Communication Breakdown

This is a short entry but I wanted to put something out there for all of you loyal fans-all four of you. So the story goes about a month ago I tried something different and asked out a girl through less conventional means. No okcupid dates, but another site that has nothing to do with dating. Well, after @TheSassyFiles got asked out by a linkedin guy, I figured it couldn’t be that weird. I keyed in on something she was into, and made some small talk and an opening to do that activity together. Kept it short and sweet (hat-tip to @DatingRev.) So I saw a cute girl that I had met in person, but then used the site and asked her out and we went out together.

Turns out she was married. Whoops. At least it’s a story for you guys. I’m pretty sure she didn’t think it was a date. I will also admit I had no idea what it was, but I was hoping maybe it was a date.

Now the question for my female friends, if a guy asked you, a married or taken woman to do something, and you were not friends before hand, how would you react to the question? Would you politely decline, because it’s odd for a married woman to go out and do something with a stranger? Or that he (or maybe your husband/boyfriend) would get the wrong idea?

Open letter to my ex:

As I write this, now 14 months…two weeks since we last saw each other (yes I am counting) I still have tears welling in my eyes. You came back after a two month separation to get your things and to sign the divorce papers.

We were together over 5 years, and you were the most important person in my life for that time period. You’re still important to me even now, and I know that our relationship has a huge hold over me going forward because you were my first real relationship.

There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about you. Everything reminds me of you-it doesn’t help that you left me with most of our shared possessions. I really should have sold everything and started over but I thought that was stupid and irrational. Well a year later I want to go back and punch that version of myself in the face. I should have sold everything when I had the chance.

Right after you told me you wanted a divorce (on the phone-classy) I moved out of our place. I went home and slept in my old bedroom at my parents, the only room I had no memories of you in. I cried a lot. I don’t care if it’s unmanly to say, I cried like a 12 year old girl who found out unicorns weren’t real.

I thought I might need to leave this city, because we spent so much time here together. I feel like it’s tainted with you. Maybe that’s cruel but so are the things you did to me.

Part of the problem is I’m not busy so all I have to occupy my thoughts is you, us, us not being together anymore.

The worst part of everyday is when I wake up and for a split-second, I wonder why the bed is half empty and then realize you’re not in it. How did I combat the thoughts? I moved to the other side of the bed. To your side. Now when I wake up-instead of looking at your side and instinctively reaching for you, I avoid it.
More than anything I am deathly afraid that you will forget me. We had so many inside jokes, things only we shared.

All the pet names you had for me. The pet names I had for you. That I lost my virginity to you, all the promises we made to each other. How many promises we broke.

How we would make dinner together…and how you loved to eat my food. How you would put your hair down and call it weird beard. How you would make up songs and sing to me-I never appreciated them but I miss them so much now.

We have so many spectacular memories, elefante and Lafawnduh, BU winning the national championship in 2009, our wedding, the moment I proposed to you in your parents’ living room. How you would cry every time we separated when we dated, including sobbing three months before our wedding and sobbing the time you knew you would see me a week later.

Our cross country move, our trips to the zoo, watching Amazing Race. So many memories we’ve had over the years. I’m so afraid you’re forgetting me, that you’ll be able to delete them from your life. That it will be like I never existed, that we never existed.

You don’t speak to me, we have 0 contact, and I wish we could just talk. Then I could get some closure. I opened a bag of old hand towels and they absolutely smelled like you. When will I escape this?

How about we…

I decided at the insistence of @Melysa_S on Twitter that I would join HowAboutWe.com, a new dating site where people decide to throw out a date idea and have people respond in kind. It gets the whole talking thing out of the way (usually where a guy or girl can bungle things before people meet up for a date) and gets right to the date.

And let’s be honest, if a potential first date candidate can’t come up with one half decent date idea, what can you imagine your life together will be like? You planning her/his entire social life? That gets boring after awhile, trust me-I’ve done it before.

I love a woman who has good ideas for dates: she’ll have good ideas once you’re in a relationship too.

