by Becca Shaw Glaser September 17, 2019, The Free Press
“You may cap him, or trap him, or catch him, but how much better to make it no object for him to catch you? Render yourself worth catching, and you will need no shrewd mothers, or managing brothers, to help you find a market.”
— from “Hark Ye, Girls,” Lime Rock Gazette, Rockland, Maine, September 26, 1850
Oh, my God, it’s hard to date here! When I left Maine I had the idea that hopefully out there in the Big Bad Beautiful World I would find someone lovely and compatible and be able to entice them to move with me to weird, gorgeous Maine. And out in The World, I did meet amazing, complex people and have some intricate, loving, star-gazing, passionate, and something-is-a-little-(or-a-lot)-off relationships. But nothing worked out to where we are still together, frolicking in our perfect Maine life. Instead, I’m your local spinster.
When I first moved back to Maine I had a joyous swim in the Shirttail of my childhood — I swam out to the little island that had always felt public and even when someone bought it and nailed “No Trespassing” signs through the flesh of the spruce trees, none of us paid any attention to it. I crawled onto the big hot rock where the water dripped from my bathing suit, watched the sun glitter over the small waves, and listened to kids playing Marco Polo, having underwater tea parties as we neighborhood kids used to do. I picked a few sparse huckleberries, my feet on the very same crevices and springy terrain they walked on when I was a kid, and how free I felt, how good in my body. I walked back from Shirttail like, “Ok, moving to Maine is probably the death of my sex life, but maybe it’s worth it.”
Three years later, it hasn’t been the death of my sex life. But close! And I’m not so sure about the trade-off. Between the challenges (and successes) of navigating small town politics, both liking and not liking running into people I know wherever I go, feeling under-stimulated, and the possibility of being partnerless until I die, I start to think about leaving. And it’s not just me. Since my return, I befriended several women in their 30s and 40s who have since left the midcoast searching for better dating prospects. A few moved to Portland, where they’ve had more options, and some have moved thousands of miles away. Many others seriously consider it. A good friend who has spent a fair amount of time making the dating rounds here has had more sexual encounters. But I don’t envy her stories of uncommunicative men, lying men, cheating men. Her experiences also makes her think men in Maine are major potheads, moreso than anywhere else she has lived. We think many are self-medicating. A pothead wouldn’t necessarily be a dealbreaker for me, but it’s a concern. What issues aren’t being worked on?
While I know it’s not just that something is mortally wrong with me, sometimes it feels like it. I don’t drink much, am kind of a hermit, and work on my own doing landscaping, where I sometimes run into frogs, snakes and newts, but that’s about it. And when I get done I’m so dirty and tired that all I want to do is jump in water to scrub off dirt and ticks, then fall into bed with a bag of chips, crunching through one tragedy after another on the news. The single life is great!
“But have you tried online dating?” “But have you tried not looking? That’s when you will find someone!” I do get out. I’m involved with local organizing, and, you know, go to events occasionally, but there sure are a lot of wedding rings. I was devoted to the online dating apps for over a year. But the guys in Portland who seemed cool and more plentiful don’t seem interested in dating people who live all the way up in the Rockland boonies. And there were just so many conversations, so many date invites that never went anywhere; there was a guy who looked vastly different than his profile pictures; a short fling with a guy who told me “best of my life,” then promptly ended it; some ghosting, etc. So it got to the point where I couldn’t even read, “Hi 😉 You look pretty. What’s up?” without wanting to throw up — it all felt so fake and doomed to go nowhere. I couldn’t even be curious anymore.
This single life I’m living is actually pretty great. My life in midcoast Maine includes jumping in the ocean, random anytime dance parties, hanging out with my family, a Rockland community which has warmly welcomed me in, an ability to organize locally and help make positive changes more directly than in most places. I love curling up by the woodstove in winter, walking on the Breakwater when waves are crashing, or the sun is setting. But you do start to wonder what you’re missing.