Reflections

So I signed up for eHarmony with lofty expectations that this computer program would serve me up a perfect man. How else am I supposed to find him? I work with women and children; what single men do float through the solar system of work burn with the brightness and tenacity of a 76-year comet, and my interest in them burns as brightly and wanes as quickly.

So I place myself among the glittering stars of the eHarmony constellation, and what do I see? Problem after potential problem. Men with jobs or even careers... that's good, yes?... and men with first families and obvious hangups and a fair helping of unreasonable expectations of a woman in their lives. All that glitters is not gold.

So little of what people say they ARE like really is what they are like. I can tell it. "What are you passionate about?" is the first question. I know that the bullshit they're writing isn't true, cannot be true. I see such philosophical fluff coming out of my ex-husband's mouth or even some of his successors' mouths, the mouths of men who speak what they believe is true or even wish were true, but which isn't true, which never has been. I DON'T see it coming out of the mouths of any of the "real" people who are part of my three dimensional life in the real world. Nobody cares so much about learning, growing, or evolving. I really don't believe that they do! Most people care about getting through the day, meeting their own needs (only after which do they care much about anybody else's), and being able to live in peace. That's their passion. Beyond that, caring about "leaving the world a better place" or "expanding my knowledge" or "helping others to live better lives" is wishful thinking at best and an outright misrepresentation at worst.

What did I write about? Quite simply, investments... finding, making, an sustaining them. That is true. All kinds of investments... not just financial, but spirituatual and emotional as well. And for me, that IS true. My sense of safety and security is contingent on the investments and dividends I draw from my resources of material goods, family, friends, and learning, and they are the primary thing of importance in my life. Throwing out my passionate need for security and faith to risk with someone whom I don't believe, some half-baked pseudointellectual who's not even in the same stratosphere with reality and who doesn't recognize the difference between how he sees himself and the objective conclusions drawn by this faction of a cynical outside world is, to put it mildly, not highly motivating.

How much of what I see in myself isn't true?

How much of it all really isn't the men? How much of it is the twin suns of insecurity and frailty shining on me, my own weakness merely reflected back in the faces of these men from the internet? In their alleged faults and flaws, I see my own, magnified. I see the detriment of my investment by compounding weakness upon weakness, and in my own weakness, I reject theirs.

I wish, in some alternative universe more perfect than this one, to find a man through my passion... while reading in a bookstore or library... while lifting weights at the gym... while swigging margaritas at happy hour with my friends... while living my life so I can see him living his, to see him living his and if we could mesh together. To build over time, without contrivance. The anti-eHarmony. The unmatter matter of relationships.