So this week is the fifth year anniversary of me starting this blog! Yikes. Yes, you all have been enjoying my self-deprecating tales of why I am (still) single for longer than some marriages last nowadays. Five years later I am pretty much, okay no, let’s be honest, I am EXACTLY where I was love life wise as when I started this blog. Only now I have three cats instead of two so I actually think a regressed. While this blog has been a fun creative outlet for me to drop my thoughts into, I will admit I have been doing a poor job of keeping up with posting. I am about quality not quantity and I actually I have a handful of half written posts that I haven’t finished due to getting stuck with writers’ block, not absolutely loving the content and then just dropping them altogether. I guess you could say I write like a date. But this post came to me fairly easily. Here you go: the day to day realities of being a single, 36 year old woman:
You’re happy for your friends who are married and have kids, but at the same time you also sort of hate them. Receiving the annual holiday cards with the photos of them smiling with their significant other and the kids are nice and thoughtful of them to send, but they are also depressing. And the people who include with the photo card a single spaced, 10-point font full page synopsis of their and their kids’ accomplishments over the past year need to chill. Rub it in why don’t you? Yes, I said it. Or at least leave that insert out when sending holiday cards to your fragile single friends. Please and thank you. We don’t write you cards about our shitty first dates, our one night stands, or about how our cat learned to play fetch.
It becomes more and more apparent that the one thing you suck at is dating. I would argue that most single women in their 30’s are killing it in all other aspects of their lives. Take me for instance: I have a solid career I am proud of and passionate about that pays well. I am financially set for life with a solid bank account, IRA, CMA, etc. and I own multiple rental properties as investments. I am freakishly strong in the gym. To top that off, most days I am mentally stable. However, the one thing I am consistently horrible at is finding love. It’s sort of my thing at this point. I excel at it.
Your friends are now trying to fix you up with their divorced friends. Like “Here someone else didn’t want this anymore but I thought you might like it.” Gosh, um….thanks for thinking of me. I’m flattered.
Having sex with random super-hot strangers is no longer fun. In fact, it’s horrible. The older you get the more you want a mental connection along with the physical. In fact, I broke things off with my most recent fling because while the sex was the most knock your socks off, mind blowing sex I’ve had in my life, my heart and head just were not in it and I was left feeling unsatisfied. If that doesn’t scream “I am mature and in my 30’s” I don’t know what does. I’d also like pause here for a moment of comprehension for a few of the ex- men in my life who read my blog who just realized that they were not the best sex of my life. Sorry/not sorry. You all put me through some shit.
You can’t relate to or have sympathy for the women on The Bachelor anymore. I can’t roll my eyes any farther back into my head as I watch 25-year-old runway model lookalike Victoria ugly cry about having her heart broken and her world crashing down. Girl, you are still a baby and have so much time left to make bad dating decisions before finding Mr. Right. Stop sniveling and get on Bumble/Tinder/Hinge/POF/Zoosk like the rest of us and start racking up some horrible dating stories. Then you can cry. Also, there really should be a dating show called “Let’s Just Fucking Do This” for people in their late 30’s/early 40’s. The winning final couple gets a full expense paid wedding with complimentary babysitting for all their friends with kids and a free egg freezing and in-vitro package. Where do I sign up?
You see that even the dating apps are losing hope in the process. Why on earth would Bumble offer a lifetime membership? I don’t think the marketing team thought this one through.
You get excited to tell other single people who have not yet tried online dating about how horrible it really is. But at the same time, you’re also hoping they will agree to try it out and be miserable along with you. It’s like when something tastes awful and you say to someone “here taste this!”.
You seriously worry that you have exhausted the dating pool. …. In fact, in the recent years I have actually started recycling men whom I dated previously. It’s just easier than starting from scratch. You know the issues and baggage they have and what they like in the bedroom. However, a short while later you are reminded why it didn’t work in the first place and then you’re back at square one which actually makes being 36 and single AF feel even more shitty. And let’s also address the fact that I’ve been online dating for so long that I can’t go more than 30 minutes of swiping on a dating site without seeing someone I have either gone on a date with or exchanged messages with previously. I need to move.
You realize you are no spring chicken and are now one of the older people on the sites. It always makes me laugh when I see a man with something to the extent of “Yep, 40 years old and on an online dating site. Life is going just as planned.” Same buddy. Same. I was so young and naïve when I first started online dating at the age of 28 thinking “This is fun! It’s like an endless supply of men for me to sift through!”. Little did I know that almost 9 years later I would still be sifting. And now I get to look forward to the messages like this:
All the 6-8’s are gone. All that’s left are 9+ and <5’s. Once you reach your mid 30’s there are no decent in between men left over. No woman in their 30’s has the time or energy to chase around a 9/10. Plus, most of these men have glamour shots on their profile and I just can’t keep up with that anymore. My days of chasing narcistic gorgeous men are over. And then of course you have the super creepy 5 or less men online. They’re the ones with the bathroom selfies from a super odd angle while wearing a wife-beater tank. Another strange phenomenon I have noticed over the years online dating is that there seems to be a disproportionately high number of men with face tattoos, poor grammar and height under 5’5” feet tall.
