I never imagined I’d be single at 35.
I was gonna go to college, meet the man of my dreams during freshman orientation. We’d wait till college graduation to get married, or hey, maybe we wouldn’t. When you know, you know, we’d tell all our friends and professors who thought we were too young.

Yeah.

Or maybe, I’d watch all my college roommates find love, then all my post-college roommates … my summer camp kids … the college students I recruited when they were seventeen … the kids I used to babysit for.

And it’s been fine– or rather, most of the time it’s been fine. Honestly, the kind of boy I’d have wanted in college is almost the polar opposite of the man I’d want today. Mostly because I am nearly the polar opposite of myself in my early twenties: sheltered, extroverted, enslaved to a brain disorder, ungracious with myself and, unfortunately, with others too. Today, I live in freedom from OCD and legalism. I’m an introvert who feels called to pour out affection and not judgment.

I’m a liberal, feminist, evangelical Christian. Which sounds like an oxymoron to most people but makes total sense to me.

It has made online dating difficult, I’ll admit.

I’m “too this” for one crowd, “too that” for the other. I have a handful of “must haves” but they are very hard to find.

Next week (or whenever I can get to it), join me for a not-so-serious look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of online dating.