Dating is hard. Dating in Manhattan is even harder. Dating if you suck at dating is just the worst.

I wanted to write about my trials and tribulations of online & offline dating (and I am not ashamed to admit I am a member of the online dating world). Writing about it is, in a way, a form of therapy for me, or maybe introspection, or maybe so I don’t make the same mistakes on future dates/relationships as I write about past ones, or maybe because I just need a form of emotional release that, at this point, my girlfriends are weary of hearing the casualties of my latest romantic saga.

Interestingly enough, I’m writing this while watching a rerun of Sex & the City. I actually only started watching this show after my ex and I had ended our LTR (approx. 31 months ago). While we were together, I had absolutely no interest in it, I guess because I wasn’t single and couldn’t relate. In fact, I dated my ex in the very beginning of my twenties and it lasted for a few years, so I never really had to deal with the whole process of dating. So while the SATC are re-runs, they actually are not re-runs for me at all, but actual experiences I have or am actually going through right now. One thing that stayed in my mind though, being television and all, is the fact that even though SJP plays a single female in NYC, she gets to go home every night to her husband and child… another slap in the face for a single chick!

After I broke up with my ex, I found myself not only having to learn how to date, but how to reconnect with old girlfriends and build relationship with new ones. You see, I was the girl who always had a boyfriend. When one relationship ended, I jumped into a new one. In any case, I worked on developing solid relationships with my girlfriends over the last few years and have a group of chicks whom I can count on to be there for me when I need them and vice versa…

The thing is, as you get older and understand what you want from the opposite sex, you become more selective in terms of who you can actually see yourself with and maybe, in the future, marry (and yes I would like to do this some day, I hope). That’s partly why dating now is so difficult.

I wish I started this blog when I first jumped into the dating pool a little over 2.5 years ago. But better late than never I guess, so in future posts I will add in what I call “Character Break-Downs“. Basically characters (i.e. – painful dates) I have had in the past that will segue into what I have learned from it, or should have anyway 😉