A Parade Of Shmucks: Cyber Dating Odds.

At a recent holiday party, I got into a conversation with a fabulous twenty-something girl. She mentioned that she had been having major difficulties meeting worthwile men, while many of her friends seem to be finding their one and only's. She brought up singles sites, and asked my opinion of them. While I know of people that have had decent dates and relationships with men from many of these sites, my experiences were much different.

During desolate dating deserts, I tried my share of dating sites, and outside of making one good, close friend, I came out worse than empty handed: I became scared of the male gender almost as a whole. Though I had many not so great experiences with cyber match ups, three stood out to be much more horrid than all the rest combined.

The first contender that I met up with mentioned how much he liked to travel, that he was self employed, and that he enjoyed warm pubs with cozy fireplaces. In his picture he looked like a darker complected Heath Ledger, photographed outside the breezy ruins of a British castle. What I found when I finally arrived at the "secluded pub" he invited me to was a dive bar, no fireplace, or even tables for that matter, a scrawny little guy that looked nothing like the late great Mr. Ledger, a half eaten pizza that he had so kindly been pigging out on before I even got there, and a bartender that slammed a glass of water in front of me, and never spoke to me again. Through our conversation I found out that he was UNemployed, and that he was a freestyle frisbee fanatic (that means he does tricks with frisbees, like juggling and spinning), and that he had only traveled once, to Guam, for frisbee tricks. I came to realize that the reason the bartender was ignoring me was because he was friends with my date and knew he had no money, even though I had every intention of paying for myself. It was when my date showed me his hideous homemade black acrylic nail on his pointer finger that allowed him to do tricks with his frisbee, and then peeled the nasty booger looking thing off in front of me and started playing with it on the bar that I knew I was leaving as soon as humanly possible. When he got up to smoke, I took that opportunity to escape, nonexistant bartab unpaid.

The second contender was a liar, plain and simple. I began chatting with him one night after seeing his profile, and he looked like a normal, somewhat decent guy. His picture was that of a big cuddly lumberjack kind of guy, and said he was six foot three, an aquarius, 35 years old, and his name was Justin. During our chat, I mentioned his sign, and he told me he had changed his birthday on the site because being on a dating site freaked him out. Though somewhat understandable, I found that to be a red flag. I mentioned it to one of my closest friends, and she said to check his ID when we meet. The next evening, I went to the chain restaurant that he had suggested, and waited. While waiting, a short man that looked very much like a bald hobbit came up to me and said my name. Baffled, I looked down at him, and said "yes?" It turns out it was Justin. Kind of. When we sat down I asked if I could see his ID. He nodded, but told me that he had something to tell me. He wasn't actually 35, he was 33. And his name wasn't actually Justin, it was Kendall. And the pictures on his profile were actually from some weird website where you can type in your characteristics, and it will pull pictures of people that look like you (or in this case, look nothing like you). He had lied about every single thing on his profile, but yet he expected me to take him home with me, and became beligerently angry when I left him at the restaurant. Strike two.

The final date was with an older Norwegian gentleman, well monied, once divorced with two kids,  and very not my type. I realized though, that my type (younger, barely employed, gorgeous eye candy) had not been working out so well for me, so why not try this other barrel? We chatted for awhile, found each other funny, and decided to meet at an upscale restaurant in Bellevue. He was nice enough, and his interests in skiing and snowshoeing were intriquing. There wasn't any real chemistry, though I would've considered a second date with him, because at least he had been honest, treated me like a lady and seemed to have his shit together. After our date, I came home to an email from him asking me my thoughts on how it went. I told him that I thought he was nice, and that he seemed worth getting to know better, though I wasn't sure if we had chemistry at this point. He wrote me back stating that he enjoyed the date, and that I talk a lot (I will acknowledge that I have a lot to say, yes) but that my stories are funny. He then proceeded to tell me that he was looking for someone "curvy" not fat. He asked why I would lie about this, and ridiculed me for it. There are no words for how hurt I was. I had just been through one of the toughest years of my life to that point, including taking care of a terminally ill friend, dealing with health issues of my own, my friend had sent me flowers because of all the hardships I was going through and my cat ate them and died, the last man I had dated unceremoniously dumped me after meeting my family, and I had lost the one thing that I have always wanted: I had miscarried. I had put on some weight in dealing with all this, and yet had still found the courage to go out and meet someone new. Having my weight thrown at me like it was some joke I played on him broke me.
That night I went to the gym, and then to the grocery store to buy a few things, including a bottle of water. After the checker at the register scanned the bottle of VOSS, I snagged it, opened it up and gulped half of it down. He asked me if I could now speak Norwegian. I looked at him, almost in tears, still so hurt by what the Norwegian tycoon had said that I didn't want to even support the country. Then the adorable little checker started speaking in a hilarious Norwegian accent, spouting off a silly joke, and I couldn't help but smile. It turned out he was Norwegian, too. I guess my point to all this is that you don't have to find pictures of strangers with witty written things in little boxes on your computer in order to meet people. Most often that's not really them anyway. You just have to be willing to smile and say hello. I would have much rather dated the adorable checker boy that stood two inches shorter than me and works a nine to five than ever go out with the tycoon again, let alone any of the other guys that I came across on those stinkin' sites.

