Welcome to strangers from KCW and Radiotopia. I'm Leah Tao. And this is the second installment

in a series about dating in general and about my dating life in particular. And holy cow, friends,

thank you for your support and advice and the stories you've sent me since the last

episode. Who needs a husband when I have you? On the last installment, I told a story about my

most recent heartbreak, and we'll have a little update on that later in this episode. Something weird happened.

But in case you missed the first one, I'm doing a series to try to figure out why I've been

single for almost four years since my fiance left me.

And I've been going back to people who didn't want to date me in recent years and asked them

why.

On the last episode, I talked to a guy who turned me down because he'd met someone else,

so he said, you know, you're wonderful and blah, blah, blah, it was just timing. But of course,

sometimes people have turned me down, not because they met someone else or because they weren't ready,

but just because they didn't want to date me. And the guy you'll hear from today is one of those.

We only went on one date, and I never heard from him again. I thought we had a pretty good connection. He had several drinks and a good

conversation, and he had a kid, which I liked. So I wondered why he didn't want to go out with me

again. It was a bit of a blow to my ego, especially because I was very new to online

dating at the time. What a dating period. And when you suddenly find yourself single for the first

time at 38, dating is a weird thing to get the hang of. But time went by, and I forgot about this guy.

Until one day, two years later, I was volunteering at my son's school for an event that was open to the public,

and I was having one of those days where I just felt like a total loser.

I'd been on an awful online date the night before with a guy I did not find appealing,

and I'd just broken up with the last guy that I had found appealing,

...