Everything You Always Wanted And Less.

My search labeled “True,” when I use criteria that is honest with myself, has always come up with zero matches. ZERO. This startles me. It provides empirical evidence to support the long dreaded conclusion, year-after-year, that there is no match suited to me. I do not know but maybe you have tried the same thing as I have: plugging in search criteria you know appeals to you but finding your search results are better when you fill in as many “Any” answers to search as possible. This type of search does not make me feel good because I know I am not deriving the best value from the search technology I can, and, in settling to slake the momentary need, I feel I betray myself. I do not need a computerized matchmaker to help me settle. Your mileage how you might feel about all this may vary, of course.

My search has had zero results for years here, and for much longer in my real life. I am happy to be alone but I do not expect to be alone. I would rather share my life with the right person. Steel sharpens steel so, being alone, I miss being sharpened, more defined, and more refined – yet being with someone with whom I am incompatible is frustrating. If you have ever been stuck in an incompatible relationship, you know what I mean: it is better, at least more honest, to be alone.

And a whole industry on dating websites targets people unhappy to remain alone, who are desperate to find someone for validation. AshleyMadison comes to mind: men talking to other men (it turns out), unhappily married to their choice of partner, trying to find a mistress. I can only imagine the women must be as unhappy with their husbands. Profiles here, too, are baited hooks for the clever to extort money from the lonely not unlike a kind of cerebral or emotional prostitution. Profiles of blond and blue-eyed Californians identifying as “Native Americans” are always a laugh as are the profiles with poor English - easily picked up by a native speaker. If loneliness or desire is willing to forego such signs, then the sharp mind can pick up cold reading techniques in letters that are long but manage to say nothing unless it is to parrot back the needs of the lonely and desperate: here I am, all that you want me to be, and nothing for myself.

I was going to reprint one such letter I received and critique it: the strong opening that lays the foundation for future demands of financial assistance; the flip-flop statements that jig the line for the fish to bite; the contradictions between description and photo, the poor standard English from people born in an English-speaking country… It is quite a list. But I realize the space of a blog post is to limited for such a literary critique. Such a letter to me is disheartening to read as it was meant for me and, yet, not meant for me.

It is shocking how transparent it is; how wise I am to see it for what it is; and yet how alone I continue to be. It wearies me.