If you follow #stateofthelil, then you may recall my adventures in dating. One of my posts was called I Can't Win for Losing. I was contacted by endless romanti-scammers, the Holo guy, the "Cleanse Yourself" guy, the disgraced doctor, and twice by my ex-husband. I was even told by someone that I wasn't "materialistic enough."
To discourage everyone, I made my profile as impenetrable as the thick vines that grew around the castle where Sleeping Beauty zoned out for 100 years.
Only a true prince could manage to read my dating website profile.
Instead of talking about my career, trips, my favourite "books, movies, tv shows, music, and food," I wrote philosophical statements like this:
- Philosopher, Richard Rubenstein, said, "We stand in a cold, silent, unfeeling cosmos unaided by any purposeful power beyond our own resources."
The cold silent cosmos - is that where we stand - unaided by any power beyond our own resources?
I'm inclined to agree with him, but I also think that our own resources are extensive, untapped, and mysterious and include resources for togetherness, cooperation, mercy, justice, and revelation.
At the bottom of my profile, I put:
- Contact me
-- if you are wise and thoughtful and yet believe, as I do, that we know very little and control even less; and
-- you suspect that if the universe can create someone as unique as you, the universe can also create someone for you.
Then I tapped into the psychic paging system.
-Tess of the d'UrbervillesWhy it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as a gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order.
On Saturday I broke up with someone because she wanted a relationship, and I don't. She told me, "You are the worst. You should remove yourself from the dating pool." And that warmed my cold heart, not because I knew she was right, but because nothing says you care like being upset when it's over. She was a nice girl and she will do much better than me in the future.
Single people say crazy things... I did. I said, "I don't want to get involved for five years." And I believed that I meant it. but then something happens...or seems to happen... or might be happening... and everything changes ... and five years are over in six months. or I actually am hallucinating. We'll see.
I thought that I was no longer prone to hallucination. Because you grow out of it. You stop seeing things. And feeling things that are too intense to be real can't be. Real or otherwise. They can't be. Simply I thought I had put away childish things. Her mom asked if we had eloped. What are you? Teenagers? I didn't think I could be, but yeah, ma'am. I guess so. I was chasing the wrong dragon. She is a pharmaceutical woman. She is a time machine. She takes me with her.
I want to badge all three of these comments. Came to the realization the other day that I don't want to be in a relationship (not that I am currently). But it's a weird thing to say to someone, how do you explain that to people. How do you know it's not just a defense.
-- you suspect that if the universe can create someone as unique as you, the universe can also create someone for you.
-that's pretty awesome
I was kind of sad listening to that Ted Talk. That woman had a "plan" to live her sentimental life? She planned to go to Petra, name her daughter Petra, be married before X age old, have a child before Y... And that exactly what she did. I get that it's good to know your priorities. I just wonder if that many specific priorities are genuine or imposed by peer/society/idealization pressure. I had the awful impression she could only be happy, by telling people (on Ted talk) how happy and perfect her life is. I hope she's still married and have fun.
Reading your post made me realize something about my own dating profile. I've received a couple scam emails, one "ur profile rocks" that seemed to be a real email, and that's it. It's disappointing. I did meet up with one person recently. We had coffee and pleasant conversation, then she sent me a very kind message that she wasn't interested in meeting again and wished me well.
It's a strange awful process, but the "impenetrable" process seemed to work. The prince didn't even pay for the website that he was searching. He was allowed to post a profile and look at profiles, but not message or receive messages. Like a prince, he found the magic key that I hid in my profile and was able to unlock the door to the castle by following the hints.