Like this:

Yesterday, there was this article about this matchmaker who, for a fee of about $1,500, will basically hold your hand as you tip toe your way into the online dating world.

The reporter starts off the article like this: “Now that dating has veered so hard towards the online realm, it seems almost retro to take proceedings back to the bar.”

The first sentence was the only thing that I kept coming back to and thinking about.

Why?

Well, most of my fellow bloggers who are firmly entrenched in the same boat as me will know the roller coaster ride we call online dating — sometimes we want on the ride, most of the time, we want off.

Has dating really veered that hard onto the online realm, though?

Why do I continually find myself reading about or hearing about people who didn’t meet online? Did they just lie about how they met?

I’m considering dropping out of the online dating world again because — well, I haven’t had any success.

To recap the old story: the guys I’m interested in and want to know better never respond to my emails. The ones I’m not interested in — the pot-bellied, balding, older divorced men — will sporadically email me.

Sometimes, I’ll force myself to go out on dates with the guys who seem okay — like, technically, there’s nothing “wrong” with them. And some of you even encourage me onwards, saying, “Well, if there’s nothing wrong with him, give him another chance!”

Is that what it comes down to? For those of us who have failed so badly at dating (nevermind relationships…let’s take baby steps and just manage to date someone for a couple of times), is it a matter of just trying to stick it out with someone who’s got nothing wrong with them because…well, isn’t the main message here that it’s better to be with someone than with no one at all?

I guess a part of me just thinks, “Well, am I closing the door on the only avenue that I have of possibly ever meeting someone?”

But then I think about how miserably I’ve failed at connecting with anybody — and then think, maybe it’s my fate that I will never be with anyone. Maybe my fate is to die alone one day and for someone to eventually find my skeleton three years later when they realize I’m behind on my rent. (Based on a true story found in the newspaper…read previous post.)

And the thing is…the things I thought I wanted…well, now I question how badly I want them.

Do I even want kids anymore?

I don’t know. I find them cute in small doses, but then I think about how they eventually grow out of that cute phase and they’re just a financial and emotional burden and drain that’s tethered to you for the rest of your life.

Do I want to be married?

I honestly don’t know.

The last guy who contacted me was a bartender.

A 37-year-old bartender who made it clear that he had a number of other girls he was checking out and talking to online, but that I was close to the top and he wanted me to be his first date.

I’ll admit it: I was mainly turned off by what he did for a living.

I also wasn’t extremely attracted to him.

Who the hell asks someone out through email? It’s so fucking lame.

I get it; we’re all shy — but seriously, it’s never okay to ask someone out via email or text. And lately, I’ve dated plenty of those.

Another guy asked me out via text, didn’t plan the date, and then criticized me (jokingly, he claimed) for my choice of where to go and what to eat (even though he kept shrugging and saying, “I don’t know” whenever I asked him what he wanted to eat or where he wanted to go…oh, and by the way, he was also late for the date). When he followed up via text if I felt like going on a second date, I initially said yes, but then after he “jokingly” insulted me (because all of his jokes were insults), I didn’t bother responding to his text…and then, never heard from him again until a month later when he asked, “So, did we break up?”

A 60-something man with bad teeth, sallow skin, and a vaguely serial killer vibe about him emailed me the other day and said his last Asian girlfriend was very sexually satisfying in bed and wanted to know if I was up for the task of being her successor.

I felt all at once depressed and on the verge of tears.

I haven’t cried myself to sleep in a long time because I think my heart has shriveled to the size of a tiny pebble, but the other night, two tears leaked out before I angrily swiped at them and rolled over and went to sleep.

I just have zero patience for self-pity anymore.

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