Sitting with five
of her girlfriends sipping cosmos and eating from a
heaping plate of nachos at the Abbey in West Hollywood,
Calif., on a recent Friday night, Gina Davidson is the
picture of a confident young L Word lesbian.
But mention
romance and Davidson's composure wavers. This petite
21-year-old nursing assistant is just three months out of
her first and only relationship. It began when she was
a teenager; she and her girlfriend had essentially
grown up together. Over the past few years, Davidson
says, their life together had deteriorated into "just
constant arguments." Still, breaking up was
hard to do. "You still think about it half the
time. You're consumed thinking about that
person," Davidson admits. "You think you
see her everywhere. The other half of the time, I just
try and have fun to get her out of my mind."
Davidson has
already been pursued, but she's sticking close to her
friends as she dips her toe into the dating world, a place
she has never really known. "I'm very
hesitant, very scared," she admits.
"I'm keeping my options open, living
life."
Davidson has
plenty of company among gays and lesbians who find
themselves suddenly single. Standing several yards away at
the Abbey is newly single Steven Mongeau, a
boyish-looking 34-year-old real estate developer
who's back on the singles scene with a vengeance
after the recent end of a three-year relationship.
He has been going
out with friends to hot spots in
"boystown"--as West Hollywood is
popularly known--but, he says, "I think the
whole thing is more shallow than a year ago.
They're more interested in the physical and
income--mostly income. I'm interested in the
whole package. A lifetime package."
Therapist Tina
Tessina, author of The Unofficial Guide to Dating
Again, says reentering the dating scene after time away
isn't easy for anyone.
"When they
get into a relationship everyone feels relief that they
don't have to do the dating thing anymore.
Dating is difficult--a lot of unknowns all at
once, and you're putting yourself out on the
line," she says. "When you've
broken up suddenly, you are wounded, even if you did
the breaking up. All your doubts go with you out in the
dating scene."
John Rochat, 43,
had been in a committed relationship for more than 12
years when he found himself suddenly single after a painful
breakup last year with the man he married at San
Francisco City Hall in 2004.
It's the
first time Rochat, an oncologist who lives in Mendocino
County, Calif., has been on his own since his late
20s, and he says he felt a sense of shock as he dove
back into the dating pool. "The last time I did
this I was in my 20s--I missed my 30s
completely," he says. "[Being single
this time] felt a lot different. Friends were asking if I
was going to clubs, and that just didn't appeal
to me. I didn't want that scene. I went through
the stage where I was going to be a monk. Then I wondered if
I was going to be a cynical, bitter aging queen. Ultimately
I realized I'd like to have a relationship
again."
Rochat has been
going on dates, and he feels optimistic about one guy in
particular. But he also feels pressure that didn't
exist during his first tour of singlehood. "You
really think [your relationship] is going to last
forever--so now, if I'm going to have forever
with someone else, it doesn't feel like as much
time. It's like I want to hurry up and get
forever going. When I got out of a three-year relationship
in my 20s I had none of these feelings. I was just
lackadaisical, thinking it would all work out."
Chicago resident
Blythe Landry, 32, thought she had found the woman of
her dreams after spending four years married to a man during
her 20s. But after less than two years she is single
again. "It's difficult, when you were so
involved with someone, to go back out there and start dating
again, because you compare them to your ex," muses
Landry, a social worker. "I might have gone
back out there prematurely."
Because she
prefers feminine women, Landry says she's had trouble
finding someone to connect with. "It's
more difficult to meet people the older you get.
I'm not in grad school anymore," she says.
"I go to yoga and I go to the gym and try to
find ways to network because I don't generally
go to clubs."
Landry has also
tried her hand at online dating--along with thousands,
maybe millions of other new singles. For many it's a
bumpy ride.
Match.com's Kristin Kelly calls people like Landry
and Rochat the "second-time-around
group." Singles in their mid 30s to early 50s, she
says, are in for some culture shock when they try to resume
dating. "Whether you're gay or
straight," says Kelly, "if you're new
to the dating scene after a number of years of being
in a relationship, the dating world has changed
drastically. Everything about the way we as a society
communicate and connect is different, with e-mail, cell
phones, BlackBerrys, and instant messaging."
