Everything Old is New Again, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

June 23, 2013 Martha Thomases 5 Comments

My friends from high school think I should try Internet dating.  They know so many people for whom it has worked.  Why not me?

Here’s the thing:  I’m not feeling confident enough to write an ad for myself.

Don’t write an ad, they say.  Just do it.

My first time around, I went on very few dates.  In college, we just hung out and paired off, as the mood hit us.  Once we were sleeping together, we would be a couple, and then we’d do things as a couple, which I suppose is dating, but not with the added suspense of whether or not my partner was any good in bed.

 

Falling on love that first time felt like the revolution.  I had read about sex, but actually doing it with someone else made all those prose passages read like first grade primers.  I knew, in my heart (and elsewhere) that no one else had ever felt anything like this before.

By the time I met my husband, I had a more experience, and more settled expectations. It was still the revolution, but now we were going to create our own utopian community, complete with the world’s greatest child.

How do you advertise for that?

Especially since, now, I’m being told that my expectations are different.  A woman my age isn’t supposed to care about sex.  What’s important is “companionship.”  Someone with whom I can travel, or at least go out to dinner.  I’m not going to have any more children, so sex is no longer important.

But I want it.  And I’m encouraged to find out that I’m not the only woman who feels this way.

Still, I’m feeling shy about it (although not so shy that I won’t write about it on the Internet).  After being married for such a long time (and flirting throughout), I don’t remember how to flirt with someone in a way that can go beyond flirting.  And I feel oddly worried about both my reputation.

Also, I’m still feeling quite raw and vulnerable.  This is not a good way to enter a relationship.  Certainly not a relationship between equals, which is what I’d like.

So I’m not going to start Internet dating.  Not today.

I feel like I’m in high school again.  And I never dated in high school.