Tell Me About Yourself

When your marriage ends at thirty-seven and you have three kids in tow, dating can seem like a quagmire of half-truths and red flags. In fact, my most used phrase of 2024 has got to be, “that’s a red flag.”

My relationship ended and I had no idea what men my age were like. Did they look old? Did they have bad hips? Were they tired all the time? Did they call you Dear? Would they stay out past eight?

Yes, I signed up for a dating app a few months ago. Mostly, I was curious. How do people present themselves in the best possible light with six photos and a couple lines of text? About half the profiles are what you’d expect – I love the outdoors and football! I’m looking for a partner to travel the world alongside!

The other half range from hysterical to tragic. Identity politics are front and center, with several profiles stating “no libtards” at the first opportunity to write something charming about oneself. A guy I talked to asked a woman on a date and she accepted, but when he recommended a restaurant in his part of town she balked because “only MAGA people live there.” They did not go on that date, and he wasn’t even a supporter of the cause. For some people politics are truly important, but for others, even if your beliefs might fall within a reasonable range on the spectrum, coming out guns blazing with your “I will not date someone who supports X” is a turnoff.

My favorite profile I’ve seen was a gentleman from El Paso who had livestock with him in every photo. He was a portly older man who claimed to be in a polyamorous relationship, and anyone who sent him a message needed to be “up for absolutely anything.” The word anything was rather ominous, what with all the cows and horses in his life.

The last time I went on a date my phone didn’t have a camera. Or the internet. I had a thing or two to learn and needed to look up a lot of new terms. For example, when you see ENM on a profile, it means Ethically Non-Monogamous. Its like cheating, but ethically. A demisexual is a person who only feels sexually attracted to a partner once they’ve developed a close emotional bond. A sapiosexual is attracted to your intelligence, not your looks. The emoji of a red circle on your profile means you’re a huge Phish fan (red flag). Selecting the relationship preference “figuring out my dating style” means you’re just looking sex (a mistake I made, as I was literally trying to figure out what kind of dating life I wanted and attracted a lot of a certain type of men. A very nice man let me in on the coded message I was inadvertently broadcasting). Choosing “bisexual” as your orientation means you’re going to get groomed as a third to join an established relationship (see also: “Looking for a unicorn”). Seeking someone with an “active lifestyle” is a thinly veiled way to say they don’t date people who appear overweight. And my personal favorite, “I’m looking for a woman who doesn’t take herself too seriously,” means “I’m going to be an absolute prick and insist any reaction from you is your fault.”

Once you weed out the truly egregious profiles, you start chatting with strangers through the app. This is for safety – you can’t send photos through the app and the person doesn’t have your phone number or other personal information, just the vague tidbits from your profile. However, men seem to immediately need your phone number. First, it’s to get a recent selfie to make sure your photos aren’t outdated or filtered (spoiler alert: a man showed me the women on the app I use and they have full on SnapChat filters including the puppy ears and heart eyes). Second, the men need to show you their junk. Like, right away. I cannot tell you how upsetting it is to have a stranger even ask to send that type of photo. Do men think we like that? They don’t even make an effort to be artistic about it, which I know because two men did not ask before sending their special little photos (emphasis on little). One very nice man told me it’s actually a crime to send an unsolicited photo of your bait and tackle to anyone, and how to report it. If you were a gambler, how much would you wager I accepted a date with the law and order guy over the check out my weiner guy?

My biggest concern when attempting to reenter the dating pool was my kids. My profile says I have children, but doesn’t say how many. I know that having three is a big ol’ red flag to a lot of people. Three is a lot for a potential mate, especially if you also have children. Not everybody wants to be the Brady Bunch. It turns out not all men are alarmed by children. Some men I spoke to would only date women with children, because being a parent is all-consuming and they want a partner who would understand that. I have to agree. I talked to a man for a while who was fussy when I was busy and wouldn’t pick up the phone because I was with my kids. A man who had kids he was actively involved with would never act that way. Presumably.

And so, I have been on dates. I have spoken to many people who never made it past the vetting process, and I have been out with a few who cleared my initial background check. Also, I have a friend who insists on doing actual background checks, so if I smell a potential red flag she does her thing and gives them a pass/fail. I was assured my first date would be a complete trainwreck and I’d probably burst into tears at some point, but it was delightful. Sure, it’s tedious to rehash your background with every person you start talking to, especially when they start with someone innocuous like “where are you from?” and I am completely unsure how to answer. I’m not from El Paso, but I moved from there, and I’m not from Austin but I did live there a while, but people assume you must be aggressively liberal if you’re from Austin and I’m fairly tolerant of all political beliefs, and I can’t say I lived in Moscow because maybe I’m a spy, and one guy seemed to find my life overseas pretentious after he tried to tell me I “really must travel Europe, it will change your life,” and was dumbfounded to discover I had actually lived there myself. Don’t worry, he recovered by assuring me he is a fantastic gambler (a thousand red flags to you, good sir).

It turns out men in their forties do stay out late and don’t often complain about being tired. No one has suggested an early bird special for a date, and all have their original hips. They don’t look old at all, which makes me think I am dangerously close to being in my forties myself. They do call you Dear, though. They also open doors for you, insist on paying for your drink, and send flowers. The good ones do, anyway.

It’s weird, and it’s difficult to know what you want after seemingly hundreds of years in one relationship with one person, but it’s not all terrible. I have made some great friends through dating apps as well, and it’s truly enlightening to hear what the men are dealing with from the women looking for partners/hookups. Men are a mess but the women are no picnic either. Everyone single at my age is damaged in one way or another, but the trick is to suss out what kind of damage compliments your own particular brand of broken, and not to take on more problems than you can handle on top of your own. I’m still very new to dating in my (extremely late) thirties, but it has given me some hope for the future.