While The Gettin' Is Good

As you may have noticed, I tend to be aggressive in my dating strategies. I go to events, reach out to shadchans, stalk the dating apps, anything I can think of to get me one step closer to my goal which is 20% getting married and 80% owning a house with marble countertops. Right now I have formica countertops because my apartment was all the rage in 1932.

This blog has helped me a lot with this approach. Now when I go to a miserable event I see it as writing material rather than a waste of a perfectly good evening.

However, all of these things take a huge amount of emotional effort. It doesn't seem like much to copy/paste the same paragraph in an email or text to 30 different shadchans, but it feels quite heavy when you only get two responses.

Then there are the suggestions from well meaning friends who ask about this shadchan or app and tell me that it worked wonders for their boss's granddaughter. I try to be a smart person and recognize that it is not going to work for me but every single time there is that shred of hope and then every single time that shadchan ignores me and I have to question myself. Am I bad? Is that the reason no one wants to find anyone for me?

There's also the feeling that I like to call walking into a brick wall over and over and it never becomes platform 9 and 3/4. That's when you have a conversation with a shadchan, a friend, someone who you met online, and they want to find someone for you. You lay out your whole life, you mention your pet peeves and the very way you connect with Hashem. It feels like your soul is an onion (ONIONS HAVE LAYERS) and every time you do this you are giving another layer to someone else. Then, that person comes back with a suggestion which is the exact type of guy you laid out that you do not want.

All anyone wants in this world is to be understood. There's a show on HBO called In Treatment from way back in 2008 where each 20 minute episode is a different therapy session with Paul the therapist who is a very disconcerting mix of a father and a daddy. During quarantine I began to watch this show while doing puzzles and now I use the fake television therapy as my real therapy.

Which is normal. I read an article about how others are doing it. On the internet so you know it's highly recommended.

Plus, I'm clearly not the only one, as HBO has decided to renew the show for season 4, only this time with a black female therapist which is going to be a lot less fun for me. Not in a racist way. In a she can't be my father or my daddy way.

Anyway the real joy of using this show for fake therapy is that within 7 episodes, the patient always reaches a beautiful conclusion (except the one guy who killed himself. Whoops.) They come in to Paul's office at the beginning of their season with their issue and over the next few weeks become convinced that Paul cannot possibly understand them. He always fixates on the wrong parts of their stories and makes them approach issues that aren't what they came in for in the first place. But then, they reach some sort of catharsis when they finally touch on their big issue-almost always their parents-and they realize the entire time Paul was seeing right into their souls. And that was all they wanted, to have someone look at them and not be repulsed and understand them for 20 minutes a week.

When I give someone that tiny fragile layer of my soul that includes my hopes and dreams and they claim to understand me, it feels good. They may not have the answer but at least they see me. Then they come back with the exact opposite of what I want in a guy and I feel like no one can see me. Like I've run into that brick wall a few too many times and now I'm a just a bloody shmear and maybe someone should notice the bloody shmear on the wall but also blood is WAY TOO COMMON on public transit so they ignore it.

All of this is why I've decided to step back from trying for a while. I've said this before on here-if G-D wants me married I've given him plenty of ways to send me someone. He made the world and can find a way to send me a man without me dragging myself through the gauntlet every week.

Stepping back has definitely hurt the content on here-no more crazy stories-but luckily I still have a long history to explore. And crazy stories tend to find me anyway so I'm not concerned. I want to live a life where I'm not on a pincushion-where I can move about freely without insane emotional hurdles every two days. Stepping back is a way to achieve that.

I've stepped back before, but in a fake way, where I heard that one story about that one girl who met her husband while she was on a break. This isn't that. I have no expectations of meeting anyone this way. If I did it would be a miracle and honestly, it feels like meeting a quality guy at this point would be a miracle anyway, even if it didn't work out. Basically, I am saying that if it were to happen for me it would be a miracle and I'm not going to try to ground that anymore. It's miracle or bust.

In miracle or bust world I don't have to hurt all the time. I don't have to smell the oniony parts of my soul as it molds. I can live the way I want without expectations. It feels free and freedom is my ultimate good. #sagthings

Mostly, it will allow me to see myself without the veil of pain. Hopefully with the help of my fake TV therapist I can feel seen and understood and reach that emotional catharsis that will let me breathe more easily.

And maybe I'll buy myself the marble countertops.