Dead fish, ghosting and other stories of trying to find a match, by a midlife single mom

Our story begins at the end. The end of my marriage. After 13 good years, and two amazing children, we split up. I have a lot of feelings about this rupture, none of them simple, but this is not a divorce story. This is the story of what happened after — when I started dating.

I’ll be frank: After my divorce I wasn’t looking for a relationship as much as a situationship — a little flirting and maybe (hopefully) some electricity — some kind of spark untouched by the dust of familiarity that can only be reached after a decade of marriage with children.

To achieve my goals, I went on a variety of apps: Hinge (more expensive because they make you pay to send roses to the “top picks” who tend to be the only people you want to meet), Bumble (seemed to actively try to send me men I didn’t want to date) and Tinder (more sex-positive, but also more nude pics). While each was slightly different, I found they all shared one trait: the fish photos. Yes, endless photos of men holding up freshly dead fish, like, “Hey honey! I can sit on a boat in the sun drinking beer all afternoon with a rod in the water and maybe kill a fish while I’m at it! Pick me!” Why men have decided this is the image that will make women swoon is unclear.

Another thing I learned on the apps were the acronyms. Learning these is essential to your dating journey because if you don’t know them you could end up with an ENM dom looking for a sub third. So here is your acronym glossary:

ENM: Ethically non-monogamous

GGG: Good, Generous, and Game in bed

Poly: Polyamorous

Dom: Dominant, looking for submissive partner

Sub: Submissive, looking for a dominant partner

I learned as I swiped, mostly left. I went out with a 30-year-old firefighter (as hot as you would imagine and even hotter in bed, but also 30), a 45-year-old sommelier (who knew a lot about wine, but could not speak about anything else), a 55-year-old polyamorous guy who owned a running shop (I had not yet learned the acronyms and was not into dating him and his wife), a 53-year-old sociologist who could not seem to be intimate or take the medications necessary to be intimate, and a jolly Buddhist who had a belly the size of Santa’s that was curiously not pictured in his profile.

After a few months, I felt I might be ready for something a bit more substantive; more of a meal than a snack. That’s when I matched with a 49-year-old, divorced dad of three. He was a handsome blue-eyed nerd — a Ph.D. in math working in finance. I wasn’t happy about that finance bit, but the video of him playing his acoustic guitar made me forget he worked on Wall Street. He was sweet and funny. He asked questions. He noticed things. He looked at me, and I felt seen.

And the sex was very good. No offense to him (or my ex), but I don’t know that this was necessarily because of him; I think it was me. At north of 50, I finally had the confidence to say out loud what I needed and the empowerment to feel good about my body. Sure I had sags and bags, bumps and lumps, hot flashes and crime-scene periods. But, you know what, I had also birthed two people! I had run two marathons (slowly — but I finished both)! My body could do amazing things. I was over 50 and had finally gotten tired of feeling bad about myself, and comparing myself to some completely untenable female form. I found a confidence that I really never experienced before. I told him what I wanted, and how I wanted it. And then the sex really changed. How ‘bout that? Aging has its benefits.

But six months in, after dinners and brunches and every-other-weekend plans, he ghosted me. I texted him about plans we had, and he just didn’t reply. Days went by with no communication. I was furious. I was baffled. I was concerned, because how could someone just disappear after six months? Maybe he died? Should I check the hospitals? How could he just disappear? Well, he did. Poof! Never heard from him, until he called about a year later to tell me he had been indicted on white-collar crime charges and would not be able to date me any longer due to his upcoming period of incarceration. That was an excuse I actually had not seen coming.

A few months after that, I decided to try a few swipes here and there. I figured I’d inadvertently dated a felon, how much worse could things get? That’s when I came upon a man from from Brooklyn, age 54, two kids, nice looking, kind of Paul Mescal-adjacent-ish. Well, he looked like maybe he could be a third cousin of Paul’s. (Also this is to say that yes, Paul, if you’d like to go for dinner, I can make room for you in my schedule.)

When we met for sushi lunch, we chatted easily, until toward the end of the meal when he said he had a confession to make. I braced myself for more criminal charges. But no: he said he had trouble counting. He explained that while he told me he had two children, he actually had four. The two he had already mentioned — ages 17 and 20 — and two more, ages 7 and 2. The 7-year-old was from a failed attempt at reuniting with his ex, and the 2-year-old was from when she forged his signature on documents and went to their IVF bank and retrieved one of their embryos without his consent and had another kid. “Wow, you really can’t count,” I said, laughing uncomfortably. Crazy ex-wife, stolen embryos, and four kids aged 2 to 20? No thanks.

It started to feel like maybe I should never date again, but hope springs eternal. There was the bearded doctor in rugged flannel, and you know I’m all about doctors since “The Pitt.” We made plans for a Sunday brunch, but he canceled at the last minute with a work issue. I said I understood and agreed to another go. We planned dinner; he confirmed our dinner the day before and he sent many cute emojis; I’m not above a cute emoji.

I was a few minutes late for our 6:30 reservation, and figured he’d already be there waiting. Alas, he wasn’t. The hostess asked if I wanted to wait at the table, which was ready. “It’s a first date and he canceled our previous one and I have a feeling he is not gonna show,” I admitted to her. “Girl, you have no idea how many times I have had this same conversation,” she said. “Go have a seat at the bar. I’ll hold the table for you. We got you.”

I found a seat at the bar, ordered a glass of wine and waited. 6:45. Still no sign. I texted him: “Hey, are you running late? Or just standing me up?” Smiley-face emoji. No reply. 6:50. No show, no reply from my text. Maybe he was in an accident? Trapped in a stalled subway? Dead? How many times do I have to wonder if my dates are dead?

Again, I was baffled. Just cancel! You can make up any excuse: Your kids are sick, you have an ingrown toenail, your cat was acting strange, you were watching “The Last of Us” and couldn’t stop. And you can do it on text, you don’t even have to summon the balls to make a call. But no.

Where does this leave me? Well, I wish I could say that as I was sitting in my local coffee shop writing this very essay, a man who looked like Jon Hamm asked if the seat next to me was taken, and that we chatted effortlessly over fair trade coffee and overpriced croissants, and are planning to grab dinner later this week. But I can’t.

So here we are. I’m still dating, on and off the apps depending on my mood. Yes, there are days when I feel lonely, but there were also days when I was married when I felt lonely, and that’s a different kind of heartbreak. I’m an optimist by nature, and I’m hopeful. But in the meantime, I’m living my life — hanging out with my kids for as long as they’ll have me, going for runs, drinking wine with friends, playing piano on a middle-school level and writing stories at my local coffee shop until the lights are turned off at the end of the day.

The lights will be back on tomorrow.