Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino.

Perhaps out of the sheer need to look away from all the horrible news pouring out of every screen, I’ve found myself watching . . . matchmaking shows. For someone who never watches rom-coms (hate is a strong word, but I’ll use it), this has been an interesting diversion for me to take up.

You have The Bachelor, I have Muslim Matchmaker. You have Love is Blind, I have Indian Matchmaking. You have Love Island, I have Love on the Spectrum.

As a therapist and as a person on the internet, I come across many, many stories about Dating In These Times. Meanwhile, my own past dating history feels sparse. I can name pretty much every single date I’ve had in my life, because there are so few, relatively speaking. My first date, or what I thought of as a date, was going to Magic Mountain with my longtime crush Marc Hendricks. I don’t think Marc saw it as a date, though. We were in sixth grade.

The second middle school date I had was with someone named Chet, who I have no recollection of having met, because we didn’t go to the same school—we were suddenly just on a date at a Halloween horror thing—what was it called? The one at what used to be Devonshire Downs in the San Fernando Valley (extra credit to Valley Girls who know). We had both been dropped off by parents and I remember an awful make-out session that did not excite me about the future of sex. There was also a date with Brandon from middle school (also blech). Then one day, I went on a “date” (more like a drunken hang-out with numerous others) with “Nicholas” (if you read my books you’ll know) and suddenly I was Nicholas’s girlfriend (while also seeing my former English teacher on the weekends—again, if you read my books, you know).

Nicholas took up a few years of my life. While with him, I went on one “date” with a man more than twice my age, and of course, the “dates” with the English teacher.

This was my dating history, ages thirteen to nineteen.

It could be said that at nineteen, I “dated” the man I met on a prairie in South Dakota while riding a hippie bus going in the opposite direction of his—we met up a few times after that strange event on what some might call “dates”—the most problematic factor being that we lived two states away from each other. Of course this made our dating short-lived.

The one I think of as my first mature adult relationship began when I was nineteen. We met in a classroom and studied together, and then, once our chemistry was sealed, we dated—as in, we set aside our textbook (The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft—a perfect place to meet your future lover, it turns out) and went to restaurants, punk shows, the beach. We dated.

And, like with Nicholas, I was suddenly in a relationship. I went from Nicholas (four years) to Ren (roughly four-plus years). Ren and I opened up the relationship (signaling the volatile ending of us) and I “dated” Justin. It wasn’t really dating, though, maybe it was? Justin and I were fellow writers who just happened to have chemistry and since my primary relationship was open, I started seeing Justin. Was it a date when I flew to Spokane to spend a weekend with him? Probably. We were extremely clear with each other that we had no romantic feelings, though. That didn’t stop us from having nice dinners together, sipping wine in front of his fireplace, and playing at “dating.”

“Michael” and I were friends who began dating, though I don’t think he or I ever called it that. Then we were suddenly living together. I spent another four-plus years with him. After reading The Ethical Slut (it was 1999, okay??), I asked if we could open the relationship. I went out on one date, with a woman who had been a friend and who I had lusted after since day one—and she fell in love with another woman a short time later. Case closed.

I recall one friend asking me if I knew what it was like to be single. I did not. Did I want to try it on? she asked. Sure.

After I broke up with Michael and moved back to Los Angeles after eight years away, I thought, This is it. I am going to date. I am going to date WOMEN. And because it was 2002, I had like two options for online dating, which was still shiny and new and not at all the cesspool it is now. This is when I had my most date-y dates.

There was the guy who could not understand why a woman would masturbate. There was the funny guy who said in his profile that he “loved tits” and who blasted Metallica for me in his cherry-red vintage car. There was the person who I’ve wondered whether they eventually identified as non-binary and/or trans. There was the one who drove an expensive soccer mom car with rope in the backseat. There was the one who fucked up my psyche and became material for many writings (“Sh.” in two of my books). There was the one who was so boring I never saw him again after one date. And then the one who gave me a professional sketch of Sophia Loren for some inexplicable reason. There was also the friend who I openly crushed out on, who took me out for dinner in places as far away as Ventura, who had me over for dinner, drinks—but neither of us ever made a move. I naturally assumed we were just friends until years later, when he described us as having “dated.” WHAT?! I still don’t understand it.

And then there was the one I half-heartedly dated, then became good friends with, and eventually married—thus ending my dating life once again. I was back to being In A Relationship—for another five years.

What I recall of the dating spree I had in 2002 was that it was funny, intoxicating, and ultimately, a harmless distraction from my grief of having left Olympia and my relationship with Michael.

Damn, I guess I do have some kind of dating history? It’s maybe just not the average dating history.

And—where were the women I wanted to date? The two online dating options I had did not present me with anyone I was remotely interested in or attracted to. Like many bi/queer cis women, I found it far easier to “just” “date” cis men because they were bountiful online. They were easy, they were game, I knew what I was getting into, and I didn’t know how else to meet people, particularly women. I was also scared of meeting women to date. I’d been out to myself and my lovers for years, but the prospect of dating women in Los Angeles meant possibly coming out to my family—which scared the shit out of me.

Until.

