Living Conservative in a Liberal World (Part 4): Social Awkwardness

NOTE: Yet another catch-up post in this series of posts.

Dating is a scary word when you are forty-two. Heck, it is a scary word when you are in your twenties if you are serious about it. At forty-two, all you can be is serious. You don't have a whole lot of time to date around.

I was one of those people who waited. I waited to have sex, I waited to date seriously, and I waited to get married. My goal was to do it once and for all. Too bad my ex-wife didn't think the same way. She said she did, but when the rubber hit the road, she started having cyber-flings, and they turned into some rather serious relationships, and eventually she announced that she was leaving me (this by the way, is the short version of the story ... I may tell more of the story in a later post). Two months after her announcement, she was gone.

So now I am stuck navigating the Darwinian wasteland of dating late in life, and I have discovered something: dating has sure changed. People meet online, they "hook up" at bars, and they treat people like socks ... as long as they are warm and comfortable, they are fine, but as soon as they start showing some wear, it is time to get rid of them and get some new ones. There are so few people looking for a serious relationship these days, even amongst my age group.

Add to that the prevalence of liberalism in females, (I read recently that fifty-three percent of women identify themselves as liberal) and you can see me start fraying right before your eyes. Contributing to that fraying is my theory which I call "the perils of not being Brad Pitt.". The theory works like this: every woman has a vision of the perfect man. As a generic name, we will call him Brad Pitt. Why pick on Brad, you ask? Because once, while talking to a female coworker who was well and truly smitten with him, I pointed out his very public faults at length, and she dismissed them, saying "when you look like that, it makes up for a lot."

Anyways, so this perfect man has a set of attributes, any one of which can be dismissed, either singly, or en masse if, and only IF, you are attractive enough. If you have the bad luck of being me, meaning generally unattractive due to lugging around excessive weight, then it starts to nibble away at the attributes you DO posses that the woman would normally consider to be positive.

So I pick my way through the wasteland, keeping a weather eye over my shoulder for Darwin as he hunts the unworthy, something I find beyond scary, perhaps even terrifying.