I’ve been on a free online dating site hiatus for over 6 weeks and it’s been gloriously freeing. The whole not wasting my time swiping left and right, reading dumb messages, and rolling my eyes at the lack of ingenuity is fantasmo. The only thing is…I haven’t been on a date in 6 weeks. I am officially the most single (the singlest?) I’ve ever been.

I’ve been stuck behind a computer screen for so long, that I’m a real life Bambi on ice.

After learning that the one person I’ve flirted with in a month-and-a-half was 24, I kept talking to him. I’ve met a few other good looking lads here in the real world and I’m embarrassingly daft at attempting to pick them up. My excuse for being so bad at it (besides years of non-practice), is that I’m scared to death. I’m afraid of rejection. I also fear that cute men aren’t actually single. Online, they’re all single (well, usually), but IRL who knows?! The ol’ checking the left hand only gets you so far since the lack of wedding band doesn’t mean they aren’t fully and madly in love with someone else, or that they aren’t in the throes of an online dating addiction.

A future politician caught my eye recently – smart, funny, successful, interesting aka perfection. We have a mutual friend, but I could not get myself to ask that mutual friend if he was single. Physically couldn’t. I still haven’t asked, so I still have no idea if he’s single or not. My other friends have scolded me, “You are so honest all the time. Why didn’t you just ask?!”

I met an equally as perfect guy at an organization where I volunteer. Friends are urging me to contact him. “Just ask him out!” they yell. “I CAN’T!” I yell back. I will be seeing him at least once a month for the rest of my tenure with the organization. What if he has a girlfriend? What if he says, “Eww, no thanks!?”

As my mother has said to me multiple times, “You are so confident in every other area of your life. Why can’t you be that way with dating?” And, ma, I have no freaking clue. But I do know that I’m working on it. I’ve closed the laptop and I’m being a human. It may not be what the rest of the single world is doing, but I’m not sure I want to date someone addicted to free dating sites anyway. So, if you’ll excuse me, I need to muster up the courage to approach a cute man…tomorrow…or on Saturday…or when the weather finally gets nicer.