A friend told me there’s a new word to describe a modern dating phenomenon: “Ghosting.” As he explained it, the word arose to describe how people disappear on personals sites, completely dropping out of communication.   This can happen right after you’ve been “matched” or it can happen months later after multiple calls, texts, emails and face-to-face dates. No goodbye. No explanation. No “sorry, you’re not for me.” Nothing. Just “I got ghosted.” “She ghosted me.” It’s a noun and a verb. Is this the new normal for present-day relations? Instant disconnection? Has the Internet made us so uncaring that we just figure “Hey, there’s always someone else.” If ever there were an apt symbol for the disintegration of civil society this looks like it. Swipe left.

I’ve already experienced this trying out Tinder – the singles site. I’ve been “matched” with a number of women. Most never respond at all, even if I send a hello text. A few will respond with a flirty line or two, saying nothing of substance. But they all disappear when I drop the hammer: Please forgive me if this sounds crass or crude. But I’d like to meet for 10-15 minutes somewhere for tea. In my experience, I can learn more about someone who I might be compatible with in a brief face-to-face visit than in hours of phone conversations, texts, or emails.   Following that first visit we’re then both free to choose each other for a subsequent, longer visit at another time, or not. Let me know if that sounds amenable to you. Not a single woman has deigned this statement worthy of a response. Many women talk in their bios about how they’re not seeking hook-ups but want to meet sincere, well-intentioned men. Does the statement above not qualify? To me ghosting is just plain rude, as if to say, “I posted a profile here just so I could see if anyone responds. I’m not seriously interested in meeting someone.” Is this the underlying reality? I must be terribly old-fashioned to believe that every human being deserves the dignity of a response even if that response is “I’m leaving now. Have a nice life.”

So now I date. But I do it like I’m approaching a reasonably grim job. It’s something I recognize I need to do, like exercise or flossing. Call it emotional hygiene. Though its immediate impact is somewhat the opposite, the long-term aim is to keep mind and body healthy and whole, the masculine humming in good relationship with the feminine. Sex, love, intimacy… a well rounded hetero man requires them.

In dating you enter a world where everything is uncertain. You’re replacing the known world for the unknown. Everything you thought you knew no longer applies. Words, looks, touches, even smells and sounds suddenly become unhinged from the semiotic systems where they formerly resided. With each new person you land on a new planet. Gravity has shifted. On some you practically float, weightless and free, unmoored from any system of known meaning – Crazyland. On others you can barely lift your feet to walk, crushed as you are by others’ expectations. Some planets fall away from you just as you’re about to stand and take your first step, then recede with differing speeds into the blackness of space.

Arguably, this is not a wise course for a man whose heart was recently split open after 13 years of marriage by the death of his beloved.

But I love women. I love their beauty and allure. I love their minds and the way they smell. I love being intimate with them, talking softly inches from their face, feeling their breath while gazing into their eyes. No doubt all that only qualifies me for typical heterosexual male status. I certainly love the shapely female form, perhaps even worship female beauty. But it’s the mind that most captures. A brilliant mind is a woman’s most erotic instrument. Dating has taught me a new word for this: “sapiosexual.” As long as you can think, and think originally, capable of reaching for and finding new ideas, or expressing old ideas in new and original ways, the flame will never die.

But that’s assuming you get started. Just getting to the point where you can meet a woman is a challenge. That’s getting to first base. That’s success. Not kissing. Kissing is like a home run in this game. It takes a lot of work just to get eyeball to eyeball. First you have to get to the ballpark and into uniform, ie., set up your profile. Then you’ve got to be put in the lineup, ie., get on a woman’s radar. Then, like a pinch hitter, you may have only one chance at bat. What you say in that first, or any subsequent, text or email may be your last chance.

