Fifteen years ago when I started this blog, I used to have to work really hard to meet people. I had an app that would swipe right on 300 Tinder profiles at a time. I did this not because I was not selective – I was – but because the math of being a married guy dating at the time was really prohibitive. The number of women who were interested in a guy who declined to put a picture of himself on his profile and who revealed that he was a writer and married was just vanishingly small. And so, if I swiped right on thousands and thousands of profiles, every so often one or two would match. And of those that matched, something like 10% were of interest to me.
Over time, the blog itself became something of a chick magnet. Veronique and Sophia were the two best examples of the blog’s working this way. They each stumbled on the blog in their internet meanderings and reached out to me, introducing themselves and launching torrid affairs.
There were other examples of that over the years, but in the last 5 or 7 years, that has really come to a stop, for reasons having to do with some combination of the changing dating world, the changing internet, my age, and who knows what else. It just doesn’t happen anymore that people stumble on the blog and say they want to suck my cock.
Add to which, 15 years ago when I was swiping right on those hundreds and hundreds of Tinder profiles, I was prepared to put in some work. I understood that if I wanted to meet women via the apps, I had to spend some time to make it happen. Nowadays, I just don’t have the interest. I don’t know if this is about my libido or about my maturity, but the thought of spending hours hyping myself on apps to women, a tiny proportion of whom might conceivably be interested in me, just doesn’t appeal. Add to which, the evolution of apps like Feeld, which caters to the poly crowd, just highlights how non-normative I am. There’s a whole universe of swinging 20, 30, and 40-somethings openly dating, engaged in some various permutations of kitchen table polyamory.
It seems like there are a lot fewer women in their 20s and 30s and 40s exploring their sexuality – my catnip – receptive to a companion and guide in his 40s or, God help me, late 50s. And maybe that’s the issue. Maybe there’s a real difference between late 50s and early 40s.
I mean, I know there is. But gosh, does it make me sad.