Life & Love · The Lori Diaries
Finding love these days can feel a little like looking for a needle in a haystack. Except the haystack is full of dating profiles, unread messages, and people who are “not looking for anything serious” but would still quite like to see where things go. I don't think love has disappeared. I just sometimes wonder when getting to know someone became a process that requires quite so much strategy.
I miss the idea of meeting someone by accident.
Not that I expect to drop a bag of books on the street and have a handsome stranger help me pick them up while an excellent '90s soundtrack plays in the background. Although, for the record, I wouldn't object.
It's more that I like the thought of two people meeting without first having to decide how interesting they can make themselves look in six photographs and a short biography.
Dating apps have their place. Instagram has certainly made it easier to begin a conversation with someone you might never meet otherwise.
But sometimes the whole experience feels a little like preparing for a job interview.
Choose the right pictures. Write something funny, but not too funny. Seem interested, but don't appear too eager. And once the conversation begins, try to remember whether responding immediately is supposed to be a good thing or a terrible mistake.
It's exhausting, and we haven't even made it to coffee yet.
Somewhere Between the Profile and the First Date
I understand why we want to know things about a person before meeting them.
Do we have anything in common? Do we laugh at the same things? Does he know the difference between Marvel and DC? Important questions, obviously.
And yes, I might be curious about his zodiac sign. I'm not saying it should decide the future of a relationship. I'm simply saying that I would like the information.
But there's only so much you can learn about someone through a screen.
A clever message doesn't tell you how a person treats a waiter. A beautiful photograph doesn't tell you whether you'll feel comfortable sitting across from them in silence. And a long conversation can be lovely without necessarily becoming anything more.
I think that's one of the frustrating things about dating. You can enjoy getting to know someone and still have no idea whether you're moving in the same direction.
Perhaps one person is looking for a relationship. Perhaps the other is enjoying the attention and genuinely hasn't thought much further ahead.
Neither of those things has to make someone a bad person.
It would just be nice if we could be a little clearer with one another before someone starts imagining the next six months while the other person is still deciding whether they want to meet on Friday.
The Strange Fear of Actually Liking Someone
What I find particularly funny is how much energy we can spend trying not to reveal that we like somebody.
We read into the timing of messages. We wonder whether a short reply means something. We ask ourselves if making the first move will come across as confident or embarrassing.
And then, after all that thinking, we sometimes end up doing absolutely nothing.
I get it. Nobody enjoys feeling more invested than the other person, and rejection isn't exactly an experience I look forward to.
There's also that quieter worry underneath it all.
What if I seem more interesting through messages than I do in person? What if I talk too much? What if the little things I find funny about myself aren't quite so charming to somebody else?
I don't think a dating profile can prepare us for that part.
Eventually, someone has to meet the actual person behind it. The person who has bad days, says something awkward, gets distracted, and occasionally sends a joke that makes perfect sense in her own head and absolutely nowhere else.
I would like to think that's the person someone could fall for.
Not a carefully edited version of me who always knows exactly what to say.
Maybe We're Asking the Wrong Question
When I ask myself why love feels so hard to find, my first instinct is to blame modern dating.
Too many options. Too much scrolling. Too many conversations that begin enthusiastically and somehow disappear before anyone suggests meeting.
But I don't think the apps are entirely responsible.
Meeting someone has probably always involved a certain amount of uncertainty. The difference is that now we can spend hours examining that uncertainty on a screen.
We can reread a message, check when someone was last online, and consult three friends about the meaning of a perfectly ordinary sentence.
I'm sure none of us has ever done that.
Maybe the harder part isn't finding someone who looks promising. Maybe it's accepting that we can't know how something will turn out before allowing it to begin.
I can ask questions, pay attention, and be honest about what I'm looking for. I can notice when effort isn't being returned and decide not to keep chasing it.
What I can't do is remove every possibility of disappointment.
And I don't particularly want to become so good at protecting myself that I stop letting anything lovely happen.
I don't need every new connection to turn into a love story. I just don't want to feel that showing genuine interest is something I should be embarrassed about.
I Still Believe in the Ordinary Kind of Romance
For all my complaints, I haven't become cynical about love.
I still like the beginning. The unexpected message. The first conversation that goes on longer than I intended. Discovering that someone laughs at the same ridiculous things I do.
I like the thought of being excited to see a person and knowing they're excited to see me, too.
But the older I get, the more appealing the ordinary parts become.
Coffee without the pressure to be fascinating. A walk that doesn't need to become an elaborate date. Being able to say, “I've had a terrible day,” without worrying that I've spoiled the mood.
Someone who can laugh with me when a plan goes wrong, rather than treating every imperfect moment as a sign that we're not meant to be.
I don't think that's asking for a fairytale.
I think it's wanting a relationship in which two people can gradually stop trying to impress each other and enjoy being themselves.
Of course, that doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to learn how someone communicates, what matters to them, and whether your lives make sense together beyond the initial excitement.
I suppose that's the part a good profile can't tell us.
We have to actually get to know each other.
So, why is love so hard to find?
I don't have a particularly clever answer. I think timing matters. I think wanting the same thing matters. I think we sometimes meet lovely people who simply aren't right for us, and sometimes we meet the right sort of person at a moment when neither of us quite knows what to do about it.
I also think it's easy to become discouraged when every new conversation feels like another little test.
But I don't want to spend so much time worrying about the possibility of things going wrong that I forget to enjoy the possibility of them going right.
I'd still like to meet someone who makes me put my phone down because the conversation in front of me is better than anything happening on the screen. And when that happens, I hope I won't be too busy trying to play it cool to notice.
What about you? Do you think dating has become more complicated, or have we simply become better at discussing all the awkward parts that were probably there all along?
xoxo,
Lori
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