Shot tastebuds

My taste buds are shot. For food. For people. At the behest of some of my friends who have had good experiences using online dating sites, I decided to actually use a paid service.

I sift through hundreds of photos and find that no one, or VERY few people are attractive to me. It isn't that they're bad looking, they just don't pop from the page, they don't make me thrill, or jump or get the butterflies. And alas, here is my problem.

I'm pretty, smart and a good person, but guys aren't lining up to date me. I want to get out there and enjoy different people and say that I dated, so when the right one comes around, I know it. I can look back and say I really did date and have fun in my twenties, I'm not just settling on what's come into my life.

My friends say that I'm being too hard on people, that I can't just judge a person by their picture. That I should give someone more than a first date to see if they spark me. But I've never had to give anyone more than a first date, an initial meeting, to know that in the past. Chemistry happens, it grows with a mind of its own and comes when it does, usually the second I see that person or talk to them, or know that they like me. That's what's great about sexual chemistry; it just happens, there is no premeditation, no thinking about it, no trying.

But I can't even muster the energy or the interest to just date, because for me, I've always had to be attracted to someone in order to date them. That's the problem. I don't get attracted very often, so I've already self-selected myself down to a few people, and more likely than not, those people don't feel the same way for me as I do for them.
 
So, I'm kind of fucked and the grief I've lived through in the last few months has numbed my ability to taste people or food, although I'm more hungry now than at the start of this year. I'm actually dying for a taste. I dream about tastes, and I'm numbed to it in real life.