#otherbenefits – Swipe Right on the Journey

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” – Carl Gustave Jung

“What are you looking for?” I get this question a lot. From people who don’t know me at all to people who know me very well. It is a great question, and I often answer it a little differently depending on who is asking.

I have a fantastic life and I am the happiest I have ever been. I have a good career, own my home, and have successfully ushered my offspring into early adulthood. I have a decent relationship with my family, have amassed an impressive collection of books, board games, and hobby supplies, and so far have avoided any long term debilitating illnesses or injuries. I have a sexy and supportive primary partner, a truly beautiful group of friends, and am part of a community of people that embrace me for who I am. Life is very, very good.

So what am I looking for?

A big part of getting to where I am now was learning a few things along the way, and those things are as valid and important now that I am in a wonderful place as they were when I first learned them.

It is unreasonable to expect one person to provide everything you need. This is true no matter what the relationship – romantic, friendship, or family. People are beautiful complex creatures, and we all come with a mess of needs, wants, and issues that are more than some of us can handle on our own. How is it fair to expect only one other person to be able to help us with all of that, when all of us can barely help ourselves? Western society likes to tell us “it takes a village to raise a child”, but why does that stop once you grow up? If anything your needs are more complex and diverse, so it only makes sense that it will take more and different people to meet them all.

I want to continue to grow and evolve as a person. Life is great right now, but that is the way it is because of all the work I did and all the changes I made to get here. It didn’t just happen overnight, and it won’t stay this way if I just leave it alone. Everything changes, whether you want it to or not, so trying to stay the same means getting left behind. That doesn’t mean racing forward and leaping into every new thing that crosses my path, but it also doesn’t mean slamming the door on anything different or scary. I want to grow and evolve and see what else I can see/do/accomplish, not just stagnate where I am.

I crave new input. New experiences, new ideas, and new people. I firmly believe that who we are as people is made up of the things we have experienced and the people we have experienced them with, good or bad. Every person we share time with becomes a piece of us, shapes us, and ultimately determines who we are going to be next. Allowing new people in means getting to see the world through a new set of eyes, being introduced to new activities or ideas, and having the opportunity to learn new things about myself.

So what am I looking for? I am looking for people who bring something new and worthwhile to my life, be it a romantic connection, a friendship, or an experience. My hope is that these will all be positive additions, connections that increase the size of my “village”, but even if they aren’t they are still things that I can learn from. They will still become a part of me, either treasured memories to bask in later or painful moments that teach me something new.

When we are online dating it becomes very easy to develop a negative perspective on the process. We tend to focus on all of the things that we aren’t finding, whether that is love, the perfect fling, or something else, and not the things we are. We go into it with our lists and our expectations and often come out of it feeling even more alone or unfulfilled than we were when we started. On top of that not all dating experiences are good ones, so sometimes we develop new social scars to go along with the ones we already have. These feelings can make it very difficult to see the other benefits of the experience, beyond meeting the person or persons you think you are looking for.

The first unexpected benefit I found when I started online dating was the realization that I was not alone in being alone. At the time most of my friends were in long term relationships and I had been single for over a decade. The need I felt to partner up, either by lowering my expectations or increase my desirability, was intense. My inability to do it bothered me to the point that it became a source of shame, something else that made me feel alienated, unworthy, and unwanted. The constant commentary from family and friends that I should find someone, and their expectation that it should be easy for me, only added to this. I know they all meant well, but the pressure I felt from being unable to meet the social expectation that we should all couple up ultimately made me very depressed.

When I started online dating I found out just how many people out there were single, and I was amazed. Some of them were like I was, desperately looking for a partner. Others fell into the category of people who were single for a reason, either by their own choice or due to something they needed to work through. Several were in that brief period between relationships that most serial monogamists experience. Ultimately it didn’t matter to me why people were single, the fact that there were so many of us made me feel like less of a failure. I wasn’t an outsider anymore, I was part of a community, one that I had previously known nothing about. Through the shared experience of dating I became closer to the few friends I had that were also single, and realized there wasn’t anything wrong with any of us. Eventually the imposed feelings of expectation and loneliness left me, and I was able to realize the complete person that I already was.

I credit online dating with improving my social skills. When I was younger I had no problem talking to anyone, but during my long period of being single I had forgotten how to meet new people, how to interact in a crowd, and even how to talk to people I already knew. I became very introverted, uncertain of myself in every situation, and that added to my isolation. I wouldn’t say or do anything because I was so afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.

Online dating gives you a unique opportunity that I don’t think you get anywhere else – the chance to edit yourself. Most communication is done through messaging, which means you can compose and make changes to your words before you send them. It is a social crutch, but one that I found very helpful when learning how to put myself out there again. The chance that I would blurt something awful out, or laugh at the wrong time, or miss part of what a person was trying to tell me was gone. I could read, reread, write, and rewrite to my heart’s content. Over time I found myself doing this less and less, as I re-learned the skills I used to have, and as my natural confidence began to come out again. I was shedding layers of self-doubt and fear with every message, and it felt wonderful. By the time I felt ready to have a real relationship most of my unnatural shyness was gone, and I was able to show the person I wanted who I really was from the beginning.

My favorite benefit has been the improvement to my social life. I am very glad that I never fell into the habit of ignoring a connection because it didn’t include the romantic element I was looking for. Online dating gave me access to people I would never have met in my everyday life, and some of those people have quickly become my closest friends. Because of them I have been exposed to new experiences, different points of view, and have developed a better support system than I have ever had before. Without them my current hopeful, happy, and excited personality would not exist, and I would have missed out on far too many wonderful aspects of life because of that.