My dating filter
The preramble
Last year, I dropped everything and devoted my entire life to solving the hardest problem in the world: dating. 27 years of failing to find someone left me empty-bedded. So instead of more of the same, I dreamed up a better way to date. I built a dating app. The only issue: my fantasized future came head to head with reality. Reality beat the shit out of my dating app.
I did, however, meet a girl in the process. Things went well for a while, until they didn't.
Sigh.
No more proof needed that I did NOT understand dating. My app failed. My relationship failed. I was basically the out-of-shape personal trainer of dating.
And so I went on a victory lap befitting a newly anointed double-crown-bearing heartbroken lovelorn and failed founder. To give you an idea of what that self-congratulatory ceremony looked just picture solo walks soundtracked by songs like Me in 20 Years and similarly morose melodies supplied by well-meaning friends. Luckily Maudlin Zach Phase culminated in a sudden moment of cathartic outpouring that had the totally unexpected but welcome effect of nearly instantaneously ridding me of these shadows of the past. I've since coined it flash healing.
I only bring this up to beg for your sympathy.
Kidding.
The actual reason is so you stop consuming anything that I say or write or build or, well, anything that comes from me that has anything to do directly or indirectly with dating or any of its other common siblings be it hookups, love, dance floor makeouts, stargazing trysts, onanism.
You get the point: this is one giant prolix caveat emptor. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The interlude
As I reread what you just read — my own words — between laughs I feel disingenuous. Disingenuous in feeling, not in fact. The self-deprecating humor. The irony. It’s a defense mechanism. The truth is I didn’t laugh a whole lot going through this.
I would step out for a walk in Arizona’s blazing sun, warmth on the surface of my skin but cold within. I would begin to think about what I could’ve changed. Change about what I did. About what I didn’t do. About myself. I could try to pull myself back into the present, momentarily admiring certain flowers lining the street. But even the usually vibrant ones that I had come to rely on for daily doses of beauty appeared flat, almost as if I could see only a thick epidermal coating of dust instead of the brilliance that lie underneath.
I remember trying to focus on the breath like they teach in all beginner meditation courses. I could choose to focus attention on it as it passed through my lips, down into my chest. It felt so heavy though, sinking down through me until it reached a point in my stomach where the most intense feeling clung. I think I would describe it like an undeniable weight deep in your core except that instead of heavy it feels empty, like something pulling the contents of your stomach ever inward. A pit of quicksand.
I no longer think emptiness is a lack of anything. Emptiness has a substance to it.
Okay seriously stop reading
I had hoped that last bit would be too much. You’re still here so let me try one more time as directly as possible.
The rest of this essay is NOT meant for you.
Rather paradoxically, it’s meant for two audiences: one, quite oddly, destined never to lay eyes on it and another, with profound certainty, who will.
For you, my future ex-girlfriends.
And for you, my future wife.
My dating filter
Welcome to my dating filter. You’re passing through it as you read. It goes by a few names: my newsletter, my blog, Such Stuff.
It’s a publicly broadcasted feed from inside my head. A projection of my inner self that engages in conversations without me. Every moment you spend reading it, you enrich the time we spend together. Think of it like a multiplier on quality time where every step you take wandering through the inner chambers of my mind adds another layer of depth to our shared moments together.
I hope you find it as strange up there as I do.
Most who do won’t want to linger for long in that labyrinth.
And I’m okay with that. That’s actually the point: a filter removes stuff.
My dating filter has one other unique quality: it’s an implicit filter. You can’t game it because it doesn’t test your interest in me by some overt mechanism like asking whether you like me or even hearing words like “I love you.” It works by teasing out genuine curiosity. The type of person who reads this expresses a pure desire to know me deeply, not by something she says, but by something she does.
Imagine you take all that time and energy to create something deeply personal: a song you wrote, a painting you drew. Try to recall how you felt that moment before you shared it even just with your closest friends and family. Some mixture of brimming excitement, naked vulnerability, stomach-warming pride, throat-tightening uneasiness.
Now think about how those cherished people in your life reacted. They received it with tenderness and care. They expressed pride in you. They admired you.
Imagine now that you’re dating someone. She passes all the superficial filters — she’s hot. She seems to pass the intangible filters like interests and values — she’s virtuous. You think you may have found your person. How would you feel if that person, your person, didn’t consume your labor of love? The stuff you spent so much time cultivating and finally sharing with the world. I can tell you how I’d feel:
You’re not my person.
High standards, sure, I’m asking my person to read thousands of words of my sometimes nonsensical drivel. Small commitment, though, from someone for whom you’ll touch your knee to the ground to spend the entirety of your lives together. If you can’t even be bothered with enough curiosity to read my innermost thoughts, then I have no interest in spending the rest of my life with you.
It’s a two-way street, just like everything in dating. You should hold me to the same standard. But you won’t have to; I’ve placed a higher standard on myself. At the point that I don’t have enough interest in the person I’m dating to read her writing, admire her painting, listen to her music, consume her labor of love, I will see myself out the door for my own sake but also out of respect for her. She deserves someone with a near neurological compulsion to know her entire being. Someone with an insatiable curiosity for the substance of her soul.
To the future woman I meet who I envision myself with for the rest of my life, you can be sure I will read everything you write. Hell, if anything you’ll have to prevent me with all but physical force from reading your shitty first drafts because I will want to see you at your roughest, nakedly vulnerable. I want to see the crumpled papers and half-finished sentences that you yourself cringe to even consider that you penned. The no-makeup morning after version of your thoughts.
What I really want for myself is the reciprocal of what I want from myself: a person who I will catch sneaking over to my computer to read my shitty first draft after I told her it’s not ready yet. I want my partner to be the first to read all my stuff. A person who I can trust so much that any criticism will be seen as only support, pushing me to do better. To be better. Because she knows I can, even when I myself doubt it.
I’ve never had that as of yet, but I know I’ll find it. I won’t say I do until I do.