When celebrities attack...

Two weeks after my ex and I broke up, while still in the cake/wine diet phase, I decided to put in a movie with no love story to it. I settled on a football movie, so that I could watch big beautiful men tackle each other. The film had taken professional athletes and cast them as the characters, one of which I had developed a major crush on years ago, from the moment I saw him in the film.
While watching the film, in sweats that I hadn't changed out of in days, my hair held prisoner in a scarf in order to keep it out of my face and thus saving it from being lopped off and sacrificied in a fire in offering of the broken hearts of every "single girl," I decided to find out a little bit more about the athlete I had pined for, primarily if he was married. I just wanted to be able to fantasize with peace of mind. My web research came up inconclusive on the marriage question, though it did tell me he is based out of my area, is two years older than me, and that we had gotten degrees from the same school. Though I found this all interesting, I didn't think much about it outside of that maybe I'll pass him on the street someday. Then I decided to take the marriage query to Facebook, because you can find out anything on Facebook. What I found was a few fan pages, and one personal profile for him.
I decided to write him. What's the worst he could do? Not respond? Oh well, I'd survive. Within a couple of hours of writing him, I got a reply. Then we were emailing a few times a day. Within days we were chatting for hours. Within a week, he'd invited me out to the Metropolitan Grill, an incredibly posh restaurant in Seattle. I went there still trying to wrap my head around what was happening. I was two thirds convinced it wouldn't be him, and that it was either a joke, an assistant, or some dude from Hoboken New Jersey toying with me. Then the thing I was terrified about the most happened. The host took me to the table, there were three men with their backs to me, and one facing me. He was facing me. I almost fell over. He was grinning ear to ear when he saw me. He stood up, gave me a hug like we'd known each other for years, and sat me down next to him. We couldn't stop looking at each other the whole dinner. I ate bacon for him. I've been a vegetarian for 13 years, and I was so smitten when ordering that I forgot to ask for no bacon on my spinach salad. I ate it. It was one of the best dates of my life, not because he's a celebrity, but because of how we got along, how our knees touched the entire night, how he made me laugh and vice versa, and how he made sure to escort me to my car, and gently kissed me several times. I drove home in a daze, I couldn't even talk to my friends about it. We didn't even wait 24 hours before seeing each other again.
And then reality happened. I had started hitting the gym heavily when he and I started talking. My ex had liked "big girls" - which turned my stomach when I met him, realizing that I fit into that category, but it was easy to be lazy knowing that my boyfriend reveled in it. I've dropped nearly 50 pounds since, and when people ask me what got me started, I tell them the truth. I started dating a man I was really into. It was dating my athlete, who is still a professional fighter, that made me take a good look at myself. I've always known I'm fabulous. I've known I'm an attractive girl from the neck up, and I've known that if I got the rest of my body to stop ballooning in difficult times, and if I let it thrive to it's potential, then I'd be a showstopper. I decided I had to stop the excuses. If I was going to give the relationship I wanted a fair shot, I had a lot of work to do. I needed to do what I was capable of, mentally and physically. With the promise that I would see him in three months, after his next couple of fights abroad were done, and the TV shows and interviews were completed, I continued working hard, and we'd text, chat, call, skype, and email daily.
Then three months turned to five months. Texts turned to arguments. Five months turned to ten months. Skypes turned vindictive, phone calls nonexistant, and all texts were angry. It was so bad that I actually got to the point where I hit on his opponent right before one of his fights. Not to say the opponent isn't a good guy, completely shagworthy, as well as has a great sense of humor, but it wasn't right. I knew something was really wrong with me and my fighter when I asked his opponent to hit him once really hard for me. Once again, I was done. Another hopeful situation gone very very wrong.
And then something happened. A couple of months later, I contacted him, and we became friends. Actual and honest friends. I was still talking to the opponent, who he is friends with as well, and had started dating a former NFL player in the meantime. I guess when it rains it pours. I also guess that when you raise your standards, and realize that you have value, that there is no end to what you can acomplish and who you can attract. I had contacted my fighter because the NFL player had played on the same team as him when he was in the NFL. I wanted to find out more about the man who was trying to nail down a commitment from me, and he helped. Things didn't work out with the NFL player, and I am very grateful for that, very, very grateful. Though my fighter said nothing negative about him, he was a great friend when I was having major qualms.
Something else happened. He stopped pushing me away, and started letting me in. He started telling me honestly about his problems, and about his medical issues and injuries, and has basically ruined me forever. Somehow, this man that was at one point just an adorable big man (6 foot 5, 370 pounds primarily muscle- I like 'em big, what can I say?) on my television, has now become one of my closest friends, who I talk to daily. He listens with intent to silly little every day dramas. Ever the single girl, I have learned my lesson about putting too much stock in things that I wish would happen. I am keeping my sanity by continuing dating the men that I find the slightest bit attractive, though the dates, one referenced by my first entry, leave a lot to be desired. I have even continued to talk with the opponent which feels sick and wrong, though the conversations are flirty and fun. I will be seeing my big fighter in a few weeks, when he comes home for a necessary procedure. In the meanwhile, I continue to go to the gym, enjoy our conversations, and try and keep myself romantically available. I almost hope we'll have an argument. That would be so much easier.

