Adventures in Online Dating: Gathering Courage to Take the Plunge
I can do this…I think.
I have a love/hate relationship with diving boards. I love watching others use a diving board to launch their bodies gracefully into the air, do an amazing trick, and then plunge into the deep without a splash. My own experience with diving boards could not have been more different.
I was the kid that would watch from the sidelines, studying each person’s dive off of the community pool diving board. I marveled at their courage and execution. I envied how much fun it seemed to sail through the air before splashing into the pool and tried to envision doing each dive myself.
Who knows how long I was a diving spectator before I finally decided to get in line to wait my turn. Standing there in line, I would watch my peers and feel the fear in my stomach. Fear of what, I’m not exactly sure. Fear of making a fool of myself? Fear of judgment? Fear of injury? I had already experienced all of the above when I was younger, unsteadily plunking off the concrete side into the pool headfirst, going straight into the bottom of the pool because I didn’t realize I needed to dive at an angle. I came up out of the water dizzy to what felt like a crowd of snickering swimmers with a knot on the top of my head, and I certainly didn’t want that experience again.
But still the desire would rise up within me, so with great trepidation I would again climb up the 3 steps and make my way to the end of the board, wrapping my toes around the end. At that point, if I was lucky, I would have the courage to raise my arms, hands pressed together, and bend over to plop, not at all gracefully, into the pool--an entrance into the pool that, while not quite disastrous, left me feeling humiliated and disappointed in myself. Eventually I just gave up trying. I don’t remember ever having the courage to actually bounce off the board before diving in. It was both an issue of confidence and trust in my body. Truthfully, I don’t know that I had either.
Fast forward to the present. I now find myself metaphorically standing at the edge of the diving board, wanting to confidently jump into online dating with poise and skill, but facing the same old fear and anxiety that haunted me as a child at the pool. It has been 5 years since my divorce and essentially a year since my last date. I have used that time to take a hard look at myself and to do some healing work related to trauma experienced in my marriage. I experimented with “organic” dating on and off for a few years, learning lots about myself through periods of dating and not dating. Then Covid hit, minimizing the chances of meeting someone organically, and bringing me to this place. Since Covid isn’t going away any time soon, it seems like there is no time like the present to dive into online dating.
“How you do one thing is how you do everything.”
Let no one be surprised that I have approached online dating much like I did those summer days at the community pool. As the saying goes, how you do one thing is how you do everything. I have spent these years post-divorce on the sidelines, watching and studying, suspiciously considering my friends’ invitations to dive on in...the water is FINE. I have researched online dating - read books, blogs, and scrolled through social media. I have thought about what worked for me and what didn't work for me in my marriage and in organic post-divorce dating. I now know what I am looking for in a partner and what I offer in a relationship. I have learned a great deal about setting boundaries in relationships, which I didn’t do well before.
I can admit that post-divorce dating the organic way was so much more fun than dating in my 20s, so I can imagine that possibly the same can be said of online dating. I can do this. I am much more comfortable in my own body now and give myself a hell of a lot more grace than I used to. I just need to clasp my hands together, focus on where I want to go, and take the plunge - understanding that there is no perfect form in dating, no medal for degree of difficulty, and any perceived injury to my pride is probably all in my own head.
As such, it seems I am finally ready to climb up onto the diving board. You are welcome to journey with me as I figure this out. Walk with me as I drum up the confidence to jump on in with my blog series titled “Adventures in Online Dating.”
