It’s a weird thing to start dating again as an adult.
I knew how to date as a teenager and twentysomething, but as an Established Person, it feels a bit like going backwards. Meeting someone you have to shave your legs for feels like something you do in high school. Adults go on obligatory couples’ dinners and order overpriced entrees with people they tolerate because of their children.
Established People have graduated past all those youthful milestones like “becoming official” or moving in together. With age you’re supposed to have someone to sit on the couch with in your ugly sweats, and strategize how you’re going to get out of going to Uncle Jerry’s 75th birthday in November.
The identity shift from “married person” to “single person” was weird. Having a boyfriend after having a husband was, likewise, weird.
I had been with my ex-husband before Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, so I was one of those a-holes who didn’t know what “swipe right” meant. Downloading an app was a thing I did at the behest of my friend Casey who insisted.
I meet a lot of dating purists who espouse that meeting in-person is The Superior Way. I am tempted to agree, but being a solo-parent to an elementary school-aged child, there aren’t many opportunities to meet single people. I am out a lot but the events I attend involve married people and children. What playgrounds the single dads frequent – I do not know. I never found them.
The apps were fantastic for me because they allowed me to “get out of the house,” while being home for bedtime every night.
Living in a big city, I became a stickler for safety before meeting someone IRL, so the next thing I learned was how to be an FBI detective (and enlist my friends) so we could vet any sketchy characters. One way to do that was using secret online groups where women posted about people they were dating to discover if others were dating them too. The answer was almost always, yes.
People also posted questions about dating. Personal questions. Questions that revealed more than they realized they were revealing.
I started commenting when people asked questions that seemed…how do I say this? Like the poster didn’t know the behavior they were observing from a man was unacceptable.
Abuse generally doesn’t begin with broken bones and bruises, it starts with the sense something is off, followed by a slow disintegration of your reality where you feel very confused about a person you love and feel positive affinity toward. You start to experience a cognitive dissonance to bridge the gap between who you believe this person is and how they appear to be behaving. I tried to help women pierce through that fog.
I was scared of my ex and that made me slightly scared of all men so I posted in these groups anonymously.
The freedom to share what I had learned and to help other women was thrilling. So was being able to ask taboo questions. Questions I was afraid to admit I had or wondered. Questions that led to conversations you can’t have in polite company. Questions I wanted to ask, but didn’t know how.
Anonymously, I could. And I did.
Posting anonymously allowed me to speak freely at a time when I was afraid.
It was also a crutch I could use to avoid having these conversations in daylight. Avoid seeing that the things I experienced had really happened. Avoid owning my point of view. Avoid the consequences that could result from speaking up.
I hadn’t realized how easy it was to feel safe behind obfuscation. To be in the dark.
One day someone posted a question about narcissistic abuse, and I commented using my real name. I knew the risk and I decided that it was ok. That having a person see me – a real person, with a real name and real face and real identity – was more important.
I was speaking for myself, as myself.
It felt like power.
The kind of power I’d been missing – power over my own voice and the ability to share it. Posting anonymously made me feel safe, but it also made me small. I noticed that my desire to publish publicly was dwindling. Being invisible expanded my fear of reprimand, consequences, and judgement. It kept me confined to the dark.
What had started as a way to stay safe, turned into a place to hide from the light.
I don’t judge anyone who is in the position I was in. When you’re afraid, when you’re embroiled in legal battles and advised to stay silent, or when you’re simply a person in the world and there are consequences to being seen – it makes sense to choose anonymity.
I couldn’t choose it anymore. If I was going to share an opinion or experience, I had to do it as me.
It’s possible I’ll be sued for what I say. It’s possible people will attack my character or call my credibility into question. That is the tax you pay for freedom of speech.
Real connection, real shared experience, real truth telling – requires a name.
And my name is Margo Aaron.