When one woman posts: “How about we… Go out with a nice, smart and funny guy! Eat dinner and wine, have a good time” , well I get a little sad when I see the bar lowered to the point where you can’t do the limbo under it. I can’t even feign excitement for this woman. And if you know me, if there was one thing I am magical at(besides falling asleep), it’s feigning excitement.

I don’t want to go out with a nice, smart, funny guy, and I’m confused…is this a three-way date? Are we picking up the third wheel? Also how does one eat wine?

I think the greatest flaw with HowAboutWe, is the site is limited by the number of people who can respond to you, and you can’t read messages unless you’re a paid member. So the majority of messages could easily be the equivalent of well to pardon the phrase, “messages in a bottle.” The person will get notification that you had messaged them, but no ability to read the message. It gives me the feeling that there will be a good deal of ships passing in the night. And that’s not what a site should be imparting upon me, impression-wise.

What would I fix with howaboutwe? I think everyone should be able to read their messages from subscribers. You’ve already gotten payment from someone, why limit the value for the people that those people get from their subscription. One thing they do that is better than match is they will give you a list of people who ARE subscribed. But everyone should be listed as a member or a non-member. I don’t want to waste my time.

My one howaboutwe experience? It turned into “how about we” go ice skating, never get a thank you, and spring the fact that you had adult kids at the end of our date.

I’m willing to try again, but the site needs massive improvements for me to pay for it.

What’s your big pet peeve about online dating? A lot of my female friends say it’s about the quality of the ideas the man postulates. Maybe this site helps them.

The weirdest things women have been honest about

You’ve been on the journey with me through so many of these colorful characters/train wrecks I’ve called dates. But what about some of the women that I never did meet up with?

Some I messaged just because I liked poking the bad news bear. Others? I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.

Beer me, Danno

Take one woman, a young African American single mother on PlentyOfFish (I spent maybe a week on this site, a week too long except for the stories I got from the experience), she stated a need for a man to provide for her and her child and to “not waste her time” but also made sure to know that the man wasn’t going to be getting some for a long time.

Thanks for inviting me to pay for the barn after the horse has gone free, now shall I close the doors? I guess you want me to take care of some other man’s kid? Eh, she’s entitled to be gun-shy, and I get that. But keep your desire to have me pay for the cow and get 0 milk to yourself. It’s in your best interests.

Maybe I should throw in some more pithy responses. Suffice to say I didn’t message her.

Okcupid questions:

Have to laugh through the responses on the okcupid website. For those who don’t know how okcupid works you are matched based on the compatibility of your answers. Now while we all expect a certain amount of lying, I don’t expect telling the truth on something bad before we’ve met.

Oral sex? One woman said, DISGUSTING. Now I wonder what the point of answering the question is for her? Maybe she hates doing it, but isn’t that something a little personal to scare the guy off with so soon? Our society is more sexual now and I think in America the number of women are age unwilling to do it puts them in the minority. It’s an even smaller amount who actually considers the act gross. I don’t expect it to be enjoyable for everyone but an eww gross response comes across like I’ve got cooties and so does my penis.

Another said, “cutting during sex?” AWESOME. Aren’t these things we need to build toward before meeting up in person?

Is this too much too soon all over again?

Crazy Magnet

Variety is the spice of life

I was on okcupid this week looking through my matches and a pretty girl with similar tastes popped up. I read through the questions she had answered and found myself perplexed at one of her answers. The answer itself didn’t bother me, but more the question. And the answer opened a whole new can of worms.

My whole life, I have been in relationships with only two different ethnic groups: I’ve dated within my ethnicity, and dated two Indian women (rather they were girls, it was college) and I’ve dated several Caucasian women. It’s not to say that I don’t give other ethnicities a chance. I do message women of all colors on Match and okcupid. I do flirt with women of all colors when I am out in public. But I will admit that I have a type. My first girlfriend from high school was Caucasian, short, skinny, blond, and blue eyed: and that’s been my type for the rest of my life.

I guess I prefer to date outside my race, but that’s as much the odds as anything else. There aren’t that many Indian women in Southern California anyway and the ones cute enough to date? Well they know they’re a hot commodity.

