If you have ever had a corporate job, your boss will have a dossier of information on every team member and they will be comparing your performance to a set of department-wide performance metrics and to other team members but most likely won't tell you what those metrics are. It can be very intimidating because you may be doing just fine yet feeling deeply insecure.
Dating can be a bit like that.
If you are older, you may be looking in the mirror and mentally comparing yourself to what you used to look like and feeling unattractive but that internal metric of yours is largely unrelated to the metrics other people are using. Other people will most likely be comparing you to two sets of data:
Years ago on the TV show All in the Family, Archie and Edith attend a high school reunion of hers and she gushes about hoping to run into her old crush who was a football player. Archie is not happy about this because he's feeling unattractive in comparison.
Archie happens to run into her old crush before her and the man has grown quite fat, which tickles Archie who is now eager to introduce Edith to the guy. Archie takes Edith over expecting to get a "gotcha" out of it and expecting her to not recognize the guy.
Much to Archie's chagrin, Edith recognizes her old crush immediately and is thrilled to see him.
She never cared that he was a football player. His athletic body wasn't what turned her head.
She recognizes his beautiful blue eyes which look just as wonderful to her now as they did in high school.
There is a scene in Bridget Jones's Diary where Daniel says something like "Let's just settle for each other so we don't end up alone in our old age." Bridget replies that she would like a better offer than that and dumps him.
That scene hit a nerve for me. While getting divorced, men about my age routinely talked a lot of trash about what has-beens they were and how their best days were behind them.
They may not have meant to imply that I was also a has-been and we should "just settle" because "no one else will want either of us" but that was the message I got. I never found a way to turn interest from such men into an opportunity to establish a healthy relationship and it wasn't for lack of trying.
It was sort of the dating equivalent of "Not wanting to belong to any club that would have me." It's a terrible position to take.
Even if someone genuinely likes you, it may be impossible for them to find a good way to tell you they see something else and would like to get to know you better.
In Ben 10, one of the things Ben transforms into is some sort of dog-like creature called Wildmutt that had no eyes and "saw" using its sense of smell. In the episode Side Effects, Ben had a cold, so his sense of smell was impaired, making him effectively blind (or nearly so) in that form.
The dating landscape is a little like that.
Dating is strongly influenced by an internal perspective, an emotional landscape full of baggage from past relationships, old hurts, personal preferences that most people do not wear on their sleeve and lots of other particulars unique to this person's private life.
It forms a unique fingerprint and the whorls and ridges of that fingerprint are shaped by their most private experiences. Not only private in the sense that sex typically happens when two people are alone but more importantly it is about their internal point of view and feelings, which even their sex partner at the time may not have learned about adequately, which may be why they are in the past.
Yet people tend to focus on what they can literally see -- age, weight, looks, etc. What you are focused on when you look at old photos of them with an SO or hear old anecdotes may be wholly unrelated to what your date sees, feels and thinks is important.
My divorce was fairly protracted, so I spent a fair amount of time available enough for men to chat me up but not available enough for much more than that. As a consequence, I went through a period where I just bluntly asked men what they liked about me.
To my astonishment, this utterly destroyed my preconceived notions about what made me attractive to men. It was rare for two different men to list the same things.
Initially, I had some idea that x, y and z were what made me attractive and those items rarely got mentioned. One man liked a, b and c and another like l, m and n.
I have seen questions online like "How old is too old to lose your virginity?" The answer is "There is no such thing."
If you are coming out of the closet, whatever your age, rest assured some people will be very happy to be your "first" in some sense. People who have a problem with you being inexperienced are not worth wasting their time on.
But if you hear this a LOT -- that I don't want you due to your lack of experience -- consider the possibility that it's a polite cover story and there is some other reason they are rejecting you.
I once knew a man who whined incessantly that "No women will date me because I'm too short." He was 5'10", so not actually short.
I eventually concluded that "No woman will date you because you are a rampant giant asshole. Naturally, they don't want to tell you that is the real reason, so they list your height as The Reason to try to ditch you with a minimum of drama."
