Off the Market (Warning: Long)

The first thing people said to me after the divorce went along the lines of "Well, Freddy, here's your chance to enjoy some freedom. Have fun with it." The subtext of that varied, depending on who was delivering the advice. Some meant to sow some wild oats, others thought I should spend some time "finding myself." Frankly, I was a bit lost when it came to women; I kinda liked the idea of fucking indiscriminately around the city but the reality was that I gave off that "just got dumped" vibe for quite awhile. Needless to say, I didn't get any.

I dated some, pretty much from women I met online. I liked the idea of it, everyone was there for the same thing, we could skip a lot of the awkwardness and get to the gettin'. After a string of one-and-out dates, I came to realize that being online doesn't necessarily make things easier. If anything, you tend to meet the same person over and over; the computer "matches" you with people who supposedly are compatible based on a checklist and some weird algorithm. If you're a woman on these sites, it's a situation of having too much choice. You're inundated by messages from potential suitors; faced with such prosperity, you can afford to reject men out of hand for the most trivial of reasons, because there's 50 more of those where he came from. I speak from experience; as a bit of recon, I put up a fake ad as a woman to see what "Jane" would face, the strategy was to basically figure out patterns and tweak my approach to make myself stand out from the crowd. I was somewhat successful, got some good responses but again, nothing to show for the effort.

I realized "What the hell am I doing? I'm sitting in front of my computer when I could be out there actually meeting people." So I got myself a striped shirt and hit the bars with friends on a more regular basis. While I was able to meet people and make some new friends, I was still going home alone. I guess thirty-somethings in Seattle don't go out anymore.

Time to take a break from the dating scene. I moved out of Belltown and settled into South Lk. Union, stop obsessing about things and just let it happen. It was about that time when SB and I met BW, a general contractor. We got to talking about the construction business and exchanged cards. The next day, he emails us and asks if we wanted to volunteer for a group called ACE (Architects Contractors and Engineers), which mentors high schoolers who want to enter the field. I said "Sure, sounds fun."

It was at one of these ACE meetings I met AB, a structural engineer and fellow mentor. We hit it off pretty much right off the bat, I told her about my dreams to open up a series of lumpia carts around the city. She was on board, in particular as a guinea pig for product testing. I hesitated a little at first, thinking "Geez, another Pinay engineer. Do I want to go there again?" But I realized I was looking forward to the next meeting just a little more. All of a sudden AB and I were seeing one another outside of ACE. In groups at first, then just the two of us. At first, neither of us wanted to commit to anything, which was fine with me, though I didn't have anything else going on at the time. Both of us were recently out of long term relationships, and didn't want to rush into anything.

Some weeks later, we're now dating exclusively, meeting each other's friends/family and making plans to go to Mexico, you know, the usual. I guess it's true that you'll find something as soon as you stop looking. So now what? I think both of us are trying to figure out where we fit in each other's life. My biggest mistake in the past was to allow myself to be defined by the relationship, putting everything else aside. So now we're just enjoying the new romance and building a healthy relationship, not getting too far ahead of ourselves. But go ahead and take me off the "single" list. More later.