How many people use dating sites for a casual fling? Impossible to say I’m sure, they’re hardly likely to own up to it. This week I’ve had an unusually high number of emails asking if I’d like to meet up in a hotel room and have anonymous sex. Normally they’d irritate me - and irritate is precisely the right word seeing as I’m not offended by them, it’s just their pathetic need to shock and/or exploit that rankles - but I’ve had my suspicions about some of the other types of emails that I get for a while now. They are rapidly beginning to irritate me more. You can tell them apart because they are usually pushy, way too forthcoming with certain facts and suspiciously cagey about others. They are the casual flingers!
Be it because they are already in a relationship or just because they are not looking for anything serious, there are people (although obviously I’ve only encountered men) that cruise dating sites looking for people to lie to. They would put it differently no doubt but I don’t care, this is exactly what they are doing. If you are single you will have come across, and been frustrated by, society’s view that you are somehow weak, sad or pitiful because of your relationship status. It may or may not be true but it’s an odd viewpoint and one that I have rarely got anywhere arguing against. To me, being single is something that you just are. And far from being odd those who are ‘looking for love’ are following a basic human need - striving to be happy. It’s all very simple!
Except it’s not is it? When you are young, dating is one of the biggest occupations of your life. The choices are plentiful and you move from person to person without getting too upset about any failures. Emotionally speaking, you’re practically bullet proof! At least this is how it was for me. If you’re lucky, you’ll be with someone at that point in life when you suddenly realise you’re a grown up, they’ll realise it at about the same time and you then marry, set up house, start a family or all of the above. It is these people that would flail around like non-swimmers in a dingy with a puncture if they were to rejoin the dating pool. Dating in your thirties is a VERY different game.
As someone who is ‘looking for love’ I’m useless. I lack motivation and am very un-Bridget Jonesy. Yet even I feel exploited. If the sad, tragic stereotype of the singleton that I mentioned above were true it would make the vultures circling us even more heartless but to be honest I suspect we are not all the social misfits we’re portrayed as being. Very often we’re just people who haven’t had the right opportunities at the right time.
The advice of friends - that you need to be more open and less afraid of getting hurt - is well meaning enough. But it’s hard to know how to cope with the idea that around every corner there is someone who is prepared to diminish your life, feelings and desires for the sake of spicing up their life. To go ‘once more unto the breech’ suddenly seems utterly foolish!
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