Talk about inundation! That’s the word for the sheer number of emails I’ve gotten from Match.com. I need to go on my preferences and turn off those alerts so I can go on when I’m ready for the flood and not have ten new messages a day. I don’t know if this is normal. Does everyone get this kind of interest?
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But none of them have really sparked my interest. And I have started to wonder how you do this. You get a wink and you wink back and then you get an email and then you email back and then what if you find out you’re not interested after all? How do you extricate yourself? I suppose I should just cross that bridge when I come to it; isn’t that always my weakness?
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I also wonder – as I always wonder with a dating service – what comprises “good enough”? If I’m using a dating service, do I just have to assume there won’t be any guy who is truly together, handsome, successful, and funny? In other words, a “catch”? But look at me. I’m pretty attractive all-around. Never the type of woman anyone would expect to use a dating service. If I’m on there, couldn’t a male equivalent of me be on there, too? It’s just that when I do a dating service – it’s been a year and a half, so I’d forgotten – I start out rejecting every possible match out of hand because they’re instantly unappealing or boring, and then after 40 or 50 or 900, I start thinking back to the beginning and thinking, “Oh, well, maybe that one wasn’t so bad…” And I never know what I should do with that. Should I a) take that as a sign that I in my shameful lack of experience had not yet gained a sufficient frame of reference, or b) I’m starting to settle and I should stick with my first impression. I don’t know. But I do know when I consider option A, I get this instant let down from the idea that those few standouts that only stand out in comparison with worse losers, are all I can expect. And I just can’t help seeing me with more, with a man who’s amazing on his own merit, not merely because he’s standing among the dregs and so looks decent by comparison. So should I wait to respond on Match.com until I see a profile that really strikes me? Or will I just be doing what I did with all the other dating services and sit there and waste the money? Am I only in store for a groaning acceptance of a wink or email because I have to? Yes, it’s only been three days, but I have a lot of history to support that prediction.
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And I think I have finally, after all these dating services, hit on precisely why I loathe dating services of any kind, put off using one until the last possible excuse has been exhausted, and never take full advantage of them when I do finally break down and sign up. They make me feel so undervalued. I go on and look at profile after profile, surely enough to get a fair sense of the pickings available, and think with a quiet shock and a distant disorientation, “Is this all I can hope for? Is this all I am worth?” I had just always had a sense of being worth a great deal. While I am not perfect, I have so much to offer, and in an attractive, fun package, no less. And this is all there is to choose from? No wonder I hate dating services. Even with me on there, there are just so many people who clearly couldn’t get a date any other way. Where is my match? For surely these men could never be.
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I find it surpassingly ironic that most people go on dating services because they are hoping for anything, they go on because their expectations are so low and static, and I am on there for precisely the opposite reasons. My expectations are so high they interfere with normal dating where they have a far greater chance of being met than on a dating service. How does that make sense?
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I suppose I just have to hold to my vision, and hope he’s out there, this man among men, this man who is witty, kind, patient, successful, funny, and handsome, and somehow finds me. I suppose I just have to remind myself it’s only been three days, and that this might just be one step to a completely different path to my destination. At least I’m taking action. I just need to keep working on “letting go of my vision.” I had thought I was releasing more power if I kept visualizing but I now wonder if you have to at some point release it so it can do its work. I suppose it just symbolized my growing fear and need for control that I couldn’t let the vision go.
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And it must change. My life must change. I cannot be stuck for the whole of my life. I could not have walked in, for instance, my first day of student teaching at
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