I'm tired of the dating game

and so are you

Swiping left, swiping right, meeting up for drinks with strangers met on an app, that feels so foreign to me now. I no longer wish to meet my partner like this, or even have sex with someone I meet like this.

The truth is simple: I’ve been on the doggy-style end of the dating game for 4 years, enduring bad date after bad date, and giving chances to people way below my league, and it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting to constantly choose the right clothes, to shave the right places, put on makeup, just to be disappointed by some basic white guy in jeans and a white t-shirt.

And yet I see beautiful men walking down the street, and I know they’re not on dating apps, because everyone on dating apps these days is garbage. Just someone’s throw-away Chinese take-out after 3 days in the fridge. That’s what those people are to me.

So no, I’m not willing to partake anymore in that. I know you’re tired too. It’s always women and female-presenting individuals who have to make the concession, who always have to do 10 times more than the guy just to walk out the door, and I’m tired.

I’m done wearing my pretty little makeup, putting on my most ethereal nightgown, my big docs, with color-coordinated socks for someone to show up as a blank canvas of a human being.

Men no longer know who they are, not without the presence of women (or female-presenting humans), and it shows, and they’re just trying to reflect what I’m giving them. And honestly, what I’ve been giving them these days is tired and bored. They try to light me up with some jokes that don’t land because I’m humorless (apparently) and my taste in movies and music is so niche that we have nothing in common: what do you mean you like indie but don’t know Big Thief?

I always have to teach them everything, invite them into my world, and discover a vast landscape of niche cultural references. They never bring anything new to the table. Oh, you like David Lynch? How novel, I’ve never heard that before. What do you think about parts of Eraserhead making it into Twin Peaks? Crickets. These men have no clue. The men from dating apps, I mean.

I’m tired of pretending to be interested in the average 25-year-old man. Hell, I’m even tired of the older ones. I was hit on at a club by a 40-something rich guy from Tunisia who showed me his house with his pool and barbecue, and he was handsome, he was way taller than me in my docs ( I’m 6ft in my docs), but honestly, I’m just bored.

I don’t want to date you, see. I want to get to know someone through friends, then slowly discover I’m attracted to them. That interests me more. I wanna get to know the person before the physical and before the expectations and context of a date.

A date feels like a prison I need to escape. It gives me hives. Makes me hyperventilate. I hate the fact that we already know we like each other’s physiques. I hate the fact that we chose each other on that, or a short, witty bio your best friend probably picked for you.

I want to discover that I like someone months down the line. I wanna see your soul first, what it’s made of, and how it works. I want to get to know someone as friends, then fall in love. Is that too much to ask? I don’t like this pressure put on dating, to kiss on the second date, to fuck on the third, what if I don’t want any of that? What if I want to take it at my own pace and see you once a week over some Diet Coke on the beach and spend some time playing games together?

Also, why does it feel like every leftist man is playing a big dick contest over who’s the most left-wing? It’s not a turn on, guys, don’t be so radical. (This is not for Americans, you don’t even know what the left is.)

The point of this is, I’m done playing the dating game. I’m officially retiring after 4 and a half years of service. I think I gave some men a lot of cultural and political nuggets that made other women happy. The last two guys I dated were flops (even though I’m technically friends with one of them), everyone has been a flop, or I wouldn’t still be single.

And you know what, I’m glad I’m single. Singleness gives a woman (and female presenting humans) higher expectations of life, ambition, and drive. I think if I were in a relationship, I wouldn’t have started this blog, because I would be too busy making my dumb boyfriend happy.

But now that I’ve accepted my singleness, I feel a hunger for something new, for some professional dynamite, for self-development, and independence.

You know what, there’s a giant red spider in my shower right now and I still took a shower, when I used to be paralysed with fear because of spiders (childhood trauma, some people sat on me and put spiders on my back during a camp).

The truth is, when you’re single for as long as I have in your twenties, you grow so much that almost nobody can reach you. You become the old wise man trope from Lord of the Rings (Gandalf) to your friend group, add no gossip but is always there to give advice (it’s often shitty).

This is me shedding my Samantha skin to reveal a Charlotte underneath it all.

From Marseille with Love,

*vapes away*