CAN WE CONTROL WHO WE FALL IN LOVE WITH?

How many of you know of a guy that decided “the next woman I’m with is my wife” or a girl that said “by this time next year I will be engaged” and they got it?  The idea behind those proclamations is being in control. Setting out an intention and allowing the universe to bring it to you. I am willing to play this game with my career and actually have played this game with love before and guess what, most of the time I get it but when it comes to love, how much do I want to be in control?

I think that is the root to my aversion to online dating. I feel like I am too much in control of whom I date and what I like. So much of what I like changes from year to year based on the experiences of previous choices. So much of what I liked at 25 is not apart of the equation now.  Especially when it comes to love, being in control might not be the best thing simply because most of the time what I want isn’t necessarily what I need.  As much as I complain about being single as the next girl, I know that God, the Universe, or whatever higher being you believe in, knows more about my journey then I do.

Right now I am online dating again and kicking and screaming throughout the whole experience. Truthfully it’s the only sure way I meet and able to experience different men. As much as that is a plus, I still grapple with how much control I have. So many people give me the stories of their friends that went online and got married not too long after. I have those same stories in my own circles. They set out to find someone and mission accomplished. There is no arguing, if you are looking to find someone, the best place to find them in online… but I don’t know if I am looking to find just someone.

But on the other hand, finding companionship is not always about finding the best fit. Maybe this idea of romantic love is just something that doesn’t truly exist. At least not in the realm that we believe in. Sure, romantic love is possible but it might not come 6’5 with a MFA and a Mercedes.

 As we all know, marriage was never about love. It was about procreating and having someone to take care of our daughters. Maybe I need to realize being in control of my love life is probably the best and sure way of achieving the goal of being married and having children. But as time goes by… I don’t know how much I am attached to those ideals anymore.

Whenever I am facing what I believe to be a bad situation, I always take a set back, give myself a moment of silence and look at the situation from a different perspective. What am I not looking at? In those situations I can easily change something that I hate to do to something that I would love to do. Simply by looking at it from a different angle. Essentially, we can do the same with love. Maybe I just need to allow myself to be in full control of my love life and stop seeing it as such a bad deal. We can control what makes us mad or what makes us laugh, therefore we can control who and when to fall in love.

Thanks to online dating, I have a date tonight. Who knows…maybe its time to take the lead and fall.  

Like I said, Online Dating Sucks

A couple months ago I wrote a post on online dating and how I don't believe it as a system that truly helps in matching you with the right person. Looks like I'm not the only one. Doctor Dan Ariely did a study on online dating and found out that on average people spend over 6 hours online for the possibility of coffee. The problem is the attributes that we list and require are not true signs of compatibility or even real gauges of what we are truly looking for, even if we don't know it.  It's an interesting argument about a social system that is becoming the norm. Does it really work?

Dear Online Dating, Why Don't I Believe In You?

They say love finds you when you aren’t looking but if that’s the case then why are so many people writing profiles and posting pictures online to find “The One”?

I’ve done online dating and currently doing it right now but I have to tell you, I hate it. As much as I try, I can’t get over the shopping set up of it all. Looking at profiles like I’m looking for a pair of shoes, trying to figure out which one is a good fit. I feel like I’m shopping for a date. Throwing men into my "shopping cart" hoping for the moment I get to "check out". It feels unnatural and in a way desperate. Plus, my attraction to the men that turned into monumental relationships of my past was never been about what they looked like but more about what I felt when I was with them. Call me a hopeless romantic (and I wear the badge proudly) but how can you simply look at a picture of someone and know if you are a match? And when it comes to compatibility, what the hell does that really mean? Does the fact that he too likes italian food really mean we would get along? Sure, when it comes to statistics, we are more likely to meet someone online then walking down the street but when it comes to love has it ever followed the rules of science? We can all write a list of what we want but how many times have we fallen in love with what we never knew we really wanted?

I am less interested in finding “Someone” and more interested in finding “The One”. The distinction between the two is where online dating actually works. It directly puts you in a circle of people “looking” giving the a chance to meet people you wouldn’t usually meet day to day. The problem is do we really want to meet someone so out of pocket from what we experience on a daily basis? It’s a proven fact; we naturally want to be around folks that are like us. Our friends are our friends for a reason. So I can’t help but ask, is online dating just throwing folks at us that are not part of our social circle for a reason?

Now as much as I can complain about the online dating experience, I can also say some good has come of it. Surprising, I’ve met more respectable men then cyberspace Patrick Bateman’s (Have I told you the story about the white guy that smelled me all night cause "black chicks spell better than white chicks"?) and I am currently dating someone that I met online that I actually do like. So maybe I’m just a hater… but still 70% percent of us are meeting lifetime partners through social circles so… maybe I’m not.

Online dating... is it really our chance to finding love or just another way of wasting time and money?