I have a confession to make.
(Deep breaths here)
This may come as a shock to you. It did to me. But it has recently come to my attention, that when it comes to dating in your 20s,
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING
Yes, you read that correctly. I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I never meant to mislead anyone! I thought I had this whole dating thing down. After all, I have been doing it for quite some time now.
When I started this blog, I had all these grand illusions of writing about extravagant dates, of regaling you with stories of eager suitors, of becoming the Taylor Swift of the blogosphere. I dreamed of millions of followers, of fan mail, of loyal readers begging me for advice, desperately needing my insight and wisdom.
I was asked by a happily-couplified coworker the other day,
"So how does one meet people these days? How do you find someone to date now that you're not in college? Doesn't it get harder?"
He has no idea.
And, well...obviously I don't either. Suddenly, my mind was spiraling. How do I meet people?? When did I become this old and alone???
Meeting people, however, doesn't seem to be my problem. Meeting the right people (person- just one would be fine with me...) is my problem.
There are a lot of interesting options for meeting new people in this day and age, including the plethora of online dating sites, match.com, eharmony, okcupid, farmersonly (seriously...they have one for everybody). And, more recently, tinder and grindr.
My first encounter with these new dating tools was the other day when I was casually approached by a man who, rather flirtatiously, informed me that he was on tinder.
"Oooo...." I replied. "Good for you? I think..."
I quickly rushed to ask a friend what in the world "tinder" is.
An online dating app.
He was hitting on you.
Damn. Totally messed that one up.
Personally, I prefer a more natural approach to meeting new people.
You know, you see an attractive guy on the subway so your hand "accidentally" slips off the handrail and you get jostled into him.
"Oops, so sorry! Hi, my name is Naomi...buy me coffee..."
Boom. New boyfriend.
Call me old-fashioned or outdated, but I have never really been a fan of online dating. Maybe I've watched too many episodes of Catfish, but it has always seemed a bit sketchy to me (good for you, though, if you've had a successful experience with them...no judgement here).
I just like the face-to-face interaction of knowing that I am speaking to a real, live human being.
So what do we do now? Us clueless, single, 20-somethings....
We stick together.
We live.
We get out there and we smile a lot.
We compliment each other.
We try new things like kayaking, disc golf, pottery classes...
We love ourselves.
We help each other.
We adopt a cat (or a dog...I'm not trying to turn you into the crazy cat lady just yet).
We throw out our old ideas of what our "type" is.
We stop gossiping and causing unnecessary drama.
Does this help you? It may not be a step-by-step, this-is-how-you-find-your-man approach (if that's what you are looking for try the self-help section of Barnes N Nobles), but these are my new guidelines for myself for all aspects of my life.
These are not tried and true. I am a work in progress. Maybe we can work on ourselves together?
After all, we are Forever Girls. And we Forever Girls always stick together.