So back to the question: She answered “Do you prefer to date within your own race” and she said yes, that she preferred to date white men and found them to be the most attractive to her. Now crushing as it was for my ego, she also said that she would date men of other ethnicities. Best case: it’s just that she found her own race the most pleasing to date. Worst case, she’s not into men of color at all. Now, how can I be upset at her preference? I have a preference for her ethnicity but don’t limit myself, and neither does she. I’ll take the ego hit. But if any women really find Indian men attractive, give me a call, ok? And I’m annoyed at myself for even being irritated at her answer. So if her preference isn’t me, and she is my preference, them’s the breaks.

Is variety the spice of life? Have you gone out with a person from a race you didn’t find attractive and decided that they were attractive to you despite them not being your typical flavor?

And last but not least, if you do have a preference, do you admit it?

Don’t kid around

You might remember that many moons ago I had a dalliance with a cute single mother named Escargot. When I first got divorced I was a little apprehensive about jumping into the dating pool at all, let alone dating someone with a child. But if anyone could do it, it probably would be me, my ex-MIL would often grin when my ex-wife would say my biological clock was ticking. Children love me, it’s a gift and a curse-mostly a gift.

I had my own issues with Escargot besides her being a single mother, but one memory (besides my mouth being violated by a snail against my free will) stands out to me. When I picked her up for our third and ultimately final date, she was dropping off her son at her father’s house. I asked her if she needed any help and she warded me away. She grabbed her kid (who stared at me) and walked him to her dad’s front door. No introductions. She didn’t think it was appropriate for me to be meeting him that early in our budding relationship. Maybe she knew she was going to violate my mouth (in a bad way) later.

Or maybe, just maybe, the one sane bone in her body, (probably the pinky, she wasn’t *that* sane) realized “hey it’s way too early for you to meet my son”, and that the kid needed stability. So the kid looked at me perplexed as his mother pulled him to his grandfather’s house and we never ended up meeting. Her theory about waiting for men to meet her son might have been the only sane thing about her, when I piece it all together Memento temporary tattoo style.

Fast forward to the future. I’m contacted by a cute girl on okcupid, and we go on a date. She has the same name as my ex, is vegetarian, and used to be married to a guy of the same ethnicity as myself, and was married and then got divorced around the same time as me too. It was eery how similar she was to my ex: we went on our first date and held hands when at the end of our first date I found a difference. She had conveniently hid the fact that she had a child from me. Oh…well, about that.

We went on a second date, and things dropped off. I made my effort, she didn’t, and I lost interest. Out of the blue, she texts me and asks me out on a third date, to go for a walk or dinner. I chose the walk. She wants to pick me up and she arrives and as I am hopping into the car I notice the car seat is full. With baby.

No matter how adorable they are, no one wants a third wheel on a date. No one should bring a kid on a date, especially not ambush style. And I love kids, I held him, I fed him, I talked him down through fits 4 through 9 in the car…but for my relationship with his mother, I felt it was the death knell.

Was it a test? Was she nuts? Am I doomed to be the crazy magnet forever? Should I give up single mothers forever?

Your thoughts?

Getting out of the right side of the bed.

Haven’t been on a date in a week, and figured I would post a comment that I posted on another blog belonging to Twitter’s @JustMeWith

For my entire life, I slept on the left side of the bed. My entire life. When I got married I took the left side again. I had always slept on that side no reason to change now. My then-wife said to me, “I want the left side.” I told her she could have it, but she decided to keep the right side of the bed instead, she had grown accustomed to it.

When she left me, I was devastated. I didn’t know what to do. What I did right away? I moved to her side of the bed. Why? Because when I woke up in the morning I didn’t see her when I woke up or to look for her. I was on her side of the bed…one of the most comforting things in the world when I was married was to look to my left and see her. It’s one of the memories most etched into my brain. With it lost, I decided to create new memories. Now I have a new side of the bed.

What did you do when you split with your ex? Keep your side of the bed? Change your side of the bed? Set the bed on fire and sleep on the couch?