Member-only story
Who Are You Anyway?
And Who Gets To Decide?
Online dating challenges your identity. Ten years ago, I faced the primal act of writing a self-description with trepidation: who was I anyway? Was I someone others, specifically men in my approximate age group would want to date?
I put off online dating for years, my strong sense of self-rejection finely honed by years of familial bullying. If both mother and father and two siblings decreed me to be unworthy of life, surely a potential dating partner would feel the same. After all, as family members reminded me, they’d known me all my life.
It took a long time to overcome that early conditioning. Lots of “eat that frog” — type motivational videos and books, countless attempts to “face the thing you fear,” which had me most recently vaulting onto a horse the size of Mount Olympus and trotting around an indoor arena for an hour. And signing up to do it again, as soon as the weather warms up. I agreed with my trainer that a frozen rider is more likely to fall off, and I’d like to avoid that option if possible. Safety first, right?
But there’s nothing safe about online dating, I quickly discovered. Ten years ago, I wrote a paragraph, put on some makeup, had a friend take a few pictures and posted the nicest ones. A few months later, after a string of largely unsuccessful dates, a wonderful man…