Lunches during the workday, birthday parties, a concert—for years I “dated” someone while I was married. Of course we didn’t call it dating because we were both in long-term relationships, but then why did my (ex-)husband call her my “boyfriend”? I jumped from marriage, divorce, into another LTR, the same one I am in now, today.

And she and I watch these dating shows together.

We started with Muslim Matchmaker. The matchmakers, Yasmin and Hoda, are a great pairing themselves. Also: their clothes are gorgeous, their makeup flawless, and they are fun-ny. But of course, I was interested, too, in the actual matchmaking. The cultural specifications for dating, the familial input, the rules the matchmakers try to impress upon their clients for best results—it’s so far away from my own limited experiences of meeting and dating people and makes me very curious to learn more. We ship one couple and not another. We laugh at the quirks of dating, people’s expectations for perfect partners, all the intricacies of the getting-to-know-someone dance. I was sad to say goodbye to these matchmakers and their sweet, funny personalities and amazing clothes when the show ended. So we moved on to Sima Aunty Taparia from Mumbai, and her penchant for utilizing many tools and helpers in her matchmaking efforts, including face readers and astrologers.

Are these shows problematic? Yeah. In the matchmaking shows, everyone is wealthy and upper caste for the most part. Men are sexist, the shows only feature heterosexual relationships, and Indian Matchmaking is specifically about arranged marriages.

And yet I can’t stop watching. There’s something about the idea of other people choosing options for your partner for you that seems so efficient. Lol. Getting a peek into any particular couple’s dynamics, how they go about wooing, avoiding, and breaking up—it’s all fascinating to me, which is maybe why I’m a therapist (and if you haven’t watched Couple’s Therapy, go watch it—I highly recommend it). Watching couples date on tv in 2025 is wild. I’m watching people connect, sit with loneliness, reject others, avoid connection, be influenced by family, and also find love without the help of the matchmakers. I’m also thinking about how no one gave me or my peers much advice, if any, about dating. And of course I think of my kid’s own future—who she may date, what guidance I might offer—though I myself have such a limited history of dating.

When we wrapped up Indian Matchmaker in its (somewhat weakest) third season, I happened upon (Netflix suggested) Dating on the Spectrum.

I want to say here that I could write a volume on every person I dated and wrote about here, and maybe someday I will. Everything I write in this post is obviously a truncated version of years-long relationships. Like, I recently have wanted to write about me and Ren, from start to finish, either as an exercise for myself, and/or because I think there is something in the story of who we were that I think would make for a good essay. There are others of whom I feel I already wrote plenty about and never want to write about again (“Sh.”), and still others who I will just plain never write about at length.

So in laying this out, I want to say that Love on the Spectrum is a completely different experience for me than the matchmaking shows. Not because it completely takes place in the U.S., but because at least one (if not two) of my long term relationships were with folks who are on the spectrum. Back when I was in a relationship with them, the culture-at-large wasn’t yet widely using the terms “autism” or “spectrum.” In the past year, I noticed that one ex I’m still friends with had updated their instagram bio, mentioning that they are autistic (and nonbinary). My reaction was emotional—like a mixture of relief and happiness, that this person had a term that they agreed with, and wanted to display. There was, like, a gentle reframe for me of the entire relationship, where some things made new sense to me, and other things just made deeper sense.

And of course I have and have had numerous people on the spectrum in my life before and since, as friends, as colleagues, but it turns out I had also been in a LTR with someone autistic, my own version of Love on the Spectrum.

The show offers a range of relationships to the viewer. Some couples are matched, some speed-date, and some meet outside the parameters of the show but appear on the show. My experience watching it has been affirming in so many ways—having spent several years with someone who I loved and simply thought of as “quirky”, whose “quirks” were appealing, intelligent, funny, and sweet in my eyes, and seeing various reflections, echoes, and shadows of them in the main characters on the show—is satisfying, affirming, and, yes, entertaining. And yet, the show is limited. There are few people of color featured. We are watching very well-resourced families who appear to have some wealth and therefore are free to focus on dating, so it’s not at all inclusive.

Still, seeing people connect makes me happy. Not thinking 24/7 about the news makes me less despairing. Watching people negotiate all the exciting and annoying aspects of dating and being in relationship doesn’t seem like the worst way to be spending my downtime.

Besides the fact that I think I would make a decent matchmaker myself (hehehe), I am enthralled with these shows for the window into the really quite miraculous experience that is two random people finding each other and deciding to be in a relationship, with all the risks and beauty that entails.

So here we sit, my queer lesbian gender-nonconforming parter and me, a queer kind-of-bi, mostly lesbian femme, watching these heterosexual, mostly much younger people looking for and sometimes finding connection, partnership, and sometimes, even love. Absorbing the bad news of the world, while maintaining some buffer against full-on despair.

I hope you’re finding the same, wherever and however you need it.

Have you asked your local library to stock a book recently? Would you consider asking your local library to stock new editions of my books? Here’s how: Copy and paste the ISBN numbers below into the field on the webpage of your local library’s book purchase request form. As an example, here’s the Los Angeles Public Library’s “Suggest A Purchase” page. (If you can request e-books, the ISBNs for those are also listed on the Northwestern University Press website.)

Excavation: 9780810148604

Hollywood Notebook: 9780810148581

Bruja: 9780810148567