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June 8, 2015

Internet Dating totally Wrecked my Game.

sufr flirt

There are no flowers on the beach.

If there were, I could pick one. Pull off the petals and recite like some grade school girl with a crush.

He likes me. He likes me not. He likes me?

I wish I had a sign. But, I don’t. I have no horoscopes, or tarot cards, no magic eight ball. There is no supernatural way for me discern if this sexy surfer boy, that I meet on the beach, is even attracted to me.

I won’t lie. It’s completely disconcerting for me to wonder.

Sure, there are a proliferation of bad online articles I could consult.

Does he touch you? Do you catch him looking at you? Does he get jealous when you flirt with other guys?

I laugh at nonsense like this.

Chemistry can’t be quantified in a checklist distributed by teen magazines and poorly written relationship blogs. Chemistry just exists.

Flirt with him, my best friend says.

But, I’m the epitome of awkward. I talk too much to everyone but him, and then crush my body up against him in an awkward hug when we go to say goodbye.

“I feel like I’m 15 again,” I tell my friend, who laughs at my terrible attempts at being coquettish.

I just turned 40-years-old, I should be far better at this. But, I’m not.

“Dating in the age of technology has ruined you,” she says. You are so used to liking tiny pixels on computer screens and flirting inside of text boxes, that you don’t even know what to do now that you’ve encountered a “real” boy.

She says this jokingly, but it makes me question. Has technology wrecked my dating game?

I’ve been divorced for four years, and looking back now, every single relationship that I’ve had since my divorce started from meeting men on online dating sites. I’ve gotten comfortable with that routine.

I troll the flesh parade of one of the multitudes of dating site. I find a cute guy, I “wink.” He checks out my carefully crafted paragraph and the photos I’ve posted that display all my assets in their fairest light. He responds. We exchange some witty banter, maybe have a flirty phone call before meeting for drinks and deciding if and when we might kiss goodnight.

It’s simple.

There is an element of predictability and a comfort to existing inside the parameters of this type of dating, to following a familiar pattern. And without this pattern, I find I’m lost.

Should I go back to the safety of my computer screen, I wonder?

I quit online dating about three months ago. Although, I had met some wonderful men, I had also encountered many of the pitfalls most people face with online dating. There were the inappropriate come-ons in the form of nude photos, suggestive emails that would have made my mother blush and the dates who looked nothing like their pictures, when they arrived at the coffee shop.

But mostly, I was getting turned off by the idea of shopping for a relationship. The whole comfort of dating inside controlled parameters had begun to feel contrived.

I was wistful for a more organic interaction, envisioning myself simply bumping into my next date in the supermarket, or after making small talk with the good looking guy with the ponytail in my yoga class.

And frankly, I was simply tired of dating.

Instead, I got a surfboard and a passport.

I traveled to five countries in a span of eight months, made a new group of friends down at my local surf spot, was writing more, doing my yoga, and enjoying eating crackers in bed without worrying about somebody complaining that they rolled over into my crumbs.

I was happy.

And then, there he was.

This beautiful boy who, when he stripped out of his wetsuit, I had to fight my compulsion to just tackle him directly down to the sand and lick him head to toe.

This, in case you are wondering, is not on the approved checklist of how to flirt with a guy.

And so, I floundered and I blushed. I stood on the shoreline, salty and wet and prayed that there wasn’t a huge booger hanging from my nose, when I complimented his surfing. Basically, I was a mess. But, hopefully an adorable one.

And, I realized this is far better than searching small photographs and reading internet profiles to determine compatibility.

Sure, online dating might assure me that someone actually wants to go on a date, and it might be a far easier way to fill up my calendar on a weekend night, but it just doesn’t feel as satisfying as the butterflies I get when I randomly bump into this new guy in the flesh or when I do something completely embarrassing down at the beach and wonder if he saw it.

Does he like me? Does he not?

I honestly have no way of knowing at this point, but I’m enjoying the ambiguity of wondering if I’ll ever get to kiss his sexy face. And, if I do, I like the idea that it will be because he saw me, flaws and all, in the flesh.

And, didn’t have to find me while shopping through some manufactured online ads for attraction.

~

Relephant:

Online Dating: 20 Ways to Spot Someone Who’s Wrong For Us.

~

Author: Kelly Russell

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: unsplash

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