Hi, Carolyn: I signed up for online dating again yesterday, and I can already see why I give up so easily. Most of the conversations are one-sided. I ask a question and they reply with a one-word answer. They don’t elaborate or ask questions about me. I lose interest quickly and move on to the next person, only for the same thing to happen. On the rare occasion that someone can hold a conversation, there is usually some other reason it won’t work out: Their divorce isn’t final yet, they’re in an open marriage, they’re only looking for a hookup, they smoke, they hunt.
I’m a nonsmoking animal lover looking for a one-on-one relationship. Do I just need to lower my standards?
— Dating
Dating: Yikes. Never.
Dating a la carte just might not be a good fit for you. The most reasonable current alternative is to expand the number of places you show up in person where you have a possibility of meeting other people. Because you have dealbreakers, choose places where people with the same dealbreakers might congregate.
I say that even though I disagree to some extent: The benefit of meeting people in person vs. shopping for them online is that you can see them in their entirety, which can allow you to see they’re good for you in ways you wouldn’t have recognized on paper. Broader is better for that.
Dear Carolyn: At a family gathering — a farewell for my dying sister — an older first cousin who had always been cold to me asked, “Do you know why I’ve always hated you? Because you were born.”
How would you respond? I haven’t contacted her since, but I hope she’s reading this.
— M.
M.: I know exactly how I’d respond: I’d sit there with my jaw in my lap, not forming a comeback, because that’s how I always respond to egregious things in the moment. Then I’d spend the next month thinking of everything I wish I had been able to say.
I hope then, as I hope for you, that I’d wake up one day to the end of this process as I embraced her remark as the perfect gift. Because it would liberate me from any pretense of having a relationship with or duty to this person. Ever. Ahh.
There’s this, too, perversely: If your mistake was being born, then it wasn’t anything you did. Which is probably the three-days-late retort I would most wish I’d come to in the moment: “Oh, good — so it wasn’t anything I actually did. Whereas you just chose to be a monster out loud.”
More important than losing this cousin, however, is that you lost a sister. My sincerest condolences.
