Potential is Dead, Long Live Perfection!

For those who've been keeping up with my story, you'll know that my marriage ended, rather unexpectedly for me, around 18 months ago.

After the dust had settled, as is often the temptation, I found myself dipping my reluctant and still war-torn toe into the pool of modern dating. About a year after the separation, I picked up a digital device, exchanged a few coins per month and embarked on the awful, commodity-fuelled world of online dating.

We're bombarded with apps, each promising some revolutionary way of finding a compatible soul. Some boast sophisticated matching systems, designed to identify people with similar interests, values or, as I like to call them, more compatible bedfellows.

Whether any of them genuinely deliver on these promises is another matter.  I've paid for two different services and even endured a free weekend trial of that mighty digital Cupid, Tinder. The less said about that three-day ordeal, the better.

But this isn't intended as an exposé of my failed dating adventures. Besides, my experiences have resulted in relatively few actual dates so far. Rather, it's an observation of how the world of finding companionship appears to have changed for people like me.

A little context is probably necessary.

I'm firmly in what most would describe as middle age, somewhere in my mid-forties, emerging from a 15-year marriage with two young daughters who live with me half the time. My experience of these apps amounts to a couple of months, and I certainly haven't undertaken any meaningful research.

This context is important, as I can't say for sure if the following is true of all online dating or just those attempting the second chapter, like I am.  My suspicion is that it's a little of both.

Back in my twenties, around the turn of the century, dating largely followed the rituals practised by generations before us. Online dating existed, of course, but it seemed rather removed from my world. I lived in central London, where my friends and I spent a considerable proportion of our evenings and weekends exploring the capital's bars and clubs.

Our group of friends wasn't what you might refer to as prolific at meeting single girls, except for one of my mates. I'm sure every group of lads has that one friend who women seem to throw themselves at. We certainly had one of those in our group, and it often amazed us.

I've always been sociable and able to get on with people upon first meeting, but I know I lacked some confidence compared to my peers.  As I hurtled towards the rather terrifying milestone of thirty, I made some significant changes. I abandoned the security of permanent employment to pursue freelance work, embraced a little more freedom and, somewhere along the way, discovered a confidence that had previously eluded me.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, women began to notice me a little more. And before long, I met someone who captured my interest. 

I remember those early days vividly. Long evenings in London's bars, followed by meandering walks through the city as the nights surrendered to the early morning. It was spring, the evenings were becoming warmer, and we'd talk for hours, often with alcohol still lingering on our breath.

Nothing seemed particularly complicated, apart from the inconvenient necessity of arriving at our respective offices a few hours later. 

We didn't know everything about each other. How could we?

At that age, I suspect we were perhaps only 30% of our defined selves. We had a general trajectory, ambitions, principles and a sense of direction, but much of our lives remained unwritten. 

We recognised something in each other. Our aspirations broadly aligned, our connection felt genuine, and whatever differences might eventually emerge, there was time to discover them. There was room to grow. There was potential.

And from those uncertain beginnings emerged a romance, a 15-year marriage and two beautiful daughters.

Fast-forward to the present, or rather a few months ago, and I found myself staring at my phone's App Store, trying to decide which digital matchmaking service might best suit my circumstances. Eventually, I selected one that appeared appropriate for my station in life, assembled a profile and paid the subscription.

As with most subscription services, the longer you commit, the cheaper the monthly cost becomes. I understand that from a business perspective, but it's hardly a great advertisement for potential success.

Find the love of your life today! But if nobody likes you, don't worry, we'll offer you a discount for remaining single for another six months.

Nevertheless, I persevered.

Texting a stranger, even through a rapid exchange of messages, is a poor substitute for genuine conversation. There's no voice, no expression, no instinctive reaction to the person standing before you. Nuance gets lost, humour can be misunderstood, and the smallest observation can require an extraordinary amount of explanation. Something you might discover about another person in five minutes at a bar can take days, perhaps weeks, to establish through messaging.