What’s more challenging comes after that meeting. It’s all too easy to spin into a mind-stream of obsession. “Does she like me? Does she find my beard scratchy? Is my breath OK? Am I too tall or hunched over? What if she doesn’t like me?” What am I, twelve?! It’s embarrassing, unforgivably juvenile behavior for a 63 year old man. Mostly it has to do with sex. I haven’t had it in so long and I haven’t had good sex since much longer. The prospect fills me with volcanic excitement and energy – not an outlook that readily neutralizes mind waves. If I don’t strictly limit my time online to ten minutes in the morning and ten in the evening I figure I sold my soul to the dating devil. So I limit looking at dating sites to times on the crapper.

It seems half the world is online seeking a relationship with someone else. The vast numbers seem to compound the problem of finding someone. It turns human beings into readily disposable commodities. Why bother investing real energy and attention getting to know someone? Swipe left. There’s always another. Who is truly appreciative of any one person or encounter?   Swipe left. If the guy you’re with happens to be wearing a sock with a hole in it swipe left. I “met” a beautiful woman online. According to the website algorithm we were 97% compatible. 97%! I actually tend to trust that algorithm because it’s based on 100s of questions, some ridiculous, but most reasonably thoughtful, even demanding. So I reached out. “Oh, I remember you. Your profile said you only need sex 1-2 times a week. I need it every day. Goodbye!”

Now it’s certainly true that sex is a bottom line standard for most people, a more weighted and fraught variable than most. If the sex stars are not 100% in alignment, it is an all too common deal-breaker. But I didn’t say I was averse to sex every day; I just don’t need it every day. Regardless, isn’t that a rather superficial reason to decide not to meet someone you’re supposedly 97% compatible with?

How often does that happen? Online, perhaps regularly. But here’s my point: How superficial can you be? To judge your compatibility with a complex human being based on one lone variable out of 1,000 strikes me as self-defeating. Especially over time, once you get into a relationship and begin to discover your many differences. By their late 20s don’t most people understand that mate perfection does not exist? Any lover you take on is going to be different in all kinds of ways no matter how compatible you both are initially.

Online dating feeds addiction no less than online porn. Are there studies yet that prove it? If not, let me be the first to warn you. Online dating is like crack. It is a never-ending invitation to fantasy. It’s easy to spend hours lost in reverie. Perhaps this is the adult equivalent of video games for teens. Since I have little idea how women experience this process, other than as a cauldron of fear and uncertainty that results from being tossed into a roiling sea of horny men, let me address my remaining comments to fellow men… you libidinous bastards!

Online dating means looking at pictures of beautiful women and reading wonderful things about them. The unspoken, unacknowledged invitation is not so much to reach out and contact them but to enter dreamland and fantasize about how wonderful the two of you will be together. Should you reach out and be lucky enough to receive a response, the projections deepen – “Now she really wants me. We’re going off to paradise…” Pretty soon you’ll be constructing elaborate mental castles of your future together before you’ve even met. Then if you meet and have the (mis?)fortune to be attracted to her, god help you. You will walk away with that volcano of sexual energy pumping hot molten thoughts into your exploded brain.

Is this conducive to the mindful formation of relationships? No. It’s conducive mostly to your body releasing volumes of dopamine to Roto-root your system with ecstatic energy. I wonder how much the dating companies are aware of this. I wonder how much, like the tobacco companies, they calculate what dosage of the drug (fantasy) they need to deliver to the consumers (lonely people) within each unit of measure (a single person’s profile) in order to keep them coming back for more (addiction!). Dating sites do have an advantage over tobacco or alcohol – you can’t die from an overdose.   But are there 12 step groups like Daters Anonymous? Perhaps not yet. But the pipelines of people seeking recovery from dating sites must already flow directly into other 12 step groups like Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. Hopefully compulsive online daters will find the help they need there.

So how do I deal with all these vagaries, uncertainties, and overwhelming energies? Stay honest and real. That’s all I can do. I certainly can’t control how any given woman is going to react to me. So if I can at least keep it real for myself I can let them come and go and take satisfaction that at least they rejected or liked the real man that I am – complete with all my questions, torments, and objections. And I’ve learned to expect being ghosted.

Photo Credit: NEOSiAm from Canva

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