Must Love Cats

I read back what I just wrote.

34. Single. Loves reality TV and rooftop stargazing.

No, that’s too cheesy. And I don’t have to emphasize me being single, this is a dating website. Everyone here is single. Or is at least pretending to be.

The name of the site is City Singles. My best friend Marge sent me the link and told me to sign up after one hazy night together on my balcony, where I confessed my probable destiny of winding up alone after having consumed two glasses of wine.

Well, not completely alone. For someone who has managed to “fail” at what society considers to be the most important marker of a woman’s success, I am quite successful in all other aspects. I run a multi-million-dollar company with twenty employees. I live in a beach home on the California coast. And I have enough free time to spend my nights watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with my seven-year-old Scottish fold cat, Luchi. Life is grand.

But somewhere along the way, in the midst of building my dream career and creating the type of financial freedom that abolishes the need to depend on anyone for the rest of my human existence, the idea of finding someone to share my life with has somehow slipped my mind. After all, I’ve achieved everything I’ve ever wanted. Not once did I consider there would always be more to long for. That even after accomplishing everything your heart desires, there awaits a new stream of ambition, of yearning for something you have yet to attain. And since I have yet to attain a life partner, it seems only natural to be the next step.

On the other hand, if I were a man, I would already be considered wildly successful! No one would ask about my lack of a love life, as they would assume I am bedding women left and right with my affluent charms. And that would be enough. No intrusive questions on when I plan to have kids, if I plan on having kids, when I plan on getting married, and the list goes on and on. But the truth is, I have not once considered any of those things. I don’t care for children. I like them, but they seem an awful lot of work. This may sound strange coming from someone who has built an entire empire from scratch, but running a business is strategic. And despite what those parenting magazines may try to tell you, there is no strategy that can be applied when it comes to raising a human being.

And despite how women are portrayed through romantic comedies and flimsy sitcoms, I didn’t exactly grow up dreaming of my wedding day. I dreamt of becoming rich. My entire adult life has been centered around money and how to attain it. Lots of it. A rather “masculine” ambition, some might say. But I call it logic. No woman on the face of the earth wants to depend on a man for her very survival. But in the face of adversity, and the age-old belief that women are merely here to produce offspring for the succession of a man’s bloodline, following the status quo of marriage and children probably seems the easier route to take. Or maybe it’s genuinely what some women long for. I honestly have no idea.

I look over at Luchi napping on his cat tree in the corner of our living room. My partner in crime these past seven years. The only roommate or life companion I’ve ever needed.

“Oh, Luchi. Promise me you’ll live to be at least…” I do a quick calculation in my head, “Forty-three? So I’ll never have to go through the trouble of finding someone.”

Luchi opens one eye as if to say yeah right, lady then quickly shuts it again, returning to his slumber.

I look back at my screen. Why is it we’re expected to list an amalgamation of hobbies and interests to attract a partner? As if a couple of words I chose to describe myself with is going to reel in the love of my life. Let’s be real. Whether a man clicks into my profile or not depends entirely on my profile picture.

I go to my selection of photos. Nothing too revealing, or else men will only think of sex when they look at me. But nothing too modest either, or else they’ll think I’m boring or worse, a challenge. I could do that thing where my picture is focused on scenery and half my face is hidden, but they’ll inevitably ask for more photos anyway, so that would be useless. I have to find something in between the mess of it all. Something that speaks who I am, without giving the wrong impression to anyone about who I am.

I find a picture of me sitting with Luchi on my balcony, wearing a cocktail dress that implies a fun night out, with a blanket thrown over just enough of my legs to imply modesty. I'm even in the midst of plucking fruit off my nearby pear tree. Wholesome. Ridiculous, I know. But women cannot simply exist in this world. We must calculate our every move in order to be taken seriously.

That fun night out was actually my housewarming party, taken last year. I had all my friends over to show off my beautiful new beachside home. Something I was so proud of, and still am, when I signed the papers sealing my name as homeowner. I bought it with no one else in mind but myself, of course. I couldn’t imagine ever leaving it, or making room for someone new, despite the abundance of space I clearly have.