Kelly says that
globally about 60,000 people register for the world's
largest dating service each day and estimates the number of
LGBT registrants at approximately 6%. "What
people love about online dating," she says,
"is that you get to share a lot of information about
who you are, and you have a chance to very quickly go
through a pool of people without ever leaving your
home. It's private. When you're just coming
back to the dating scene it allows you to put yourself out
there again in a way that's probably more
comfortable."
But Tessina, who
also authored Gay Relationships, recommends
live dating and suggests getting involved in things
that interest you--politics, a church, cooking
classes. "You need to get around people who are
doing what is interesting to you," she says.
"Online you can find sex, but what you aren't
going to get from sex is commitment. It's very,
very rare. I have friends who have gotten together
online, but you have to sift through thousands of the wrong
people to find the right person."
What's
more, Tessina points out, gay men and lesbians face an
"almost completely opposite" set of
dating issues when they return to singledom.
"The setup in our culture is that men like the hunt
and women don't; they want to settle right
down," she says. "With heterosexuals, those
two opposing things balance things out a bit."
Like Gina
Davidson, many lesbians can be hesitant to initiate pursuit,
whereas gay men--like straight men--"tend
to like the chase," Tessina says. "But
they have a really hard time developing long-term intimacy.
They get a lot more competitive with each
other."
If the gay dating
world is tough, it's fortunate that gay friendship is
strong. Roberto Ezzevalli, 36, and Jim Key, 41, have
weathered the single life together in Los Angeles for
the past two years. Although both are handsome,
successful professionals, each has found it difficult to
find someone new to share his life with. "I was
with the person I thought I was going to be with for
the rest of my life," Key says of Dan, the
video-game programmer he met while dancing at a club in San
Diego six years ago. "It was the first time
I'd lived with someone. As soon as I saw him, I
was head over heels infatuated, then in love."
Dan broke
Key's heart when he wanted out, and even though later
he wanted to reconcile, Key says, "I had some
trust issues."
Single again, Key
left San Diego and took a job as chief public affairs
officer for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, a
position that allows him to come across plenty of
potential dates in the course of his day. But he also
signed up for a gay social-networking Web site. "As
I'm getting older, I don't have the
patience for bars, and meeting people online is so
much more efficient. I've had multiple dates with a
few people, but it's tough to make a
relationship. Being in a relationship is more
satisfying than being single--but not if the
relationship isn't satisfying."
Ezzevalli, an
illustrator in the advertising industry, had been in a
three-year relationship with a man with whom he had just
bought a house. It was during stressful renovations
that the relationship fell apart.
Now that
he's closer to 40 than 30, Ezzevalli says dating is
much harder than it is for a 20-something.
"When you're younger you're not 100%
aware of life--you have the world at your feet,
with thousands of possibilities," he says.
"Now I'm older, and my principles have become
more grounded. There are tons of frogs out there, I have to
say that. But if a date goes bad, you think, This
will be a great story to tell my friends.
Otherwise you'd never survive."
In fact, on
Valentine's Day 2006, Ezzevalli and Key were among
some friends who gathered at a West Hollywood
restaurant to have an anti-Valentine's dinner.
They all shared dating horror stories. Key shared a
doozy about a guy he had met online. "We agreed to
get together again, and he suggested renting a DVD and
making his 'world-famous turkey tacos.'
Then, before the dinner, he e-mails me asking me to take a
personality test before the date. Then he arrived, groceries
in hand, and said, 'I'm a diabetic; I
just need to cook this up. I need to eat
now.' In the bag is ground turkey, ketchup,
shredded cheese in a bag, store-bought shells, and a
bag of taco seasoning mix. Every other word out of his
mouth was 'baby.' Within five minutes he was
driving me insane. I couldn't wait to get him
out of my house. The next day he e-mailed me and said,
'Why didn't you like my turkey tacos? I sensed
some real chemistry with us.'