What's Love Got To Do With It?

I have horrible taste in men. Truly. I do. And I can be a bad judge of character. It is one of my biggest downfalls, though I am learning. It seems like for awhile I went out of my way to surround myself with alcoholics and people lacking initiative. This encompassed not only the men I dated, but many of my close friends as well. At least I considered them to be my close friends at the time. I spent many years being the designated driver, not just because my friends were heavy drinkers, but also because they had no car. This was more exaggerated with the men I found attractive. I wouldn't say I was a magnet for lazy sleezeballs, but moreso that I seemed to chase them down and throw myself at them.
As I have gotten older, my friends and I started some basic dating rules. No married men (including "separated" men). No unemployed men. No homeless men. No major potheads. No overly flatulant men... I think you get it. But then I find myself fleeing from ones that seem like they are what women want: commitment focused men that would sacrifice themselves on the altar of love. These men scare the living daylights out of me. Instead of facing them, I run directly into the arms of the men that fall just next to horrible.
Just over a year ago, I decided that I was going to ditch all the next to horrible men that I have learned so many life lessons from, and leave some room for someone new to walk into my life. And one day, in my hair salon that I manage, he did. He walked right in, asked about hair products for his daughter, and smiled an adorable smile down at me from his six foot seven, 325 pound frame. He was a giant. He was also (and still is) a mall cop at my mall. Over the next few days, he continued to pass by my shop, until finally he saw me there without guests and came in and asked me out. And then, over the next few weeks we fell in love. That intense, passionate "I have to be with him or I'll explode" love. I found out early on that he had four kids (two of whom are twins), from two different mothers, both of whom he had been married to - at different times, of course. This didn't phase me. Because I'm stupid, really stupid, sometimes.
After a couple of months, he started demanding that I tell my parents about him. He thought I was hiding him like a dirty secret. I thought I was just being a sane woman, not telling my parents about someone unless we're near engaged. This was two months of hyperactive loving; we weren't quite at the meet the parents point in my eyes. We were so active, that at one point I started to feel pain, intense pain that I couldn't well define, in my groin.
After a short while, things started becoming more apparent in our situation. He loved me, without a doubt, but he was always broke. He owned a gun that he loaded every night. He smoked pot nightly, though he had narrowed that down at my insistence. He also loathed my family, my faith, and my culture, but he loved me. Well, whatever was left of me, that is. Though I loved him, I couldn't do it. These weren't red flags. These were deal breakers, a lot of them. We were done, and I was devastated.
Weeks after we broke up, we both rebounded in our own ways. I started dating  a professional athlete (which is a story unto itself), and he started dating a girl ten years younger than him that he had originally spurned as soon as he met me. Within a matter of weeks he had knocked her up, and within a couple of months, they were engaged. So his Ultimate Dipshit Scoreboard reads: five kids worth of child support + two ex wives + a child bride = one of the biggest zeros I've ever met. His baby girl was born two months ago. He still walks by my store, looking in, trying to see me. He's lucky I don't flick him off and chase him with the toilet cleaner brush to show him how much of a shit I think he is.
To add insult to injury (or injury to insult, as the case may be), over the last year I've still been having intense pain in my pelvic area. I ended up in the ER because of it. They ran all sorts of tests - pregnancy, std, cervical, etc. They decided it was a UTI, and sent me to my regular doctor. My regular doctor, acknowledging the ER may have been wrong, did more humiliating tests - ultrasounds, more std tests, etc. Finally, a couple of months ago, the pain was so bad I went back again, and requested an xray. My doctor finally agreed it may not be something female oriented, but muscular/skeletal. It was. I had sprained the muscle that attaches your inner thigh to your pelvis. In fact, I had managed to pull some of the muscle off the bone. A year ago. Having sex with my boyfriend. So now, I have to go to physical therapy, and pay my copay, in order to fix what was literally torn apart, with no help from the person responsible. He's got a line of women waiting for him to take care of his responsibilities from having sex with them. I, on the other hand, get to deal with what I am left with on my own. A scarred heart, and an insulting sex injury that has made me walk funny for a year. I guess I need to add no more men with litters of children to my dating rules.

