couldn’t text but could whatsapp (red fucking flag), but I was open to briefly explore this. However, every time I asked a question like,
So how come you’re in Israel?
He’d respond with something really vague (which only makes a person seem sketchier).
I was posted here (red fucking flag, posted is military not healthcare language)
Posted by who? I asked.
The company I work for, He said.
And that was about it for me. Could he still absolutely be legit? Of course. But when someone gives me bad vibes, I listen to them. Plus, if I’m being real, much of my interest in him was the (assumption) that he was a doctor and thus intelligent, and a doctor, while private, would know better than to be vague with someone who was doubting them. Or, they wouldn’t and that’s not a doctor that would interest me. Sometimes, red flags aren’t about finding proof but seeing enough potential flags to call it regardless because even if only half were true that’s still too many to ignore. I told him as much (about being vague and weird) but that if he wanted to text me in September when he’s back in town, he could feel free. Instead of just taking that, he wanted to know just exactly what was vague and weird and that was enough for me to just say never mind and block him. Needless to say, things in dating are going well lol.
The next most promising man is named John. We’ve been messaging on POF. Things have been going extremely slowly, a lot of talk about travel and not much (if any?) flirting. John Is 51 (a silver fox if you will), he’s got a beard though which I don’t really like but it’s trimmed, and I don’t know I’m trying to be open because his messages while tepid are always eloquent and thorough. That said, recently (I think Friday) we started messaging faster, responding back and forth to each other in real time. He had just landed in Vegas on a trip with his friend who was losing money playing poker. If I’m being honest, I was wildly flattered that he was in Vegas and still messaging me like dude you’re on vacation don’t worry about me. The irony of that quickly slaps me in the face because I sent the last message (admittedly it didn’t include a question and I guess didn’t really need a response) and now he hasn’t messaged in days but has still been constantly online (which ugh is such an irritating feature lol). The thing is, I’m not really a jealous person, however, I am a person who gets easily offended and also while I don’t care if you date other people (in fact, I encourage it) if I get the feeling, you don’t have enough time or interest for me, I don’t bring it up, I just bow out. So, will John message again? Probably. Have I lost interest? Probably.
That’s it for the front runners. The rest of my matches/messages are in their infancy so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, and I have a few men waiting in the wings that I might message. They’re all men who I, at one point, thought I was ready to meet but then another covid surge came or whatever and I never ended up meeting. I would text them now but I’m worried they’ll be like okay let’s hang out tonight and while I’m healing, I’m still not actually healed from all my incisions/surgery so once I’m game-ready, I’ll hit them up (and then I’ll let you know how it went).