Losing hope, yet keeping it all at the same time

                Being single is hard work. There is nothing easy about dating.  If you are single, it is because you have walked away from a relationship in the past that did not work out.  This puts the single folk in a position where they are carrying around memories and baggage (as we will always carry around mementos from our past) along with a list of needs or expectations having learned the hard way one or more times what does not work.  This is where I find myself. I turn thirty next month and I found myself once again single; the very think I thought I had done away with in my life when I was married at the age of twenty one.  Yet, here I am, young, but not young enough, with two kids, and with nine years of memories jaded with the image of my Ex.

                The last couple of years were very difficult with my Ex and I would even go as far as to say abusive, while not physically, still left me with marks  Things were so bad in the end I started to look forward to dating with excitement, wondering what it would be like to have a guy work to gain my attention.  To be with someone who wanted to be with me, not simply because they were trying to endure our matrimonial covenants. Despite this excitement, I was a wreck after my Ex left and spent most of the next year trying to heal myself of the emotional and spiritual wounds that had been inflicted on my through my Ex and through the poisonous relationship we both fostered. I then dated a couple of men who had been close friends, making dating seems anything but scary, but now after all of that is past, here I am starting off a new decade in a situation I realize I was right to fear prior to my marriage. 

Whoever told me dating was fun, was a bold faced liar.  Fun comes in after several dates, when you move past dating and into more of a relationship. Relationships are fun, but dating is not.  First dates are especially awful.  At first you are excited or even nonchalant about a person, but the closer you get to a date the more nervous and apprehensive you get because despite trying to be optimistic and hopeful,  you can’t help but remember every bad first date you have been on.  Then the fears flood you.  Fears of what the other person may or may not be like, fears of yourself and whether you are enough, which leads you to this weird state in which you put way too much pressure on yourself and getting ready as you have already come to the realization that a first date is nothing more than a show horse competition (excuse my analogy as I have been watching a lot of “Heartland” lately).  Basically you have a couple of hours where you will be judged. Usually on looks, career, hobbies, likes, dislikes and sometimes even political and religious opinions.  You are there to try and put your best foot forward; making the jumps your date throws at you and all the while trying to look pretty in the process, but if that weren’t complicated enough, you too are scoring and judging your date with your own set of criteria and needs, that come the end of the date, you don’t even know if you were even scoring one another on the same criteria, Heck, in the end, you don’t even know if you were even considered to be scored in the first place. Now you might argue that good communication could circumvent all of this.  Well, I disagree.  You can only be so honest and so direct before you come off as pushy, unapproachable, hard or too aggressive and if you are in fact earning points, you can’t afford to be labeled in such a way.  As I mentioned, you are doing judging of your own.  Where in a short period of time you essentially try and develop a connection to merit a second date, while not trying to get too attached so you aren’t hurt and disappointed if a second date doesn’t happen. 

So, once again dating is not fun, at least for me it is not.  You never know the person well enough to really feel comfortable and if you aren’t one hundred percent comfortable, how can you really be yourself? This is where I currently sit.  In the last two weeks I have had three first dates and no second dates and I can’t help but feel sad and lonely feeling like I’m not good enough; I must just be really bad at first impressions; or there just isn’t a guy out there for me, which brings me to my title. I have lost hope in finding a guy and remarrying.  Does this mean I am giving up? No. I will still go on dates if for no other reason than to maybe meet a new friend or two, but I no longer spend hours fantasizing and imagining what my next husband might be like.  I will not go out of my way to the point of incontinence to meet a new guy. I will not believe that I deserve a second chance in love and marriage.  Instead, I will focus on the hope that I do have.  I have hope in my temple covenants and of the covenants that I made when I was sealed.  I will hope in my Savior and in his timing knowing that even if I never have the experience here on earth, I will in fact have the opportunity to be bound to a noble and great man dependant on staying true to the promises I made with the Lord. So while I don’t hope for a new man in my life, I hope in the Lord and I have faith that if he chooses to bless me in such a way, then it will happen as long as I am doing all that I can.

I apologize if this comes off negative as that is not what is meant, rather, dating is difficult, which has led me to shift my perspective from a worldly one to an eternal one.