Trying to online date in your 30’s when you have a rock solid professional network makes you consider if LinkedIn might be a better option for meeting someone. Online dating and meeting someone at the grocery store isn’t working so this seems like a feasible option. At least this way you know the guy has job and is career minded. In fact, I have a great idea that instead of Bumble, Tinder and Hinge linking your Instagram page to your dating profile, they should have an option for us older professional single people where we can connect our LinkedIn profile. Someone please make that happen.
You instantly bond with other single women. You’re fighting the same fight and it seems like no one is getting anywhere. I have a favorite fellow single woman cat loving coworker and we now share a Costco membership together. This screams “I am giving up on men” more than me getting a third cat.
You start to question your sexuality. Don’t get me wrong, I am still straight as an arrow, but there have been a number of times when I have caught myself thinking “men are just awful, is there another option?”. As the years have gone by, I have found that I get more easily annoyed with men in general. Starting to think this quest for a man is not worth it.
You develop a number of single woman survival skills. I think I speak for more than just myself here when I say that if you’re in your 30’s and a long-time single female you are a tough cookie. Over my many years of being a single woman homeowner I have become an expert at not needing a man. From killing my own spiders, opening my own jars, deadlifting recliner chairs up the stairs solo, replacing and rotating mattresses on my own, to probably my most ridiculous achievement of knocking an obnoxiously beeping low battery carbon monoxide detector off the ceiling by throwing shoes at it repeatedly since I did not have a ladder. Only when it comes to the technical stuff like fixing the TV or setting up a printer do I get a little (okay a lot) of anxiety and the four-letter words go flying wishing I had a tech savvy boyfriend to help me out.
Men from your past reach out to you and comment “Wow! You’re still single.” Yeah, thanks in part to you bro. This happens to me a lot. For some reason men always come back around. There must be something about me that screams “please mess with my emotions.” And there are handful who have reappeared some 5+ years later. I am not sure if that is some sort of compliment but I am going to choose to take it as one. I’d like to think it is due to my charming, witty personality and great ass, but it’s probably just because they are running out of options as well.
The “no man has it all” phenomena gets real. Obviously, the longer you are single and dating around the more men you interact with and then what happens is your brain picks out the best features of each man and drops them into a wish jar and then you subconsciously end up searching for one man with all those traits even though you know damn well they don’t exist. Like so and so had a great sense of humor, and this other guy was so smart, and then he had a motorcycle, and then the next one had an adorable dog, and then the one after him had amazing arms. You get the picture. It’s like a game of build-a-man that you will never win.
You find yourself randomly Googling things like “Are vasectomies reversible?”. That is definitely a reality of dating in your late thirties. Seems like all the good men have already been taken, had kids, been snipped, and then have gotten divorced and are back out on the playing field. I will also admit that I have Googled “At what age do men grow up?”. The verdict is still out on that one as far as I have seen.
When your female coworkers get engaged and announce it on a company call you immediately hate them. Please keep your disgustingly cute recap of how he proposed with a huge ring to yourself or my eyes will roll so far back into my head I will have to go off camera.
As a single 30 something woman with no man to call your own, you get ridiculously distracted by attractive men. Anything from the 25-year-old douchey guy at the gym to the silver fox you spot at the grocery store. The prospect of a new male coworker being hot and single is super exciting. But alas…. They never are both.
You’re getting really over the “least expecting it” stage. Like how long does one have to go around least expecting something before it actually happens? I have been single for over 9 years now. I am more than over this. I had a previous post about how saying “it will happen when you least expect it” is one of the most, if not the most annoying things you can say to your single friends. Us single people don’t just wake up and think “gosh I think I will meet my soulmate today!”. You don’t have to remind us to pretend to least expect it. We are pretty good at believing that we will not meet our significant other on any given day.
You’ve gotten the “I met a guy. Just kidding.” phrase on repeat. Every 30 something year old single person feels this to their core. Dating sucks. And catching feelings for someone, getting excited, and then being let down yet again is the worst and pretty much makes you want to just not get involved with anyone ever again. I have a huge guard up against getting hurt and letting someone in and while I know that could be deterring me from opening up to someone great, it is impossible not to be pessimistic about dating. Sometimes I wish I could wipe it all from my brain and start fresh as the newly single 28 year old joining Match.com for the first time with excitement of what was to come. And don’t even get me started on the emotional roller coaster I’ve taken my mom on with her waiting for me to finally find someone and give her grandchildren. Now, after all the “just kidding” let downs she’s had along this ride with me I can see even she no longer gets excited.
You worry you might be stuck this way. I have serious concerns that I don’t know how to not be single. I am REALLY good at being alone. If I am being honest, the thought of living with man and having someone permanently in my life gives me anxiety. And I sure as hell don’t know how to keep a boyfriend alive and happy. Is there a class that us long time single ladies can take for this? Like “Having a Boyfriend for Dummies”? Someone let me know.
I wasn’t quite sure what the closer should be for this post so I am just throwing it back to one of my favorite online dating first messages. After waiting a whole 2 minutes for a response, he resorted to the big dick energy card. Though I don’t blame him for trying…. it continues to work for Pete Davidson.
Happy 5th Birthday to my “This is Why I am Single” blog! 🙂
