"My Momma told me...you better shop around."

I used to love to shop.  I could spend hours at the mall, just wandering around, window shopping, trying things on, coveting the latest Coach bags.  But somewhere along the way my desire for shopping died out and I just don't love it like I used to.

And online dating feels like online shopping.

Think about it... You go to a site that you think will have what you're looking for.  Then you put in your search parameters: height, weight, ethnicity, religion, likes/dislikes.  How is that any different than logging onto the Gap website and telling it you want to see: jeans, white, size 12.  Searching an online dating website is like shopping online for clothes, despite finding a mate being much more important than finding a cute pair of jeans.  Yet I go through the same process for both.

Something seems wrong about that, to me.

Don't get me wrong - I know a lot of people who have found true love online.  In fact, I'll be the Maid of Honor this summer for C, who met her fiancee on Match.com.  However, the whole process of scrolling through profile photos, adjusting my search settings... it all feels like the same thing I did when I was trying to buy a couch two years ago.

This one's cute, that one's ugly, too expensive, too cheap, too big for the living room, too small to lay on to watch tv.  (That's the couch, not the guys.)  But I may as well be looking at the guys the same way.

Too old, too young, too full of himself, too bad he doesn't know how to spell, too bad he lives in Berkeley.

I feel like Goldilocks, waiting to find that "just right" porridge.

Now my friends tell me to be patient, that the right guy will come along eventually, and to that I say, "BUT I'M ALMOST 40 AND I'M GETTING LONELY!"

Also, last night on Glee -- yes, I watch Glee and yes, maybe that's why I'm still single -- Coach Bieste was afraid to leave her husband even though he hit her because she was afraid nobody else would ever love her.  And I'll admit, I totally understood that fear.  Let me pause to say that I would NOT stay with a man that hit me.  What I'm saying is I identify with the fear of, "What if this is as good as it gets?"  I thought that when I got divorced and moved back to L.A. almost five years ago.  Some nights as I lay in bed, alone, I thought to myself, "What if I was wrong?  What if that unhappy marriage was as good as it was going to get for me and I just gave it all away?"  It's like that song "Possibility" by Lykke Li (it was in the second Twilight movie -- and yes, I watch Twilight, perhaps another reason I'm still single):

There's a possibility
There's a possibility
All that I had was all I'm gon' get

Clearly that's the loneliness talking -- the fear -- because I know deep down inside that I would rather be out of an unhappy marriage and lonely than falling asleep each night next to a man that is not the right man for me.

But sometimes...

Sometimes I wonder if that was my only chance at love.  If I had that one shot, just that single shot, and that's as good as it was ever going to get.

I clearly don't want that to be my reality though.  I don't want to believe that this world only holds one shot at love for me.  So I keep "shopping" online for a date because I refuse to accept that there is nobody else out there for me.  And somewhere, maybe in the Valley, or maybe on the west side, there is a man who is waiting to be loved.

I just hope he's shopping online, too.