100 dates in. And no joy.

[Begin rant]

When I got my last divorce, I decided not to get onto any apps, but to meet women organically, from mutual connections, social media, personal networks, and other places where one would run into each other, including random coffee shop encounters, checking up on an old friend one hasn’t spoken to for long, or even structured blind dates arranged by well-meaning friends.

I had pegged for myself an artificial target of 100 as the outer limit. Even then, I thought it was a ridiculous number. Apparently not.

I completed 100 dates recently (yes, I was counting for the past 422 days). And it hit me what a colossal waste it has all been (for both parties, for all we got for all our investment into it was entertainment for a few hours, something that can be acquired from more resource-expenditure-poor formats like books, music, television, social media, movies, etc.) and how none of the people involved came out with anything but fleeting memories of a fun day, evening, or night (this is especially jarring when compared to the expectations one went in with). Sigh.

But I am done for now. Once I return from my South India ride, I am out. For a while. I actively considered taking sanyaas and going off to the Himalayas. But the bloody mountains are crumbling under the weight of human ‘infrastructure development’. Truly, there’s no place to run now.

You see, folks, I’m having real problems with the search for an exclusive intimate partner (we used to simply call them ‘girl/boyfriends’ once, but this seems to be the new terminology). They (the problems, not the women..oh, well, the women too, but not in the same way…what the hell, let me just say it) are threefold (note that this applies purely to women I’ve been meeting and is anecdotal in nature, not general):

1. Intellectual stimulation: I am unable to find someone with whom I can converse on diverse topics with any sort of fluency for extended periods of time. I am, of course, not a master of conversation or of all subjects on Earth, but there’s a certain minimum expectation of being able to hold one’s own when speaking of human endeavours like art, technology, history, politics, education, environment, parenting, or even sport. Seems I am yet to meet someone with whom I am comfortable spending more than a few hours without being stymied for want of things to talk of intelligently. What I need is not intellectual depth (I have dated PhDs and women with multiple Masters) but breadth, if you know what I mean. Secondly, wit. You see, Douglas Adams is famously said to have quipped, ‘Wit is how intelligent people have fun.’ If someone is unable to be one-half of a repartee or find humour in regular conversation, I am unable to see myself being attracted to them. Wit, indeed, like intellectual breadth, is rather sexy.
2. Energy compatibility: Generally, women in the age bracket I am dating seem to lack the willingness or ability to actually do things without being fatigued rather quickly. If I say, let’s wake up and go for a nice run or walk, follow it up with breakfast, maybe a motorcycle ride, then work through the day, and then meet for a movie and dinner, and maybe some dancing in the evening, they give up by breakfast! I am not saying I am The Energizer Bunny or that I expect my potential exclusive intimate partner to be one. But there are standards. And I don’t know where to find women who don’t have knee pain or migraines or arthritis or thyroid malfunction or whatever it is that keeps them from staying in Zone 2 of their HR for more than 10 minutes.
3. Approach towards woo: I haven’t found any, not one single, literally zero women who do not believe in some sort of pseudoscience and similarly irrational bullshit. They range from the garden variety theists and astrology believers to the Reiki and Pranik Healing practitioners to (and I kid you not) someone who sets bones over Zoom by thinking about it and transmitting energy!!! Of course, there are the assorted casteists, Modi-bhakts, Jaggi followers, and those who drink alkaline water. Whatever happened to progressiveness and scientific temper? Did our generation skip that part? Or does it evaporate by a certain age?

Now, to repeat, this is not a comment on humanity or women in general. It is just that from the pool of single ladies willing to date me in my (and their) search for an exclusive intimate partner, I have not found a single one who doesn’t have either or all of these issues. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place. Maybe the problem is me. Maybe both. Maybe none. I have no clue. All I know is I am single and lonely. And I don’t deserve to be.

What am I to do now? Die alone?

[End rant]

P.S.: Women who claim they have similar problems with men are free to DM me. I’d love to ask you out. It might solve both our problems! Or it might give us new ones to rant about next year.

P.P.S.: Don’t worry. This too shall pass. Like a fucking kidney stone, I am sure. But it shall. And I shall soon be back to my original swashbuckling (my dear friend’s words, not mine) self by the time I turn 51 on Monday. It is just that I wanted to get this out of my system. And what better way to do it than to appear naked, warts & all, at your most vulnerable, in public on social media, where everyone is so woke that they suffer from insomnia?

P.P.P.S.: In the meanwhile, let me tell you about a joke we crack within the motorcycling community, and it goes something like this: ‘Boy, that was scary as fuck!’, ‘But did you die?’, ‘No’, “Well then, you had fun’, ‘Point’. Point indeed.