And after all that effort, the entire conversation can disappear with a single swipe or an unanswered message. In the old-fashioned 'chat-up' in the pub, you at least had someone's attention, however briefly, while attempting that awkward, occasionally embarrassing dance we called flirting.

Unlike the bars of twenty years ago, you're no longer limited to whoever happens to be out on a particular evening. The apps offer an apparently limitless collection of single people, all supposedly looking for companionship. Everyone has arrived with a purpose. Nobody is unexpectedly interrupting a girls' night out or an evening with friends. Everyone is, in theory, available. And perhaps that's precisely where the challenge begins.

Park the dating world for a moment and consider an entirely different experience.

You're invited to a social occasion and decide you need a new outfit. You define your criteria for what these new garments need to be, and off you go to the shops. You're focused on finding what you need, yet you move from shop to shop, rack to rack, without quite finding it.

Even those that perhaps come close leave you thinking, "Maybe I'll see what the other shops have to offer first."

Often, this frantic shopping experience results in either no outcome or something you end up fretting over later, questioning whether it was actually the best option.

Compare that with the casual day when you're out in the shopping centre, with no specific agenda, and wham! You stumble across an amazing outfit. You weren't searching for it. You hadn't constructed a list of requirements. Nevertheless, there it was.

When we focus, we apply blinkers and narrow our field, right at the point when we need to have the most open of vistas.

Online dating encourages us to arrive with a checklist. A carefully assembled collection of qualities, preferences and expectations against which complete strangers are measured. And there's very little room for surprises.

My first date in this new chapter was a pleasant experience. We'd exchanged messages for several days, shared a few jokes and cautiously explored something of each other's histories.  I made a conscious effort not to dwell on the painful circumstances surrounding the end of my marriage. But it's hard to blank out such a major event in your life, especially when that event was the reason, the touchpaper that led you to be dating in the first place.

We all have a past, and most of us have a story worth telling. But I didn't particularly want an early date to become an extended monologue recounting the previous seasons of my personal drama.

Fortunately, the evening went well. Conversation flowed naturally, we laughed, and there were none of those dreadful silences where both parties desperately search for something interesting to say. She had a daughter of a similar age to my youngest and was also rebuilding her life following a relationship breakdown. I could see she was also trying to avoid delving into too much detail about her recent past.

We met again a few days later, and that went very well too.

The following day, she called, and I instantly knew the conversation was a package I didn't really want to open. She told me she liked me, but something wasn't right for her. She was very concerned that our respective child-free days didn't align. It was polite, and I held no negative feelings about her decision to end our short liaison.

Back to the app I went.

Within a few days, I was exchanging messages with another woman who, after the initial fun pleasantries, began to reveal some emotional scars, clearly from a past relationship or previous dating experiences. Not put off, and with some courage, she persevered. But her level of trust appeared to be in the red zone. Eventually, she asked me to provide proof that I was actually divorced before she would agree to meet.

Unsurprisingly, I never sent any such confirmation, nor did we arrange a date. I didn't appreciate the accusation that I was somehow masking the truth. I was momentarily irritated by this particular experience, by the need to prove myself. However, my annoyance was quickly replaced with an overwhelming feeling of sadness towards whatever had left her so distrusting and fragile.

These were just two encounters, hardly sufficient evidence on which to build a comprehensive theory of modern relationships. Nevertheless, they encouraged me to consider something I'd begun noticing throughout the experience.

The checklist.

By middle age, many of us have accumulated a considerable history. Marriages, separations, children, careers, disappointments and the occasional scar that hasn't quite healed.  We know more about what we want. More importantly, perhaps, we know what we don't want. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

It is completely understandable that we need some basic criteria. For example, some people may not wish to become a step-parent, while others are less mobile and need to seek a match locally. Maybe it's important that someone matches or exceeds your educational level, or has similar working patterns, like teachers wanting to share their long summer breaks together.

