Search for new partner leaves me wondering where she’s waiting

By David McElroy · November 28, 2019

Somewhere in this world, there is a woman who wonders tonight where I am. There’s a woman who wants me and needs me and is willing to choose to be my wife. Somewhere tonight, there is this woman who I will want and need just as much as she wants and needs me.

I’m certain of that.

I no longer know her name. I no longer know what she looks like. She presumably doesn’t know I exist and I don’t know she exists. But I know she’s out there — and I know she’s looking for me.

It’s been almost six years since I’ve actively searched for a partner. I’ve gone out with some women over the past few years, but it was halfhearted. I don’t recall going out with any of them for a second time, except for the one who pursued me enough that we dated for an unhappy four months.

This week has been the first time in nearly six years that I’ve resumed an active search for someone new. The only thing I can be sure of is that the woman I met for dinner Wednesday evening wasn’t the right one.

I met and dated a number of women who I met online in the past, so I thought I’d give it another shot. I placed a very detailed profile on a very large service. I explained in excruciating detail who I am and what I know about who I’m looking for.

I emphasized that I’m socially conservative and that I’m looking for a partner for the long term, but most of the responses seem to have ignored the words and just responded to someone who lived fairly close and posted a photo of himself.

One woman sent a photo of herself topless. After she said just a couple of things that show that she had read some of what I wrote, she ended it with, “Want to titty f*** me?”

Another said she had been attracted to the fact that I was looking for something serious and that I sounded as though I had morals. She told me she had grown up in church and wanted to “get back to church.” But when I read her profile, it was all about drunken debauchery and teasing winks about what she’s looking to do with men.

Only one woman even seemed worth responding to. Since she lives near where I work, we agreed to meet Wednesday evening for dinner.

There was nothing interesting about her in person. She kept looking at her phone. She answered my questions with short answers that told me nothing. She wasn’t interested in asking me much of anything about myself. She was attractive enough and bright enough — a grad student at a local university — but I’ve had better chemistry with random check-out clerks at grocery stores.

I just got through the meal and politely walked her back to her car. I knew I’d never see her again, but I figured I could wait until later to say that. As we got to her car, she turned and got close. She put a hand on me somewhere inappropriate.

“So do you want to go someplace and f*** me?” she asked.

What is it with the language of the women I’ve run into so far? And why is it so hard for them to understand that I’m looking for a real relationship, not just a stranger to have sex with? It was almost comical.

I really thought that if I was very, very clear about what I was looking for, I could avoid this sort of game. But I appear to have been mistaken.

I know the right woman is somewhere out there waiting for me. It can’t possibly be that I have met the only women in the world who I might fall in love with and who might fall in love with me. It just can’t be.

When I was young, I believed that God had somebody special for me — and for everybody. I believed there was one woman who would be my right partner. Over the years, I slowly changed my mind and developed the rational notion that we are allowed to randomly find partners and that we just make our own best guesses about who to choose. (And that’s why so many of the choices are wrong.)

About five and a half years ago, something oddly coincidental happened to cause a woman to contact me out of the blue who I had been crazy about in the past. The coincidence led to us talking a lot and then falling in love. The coincidence felt so crazy that I started believing — again — that God must be guiding this.

After that relationship failed — for reasons that will probably never be clear to me — I’m back to the “needle in a haystack” theory. I don’t know where my needle is. I don’t even know which haystack to search.

I’m not an easy person to match. I’m not typical. I don’t quite fit in modern culture. I’m a throwback to something more traditional. And the woman I’m looking for isn’t typical, either. She’s like me in the sense that she can move through the modern world and interact however she needs to, but she’s not really one of the typical members of the brain-dead, sleepwalking culture in which we live.

How do two such people find each other? I really don’t know.

I’m not happy with having to look again, but I have no choice. I’ve wasted five years when I could have been looking instead of waiting for a phone call that was never going to come.

I know she’s out there.

I know she’s someone who will love me and want me and need me. I know she’s someone I will want and need and love, too. I know she’s someone who will enthusiastically choose me as her partner.

I know she’s waiting — just as impatiently as I am — but I don’t know where she is.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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