Breaking the Dating Rules

Friday night. According to all the “dating” rules, I should not be admitting publicly in any kind of venue that I am at home and not out on a date. I don’t care what the rules say. I’m having a fantastic time. I’ve been grinding away for two months on major work projects. Projects that revitalized me because I felt they were purposeful…and challenging…and interesting. Projects that kept me energized and distracted me from worrying about any number of things.

Okay, sure. Let’s be clear. If Perfect Relationship came along, I would hope I’d have the sense to go for it. The problem is, I don’t believe in “Perfect Relationship”? I just don’t think it exists and I believe that perpetrating the myth that a “Perfect Relationship” exists and is even viable, is incredibly damaging.

The Goldilocks Brief

2:23 a.m. The big projects I was working on have come up to their deadline. Proposals submitted, bids received, offers accepted, contracts signed. Two out of three of the projects were successful, the third, a surprising disappointment in some ways. This third project, was not the most profitable one, so having to go back to the drawing board on this is not a horrible defeat. For me, it means, I get to return home during my evenings. I get to spend time with my kids. I get to live a bit more normal life. Which means, I’m wide awake at 2:23 a.m., for no apparent reason.

Mr. Just Right, from my last post, ended up pushing our meet up for cocktails on Wednesday to dinner and a movie Sunday evening. He showed up, promptly at 5:30 p.m. While he’s wonderful enough on paper, I knew immediately that he wasn’t Mr. Just Right after all. I don’t usually know this right away, but this time, I did. Maybe it was the fact that even though he’s only a few years older than me, he looked as frail and hunched over as my 90-year-old grandma used to look, when she was 90 years old. Not that I judge people entirely on how they look, but let’s face it: when you’re looking for a romantic partner, you have to, at least, be attracted enough to want to get romantic. I knew instantly that this was not going to get romantic. I also knew instantly that this was going to be a very long evening. Fortunately, much of it was going to be a movie, but I had to get through dinner first.

Goldilocks and Dating

Online dating is so much like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. If you’re a woman, you can pretty much put up a profile, and if your profile is decent and your pictures are good, you can just dangle that bait in the water and watch the fish come swarming to your inbox. But then the real work begins. It’s just like Goldilocks sampling the porridge, the chairs and the beds of The Three Bears: this one’s too hot, that one’s too cold, will the next one be just right?

Married Men

Ever go into a business meeting or some social event and notice how many people are married? Now, I’m not exactly looking for Mr. Right. As each day passes, I become more and more convinced that the relationship/marriage boat sailed long ago and I was probably at the airport when it did. No. I’m not looking for someone to complete me. I’m not looking for a friend to benefit with. I’m not looking to get involved in any kind of romantic relationship at all. Not only that, but I live in a location that is billed as one of the worst places in this nation to be if you are a single woman. I’m not fooling myself. The odds for me to meet up with some decent guy I’m somewhat compatible with are slim. That I might have a romantic connection with the guy reduces the odds almost 100%. Even though I’m not looking,even though I don’t really care, there are times when I look around and I notice that all the men in the room are married. I then notice that most of the women in the room are married too…except for me…and maybe one or two others. Most of the time this doesn’t bother me. I like being single and being in a room of men who are married, especially if they are happily married, means I’m not going to get hit on at the company conference. I like that. It means I can actually have a conversation with these men that focuses on something meaningful that won’t necessarily lead to the bedroom.

I feel this way, most of the time, except for the meeting I attended tonight.