Physical attributes go without saying; we do need to use these filters to narrow the field to people we typically find more attractive.  Nobody should be expected to abandon what genuinely matters to them.  But how precise must the requirements become?

And what about physical appearance?

We all have preferences, naturally. Yet when we reflect on the people we've genuinely loved, how many fitted precisely into some preconceived ideal?

I encountered one dating profile that rather neatly illustrated the absurdity of this compulsion for an exacting match with almost no flexibility. 

This lady wrote in her profile that you, the onlooker, must like dogs, must be witty, must be tall and must "have your shit together". That last requirement appeared with remarkable frequency across the profiles I encountered. Presumably, it was intended to eliminate anyone still displaying the emotional or practical shortcomings of her previous partners.

The bio continued by insisting that you must be clean-shaven, allowing a maximum of two days' stubble, before warning that she would shave you whilst you slept if you didn't comply. There's an obvious humorous or whimsical notion here, but you can see the thread crying out for exactly what she wants: the perfection she seeks, with little or no room for growth. The ease with which she can swipe in the wrong direction if any of the selfies have too many whiskers — unless it was a dog, of course, in which case they might stand a chance of a tick in the right direction.

The point isn't that we should abandon our preferences or accept relationships that are fundamentally unsuitable. It's that the ease of dismissing someone has perhaps encouraged us to confuse preferences with necessities. 

It's like that shopping experience. We can define everything we want, and it's too easy to swipe past anyone who doesn't tick every requirement.

We examine people as though we're selecting a replacement component for a complicated machine, convinced that only something manufactured to our precise specifications will function correctly. Anything else might bring the whole mechanism grinding to a halt.  And yet human relationships have never been quite so mechanically obedient.

Nobody wants to waste precious years pursuing relationships that are fundamentally incompatible. We all have baggage and constraints. We have children, jobs, hobbies and areas of inflexibility. Understandably, we seek people who come close to our idea of compatibility, close to our initial requirements. But how exacting does it need to be?

It was back in the 1990s when I first wrote that perfect love exists in only one place: our mind. There, relationships remain wonderfully uncomplicated. Nobody possesses irritating habits, conflicting opinions or inconvenient circumstances. Nobody disappoints us, and compromise is entirely unnecessary.

Real relationships involve differences, occasional frustration, compromise and those peculiar little idiosyncrasies that make us who we are. Some become sources of irritation, others unexpected affection. Reality is rather less accommodating.

We easily forget that profiles and bios are artificial anyway. They're a marketing attempt to spotlight and highlight who we are — carefully selected photographs, a handful of flattering observations and a few sentences attempting to convey the complexity of an entire human being.

How many of us could honestly claim that our dating profiles provide anything approaching an accurate representation of who we really are?  Yet we use these fragments to make decisions about people we haven't met, conversations we haven't had and possibilities we've barely allowed ourselves to imagine.

In our twenties, we were willing to discover someone gradually. We didn't expect to know everything because we understood that much of life was still waiting to happen.  We accepted uncertainty. We allowed room for change.

We believed in potential.

Somewhere along the way, perhaps through experience, disappointment or simply the fear of wasting whatever time remains, we've become less willing to take that chance. We've refined our requirements until the person we're searching for, risks becoming someone who couldn't possibly exist. And in doing so, I wonder whether we've forgotten something rather important.

The greatest relationships aren't necessarily discovered fully formed. Sometimes they're built, slowly and imperfectly, by two people willing to discover what they might become together.

But our carefully constructed criteria, however well-intentioned, leave little room for that discovery. Little allowance for the unexpected, for imperfections that become endearing, or for two people to grow into something neither could have imagined at the outset.

Perhaps we've become so preoccupied with finding perfection that we've forgotten how to recognise possibility.

And somewhere along the way, potential has been quietly, almost violently, displaced by the pursuit of an unattainable ideal.

Potential is dead.

Long live perfection.

You've been warned.