Dating app questionnaire: Facing the Fear

As I stare at the dating app questionnaire, and face up to questions like “how tall are you, how important is height to you” I wonder to myself if I should look for the book in the library: dating apps for dummies. But as I promised last week, I selected a dating app — Elite Singles — and filled in the questionnaire. So after last week, in which I surveyed the possibilities, now I chose one.

The dating app questionnaire involved my age, my education, my income, my religion … and also some interesting questions where I had to choose my favorite graphic design from a set of them with different colors and wavy or square lines. I suppose if you find someone with this app you won’t have trouble decorating the house together.

Okay, So I’m Pretty Sure I’d Better Tell the Truth …

My feelings of anxiety were activated when I put down the things that are important to me. I considered lying about what is important to me, because who knows it these are the right things to find the right person … but I know that if I don’t check off “very important” for some of these things I’ll likely have to do some weeding out later. No, as I check through the list of criteria, I decile I’m asking them for everything I’m looking for.

I am terrified.

I don’t have a good profile picture. The picture I put up is one that people have said is good. But who knows. Is it good enough? What can I do, it’s the best one I have. I think. Anyway, after all, if no one likes my profile pic then I won’t have to deal with talking to people.

That’s a bad attitude, I realize.

I don’t know. Maybe I am trying this dating app questionnaire because I sense that, trepidation aside, it is time for me to try something. Safe life is boring. And I need to build what I think of , without a better term but the modern one, my “network.”

It’s so Easy for Self Doubt to Take Over

I want to throw up my hands and ask the universe, “Should I do this?”

Because I don’t know.

Years ago, I didn’t have this sense I have now, that people get burned badly in relationships. Now, I have the sense. I think of Paul Simon’s “I am a rock.”

It Takes an Artist to Show us Ourselves Sometimes

I first heard this song when I was very young, perhaps I was even a baby. But when I began to understand the words, I realized quickly that this guy had a problem. He was alone and he (gasp) wanted to be alone. He believed people were bad, that they would hurt him. So he rejected them all.

I drift off in memory, leaving the problems of being honest and open about myself in the dating app questionnaire behind. Remembering the song, I am transported back to childhood. This record, “the Sounds of Silence,” was my father’s. He played it on the phonograph in the living room of my childhood home. Now, today, I look up the discography. It was released on January 17, 1966. Ten days after I was born.

I look at the cover of the record on YouTube. Paul Simon had all his hair back then.

The album cover is one I remember, sitting propped by the phonograph cabinet, made of cardboard, rather dull. I remember how I looked at the two of them, Simon and Garfunkle, when I was barely old enough to walk and wondered who they were. They were not brothers. They did not seem to be friends. I was told that they were singers.

Someone Didn’t Love Them and Now They Were Hurt

They were singers, okay, but this didn’t answer my question.

What I wanted to know was what was wrong with them that they had come up with the song “I am a rock.” Why* didn’t* someone love them?

Was it their hair, their skinny legs, their frowning faces looking back at the camera as they walked, apparently, deeper into a scraggly woods? That coat that Paul Simon is wearing bothered me. Half coat, half cape, it’s billowing shape seemed to suggest something under it that he was hiding, and perhaps what he was hiding was the reason that he had become so bitter.

Why were they so unable to get over lost love that they wouldn’t try again?

And what would Paul Simon (who was the one who wrote the song; Garfunkle sang it with him) say, today, if he faced a dating app questionnaire? Or perhaps more saliently, what would he have said in 1965 or so?

OMG When Did I Lose My Belief in Love?

I was a child back then and I believed in love. I did not sympathize with Paul Simon as I might have today. To me, as a child it seemed he had brought this on himself. And yet, the music. “I am a Rock” was such a good song to sing when you were sad.

“I am shielded in my armor … I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died if I’d never loved I never would have cried … ” And I think I knew, even as a child, that he was being sullen and proud.

I did not know that this same feeling was coming for me. I am now sullen and proud while contemplating the dating app questionnaire. Not to mention full of fear.

What could I do? Well, for one thing, I answered all the questions honestly. When they asked about my strengths, I considered which ones were most important to me. This is growth. In the past, the old Susan would have tried to answer by identifying the strengths that would attract men more. But I now know, I don’t, necessarily, want to attract more men. I only want to attract one. One who would understand me and would be able to share some interesting adventures. Who would get me out of “hiding in my room, safe within my gloom,” where “I touch no one and no one touches me” as Simon wrote in the song.

It Is as if He Knew Me When He Wrote that Song

Yeah, Paul Simon! You hit the nail on the head. It’s partly pathetic, and partly funny, and partly just really really sad, but wallowing in self pity and anger, after all , is a thing you could stop and savor! It doesn’t have to last forever. But if you panic about the dating app questions, it may last just a little bit longer.

I answered the questions as accurately as I could. This is the truth: no way am I dating anyone with kids under 18. I won’t change my schedule; I’m not flexible. There was no spot to check off “advanced degree desired,” But I did put education is very very important. I don’t know if I’ve now priced myself right out of the market. I guess time will tell.

What if no one messages? Well, one admirer told me years ago when I complained about not having enough dates. “When all else fails, lower your standards.” Ooof. We’ll see what happens.

And that’s what I’ve got for now. I have completed the dating app questionnaire. And more will be revealed. Next week: Will I receive messages, and will I find the strength to respond.