Today, I became the enemy. Today, I winked at someone on Match.com.
As soon as I hit the “Wink for FREE!” button on the person’s profile, I was horrified. I wasn’t ready to wink at anyone yet! I wasn’t ready to try meeting a stranger again for coffee, let alone go through the byzantine process of actually placing an order at Starbucks! (“Yes, please remind me again, what is your code word for a medium sized cup of overly expensive hot beverage?”)
Because Match.com doesn’t let you take back your winks, I did the next best thing — I went on and winked at another person. I felt like a slut. Winking at TWO people! The shame!
Hell, I was already in for my money, so I winked at a third person. Now I was becoming carried away, like a drug addict who’d just remembered where his secret stash was hidden. I had to log off quickly, because otherwise I was clearly going to become a winking whore.
Would any of these people respond? Would I be devastated if they didn’t? Would I be devastated if they did? Now that I thought about it, did I even care? I would be off the site in another month or so and unless I accidentally ran into one of the wink-ees, no one else would ever know that I had dared wink at someone and hadn’t or had received a response. (Well, until I posted about it on my website — if you embarrass yourself and don’t post about it, has it really happened? Answer: Yes, so you might as well just post about it!!)
In all seriousness, I know I talk an awful lot about Match.com on this site, at least recently, but that’s because it’s a diversion from my reality. The reality is Chris is filing for divorce this week, and I don’t really understand why. I know I may never understand why. That doesn’t make things easier to bear.
There are many things I wish that he and I had done differently. I wish he had talked to me when all of this was happening inside him, instead of after he came to his own conclusions and decisions. I wish I had been more proactive in asking him what was wrong. I wish he had been honest with himself, instead of finding ways to blame me for everything. I wish I did not blame myself for everything. And I wish he had chosen to do this 5 years ago instead of now. At least the quality of men in my age group would have been better.
When the fourth line of someone’s Match.com profile is, “Usually I am never late for an appointment,” I cannot help but think that my life must not be as bad as it feels sometimes. Because at least I haven’t had to fall back on using my punctuality to promote myself.
The good news is that I am getting a new refrigerator. I had a wonderful dinner with my landlady and her daughter, during the course of which my landlady admitted that she accidentally gave her brother the keys to my apartment instead of hers when he came to visit a few nights ago.
So at 2:15 in the morning, he let himself into my apartment. Almost immediately he realized he was in the wrong place, retreated, and called my landlady from outside. She was extremely apologetic and mortified.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I didn’t hear a thing, and if I did, I probably thought it was the refrigerator kicking on.”
“It IS loud, isn’t it?” she said. “I noticed when I was painting the bathroom floor. I don’t know how the previous tenant could stand it — I was actually thinking about getting a new refrigerator for the apartment.”
YES!!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
As nonchalantly as I could, I said, “That would be really nice.”
Then my excitement got the better of me, and I blurted out, “Actually, that’s the ONE thing that would make the apartment PERFECT! I was even thinking of talking to you about maybe buying my own! I had already started looking online! And — ”
She held up a hand. “Say no more. I’ll get you a new fridge.”
She told me she would start looking for one after she got back from her trip the next week.
And in the meantime, if anyone would like to break into an apartment and steal a bunch of old cassette tapes and CDs, I hear there is someone in the area who can sleep right through that.
The bad news is that I am having a hard time lately. I read a book by a marriage therapist a few months ago, during which she briefly talked about a client who was feeling more and more disconnected from his wife. Almost off-handedly, the author mentioned she immediately had him become MORE involved in his home life, because, she wrote, she knew that the disconnection would only become worse if he wasn’t forced to try to connect short-term while he worked on the larger issues long-term.
Since the day when Chris told me he was feeling disconnected from everyone, he has only disconnected further. He moved out, he stopped talking to me, and he did not do anything with me to try to work on this. While he certainly may be working on his own to deal with his issues, I have no say or input into anything that concerns us. There is no us, to be honest. And now that I’m finding the author was correct in her disconnection theory, there will never be an us again while Chris continues this method of dealing with whatever’s going on with him.
How do I know the author was correct in her theory? Because it’s been about a week since I moved out, and although I have seen the dogs three or four times since then, and although I clearly loved them and made them a huge part of my life, I feel less emotion for them. I feel more concern for myself than for them. I feel, in fact, like I am ready to give them up to Chris, if it means never having to come back to this house, never having to see him again, never having to see that, for example, his sister to whom he barely speaks has sent him a card.
As an aside, does Hallmark actually make “Sorry you decided to screw up your wife’s life by suddenly telling her you’re not cut out for marriage after over a decade together! Feel better soon!” cards? Where the fuck is MY card?
I feel bad for my dogs, in a remote, pitying way. I feel bad for myself, that I can even look at my dogs in a remote, pitying way. I feel I should feel worse.
So now I am going to sit with them, in an effort to reconnect. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but at least I’m trying.
During my first week at my new apartment, I unpacked most of my things, obtained Internet access, and accidentally flashed my neighbors when I forgot that all my clothes were still in cardboard boxes in the living room (four windows, and yes, I had left all the shades open). I also ventured out to my new town. The destination of this momentous occasion was (drum roll, please) the local library.
Upon reading this, some of you may think, “Oh my god, this person is such a loser, and if there were an anonymous way for me to leave a rude message about what a loser she is, I totally would expend 5 seconds of my life doing it.” Others of you, the readers I actually want to retain, will say, “Well, of COURSE that’s where you went; what else is there?”