Don't be That Guy and, rest assured, someone, somewhere likes exactly what you have to offer. You just have to figure out how to connect with them.
Dating can be a bit like that.
If you are older, you may be looking in the mirror and mentally comparing yourself to what you used to look like and feeling unattractive but that internal metric of yours is largely unrelated to the metrics other people are using. Other people will most likely be comparing you to two sets of data:
- Other people your age.
- Their past relationships.
Years ago on the TV show All in the Family, Archie and Edith attend a high school reunion of hers and she gushes about hoping to run into her old crush who was a football player. Archie is not happy about this because he's feeling unattractive in comparison.
Archie happens to run into her old crush before her and the man has grown quite fat, which tickles Archie who is now eager to introduce Edith to the guy. Archie takes Edith over expecting to get a "gotcha" out of it and expecting her to not recognize the guy.
Much to Archie's chagrin, Edith recognizes her old crush immediately and is thrilled to see him.
She never cared that he was a football player. His athletic body wasn't what turned her head.
She recognizes his beautiful blue eyes which look just as wonderful to her now as they did in high school.
There is a scene in Bridget Jones's Diary where Daniel says something like "Let's just settle for each other so we don't end up alone in our old age." Bridget replies that she would like a better offer than that and dumps him.
That scene hit a nerve for me. While getting divorced, men about my age routinely talked a lot of trash about what has-beens they were and how their best days were behind them.
They may not have meant to imply that I was also a has-been and we should "just settle" because "no one else will want either of us" but that was the message I got. I never found a way to turn interest from such men into an opportunity to establish a healthy relationship and it wasn't for lack of trying.
It was sort of the dating equivalent of "Not wanting to belong to any club that would have me." It's a terrible position to take.
Even if someone genuinely likes you, it may be impossible for them to find a good way to tell you they see something else and would like to get to know you better.
In Ben 10, one of the things Ben transforms into is some sort of dog-like creature called Wildmutt that had no eyes and "saw" using its sense of smell. In the episode Side Effects, Ben had a cold, so his sense of smell was impaired, making him effectively blind (or nearly so) in that form.
The dating landscape is a little like that.
Dating is strongly influenced by an internal perspective, an emotional landscape full of baggage from past relationships, old hurts, personal preferences that most people do not wear on their sleeve and lots of other particulars unique to this person's private life.
It forms a unique fingerprint and the whorls and ridges of that fingerprint are shaped by their most private experiences. Not only private in the sense that sex typically happens when two people are alone but more importantly it is about their internal point of view and feelings, which even their sex partner at the time may not have learned about adequately, which may be why they are in the past.
Yet people tend to focus on what they can literally see -- age, weight, looks, etc. What you are focused on when you look at old photos of them with an SO or hear old anecdotes may be wholly unrelated to what your date sees, feels and thinks is important.
My divorce was fairly protracted, so I spent a fair amount of time available enough for men to chat me up but not available enough for much more than that. As a consequence, I went through a period where I just bluntly asked men what they liked about me.
To my astonishment, this utterly destroyed my preconceived notions about what made me attractive to men. It was rare for two different men to list the same things.
Initially, I had some idea that x, y and z were what made me attractive and those items rarely got mentioned. One man liked a, b and c and another like l, m and n.
I have seen questions online like "How old is too old to lose your virginity?" The answer is "There is no such thing."
If you are coming out of the closet, whatever your age, rest assured some people will be very happy to be your "first" in some sense. People who have a problem with you being inexperienced are not worth wasting their time on.
But if you hear this a LOT -- that I don't want you due to your lack of experience -- consider the possibility that it's a polite cover story and there is some other reason they are rejecting you.
I once knew a man who whined incessantly that "No women will date me because I'm too short." He was 5'10", so not actually short.
I eventually concluded that "No woman will date you because you are a rampant giant asshole. Naturally, they don't want to tell you that is the real reason, so they list your height as The Reason to try to ditch you with a minimum of drama."
Don't be That Guy and, rest assured, someone, somewhere likes exactly what you have to offer. You just have to figure out how to connect with them.