I let out a long, drawn-out sigh, realizing what I’m getting myself into. Once you’ve reached the point in your life of feeling settled and content with who you are and what you have accomplished, it’s hard to imagine a relationship fitting into that. I’m no longer an eager-eyed college student looking for a tornado of excitement to waltz into her life, relieving me from boredom and lack of self-direction. Because I’m not bored, and I have plenty of direction. So, at this point in my life, what exactly could a man offer me that I don’t already have?

I hear Marge’s voice from the other night like a whisper in my mind.

Companionship.

“But I have you,” I respond, voraciously swirling the wine in my glass like crashing waves. “And Luchi.”

“Yes, you do. But I’m married, Jackie. It’s just not the same. As for Luchi? Well… I have no comment to make on that,” she says, slowly lifting her glass to her lips in the telltale way people do when they in fact have plenty to say but would rather keep to themselves.

I think back to the last time I had romantic companionship in my life and laugh. Yes, a real laughing matter indeed. I was twenty-eight and on the brink of growing my company to six figures. At this point in my life, I was far too busy to take dating seriously. Even busier than I am now, in fact. But something in me wanted to dabble.

So, I downloaded a dating app and told myself I would go on at least three dates, with three different men. And if nothing came of it, I could go back to focusing on my career and live happily ever after. It’s not like I had high hopes. I had done my fair share of dating in the past, all of which ended abruptly once they realized I had zero intentions of starting a family. I was well-versed in how the dating game worked. Either tell a man upfront about your disinterest in rearing children and risk scaring him away with your brutal candor, or you can save the honesty for later, at which point he’ll throw a fit because you should have told him sooner.

It baffles me how many men want to have children. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that they don’t have to carry the child around in their own bodies for nine months? Or the expectation and social construction that mothers are natural caregivers and thus, will presumably raise the child for them? Sounds like a full package deal if you ask me. Heck, I’d probably want children too if I were a man! Basking in praise for performing bare minimal parental duties such as picking up my kid from soccer practice or making them a jelly sandwich.

So, because of the mixed bag of reactions I had received in the past, I decided to wait until the opportunity arose for such a disclosure in my three-date experiment. My career success was another thing I decided not to reveal right away. Success is like a sword to a woman. It may protect you, but has the tendency of scaring those away who are unsure of how you are going to use it. Especially men.

The first two dates were disastrous. One was completely focused on my appearance the entire night, making the sort of lame, borderline inappropriate comments one might expect from a college freshman who has yet to understand how the real world of dating works between two fully-grown adults. And the other couldn’t stop talking about his mom. Enough said.

But the third was unexpected. He had the sort of silent confidence that made him appear both mysterious and charismatic. Like he didn’t have to try for a woman’s attention, because he was secure in who he was and where he was headed. I found it both intriguing and miserably nerve-wracking, the way he so easily slid into my life without a moment’s notice. Without me having the time to process what was even happening, as if I was caught up in some spell I had never consented to. That’s always the worst, the feeling of falling for someone against your own will. I had never encountered such a man before.

But, as we all know, no man is perfect. And any man who appears to be is most likely overcompensating for some major lack. Or its very opposite. Something he has and doesn’t want you to know about.

In this case, he had a wife. How he managed to date me for three months without revealing this rather crucial piece of information, I have no idea. But I finally understood why he appeared so damn confident throughout our time together. Not to mention his cool indifference towards me not wanting kids. Ironic, isn’t it? How men who appear the most stable and self-assured, more often than not, already have a woman on the sidelines doing most of the heavy lifting that is their emotional well-being? Even more ironic is how flippantly they’ll risk losing it all, only for her to take on the inevitable workload that comes with the guilty conscience of a cheating man.

Ever since then, I’ve fallen off the dating scene completely. What’s the point of meeting anyone these days if there’s this unspoken agreement to put on a show for the other person? To pretend to be someone you’re not for the sake of receiving temporary love and affection until you can no longer keep up the act? At which point, you’ve already moved onto the next, someone new who can fall for your smoke and mirrors all over again. A real bleak way for one to spend their existence if you ask me.

I turn to my computer once more, this time knowing exactly what to write. I’m no longer playing into the game of mystery. No longer hiding my true self from the world in hopes of being liked or accepted. Because I don’t need anyone to like me. And that’s the most freeing feeling of all.

Accomplished businesswoman seeking genuine companionship. Not interested in kids, sorry. Must love cats.