My Crossroads
Here’s a little known bit of trivia. I originally named the blog “My Crossroads on the Internet”. I soon dropped the name, because, well, I thought it was retarded.
Now I am sitting, still in much pain, going through my quarterly freakout.
Let me give some background.
Monday night, at FHE, I was talking with two old friends. One male, one female. All three of us are either Thirty (me) or close unto that age. The girl asked both of us, why we were still single. The guy said that he only dates once in a while, I on the other hand, date casually almost once a week (this week may not happen though).
She then proceeded to say that guys who reach our age are weird in some way. Amongst the qualities she said
- Socially Retarded
- No Drive
- Commitment Problems
- Not over a girl
- For lack of a better word, skeeviness
Now, I did my best to push that to the back of the mind. I figured, heck I’m fine. I may be a bit of a weirdo, but that’s just personality.
The only problem is, I was sitting around yesterday, and this kept on playing around in my mind.
Every year I grow older, the range of girls who want to *seriously* date me will get smaller, I believe that when I hit Thirty-One, it will be dramatically smaller.
This is at the same time I’ve been trying to get employment in Utah. Where I fear my dating pool will shrink even more.
Part of me is mad at myself for taking so long to get into the dating game. Now that I look back, I see that a lot of it was me. I was the one who said girls wouldn’t be interested in me until I lost all the weight.
What’s the awnser? I don’t know. How’s my life going to proceed? I have no idea. Why am I posting this? Therapy 😉
It’s true, there is a good majority of LDS Singles over the age of 30 who have some…social problems, shall we say, but this could also be said about LDS Singles under the age of 30. I am not far from so myself and most of the guys I date lately are over 30. Honesly, I find their maturity refreshing. Several of them were ready to talk about marriage after the first date, so I can’t say that the lack of commitment is true for all of them either.
There are exceptions to everything. You are who you are. My guess is that this girl you spoke with does not have a lot of experience dating guys over 30 and the few that she has were not willing to commit to HER and she made a generalization blaming them for her own issues.
It’s a shame that so many LDS Singles seem to drop off the face of the earth once they turn 30 and they kicked out of the YA Wards.
Hang in there. You are someone special and there’s a girl out there that will see that.
Here’s some advice, and I give it knowing that I have no idea who you date, so don’t take it as any kind of accusation. In my experience, a lot of LDS guys, as they get older, continue to date girls who are the same age. When they are 21 they date girls who are 18-20, but when they reach 28 they are still asking out the 20 year olds. That is one big reason why their dating pool shrinks, because more and more of the girls they are asking out see the age difference as too much. This contributes to the notion that single guys over 30 are skeazy.
So if you do get to the grand old age of 31 without hooking up (which by the way is FINE, no matter what remark Brigham Young may have made about 26 year olds (people’s life spans were 20 years less at that time)) then look around widely. There are a whole bunch of really great 26-35 year old single LDS women who are being largely ignored for no good reason. They are only still single for the same reasons you are – it just hasn’t happened yet.
Trixie: Thanks for the boost. I’m one of the only older men in my branch to even be active. The church is loosing them in the droves. It’s not a pretty site. Thanks for the boost though 😉
chosha: Thanks for the advice. I’m actually a pretty wide-range dater. But that just enhances my rep for being a commitment phobe ;I
I guess you can’t win for loosing ;I
Chris- Well this is a hard subject to talk about. I understand that finding the one to spend the rest of your life is hard to do. In my life it is hard when all of my friends either get married or started dating someone and I am the one that gets left out. I hate it when people ask you why you are not dating or why are you not married yet! i never really have an answer for them. I just say that I am living my life one day at a time and that I am not going to sit around and feel sorry for myself. I think that you need to get out there and date and have fun with it. Don’t rush thing and really get to know the person that you are with. Yes we are at the age that we should be looking for the “one”. Wellgood luck and just know that the Lord has a great lady out there for you. It just needs to be on his time not are own. Well keep up the dating and it will happen sooner or later. So I didn’t know that you were looking for a job in Utah!
Being 30 myself, I can understand what that girl was saying, because often the dating prospects for a girl my age–just as for yourself–narrow to the point where you sometimes feel like you have to settle for the one who’s available, no matter how unsuited for you he is. There really are a lot of weird ones out there–probably no greater number than there were at 25, but they start to stand out starkly when the only ones wanting to date you are the weird ones (i.e.–the other, normal guys are usually too shy at this point).
I get the impression from reading your blog that you are one of the supposed rare ones–the kind who aren’t afraid to date, the normal ones who simply haven’t found someone yet. What we often forget is that guys like you are more prevalent than we sometimes think, but that doesn’t mean that the people we’re in contact with that *are* normal necessarily match with us–so we focus on the lack of dating rather than on the number of great friends we have that just don’t match up with us.
Did that make sense? I’m thinking I just called a lot of LDS guys weirdos. Even if I have, that’s okay–I’m pretty weird myself. 🙂 (I mean, I’m learning to play D&D at 30 and having a blast–you should see some of the looks I get in my ward when I tell people that. But hey, it’s my job–sort of–and I’m having fun. I figure, as long as you’re having fun and don’t smell bad, being one of the weirdos is just another way of living.)
Stacer:
I wouldn’t classify myself as wierd. I’d just classify myself as goofy.
Went in to clean the church today, had major bed head.
I was mocked by the girls.
That’s good, right? If the girls are flirting, that means they don’t find you scary… 😉
Uh… Sure! 🙂
Usually the term I reserve for myself and those like me is “quirky.” It has a better connotation.