For a newly single young parent, starting to date again can be stressful, but once you get your online dating profile sorted out, it's also kind of exciting.
It was a freezing cold Friday night, the kids were sleeping upstairs and Destroyer’s Kaputt was playing softly on the sound system. I sat at the dining-room table before my computer, stymied by the blank profile screen of the internet dating site OKCupid.
Trial separation, or whatever you call it—I’m in one. And I’m starting to come around to the fact that this might not be a bad thing. “Think of the opportunity,” my friend Jeremy said. “A lot of guys would dream of the chance you have right now.” He had in mind casual sex with randoms, and while that has its appeal, I’m also a bit lonely—I’d be happy with some companionship from someone who shared similar interests.
But how does a suddenly single, longtime-sober dad discover prospective dates? My friend Lauren “Raymi the Minx” White recommended online dating. “I met tons of people on those sites,” she said, then warned me to be careful—there are a lot of psychos out there.
My 12-year marriage predates sites like Plenty of Fish and eHarmony. Hell, my marriage nearly predates cell phones. It was daunting to sum up my whole life in a 500-word profile. “This is it, Shulgan?” it suggested. “This is what you’re reduced to?”
I gritted my teeth, and got to it: I wrote about my career as a writer and ghostwriter, my kids and my love for the Jennifer Egan novel A Visit From the Goon Squad. Next were the pictures: candids with the kids, plus a couple from last year’s research trip to Nepal. My sister wondered whether I should take out the stuff with the kids. Raymi also told me my photos were a disaster—particularly my main profile pic. “You can’t pose with sunglasses, Shulgan,” she said. “It looks like you’re hiding something.”
But I must have done something right, because pretty soon I began to get messages. My first OKCupid date was with a Polish woman named Aga who works in communications. She was pretty in her profile pic, so I arranged a sitter for the kids, put on a tie and met Aga for a drink. Minutes into the date, she revealed that she was a Marxist. I get along with Marxists. My first book was about a Marxist, and I like to think I practice Marxist parenting. (If the kids are the proles, my family is a dictatorship of the proletariat.) But Aga seemed to hate me on sight. Perhaps it was the tie? She criticized everything about me, alternating between bored and berating. I gave up trying after 20 minutes.
My second attempt was with a Chinese single mother. I liked her, and wow, was she ever pretty, but my Mandarin was worse than her English. And for my third date? I forgot my wallet at home. My date wasn’t impressed.
I almost gave up. Dating is an enormous pain in the ass, particularly when you have to arrange a sitter to do it. I ignored a lot of messages and became more discerning when evaluating the potential matches OKCupid sends every so often. (In following with the Cupid-as-love’s-archer theme, the site calls them “Quiver” matches.)
Then Tiffany appeared, with her warm brown eyes and a profile that said she liked One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and In Cold Blood—two of my favourite books. Rather than meeting at night, I arranged a get-together while my kids were at their Montessori school. I decided against a tie, and wore my usual uniform of plaid dress shirt and denim. In person, she was prettier than her photos. And the conversation didn’t just flow—it sprinted. The previous evening I’d attended my first yoga class, and it turned out she taught yoga. At the end of the hour, I had to dash off to a meeting. We made plans to do something on the weekend.
But the next day, she messaged me to say that she didn’t want to go on another date. She didn’t want to see someone who was in a trial separation. She wanted to get married. She wanted kids.
All the same, the encounter left me hopeful. OKCupid had worked. Tiff and I were a great fit. Messed-up Marxists were out there, sure, but also, possibly, someone with whom I could spend some time with during what is destined to go down as my life’s weirdest period. Quiver, please deliver.
