Week 1 Matchmaker: Mom

Week 1 Matchmaker: Mom

My mom is awesome.  If you've met my mom, you know that she's one of the sweetest, kindest people you'll ever meet.  We're close and she's really supportive, which I really appreciate because I've thrown her a fair number of curveballs over the years, including this latest one: "I'm doing a dating experiment, would you pick some guys for me to date?"  After some protestations about never having been on a dating site (my parents have been married for 30+ years), she agreed.

Here's the funny thing: I don't usually talk to my mom about my love life.  I used to talk to her about boys when I was growing up although I don't think she was my tell-all confidant, I think she probably knew what boys I had crushes on.  I should ask her about how much I did tell her then, sometimes we remember things very differently!

At some point in college I found that my mom had a tendency to ask about my love life at unfortunate times, through no fault of her own (my love life is usually tumultuous), usually when a guy hadn't texted/called or things weren't going well or it seemed like guy I was crushing on was not reciprocally crushing.  Being a fairly practical person I decided that it was best for both of us if I stopped telling her about my love life, so that way she wasn't accidentally bringing up injurious information.

Only when we started talking about this experiment did I realize that my parents haven't met a guy I've been involved with in the past 10 years (since high school).  They met the guys I dated in high school, but I've only had one "boyfriend" since high school and that was only a brief summer thing several years ago (he was supposed to come to one family event and bailed, and my mom still holds it against him).
I haven't been sitting home knitting cat sweaters, in the past 10 years I've been "involved with" or "hanging out" (or hooking up) a smattering of boys, more recently graduating to the Man-Child category.  These guys often "don't believe in labels" which also usually means "Not A Guy You Introduce To Your Parents."  And much of the past 10 years I've been "undateable" for various reasons: recovering from a brutal breakup, traveling around the world, focusing on film school, bouncing around the country working on farms, or focusing on my career.  But now I have no excuses left.  I've been back in LA for over 2 years, I'm no longer working 80 hour weeks, I have the time and attention span to date someone (I think).  Maybe that's why the "guys I usually date" have become the sore thumb, the one thing that hasn't changed.

I wouldn't lie to my mom about dating (honesty is quite important in our family), I just didn't volunteer a lot of information.  If she asked what I was doing that night and I had a date, I would tell her.  I would sometimes tell her about a guy I'd been involved with, but usually after it was already over.  I'm talking to her more about dating now because of this experiment.  It's funny to hear about the differences between dating now and in the 1970s.  My mom was amazed how my brother or I can know that we don't want to date someone after one date.  I'm looking forward to hearing what she thinks of OkCupid, the amount of information that you can see about someone, what guys write, etc.

I'm very curious to see what kind of guys my mom thinks I should date, and what kinds of guys on OkCupid think they're Mom Approved.  Guys will sometimes post on their profiles that they're the type of guy you could take home to your parents, but are those the types of guys that my parents would actually approve of? Will my mom pick guys that she would've dated when she was my age?  My dad was a Rebel Without A Pause when they met, he was a bouncer, rode a motorcycle, etc.  Will my mom set me up with guys like that, or Nice Guys? Somewhere in between?

Stay tuned, only time will tell!