Back in the Saddle

I did what any sad, uncertain person does in search of validation of their attractiveness and a small unsatisfying dopamine hit: I reactivated my profiles on some dating apps.

It started because my partner went on a date with another woman, and I felt inadequate.

My partner goes on lots of dates, but for reasons I will not specify here (because polyamory is a small town to try it in) this particular person resulted in me experiencing waves of inadequacy, the likes of which I have rarely felt. 

Under normal circumstances, I almost never feel inadequate compared to the partners of my partners. I am myself, which is to say I am unique, and therefore I cannot be competed with, no matter the details. No one else can be a better me than I am. However, in this situation, my usual self-regulation efforts just weren’t connecting. I looked at this woman and only thought about my own inability to offer similar things. This was disturbing. 

So I did what any sad, uncertain person does in search of validation of their attractiveness and a small unsatisfying dopamine hit: I reactivated my profiles on some dating apps. This is a ritual I perform a few times a year. I text some folks (but I hate texting), I go on some dates (but I love dates), if I’m lucky I make a friend, and then I get bored with the effort of it all and revert to my idle state. I am not naturally charming over texts; I go on strange rants and tell long stories that are more like emails, and then I wonder why I was so weird, so soon. This has been such an uncomfortable habit that I’ve taken to texting people, Oh, I’ll tell you that story when we meet, it’s better in person. It’s never better in person. I just won’t take a thousand words to get it out in person, and perhaps I will fool you into getting to know me well enough that my eccentricity becomes a feature, and not a bug. 

When I meet the rare individual who also writes long messages and uses too many words, I get far too excited, far too quickly, and spend my time trying to measure out my enthusiasm in tiny manageable spoonfuls. Don’t text back too soon, don’t say too much right away, don’t be gigantically, forcefully yourself. Even writing this feels absurd. Who else could I be?

In the spring of 2017 I was fresh and thirsty on Tinder, which at the time still had a casual-sex flavor compared to the serious dating sites filled with people looking for a lifetime companion. This was me, shopping for dick; I’d finished a nineteen-year monogamous relationship and I suspected, although I was not sure, that I’d been living all that time under a lot of fundamental sexual incompatibilities, all of which my ex blamed on me. I’d heard you just don’t like sex so many times, and I’d halfway believed it for so many years. He also predicted that if I ever left him, I would “be with a woman instead,” and he wasn’t wrong about that, but not for the reasons he said it (if I turned out to be full-on gay, then none of it was his fault). Did I hate sex, particularly with men? I needed to know for sure, and here was Tinder, purpose-built for me to find casual hookups and test my theories.

So over the course of many months, I met a series of men and had sex with them. I don’t think we said “slut era” back then. I was astonished by how easy it was, even for me, brand new to a hookup world I’d barely experienced in my premarital beforetimes. Those encounters are many stories to themselves (definitely better told in person, but probably written down someday). The results of my research were immediate and obvious: I didn’t hate sex with men. I love sex with men. I just hated sex with the person I’d spent the last 19 years with. 

This revelation also came with a measure of grief, as I realized that I’d lost nearly twenty years of my life to bad sex, and worse yet – that all that time, I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t think I needed or deserved enjoyable sex. It’s true that there are lots of healthy long-term partnerships in which sex isn’t centrally important anymore. But what if I could have both? The comfort of LTRs, plus the excitement and freshness of exploring new connections? This is where ethical nonmonogamy (and later, polyamory) entered the scene.

I fell completely in love with myself during this time. So many people I knew were talking about how much they hated dating, because nobody they met ever fit quite what they were looking for. I couldn’t relate, because I was looking for everything. I was trying anything, with anyone I found attractive, and discovering that men – even men I might have previously assumed would not have been into me at all – energetically returned my enthusiasm. I felt irresistible, and you couldn’t tell me shit. I was an awkward, magnetic goddess, abundant and receptive.

However, in recent years, the social anxiety I thought I’d divorced along with my ex had surged forth to fill in the mental spaces once packed with self-adoration. The pandemic made me functionally monogamous for a long while, and it gave me a chance to remember why I wandered, tripping and stumbling, into polyamory in the first place. I have a strong relationship with my anchor partner, whom I trust and appreciate more than I thought was possible. He shouldn’t have to be everything I’ll ever need, and while every relationship requires a degree of compromise, there are certain basic autonomous freedoms I’m not willing to sacrifice. As I’ve already mentioned, I had spent nearly 20 years not having the variety of romantic or sexual connections I really wanted. 

In hindsight, that loss was less significant than I’d feared. One of my biggest worries in re-entering the dating world as a single person was that I had wasted my opportunity to have a long-term romantic relationship with the added intimacy of having known one another for literal decades – that if I didn’t meet someone in my 20s, we’d never be as close as we might have been if we’d connected through those formative years. This, I can say definitively, was bullshit, because the relationships I’ve had since are eons deeper and more complex and much more satisfying, mostly by virtue of my being older and more experienced, and knowing what I need, and what I’m willing to accept, and what I’m not. 22-year-old Lesley could never.

For this dating-app reawakening ritual, I had set myself two rules. Rule 1: Only date people over 35. When I first entered my 40s, I had a lot of fun dating people in their 20s, but I get tired of explaining every ancient cultural reference I make and I’m over that phase now. (Mostly. I’ve connected with a 33-year-old and a 34-year-old, but that’s practically 35.) And Rule 2: Don’t have sex on the first date. I’ve been 100% successful on this so far. Why I rob myself of the pleasure of protracted chemistry and anticipation, of slow discovery, I’ll never know. Maybe it's because if I rush to give a connection even a vague definition, I don't have to wonder what it is, or what it's becoming. (And then there is no mystery left.)

I’ve had a rough year so far – lots of us have – and I didn’t expect that returning to dating apps would give me such a lift. Right away I clicked with several people, and one in particular who I liked a whole lot, more than I expected to. As much as I loathe prolonged texting, I’d forgotten the excitement and energy of sharing pieces of yourself with someone you can’t even see. And it had been far too long since I’d met up with a new unknown person and discovered we could talk for hours without a pause, or that I could share a comfortable silence with someone I’d just met.

In the hours leading up to my first first-date of this return to form, I was terrified, boiling over with anxiety, having literal palpitations, the inside of my head full-on screaming. But when my date appeared, all the noise fell away. I remembered myself, who I am in relationship with others, and how important that exploration is to me. I needed the mind-rattling potential of a connection, the maybe-ness of some kind of relationship, one that couldn’t be predicted or anticipated, like waiting for lightning to strike, and even if it doesn’t, I know that it could, because here I am, out in the rain, unready but welcoming whatever may come. 

I’ve met everyone I have ever loved for the first time, once, and I did not know then what we would become to each other. So I went on some dates and my heart opened back up. I wanted to see all my friends. I wanted to be in the world again. I felt like I’d been a half dead thing and now I was revived. I felt in love with myself, again. Something, everything changed.

I’ve had a rough year so far and I know that pleasure and ease and joy don’t just fall into your life while you wait to be found, so I’ve had to go and get them. They must be prioritized and sought out. I remember now. I always forget that contentment is also hard work. Why am I working so hard at every other feeling, but not that one?

Until the next time.

-Lesley