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This article originally started off as a tirade about how singles in today’s society don’t know what they want from each other, and I was going to draw all these mind-blowing insights about how it all relates to the 50% divorce rate and total lack of satisfied people in the world, yadda-yadda, but then I quickly realized that I was writing about my lack of satisfaction, because I actually know plenty of satisfied couples, and that my generalizations of my own problems was a poor attempt to disguise my own suck-ass social life and obvious bitterness toward happy people. So I’ve decided to fling off the façade and instead focus on how much I hate being “out there.”Whether you’ve dated five or 500 people in your lifetime, I guarantee you that at one point or another, you broke up/stopped dating someone because you realized that you wanted completely different things out of the relationship. Maybe she wanted marriage but he wanted arm candy, or he wanted kids but she wanted to have her tubes tied. Or maybe he was just a sloppy kisser with a stiff tongue and kneaded your breasts like he was making pretzels. At any rate, as a (what seems like perpetually) single woman living in Southern California, I have to say that the biggest problem I encounter is that people aren’t willing to put in the effort required to sustain a real relationship. Well, with me, anyway, and this is all about me, after all — I told you that at the top of the page.

I will generalize for a bit here, though. The roles of men and women have changed in the last few decades, and that’s done nothing but confuse and frustrate quite a lot of people on Earth, and it leaves a lot of folks scrambling for things to talk about whilst dancing on P.C. eggshells and deciding how or if they should split the dinner tab. I think most people know what they don’t want (“too tall, too short, too flat, too ugly, too fat, not fat enough,” etc.), but knowing what you do want? Well that requires some foresight, some planning, and frankly, that’s kinda scary. Plus it takes a lot of work, and let’s face it, most of us are lazy, at least when it comes to relationships.

Why can’t it be easy? It seems like it should be: two people out of six billion meet, have some semblance of commonality, are more than slightly attracted to each other, are both single, and decide to spend the next few weeks or months eating, drinking, and sleeping together. Sounds a lot like the life of two gerbils in a cage… so why is it so hard?

It’d be easy to blame it all on men, so… that’s what I’m going to do. It’s just that one of the biggest problems I encounter while even trying to get to the first stage of the gerbil life is actually meeting someone. Well, I should clarify: meeting someone I can talk to for more than five minutes without wanting to kick them in the balls. Most men I meet either flounder around and bore me to death with tales of themselves doing extraordinarily boring things, or they jump way over the line into Inappropriate Land (“My friends and I have decided that we haven’t seen enough boobs lately – could you help us out?” — an actual quote.). I sometimes just wish it were as easy as the gerbils have it.

But lest you accuse me of blaming everything on the men, women are at fault here, too. We put on cleavage-baring clothes, push our boobs up to our chins, and then complain when men stare at us. “Why can’t I just find a nice guy who appreciates me for me?” we ask into the mirror while applying another coat of mascara.

The thing is, we aren’t gerbils. Gerbils are content to run on a wheel for hours and eat tasteless meat pellets for dinner. And while I’ve dated some people who do live that sort of life, even the duller people on Earth know how to at least order a pizza.

Studies have shown that women’s largest erogenous zone is their brains, and I rather do enjoy having mine stimulated, but that can be difficult to do. It takes time, effort, thought, and patience. Finding someone willing to do those things is hard on a Girl’s Night Out at the local pub. It may be the perfect place to fulfill that dreamy gerbil life of fucking, running, sleeping and eating, but I personally would like something more.

Occasionally, I actually do feel like I’ve made a connection with someone. They’re friendly, responsive, eager to listen, all that good stuff. But that all turns to crap when they become the dreaded Card-Flasher. Look, some people carry business cards, I get it, but nothing says “I’m a fucking insecure tool and I was only pretending to listen to you for half an hour so I could pimp my glorious self” better than handing out your goddamned card after a lengthy conversation about something that was obviously not interesting enough to take your mind off self-promotion for two seconds. “I really hope you get that AIDS research grant, and by the way, if you need a good Prop Master sometime, give me a call. My credits are on the back next to my headshot.” I realize this happens more in L.A. than anywhere else, but fuck off, Card Flasher. You want to network, go to a DGA screening. If you are going to insist on wasting my time and tricking me into talking to you, at least buy me a drink before you hand me your resume.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised when I find myself leaving wherever I have gone to search for love with a profound sense of emptiness and disappointment; like I said, it’s probably my own fault for picking the wrong place to go meet the sort of person I’m looking for, but there’s only so many options a person has for meeting up with other people. Dating co-workers is usually awkward (though the secrecy is admittedly fun at first, unless you make it public because you like everyone at the office speculating about the quality of your sex life behind your back), dating within your circle of friends is just plain weird, and so that really only leaves social scenes like bars, Bingo night at the corner church, or internet dating, the latter of which I despise, but that’s for another article.

Sigh.

Reading back over this, I have tried to determine if I’m simply too intolerant of stupidity and poor social skills to get most of the sort of dates I want… but then I decided that I just have good taste. I have dated some good guys, and have also had some duds, but I always give people a chance, because I figure if I get to know them, maybe I’ll really like them. Forgive the sentimentality, but perhaps that’s all I’m really asking for in return.