A Trip Inside My Head: Why Dating Sucks For Me

So it’s now December and the holidays are almost here.  As is customary to this time of the year for me, I take stock of the things that are important, and I start to plan on what I want to change about myself for the coming new year.  The list includes things like getting into better shape or learning another foreign language, etc, etc..  Basically, it’s a list of resolutions and goals I want to achieve.  One thing that I placed on that list for next year was to start dating again, and that’s something that I honestly don’t have too much control over, since once I ask, it’s up to the woman to say an emphatic “Yes!” or hearty “Hell no.”  But I know that if I want to increase my chances at love, then the best thing to do would be to polish my own self until it shines.  (No that wasn’t a double entendre, you gutter dwellers.) I promised myself I would not go onto the digital dating world again until I was at a physical fitness level that I was personally satisfied with.

So of course, in keeping with the grand traditions of resolutions…I broke that rule within a week.  I know.  I’m sorry.  I’m weak willed.  And to tell you the truth, I regretted it even as I gave these so called dating moguls my money.  But, since I figured that I was already wading waist deep into a mistake, there was no point in holding myself back…so I took the plunge.  Also there was no point in doing a site that I had already been to previously, so I took this opportunity to check out one of the other major sites: Match.

Here’s the key to online dating: Never overthink.  Your gut reactions are usually the right ones, what you write when you are being honest with yourself and others is usually the best things to write, and people, reasonings, and motivations aren’t nearly as complicated as we believe it to be.  That being said, almost as soon as I started typing my profile I got into my own head.  I’m talking Dante’s descent into Hell, “Abandon all hope…” kinda head space.  What can I say, I’m terrible at following my own advice.  You can always go back and re-write your profile as many times as you’d like, but getting into your own head usually means that seeds of doubt have been planted, and they sprout into full grown ivy pretty damn quick.

When you meet someone in person and you are face to face with them, it’s a lot easier not to overthink your behavior.  How can you?  You’re too busy with the conversation taking place in that moment (ideally), and thinking on how to keep it going.  When you’re typing a profile from your desk in your apartment, the only thoughts you have are…how do I make myself look good?  And that’s when we start wading into dangerous territory.  You go from anxious romance seeker to used car salesman in the blink of an eye.  “How do I sell this lemon without her asking me for the Carfax?”

Example: What do I always tend to talk about in this blog?  Height.  If I were to be honest with myself, without shoes, flat on the ground, I’m somewhere in the vicinity of 5’1″.  That’s just how the good Lord made me (dammit).  So now I’m facing down the chamber of my own personal gun.  I’ve never lied about how tall I was on a dating site, but I do know that I feign ignorance when I tend to write my unimpressive height towards the upper end of my height range.  I can go anywhere from 5’0″ to 5’6″ (with my lifts).  Now, I know that my lifts would be considered a lie so I never type 5’5″ to 5’6″.  I tend to set my height at 5’4″ because that is usually where most women have their cut off.  And when you barely make that minimum line, you start to look at the competition around you and start to fight your own personal inadequacy demons.  So now I realize I’m lying (or at least stretching the elastic truth), and I come to the realization that instead of being honest with myself, I am trying to put a fresh coat of paint on an old jalopy and passing it off as a “classic.”  I won’t expound any further, but I write enough about height on here that I think we can all extrapolate that when it comes to being short, I’ll get into my own head a lot more than I should.  The reality is, that it shouldn’t matter, and that a person who is so focussed on my height that they see it detracting from all other parts of my personality, is probably not for me.  But, you can’t show them your personality if you can’t wedge your foot in the door.

Then I started to contemplate the potential problems with choosing a “race.”  See…I am a pure blooded Japanese American.  My parents are both from Japan, my family is from Japan, but my brother and I are both first generation born in the States.  We’re kind of what you call…1st and a half generation.  I still have my roots in my own culture, speaking my native tongue, knowledgeable of our culture, our history, our food, and our way of life.  But that being said, I am most decisively American.  I was born here, I was raised here, schooled here, and I fell in love here.  That being said, when you write down your ethnicity, there are certain expectations associated with it.  When someone sees “Asian”, even regardless of the stereotypes, people tend to have certain expectations.  Language, for instance.  “Asian” tends to run the spectrum between people like myself who grew up as an American and has no trouble with the 3 R’s…and then there are the Asians who are fresh off the boat, still clinging onto the same cultural stigmas from their countries of origin (most of which have laughable concepts of gender equality).  So even when we see the word “Asian American” on a profile, people tend to associate race with an epithet, even if it’s one based on their own perspective.

So…as the above illustrates…by now I’m so deep into my own head that I can see out the back of my skull.

But…I moved on after filling out my stats (only briefly considering the ramifications of choosing a “body type”), and moved onto the meat of the profile: self summary.  I don’t know anyone who actually enjoys writing these things.  First of all, I think everyone could use a little self-reflection now and again.  But it’s terribly difficult to write without the right mindset.  As any editor will tell you (and I know one), there is such a thing as “tone” in the written word.  I realize that sounds mind-numbingly obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people forget that when they are writing a profile, they are introducing themselves to the person reading it.  If you aren’t anxious and excited about meeting someone, you certainly aren’t going to read that way on paper.  And if you’re anything like me…if you’re feeling nervous and insecure, a little too eager and willing to please…well then that’s going to come across too.  All these things sets off alarm bells in your potential romantic partner, who was probably looking for any excuse to thin the herd.  But I try to write.  And for all intents and purposes, I think that it came out fine.  Now to take some distance and see what happens.

So after all of this, I need to go looking for my mate.  Because as a man, your job is to SEEK, not be SOUGHT.  And then we come to the dreaded first message.  There is no experience quite so terrifying for a writer than sitting at a desk, presented with very little information, and be at a total loss as to what to write.  Do you write a generic letter saying “Hey, I just stumbled across your profile and thought we could chat…” which is about as eye catching as the porn spam you have in your Inbox.  Then there are the over-eager sounding letters that just screams out “please love me” and “stalker.”  Or you could go with the 10 paragraph, life summary in a box route which is pretty much a guaranteed sunken Battleship.  And then there’s my ever favorite one sentence, poorly spelled, barely intelligible propositioning of sex.  This, dear friends, is a sure fire way to get yourself banned, and screams that you are from the shallow end of the gene pool where children pee in the water.

In the end if I come up with a case of Writer’s Block, then I save the profiles I like and try to come back when my brain has unstuck itself from the mud.  If I do end up writing, then I try to go for something funny, a question or two about them from their profile, and tell them that I’d like to chat some time.  The rest I leave up to fate and the dating Gods…who for the most part have spent their time, pointing and laughing, and placing Kick Me notes on my back.

All kidding aside, it’s no one’s fault but my own.  I get inside my own head entirely too much, and once I’m there, it’s hard to extricate myself from the sand.  I need to stop getting in my own way, and stop following the man with the glowing orange cones, cause he doesn’t know where the hell he’s leading me.  I want to get to Bora Bora and he sends me to Djibouti.  So maybe it was a bad idea to try this now, or maybe I’m just not meant to be meeting someone this way.  All I can do is try and hope for the best, and if it fails, well…at least you all have some really great stories to read.  Success stories are great and romantic…crash and burn, man on fire, being pushed to drink stories keep you coming back.  On that cheery note: Happy Holidays!  Hope to get a few more posts in before the New Year.