Since my last post I have been on many dates with men I have met on the internet. Though this dating I found myself with a good guy I met online. For 3 years we settled down with a house, stable jobs and fur babies. I know there are winners out there... but my track records is about 2 in 150, so you may need to be a serial edater as well to actually find one. Long story short, the three years ended amicably and I am at it again. Here are a few more of the stories, both new and old.
When I moved back to Wisconsin from Cincinnati I still lived my ex, but had started dating new guys. Out of respect I thought it best to go see my new guy on his side of the Illinois/ Wisconsin state line. His name was... fuck.... I'm too tired to keep these fake names straight, his name was just Jeff. It's just plain boring Jeff.
Jeff's mom still did his laundry. Not even just a load dropped off for her. She drove to the condo that Jeff owned (because he was 30 and had a real job), used her key to come in and wash his clothes at his house with his own washer and dryer. While she waited she did cleaning around the house as well. One time I asked Jeff to come up to visit me, since my ex was out of town. The date was uneventful except that his phone kept going off. I could see that it was his mom texting him. He apologized and told me that when he told his mom he was going to see a girl in Wisconsin that she started crying. Please keep in mind that I lived in Southern Wisconsin and he lived in northern Illinois. We lived at most 30-40 minutes away, but she couldn't be that far away from her little boy.
Jeff was obsessed with two things: the color orange and Patrick Kane from the Chicago Blackhawks. I could handle the orange. Even if it meant he had spray painted the rims of his car orange and he would pay 10 times as much for any item that came in an orange version. The Patrick Kane thing got a little weird. When I first say his house he gave me the grand tour. One master bedroom, one guest room (no bed) and a Kane shrine. Nothing in the room but walls covered in signed phones and a giant Blackhawks flag. There was a shelf with over 100 signed pucks and binders full of autographs. The closet was full of only jerseys. I know what you are thinking, "I know a bunch of guys like that, it isn't really that weird." But lets remember in this account THIS IS ALL FROM JUST ONE GUY! This isn't a situation where there is a superfan in love with the Blackhawks. This is one guy with a collection of photos, clothes, and signatures from another one man. If one of these men wasn't good at a sport, the other would go to jail if his collection was found.
Ok, it wasn't actually the Kane collection that ended things. The end came sometime in mid February. We may be still together if 2015 hadn't been a leap year. One night Jeff asked me what leap year was. I explained it to him, but all I could think was how this man was 30 years old. He had already live d through at least 4 leap years. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt that he was too young to remember one of those, that is still 3 leap years in his life. Did he just think once and a while if you are good, you get a bonus day? Bye Felicia.
Dating Philosophy
So here is the idea about online dating. You pick one out based on a couple pictures and a little bio. It is the ultimate example of human superficial-ness. The user searches for matches who are attractive, but not too attractive that you don’t have a chance. It is also an ultimate test of self-confidence. You can tell what kind of confidence a person has by whom they think they have the right to message and possibly date in the future. Someone who has extremely high self-confidence will blow off anyone who looks any less than a red carpet model. It seems only obvious from that reasoning that the eDater with low confidence will be too intimidated by attractive or slightly successful profiles.
If for some reason they pass the first “attractive- yet not too douch-baggary” test you scan the words for signs of serial killer tendencies, and send a message. Now not every eDater is the same. There are always exceptions to the rules. You often have the creepy guys who send out mass messages to every female seeking male on the site without a mustache. (Sometimes they even send messages to those depending on how desperate.)
Here is my problem:
When on a date with someone you meet online eDaters don’t hear what the other person is ACTUALLY saying. They obviously want it to go well. They wouldn’t be searching hopelessly through wifi waves for a soul mate if they had the time or social skills to wait around to sort through guys themselves. By looking for a significant other online it proves that you are either looking for sex or looking for “the one.” Everyone wants to think that the next one is going to be “the one.” We wouldn’t do it knowing that the next one is going to be a waste of time or will take your heart and rip it out leaving you a little less trusting towards the next. We wouldn’t bother (and would probably not let it happen in the first place), which leads me to my point. Every eDater goes into the date with at least a glimmer of a hope that this is the person you have been looking for their entire life.
So this is why we see our date in a far better light than they really are. We WANT them to be the great person they might be. This is how I know that in order for me to see these eDater guys as ridiculous, bad dates they must have been just that… bad. I have to admit that the stories I have taken away are something that have added to my life experience.
So what happens when you take out that factor? What happens when you don’t go in it for sex or marriage? You don’t go into it trying to dress up and impress? What happens when you eDate as many people as possible to learn about the opposite sex? What would you see once the bull shit curtain was pulled away? No one to try to impress, no false hopes or rose-colored glasses?
*names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent
Sunday, July 10, 2016
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