I was pleased with the selection of books, but baffled by the lighting. Why would a library put their new books in a high-ceilinged room where all the tiny, tiny lights are about 30 feet higher than the top of the bookshelves, thus making the actual room very dim? Given that the average age of the people sitting in that room was about 60 (and that was only after I walked in), the lack of lighting seemed like a really bad idea. And let’s not forget — this is a library. In order to read, I need to see. In order to see, I need light. I think I left the library with four new mystery books, but I wasn’t completely sure about this until I got the books into my apartment and could actually see the titles clearly.
The apartment is coming together quite nicely. So nicely and so quickly that I’m even a little bit bored since I haven’t hooked up the TV or figured out a routine yet. So I tried another local chorale and decided to join this one instead of the chorus I’d tried last week, partly because the quality of the singing seemed better. But mostly because the practice location of this particular group was about two minutes down the road from my apartment.
TWO MINUTES, people. Two minutes means the difference between bagging out on a practice because you’re just too tired to keep up with the septuagenarians singing their lungs out, and saying, “Hey, it’s only two minutes down the road.”
The only issue I have with the apartment is the refrigerator, which is circa Needs To Be Manually Defrosted and makes a horrid rattling noise when it turns on every few hours. Maybe it’s the thought of the upcoming defrost procedure that’s scaring me, but I’m also feeling very cold in here, and had to drag out the Slanket for warmth today.
So here I am, wrapped in a Slanket, sitting ramrod-straight at my dining room table because I don’t have a couch yet. Lounging time is currently limited to lying on my mattress on the floor of the bedroom (no bed yet), craning my neck uncomfortably and tilting my book to try to get closer to the desk light propped on a Rubbermaid storage container (no nightstand yet, either).
But things could be much worse. I was surprised to realize that I’m relatively happy here, in the quiet of the apartment, with a great landlady who has invited me to join her and her 12-year-old daughter for dinner tomorrow night. I’ve got my beloved dog pictures on the wall, my books are unpacked, and I feel like this is becoming a home.
I plan on baking a blueberry-yogurt pie for dinner with my neighbors tomorrow, walking through my new town this weekend, perhaps visiting the local gyms, and going apple-picking with someone I hope will become a new friend. I’m not resigning myself to my new life; I’m learning that happiness is being redefined in ways I never expected. Happiness, right now, means having a good book to read, having a job, planning things to look forward to.
A new refrigerator wouldn’t hurt, though.
Tomorrow movers are coming to take the bulk of my worldly possessions from this deeply unhappy (and short-lived) marital home. I spent less than a year living here with my husband, and an additional 1/3 of a year living on my own, and I hate this place.
In the last few months, my marriage has died and the person I loved most and thought I knew best has turned into a complete and often unlikeable stranger. However, I have also spent the last few months trying more new things than I have in the past 5 years. My spouse will probably take this as further proof of how I’m better without him. I prefer to take it as proof of how willing I am to learn from misfortune, if that is what this can be called, and how deep down, I am and will always be a survivor, even when I sometimes wish I could be otherwise.
In celebration of new beginnings, I present my list of New Things I Have Tried Over the Past Few Months, in no particular order.
In the last few months, I have:
- Begun exercising regularly
- Brought my cholesterol to under 200
- Asked for help when I needed it
- Visited my family more than I have in the past few years
- Found out who my real friends are
- Understood how few, but good, friends are far more satisfying and nourishing to my soul than many, but shallow, friends
- Resolved to continue to see my family and friends more often
- Sung in a local chorus
- Hemmed some very horribly crooked curtains from Ikea
Learned to iron Ironed some clothes, some of which looked worse afterwards
- Tried online dating
- Been winked at more times than I can count from men who really should know how to punctuate better, at their advanced ages
- Refused to meet a very nice guy from match.com, who suggested I donate my books to charity, for a coffee/tea date
- Met a very nice guy from match.com, who did not suggest I donate my books to charity, for a coffee/tea date
- Rented the first place I will have ever lived in by myself
- Spent time making that place a home and not just a place to stick a mattress
- Driven in Boston late at night, alone
- Driven the wrong way down a one-way street filled with cars in Boston late at night, alone
- Tried (and failed) to sell the wedding china, which neither of us wanted in the first place but the mother-in-law insisted on giving to us, on Craigslist
- Prioritized my possessions (unsurprisingly, books top the list, but surprisingly, setting up pictures frames with my dogs’ pictures was also quite near the top)
- Thrown out 2/3 of my wardrobe, including some clothes that had never been worn
- Grown tomatoes that looked awful, only to realize months later that the reason for this was not my horrible gardening, but that there was a TOMATO BLIGHT going on
I am deeply puzzled by the number of 45-55 year old men from out of state who keep winking at me on match.com. I don’t know if they just don’t bother reading (“seeking men 35-40″ seems pretty clear to me) or if they’re just delusional and assume that given a choice of a hot 35 year old who lives within driving distance or a 50 year old in Tennessee without a profile pic, I’m going to say, “Oh yeah, gotta go with the old guy.”
Match.com itself is not helping. Perhaps it wants to open up my eyes to limitless possibility. Perhaps it thinks it knows what I want better than I do. Perhaps it doesn’t have a programming staff. Whatever its reasons, it continues to send me profiles of men who aren’t looking for women like me or profiles of men who aren’t what women like me are looking for. Or, when pickings are very slim indeed, the profiles of men who make me instinctively recoil in horror and fear.
Match.com, you are beginning to creep me out.