To find a lasting relationship, you have to accept those relationships that won’t last.
I’m a strange creature. At 53, I have a fair amount of experience at living. However, when I joined the dating world just over three years ago, I had no experience to speak of regarding dating, and the minute experience I did have was from over 26 years earlier. There were no dating apps back then.
My inexperience led me early on to naively accept behaviors that I shouldn’t have accepted. There was the “polyamorous” woman who used me as a pawn to get her husband jealous. There was also the woman I went on a date with, but who seemed only interested in getting a free meal and promoting her business. They both displayed behavior that now would put me off from pursuing anything with them.
I’m a quick learner, however. My many adventures and misadventures quickly taught me what I call an aphorism of love:
To find a lasting relationship, you have to accept those relationships that won’t last.
I don’t see any way around this aphorism. For one thing, the statistics are operating against us. Still, I was in a relationship that lasted 26 years. We were married for 22 of those years. She was my first relationship. Wow! Lucky, right? I had beaten the odds! I thought I was lucky, until we started talking divorce. Absolutely nothing is guaranteed.
Now, I do run from time to time into those who will declare that the dating apps have always been or have become a large wasteland in which it is impossible to find anyone. I accept that this has been their experience, but such hasn’t been my experience.
I expect the vast majority of such individuals to be straight, monogamous, vanilla, and neurotypical. In all likelihood, they are also trapped by the dominant ideology of our times, capitalism. This entrapment has multiple manifestations. There’s the fact that wages have not risen at the same rate as inflation. This means that they have to work harder to keep their standard of living. This leaves less time and energy for forming connections of any kind, including romantic ones.
Another way in which this entrapment manifest itself is the desire for optimization. A lot of people these days get into debt while trying to impress the crowd. They buy expensive things that they cannot afford. People in this type of situation are likely to look for a specific type of mate. Someone who plays well the capitalist game.
Thus, these folks will compare their dates against an unrealistic ideal of what their mate should be. Thus, their experience on the dating apps will be molded by this attitude. They won’t connect, and when they connect, they will run at the first sign that their date does not hold up to their ideal.
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My own experience has been different. For a start, my demographics make me a minority. I’m pansexual, polyamorous, into BDSM, and neurodivergent. I do not hide these things from my dating profile. These characteristics make me unpalatable to a lot of people. In addition, I have my own dealbreakers which narrow the pool of candidates even further.
For instance, I do not date cops or the military. Yes, I know for a fact that this requirement of mine has cost me some potential matches. Someone I had contacted, who was polite about it, told me as much. In addition, I pass on all the straight folks. I just don’t think that the random straight individual has any idea of what being queer entails.
My demographics and my preferences make it extremely difficult to meet anybody by just going to social events. I do go to social events that have nothing to with dating. My chance of running there into someone who is looking for a mate and is going to be okay with me being pansexual, being polyamorous, being into BDSM, and being neurodivergent are extremely slim.
I also go to queer events, events for neurodivergent people, or events for people into BDSM. When I go to these events, there is a greater chance at compatibility. However, it is usually the case that the people I find there are going to be compatible with me in all respects, except one. This is highly frustrating. Do not make the mistake of thinking that one characteristic entails the other, especially if you are not part of these minorities. For instance, pansexual people are not all polyamorous.
So this leaves me with online dating. I’ll note here that all my relationships started online. Yes, even the one with my ex-wife, which started in 1996. It started through email. I did not start using the dating apps until after our divorce, in 2022, however. Truth be told, I’ve had my successes on these apps. I’ve heard from several people that they got absolutely nothing out of them.
So what counts as success? As far as I see it, a match is already success writ small. Then there’s having a nice date, which is a bigger success. Then there’s being intimate with your dating prospect, which is even better. Don’t get me wrong, some of these encounters were unmitigated disasters. The net balance, however, is a positive one overall. Ultimately, what I seek is a lasting relationship. However, I feel the need to point out that all relationships last, right up until the moment that they don’t. I do not possess the crystal ball to tell me which relationship will last, and which won’t. Moreover, remember my aphorism of love:
To find a lasting relationship, you have to accept those relationships that won’t last.
Because of this, I always approach relationships with an open mind, and assume that they will last. Yes, I’m most likely mistaken, but it does not matter. I let myself be pleasantly surprised by my partners, and I hope to pleasantly surprise them too. It has happened. And yes, opening yourself to pleasant surprises, means you can also get unpleasant surprises. I’ll say that almost every time a relationship has ended, it was an unpleasant surprise. And yet, these are inevitable.
Furthermore, I do not attempt to make my partners fit into some narrow confine of how my “ideal” partner should be. Now, I do have boundaries. Most of these revolve around money. However, if a partner does not respect those boundaries, the result is not typically a breakup.
Finally, I’ve rejected the ideals of capitalism. I do not aim to optimize my life, or my relationship, and I do not impose such optimizations on my partners. I aim to be present in my partner’s life, and so I do not favor living the rat race that capitalism likes to foist on us.
I am currently partnered with my boyfriend. We’re at the nine or ten months mark, right now. The longest relationship I’ve been in after my divorce. We found each other on OkCupid. Prior to this, I was in a seven-month relationship with a girl. We found each other on Feeld. Other than these two post-divorce relationships, I’ve had unplanned one-night stands, and some relationships that lasted one weekend, or a few days.
It may be a function of my demographics, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about how I present on the dating apps. I use all the space at my disposal to fill out a thorough profile. There is little I hate more than profiles that have pictures but are otherwise empty. It is pretty much guaranteed that you are going to get likes from misguided people who are trying to fit square peg into round holes, even with a filled profile. How much more of those are you going to get if your profile is empty, and how many of them will treat you as an object? You’ve given them no reason to do otherwise with your empty profile.
Moreover, I go to the apps with the attitude that nobody owes me anything. I’ve had matches, and sometimes short-lived relationships, where I was thanked for my understanding and kindness when things, for reasons that have nothing to do with me, unravelled and the relationship came to an end. I cannot, and do not want to force someone into a relationship with me if it is not in the cards.
I’ll conclude by saying that attitude is not the entire reason people do not find success on the dating apps, but it is a significant reason. The choice of the dating app, and even geography can affect someone’s experience significantly, and yet the effect of one’s attitude is non-negligible.
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