Online Dating is Less Fun than Being Unhappily Married

Her mouth smiles, but her eyes do not.

Meet Jacob, a thirtysomething, single Portlander on the prowl. He describes himself as “average-looking.” Girlfriends have called him “lazy, aimless, and irresponsible with money.” He doesn’t care much about “a solid credit score,” “a 40-hour workweek,” or settling down. Thanks to online dating sites, Jacob pursues dates with “one or two very pretty, ambitious women a week.” He recently ended a two-year relationship with a 22-year-old; he’s currently juggling flings with “a paralegal and a lawyer who work at the same law firm, a naturopath, a pharmacist, and a chef.”

Jacob, as Atlantic writer Dan Slater frames him, is the embodiment of a new dating market where the allure of “online romance is threatening monogamy.” Whenever he meets another woman online, Jacob (not his real name) thinks: “This person could be exclusively for me, but so could the other two people I’m meeting this week.” Why have a real relationship, Slater asks, when there are so many attractive, successful partners waiting online?

If they make you feel inadequate, then leave

And that was the game-changing truth in how I think about dating. I can’t remember how I discovered it—if I had read it online, in an obscure book, or if it magically came to me in a dream, but one day I realized that the majority of my dating woes could be solved with one statement: If a guy is making you feel absolutely insane, you should step away.

Is Being Alone Better than Dating?

As a single woman living on my own, I often feel the need to fill my time. I pack my days with friends, outings, activities — even when those things aren’t really what I want to be doing. Lately, I’m challenging my tendency to overschedule my life by consciously basking in my moments of alone time, whether I’m lying by a lazy river or chopping vegetables while listening to jazz.

A Typical Bad Dating Experience Turns into Marriage?

My relationship with Thomas began with a seemingly innocuous email he sent to my roommate. 

''What's your friend's story?'' he asked her.

She forwarded his email to me, adding, ''What do you want your story to be?''

I wasn't trying to hide my past. I had been married briefly and left the marriage feeling skittish but hopeful that someday I'd find someone who suited me better. I dated but wasn't drawn to anyone enough to go out a second time. When Thomas's email pinged into my inbox, I felt a surge of excitement for the first time in a long time.

Say No to the Dating-Industrial-Complex

BY her own admission, Sara Cambridge was "totally cruising."

She spent hours trolling online dating sites, sending e-mail messages to potential mates and creating "a real connection," which would invariably sour into deep disappointment within the first five minutes of an actual date. At which point she would return to the sites, send more e-mail, make another connection and suffer another snap disappointment. 

Finally, there was the left-leaning writer, who took her to a Japanese tea garden and, like so many of the others, seemed so perfect from his resume.

Lex Returns

I've been on my own for two years, and it has been an interesting journey. What I found is that the best people to date are the folks who just got out of a marriage, and are recently divorced or separated. This is contrary to conventional wisdom, but I believe it to be true.

Why?

These folks have had enough of a bad relationship and are ready to try the next big thing, whether that is serial dating or a full-on relationship. They are looking for fun, something lite and breezy, which happens to be exactly what I'm looking for. Might be long-term or it might not be. Neither of us cares. We just move forward and see where it goes.

This is how it used to be, no? You know, back in the good old days of dating (however you define that time period).

But then what happens?

Ah, this is the critical part.

The Ugliness (part 2)

The Ugliness (part 2)

In an ideal world, spouses who get divorced would never have to see each other again. If a marriage is so awful as to end in an expensive, time-consuming, and emotionally wrenching legal proceeding, who would want to make matters worse by subjecting the former couple to the same interpersonal problems after the divorce is final. Better to just move on and not look back.