So I am taking the plunge

After a lot of procrastination I finally got round to completing my e-harmony questionnaire last night. I thought there was just one question to go but there were several and when I finished I only had time to have a brief look at my first 7 matches. I also hadn't paid to join so couldn't see any photos. My initial impression was that most of the matches seemed like nice guys.

I have this evening just paid for a 6 month subscription and can now see the photos of yesterday's matches and some more added today. Seeing the photos has been an interesting experience, and has got me to thinking about whether I am shallow and overly concerned with looks. A small number of the guys I looked at and thought, mmm not bad looking, not quite Brad Pitt, but not bad. The rest I really wasn't sure about. A couple I looked at and thought, no way, I don't think I would ever be able to find him attractive . One had long, greasy looking hair, seemed to be fairly overweight and generally, to me at least, looked like the stereotype of someone who spends all hours of the day and night computer gaming (a horrendous pre-judgement I know). One of his aims was to become a professional poker player which kind of put me off too.

My feelings about the rest were that they were "normal", "ordinary" looking, that I wasn't repulsed and that maybe attraction could grow. One common link between a number of them was that they looked so old! And really, they're not. They're aged from about 35 to 40. I think my problem here is that I forget that I am actually 35 (had a birthday last month) and therefore not terribly young myself. I may feel no different to when I was 18, but I do look different. I probably need to accept that I'm not going to end up with a gorgeous, young twenty-something. However, comparing the e-harmony guys to men I know who are a similar age, some of the e-harmony ones do look so much older. I'm sure my feelings on this are not helped by the fact that A, my last "crush" (and still my friend), is in his twenties.

I do generally think that compatability is more important that having a high level of attraction. However, I think I would need to at least think that attraction was possible.

So what to do next? I ought to be brave and make contact with some of these guys. I will probably read their profiles again and choose the ones which I am most interested in, then assuming I am not repulsed by their photo, I will contact them. Eharmony does have something called guided communication which may make things easier as you apparently don't just go straight to sending long messages.

Part of me is very nervous about all of this, and actually I do feel a little sick at the thought of what happens next. Might someone contact me? What expectations might they have? If I contact someone might they reject me? And of course that old chestnut, how do I explain my lack of relationship history? I also am not sure of some of my answers to the questionnaire - I had to list must haves and can't haves in a partner but with no experience I just had to guess what would be a must have for me.

Of course, it is entirely possible that I will go back into procrastination mode and not bother to contact anyone, but I will try very hard to avoid that.

Jumping out of the plane

There was an article in the Observer newspaper today about Peaches Geldof and how great it is to marry young and after a very short relationship. I’m not actually interested in Peaches or anything about her marriage but there was a section in the article that got me thinking:

If you ask me, getting married on a whim, drunk, aged 19, to somebody you barely know is the only way of doing it. If I had my life over again, that's what I'd do. If I had children, that's what I would advise them. But I don't have children, because I've been loitering timidly by the open doorway for so long that I'll probably never jump out of the plane. Pause to think about it and you just sit back down and buckle your seatbelt.

Perhaps the tabloids would prefer Peaches to hit 30 without marrying anyone. Give her a chance to get used to the single life, taking her own space, own sleep patterns, own choices, own holidays, own friends, own family, completely for granted. Allow the idea of sharing all this with somebody else, forever, to become a bit nerveracking. Let her come to believe that, having left it so long, it would now be really stupid to make a mistake. Let her take the whole thing so damn seriously that, instead of acting without thinking, she constantly thinks without acting.

All thirtysomethings do is date for years, too scared of abandoning self-sufficiency to take things any further, until the other person's flaws (perfectly tolerable if they had already made the commitment) become giant, looming reasons not to marry them anyway. Or they get married and are so shocked by the unfamiliar compromises of permanent partnership, they have to get divorced again.

By Victoria Coren, The Observer, 26.10.2008

What if she’s right? What if I’m so used to being single, to having my own space, to doing exactly what I want to when I want to that I’m too scared to jump out of the damn plane? Yes I’m lonely, yes I want to be in a relationship, but being so accustomed to being alone would I actually be able to make the necessary compromises, be willing to lose some of my independence? I would hope that the prospect of enjoying life with someone I loved would make the answer to that yes, but I don’t think I’ll really know until it happens.

I definitely think I would take the whole process of embarking on a relationship much more seriously than I would have done 10-15 years ago. I suspect I would be likely to wonder if every potential boyfriend (assuming I ever have any) was “the one”, to wonder right from the start whether a relationship was going to lead to a life together, marriage, children even. I’m not sure I could simply date someone and just wait to see what happens without any expectations. A lot of pressure to put on a new relationship, and on any man brave or crazy enough to be interested in me.