Dating: Am I Doing This Right?

No stress here, just beautiful fall views of SLC

This moment in time is a lot. I won't list all the sources of stress because it could send me into a spiral and I've developed a tick to the phrase, 'In these unprecedented times.' So here's a rant completely unrelated to larger events and simply relevant to me.

Dating is hard. Sometimes I think about how I never expected to spend my thirties dating, but honestly, I never really imagined being in my thirties. Once I started college and got my own apartment I'd achieved all my childhood dreams and everything past that was new, un-imagined territory. One day, when I was 27, I started dating a man I stayed with for eight years. When we broke up it was 2019 and I was suddenly in my mid-thirties wondering how adults date. Most everyone I know got married in their early twenties, so I have to no close examples of what to do and 'Sex and the City' is not all that relevant to my life (gosh, I wish dating was that funny).

A few months into my wondering about dating I met a New Person at a place and we had things in common and hung out and then talked about dating and then dated. Remember when we could go to places? Places where we could meet new people? When shaking hands and hugging were acceptable forms of greetings and goodbyes? Ah. Simpler times. Anyways, New Person and I dated for several months and broke up during the first week of Utah's 2020 quarantine. So I still had all my questions about dating but now I wasn't meeting new people; I wasn't even allowed to see the people I love. I even miss my nemesis. And going places isn't an option.

Homeless, living my desert dream

My saga over the spring is a story for another time, it involves earthquakes, homelessness, and buying a home. I have faced my mortality and while I have accepted that I may die alone, I won't die alone in a crumbling apartment. It will be in a crumbling house.

After some stuttering starts, I have engaged with the world of online dating and IT STRESSES ME OUT! I have so many questions! And here are some of them: 

In the app:

• How many conversations should I be engaged in? I could spend all day chatting with people who have liked my photos but the prospect of that literally makes me curl up in the fetal position.
• How quickly should I respond to chats? If let things pile up I'm going to confuse the conversations I'm in, but I can only emerge from my anxious fetal position twice a day, max. Do I seem too eager if I respond in the amount of time I would respond to a text message? Do I seem uninterested if I only respond weekly?
• How many 'LOLs' are acceptable before I write someone off? I can only tolerate one per message and probably two per week. Should I work on that?
• OK. I know the answer to this. No. They should work on it. You can use the words "that's funny" or a wide range of emojis.
• What amount of exclamation marks is appropriate? 
• Is it okay to be dismissive of people if I hate their chin or the angle they've chosen for all their selfies?

Too much monkey? 

• Should I take down this picture ↑ ? I was deliberately hanging on those vines like Tarzan, but only old men have made the reference to Tarzan and I am hurt when Hinge folks comment about me being a monkey.
• This monkey thing is a long term issue for me. My mom noticed that as an infant I looked like a rhesus monkey and I can't move past it. Plus in kindergarten my field trip group left me behind while I was viewing the gorillas, but made sure to let me know they remembered me when they spotted the orangutan.
• Why is everyone named Scott?

In person:

• Is meeting up for a hike a date? Are we dating?
• How much internet stalking is too much internet stalking?
• How proactive should I be? Is this the time revise my 20-year-old pattern of letting men taking the lead?

I have so much anxiety in this photo, but it's still an adventure

• It seems that every guy out there is looking for "easy going" "adventure partners." Will they give me a shot? I'm not going to pretend I'm easy going. Plus adding an anxiety disorder into an adventure can really spice it up. Just try guessing what will trigger a panic attack AND how to deal with me if I'm panicking.
• Dudes looking for ambitious/driven + easy going ladies are asking for a pizza that doesn't exist! And there are so many of them. The outdoor community is full of Type A women, just admit you like us!
• When, exactly, am I supposed to talk about all the emotional damage 20 years of dating and 10 years of graduate school has done to me? When do I bring up the anxiety disorder?
• Where can we meet to guarantee that I won't be groped*, but that also won't expose us or employees to COVID-19?
• Am I being a jerk because I think A LOT about it before I give someone my phone number or home address? Am I over-thinking this?
• Given all the questions about using the app, is there supposed to be a conversation about no longer chatting with folks on the app?

So, I spiral through all these questions nearly every day. It's exhausting. But my therapist has encouraged me to get out there and meet people and I think she's right about that. The time I spend obsessing on how to properly use the Hinge app feels more productive than the time I spend worrying about dying a death that could have been prevented simply by my not doing it alone (for example, if I had gotten stuck while crawling under my house the other day, a dating person might know and care that I was missing and maybe look under my house before I died).

Let this image of aspens, the best fall tree, soothe you. 

*Tinder is a garbage app. Don't use the Tinder app. And if you must use Tinder, don't grope people whom you've just met.