The Waiting is the Hardest Part
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This could be it, I think. Wow, I really want to get to know this girl. I type out my most charming, yet casual message, noting what I found interesting about her profile. I ask a few polite questions, am careful not to use the phrase “mind-meltingly beautiful” so she won’t think I’m piling it on too hard, and hit send.
Then I wait. And wait. And wait.
Okay, so this isn’t ‘it.’
Online dating involves a lot of waiting. You wait until she sees the message. You wait until she decides to reply. You wait until it becomes clear she isn’t going to reply. Then you wait until another likely prospect shows up on your search engine and you can start the cycle over again.
The trouble is that waiting does not feel like progress. And when you don’t feel like you’re making progress, discouragement is the inevitable result.
People can put up with almost anything as long as they feel like they’re progressing towards their goal, but when it feels like they’re just spinning their wheels, despair sets in.
“What if there’s no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today!”
You’ve probably seen the movie Groundhog Day, staring Bill Murray (if not, what’s wrong with you?). In it, Murray plays a self-centered weatherman stuck reliving the same day over and over. Nothing changes, and no matter what he does everything resets the next morning. He progresses through reveling in his freedom from all consequences, to frustration and boredom, to despair.
Nothing he does matters; at the end of each day, everything goes back to how it was that morning and he lives it all over again.
But then he realizes something; there is one thing he can do that won’t be undone when the day resets: he can improve himself. Even though the day is always the same and everyone goes through exactly the same motions, he retains the knowledge and skills he develops each day. He literally cannot change anything else but himself, yet in the end, that’s exactly what he needed to change.
I think a lot of us feel like we’re trapped in our own version of Groundhog Day: we work, we try, yet we never seem to get anywhere. We keep sending messages to the ladies of CatholicMatch, yet we don’t get replies, or, at best, we get polite refusals.
It feels as though we’re banging our heads against the wall: making no progress, changing nothing, and affecting nothing. But all the time, there’s one thing that we do have control over and which we can change: ourselves.
The Perfect Man for the Perfect Woman
Let’s face it; we’re all looking for someone who is, in our eyes, perfect. Trouble is, we’re often so focused on what we want that we don’t think as much about what she will want.
There’s an old joke about a man who went to a priest after years of searching and said “Father, I’ve found the perfect woman! There’s just one problem; she’s looking for the perfect man.” No one’s perfect, of course, but that just means we always have room to improve. The more you improve, the more likely you will be the kind of person that your ideal man or woman is looking for.
While waiting to find that perfect someone, try to make yourself into a perfect man or woman. Take stock of yourself and decide how you can improve. Maybe you need to get into better shape, or get your finances in order. Maybe it’s time to read a few new books, take up a new hobby, or improve one you already have. We all can stand to improve our prayer life and become more virtuous and charitable. Whatever it is, identify where you can improve and work at it.
What can you control?
Once you send your clever-yet-casual message introducing yourself, the ball is in their court and you can’t say how he or she respond. Focusing on things you can’t control is a recipe for depression.
Instead, focus on what you can control, which is yourself and the kind of person you are. In this way, you will not only become better, but you’ll feel less discouraged and more like you’re actually getting somewhere.
By concentrating on how you can be better, you will be making progress towards finding the
right person, and you’ll know it. Even if you’re trapped in a small town on February 2nd for all eternity, you can still work to become the kind of person someone would want to hear from.
Find Your Forever.
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