I wish he was cussing instead...

Just coming home from yet another bad date, and I decided that this was the perfect time to start the dating blog that I've been thinking about for the last few weeks.
I know I can't be alone. I've had too many horrible dates to think that I'm the only one going out with these guys. There has to be other women that are meeting these shmucks, too! Not that I want to spend my blog time just making fun of men, but sometimes they make it difficult to take them seriously.
Tonight I went on a date with an old friend that I went to school with who had moved across the country some time ago. He was in town, and had shown interest in hooking up. He had never shown interest in anything physical while we were in school, so this caught me by surprise.
I find it really sad these days that it is almost easier to rely on the potential date bagging out and changing logistics at the last second, than to rely on them making actual plans and seeing them through. Most men in my age range (mid thirties) are more reliably unreliable than the weather.
Tonight's date was no different. We were originally supposed to meet last night after I was off work. This plan had me prepping from the night before - dealing with my hair: washing, drying, curling, setting my hair (a two hour feat, as there is a ton of it); removing hair that shouldn't be there; doing a quick pedicure, etc. It was nice to have a date to look forward to, as most of the men I am dating travel a ton (more on that later). I don't get to go out horribly often, and when I do, it's usually short notice. Obviously the date I was prepared for (Victoria Secret hair successfully attained) didn't happen. Instead it was moved to today. I met up with him, and though he is an old friend, I was reminded at how much he does NOT know me, or at least, how I have changed. He did make a show of pulling out the chair when we went to sit at the bar - and then he sat on it himself. He forgot his wallet, and though I am not a girl that expects a man to pull out her chair, or pay for her, this caught my attention. He also had me walk him to HIS car, though we were next to mine originally, leaving me to walk back across the mall by myself. And this is the kicker: he randomly breaks into tap dance. It doesn't matter where we are. Getting up from the bar stool. In a department store. After taking a pee. Anywhere. He has tap dancing tourettes. Now my degree is in drama, which is how I know him. He did perform on Broadway. I get it. He loves to dance. But still, does he have to tap about how happy he is that he just had chicken fingers?!?
It is highly unlikely that the planned "hook up" that I was considering with him will come to thruition. Besides the surprise Gregory Hines impressions, the inconsiderations that he showed while out and from the night before does not bode well for how he would treat me physically.
I guess today is yet another reminder that I am worth what I put up with. I decided awhile ago to no longer throw my pearls before swine, and I've been pretty good about that. It's just so sad. I was really looking forward to some fun, and a good distraction. I've been needing one.