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Chopin dangles his long smooth fingers over my inner left wrist. Live, as a reminder in case I should forget. He reminds me and softly traces each curled letter with his thumb before kissing my tingling flesh. Long thick lashes flutter once against the sharp lines of his cheeks as I reach out to rest my hand against his flushed neck. It’s a perfectly symmetrical smooth face with nary a flaw and arresting elements. I feel the steady beating of his heart pick up speed underneath my quivering palm. Chopin turns his entrancing profile to meet my gaze and his golden eyes pierce through my bag of feeble reserves. It is completely useless in this room, on this couch, with his hands doing exactly what I knew they would and hoped. He shifts his lean frame slightly; the room spins unmercifully out of control. How the hell did I get here? Two words: online dating.
Back in late October, I decided to stop waiting around for a healthy relationship to materialize from thin air. While I find single life exhilarating and liberating, my bed tends to get a bit cold too often, especially when the season shifts late in the year and the mild weather tumbles into frigid territory. I have always been fascinated by the idea of a secure and comforting long-term, monogamous relationship, but I have been unable to obtain a secure and comforting relationship, perhaps because I spend far too much time thinking about why I desire a secure and comforting relationship in the first place. There’s also that pesky detail about a failed marriage. I don’t consider myself a failure. On the contrary, given my background and upbringing, I am a success story! Yet the repercussions of a failed marriage have messed with my mind and ego to the point where I have often called myself a failure. I have deliberately avoided becoming romantically involved with paramours, and I harbored myopic and suspicious thoughts about all romantic entanglements. I assumed nothing good would come out of long-term dating. Once I’d blurt out that I had previously been married, my lover (if he even got that far) would eventually high-tail it out of there. You see, there’s a stigma attached to divorcees (or in my case, soon-to-be divorcees). It’s almost as if all potential suitors view divorcees as damaged goods, or defective merchandise: “You couldn’t make a marriage work? Why is that? What’s wrong with you? What did YOU do?” In other words, we can’t hold a relationship together when the going gets tough. We fail at it. I felt constantly judged, without allowing myself to be judged. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: “What a neurotic. So typical of divorcees.” See? I would say the same thing, and I do when I catch myself overthinking my past. But this is what eventually dawned on me: I married young and the union didn’t last long. So what? It’s not like I killed someone! I can talk about the experience calmly now without foaming at the mouth. Enough time has passed from the dissolution of my marriage, and I’ve grown tremendously in the aftermath. I managed to shed most of the insecurities I clung to as a form of punishment for having “failed.” I am not a failure. I no longer define myself by what I haven’t been good at; it’s what I’m good at that matters most at this point in my life. I am raising a healthy young boy, and I have accomplished several goals, like finally graduating from college. I am writing professionally for a small publishing firm, and I hope to pursue a Master’s degree in Creative Writing within the next two years. So I figured it was time to get serious about seeking out a worthy suitor. Or at least make some sad attempt at it.
Since I graduated from Northeastern Illinois University this past spring, my dating pool has shrunk considerably. Thank god for online dating sites. The dating game has gone through some weird evolution since the last time I was actively pursuing men. I wasn’t sure how to proceed with my amorous endeavors. Should I speed date and risk scaring off about 95 percent of would be suitors with my incessant blathering? What about blind dates set up by well-meaning but ultimately clueless friends? And who actually finds love in a bar with sticky floors and men who slur their speech? I almost gave up before I started. But then I came across an article on how to write a “successful” online dating profile. It was like an epiphany, even though it mostly pissed me off. So in a fit, I joined an online dating site, OkCupid, and proceeded to craft a witty and sarcastic profile. Take that unknown writer and your “pointers” on how to succeed at online dating! Little did I know it would be such a hit (well my photos didn’t hurt either) with the opposite sex. I met Dan (Federico, Chopin) within a week of joining. I had received some messages from cads calling me out on the “crap” I had created in 10 minutes and dared to post on my profile. Delete! Others couldn’t wait to help me arrange my panty drawer and get me in bed. I saw that one coming. Still, delete! Dan, on the other hand, responded with a witty and sarcastic outline on how he met the qualifications I was seeking in a suitor. I was immediately fascinated, but I had initial reservations about meeting him because he is several years younger than I am. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d go on more than a few dates. Yet I was eager to meet Dan and engage in a battle of words. It has been two months since we met, and I can’t get enough of him. I have never once felt judged by him. On the contrary, he makes me feel good about myself and the choices I have made. But I guess the real reason why I feel this way is because I am finally at peace with myself about a marriage that didn’t work. I didn’t fail—it just didn’t work out. Dan will leave in less than two months. He is going off to Latin America, somewhere in South America to teach English and learn all about a new culture. I’m not thinking of the loss I know I will feel when he’s gone—I’m only focusing on everything I have learned from him these past two months. So with that in mind, I urge you all to give online dating a try. You never know what you’ll find in your inbox.
