Welcome to Strangers from KCW in Radio Topia. I'm Leah Taow and today's story is about

me. If you're my parents, maybe you could skip this one. You know, I've been single for

almost four years since my ex and I split up and I decided to figure out why the hell

that is. Why am I not finding love again? So I've gone back to some of the people who

didn't want to date me in recent years and I've asked them this. If you feel ambushed

by this question, skip it. But why do you think you and I didn't connect? Like I'm trying

to understand like what goes wrong for me? Like I can hear on the tape this Robert. I met

him online last winter and after a second date he didn't want to go out with me again.

I hadn't seen or talked in sense until I wrote and said, hey, I'm doing a story about

dating. Could I interview you? And he said sure. So you'll hear his answers today. But

first let me give you a bit of my backstory. If you listen to this program a lot, perhaps

you know that I was engaged to be married, but we broke up when I was pregnant and then

we tried to get back together and then we broke up for good when our son was ten months.

It'll be four years this fall and it's the first time in my life that I've been single

for a real stretch. And I always make sure people knew that, you know, that I was never

single before because I found it so embarrassing to be single, especially with such a young

child, you know, when all the other baby mamas were married. So I wanted people to know

that, you know, I wasn't one of those sad cases who just could never get a man because

a woman who can't get a man is about as low as you can go on the social totem pole.

Not too long ago a friend of mine who's a little older than me saw her husband of thirty

years walk out on her. They've been together since she was sixteen and we'll call her Mary.

And I was discussing their breakup with a mutual friend of Mary's in mine who told me

...