The Scale

Why don’t you date? 

Recently, somebody asked me this.  Somebody actually asked me “why don’t you date?”  The stock answer:  I can’t have men coming and going in my son’s life.  Also, it’s a lot of work (Please refer to http://apsinnerpeas.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-perfect-first-date.html) The real answer:  IT’S FUCKING HORRIFYING.  Even when you set aside the fact that you have to put up a facade of bullshit and hide ALL of the crazy, dating is super scary.  Not so much because you have to worry about all the normal dating stuff like toes and eyebrows and balancing the humor and the compassion and give the appearance of emotional stability, but mostly because once you do all of those things, you are usually doing it for some douche bag who wasn’t worth a fraction of the time you put into it in first place.  That’s why I don’t date.  Because it’s hard.  And unfulfilling.  And I have a vibrator.  So, I’m good. 

The man spectrum

Before I go any further, I need to explain the scale.  I fabricated this diagram today to illustrate to my married friends what it’s like to be single in your 30s.  It is not, NOT, Sex in the City.  Even though I like to joke about good shoes and drinking wine, those things are largely meaningless.  And the men are NEVER Mr. Big.  So, I drew this scale as a visual aide to help those who are jaded by long term relationships to better understand the reality of being a single, or in my case, divorced, woman in her 30s.  You can see that the diagram is bookended by two different, but equally disturbing, male personality types.   On the far left, you have the creeper.  On the far right, you have the emotional retard.  At the fulcrum of the scale, you have the balanced, desirable men:  Gays and Marrieds.  Like any scale you, seek balance and integrity.  In this case, the balanced are already unattainable.  So, for the purpose of this conversation, we will focus on the two extremes:  creepers and emotional retards. 

The Emotionally Challenged (please read: RETARDED)

I’m starting here, in no particular order, because this is the subject I am most familiar with.  Also, as an aside, even though these individuals are categorized as undesirable, make no mistake, they are ridiculously desirable to single women.  I don’t know why.  I can see a bad decision coming from ONE THOUSAND miles away.  The emotionally challenged actually wear signs.  You don’t have to wait for them to talk or reveal their hideous past indiscretions.  Women can actually spot emotional retards by the black cloud that hovers over them and the insatiable desire to have their babies.   These special brands of emotional deviants come in many forms.  The sociopath.  The troubled loner.  The Love scorned.  I’ve seen them all.  I know the signs.  And my response to them, on every encounter, is always the same:  “hehehe.  He’s so cute.  This is fixable.  What happened to my panties?”  Seriously, I once sat with a friend I have known and loved for many years and listened to him tell me how he is immune to emotional attachment.  I had sex with him two hours later.  I once had dinner with man who, uninhibitedly, told me all about his anger and abandonment issues and I had sex with him in the truck outside the restaurant.  If a man exhibits any signs of being emotionally unavailable, I’m there.  Because just like I can pick them out of a lineup, they can spot me too.  In the words of my dear friend Marshall Mathers, my attraction to the emotionally retarded, and theirs to me can only be described as “what happens when a tornado meets a volcano.”  Total destruction.  Hehehe.  He’s so cute , though.  And so dangerous. 

The Socially Challenged (please read:  RESTRAINING ORDER)

Now enter a completely different kind of man.  The kind of man who can’t give you enough compliments.  The kind of man who likes your shoes and your laugh and your cat.  Mind you, he hasn’t ever met your cat, but he likes it anyway.  He likes everything about you.  The only problem is, you don’t know him.  So, it’s a little creepy.  Creepers have happened a few times.  Nothing really notable, but very uncomfortable.  Because nice girls like bad boys, but don’t’ want to hurt anybody’s feelings.  So, you kind of sit and wait for it to go away.  But while it’s going away, it makes for very awkward interactions.  Like my up the street neighbor, who knocked on the door every third day to give me an update on the neighborhood, and tell me he had wine.  There are ten houses on this street.  And, clearly, I have my own wine.  It happened so frequently, that I was devastated at the thought of having to move after I had fallen in love with Holly Heights.  There was also that guy who I knew from work, who showed up at my front door on his bicycle when I was making dinner.  How did he even know where I live?  I don’t advertise that shit.  But there he was.  In spandex.  On my front porch.   Then, there was the kid who told “you look good today. “ That’s nice.  Only we don’t know each other.  Compliments are well received with women.  We are all, as the phrase indicates, attention whores.  We all want to be acknowledged.  What we don’t want is to be accosted.  It’s real flattering, until it’s not.  As my friend Pedro said, “Either this guy is the man of your dreams who will treat you like a queen, or you’re going to become a lampshade.”  Flattering. 

That’s why

Seriously.  That’s what it’s like out there.  There’s a reason men are single. Hell, for that matter, there’s a reason women are single.  Either you commit to loving dysfunction, or you show up as a victim on local news.  So, yes, thank you.  I will protect my own emotional and physical well being by NOT dating.  It’s scary out there.  And I already have a vibrator, therefore orgasms.   That’s half the battle.  I also have people who won’t just help me bury a body, they would drag it to a shallow grave for the price of a snapper sandwich. They would even absorb the cost of the sandwich, just to see me happy.  That’s love and commitment, the other half of the battle.  Even more, that’s inner peas.