{"id":2073,"date":"2018-05-18T12:13:37","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T19:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/?p=2073"},"modified":"2018-05-18T12:13:37","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T19:13:37","slug":"on-dating-and-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/2018\/05\/on-dating-and-friendships\/","title":{"rendered":"On dating and friendships\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An acquaintance of mine (Jenny) recently wrote this really good <a href=\"https:\/\/livingmykoru.wordpress.com\/2018\/05\/01\/i-stopped-dating\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">post<\/a> about why she&#8217;s stopped dating. She had a bunch of points that I really related to as I&#8217;ve navigated dating after my relationship with H ended at the end of the last year. Her first point: &#8220;1. I find it very difficult to be attracted\/interested in a picture or two and short little blurb. And so many dudes [<em>women in my case<\/em>]\u00a0don\u2019t even write a blurb.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Honestly I just don&#8217;t really get online dating that much. The only semi-successful relationship I&#8217;ve had that started from an online dating site was H, and that only lasted about a year. My most successful relationships have been ones that started organically with people I&#8217;ve already met. I haven&#8217;t necessarily been friends with that person before entering a dating relationship, just that the initial introduction has already happened.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Jenny, I&#8217;m not ready to give up on dating yet, I haven&#8217;t even completely given up on the online sites. I don&#8217;t think my heart is really into online dating though. There are plenty of anxieties that I&#8217;m still working through regarding dating after my divorce and then the end of my relationship (and friendship) with H. I&#8217;m in a bit of a Catch-22 when it comes to dating. I want to date, but I don&#8217;t at the same time, or at my worst I don&#8217;t feel like I&#8217;m a good potential partner for someone.<\/p>\n<p>Like Jenny, what I really want is to work on both maintaining and finding quality friendships. I have my friend family both near and far, those folks that you can call up after not speaking for a year or two and its like yesterday, but I&#8217;d like to have a few more folks locally. It&#8217;s not easy making new friendships in your 40s (as I talked about in a previous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/2018\/on-friends\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">post<\/a>). I&#8217;ve reached out to folks to do things (overcoming my anxiety about this). I still spend way too much time watching Netflix alone on the weekends, but I am getting better about making sure I do still get out of the house and see another human at least once during the weekend.<\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BihcXy4hioh\/\">https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BihcXy4hioh\/<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An acquaintance of mine (Jenny) recently wrote this really good post about why she&#8217;s stopped dating. She had a bunch of points that I really related to as I&#8217;ve navigated dating after my relationship with H ended at the end of the last year. Her first point: &#8220;1. I find it very difficult to be &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/2018\/05\/on-dating-and-friendships\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[586,597,598,532],"class_list":["post-2073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-or-something-like-it","tag-dating","tag-friendships","tag-h","tag-life-or-something-like-it","item-wrap"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/upload\/\/app_1_220086724709892_1567717122.gif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2073"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2077,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions\/2077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}