So, with some reluctance, I have reentered the online dating world. I am doing so with the previous online dating experience and a certain idea of do's and don'ts in my back pocket so we'll see how it goes. It wasn't until after I had already signed up that I looked into that whole "active singles" thing, where you go do fun activities like kayaking and paint-balling and pub crawls with other single people in order to meet and mingle, rather than have awkward email and telephone exchanges leading up to an awkward date. I think that would be fun to do at some point, too.
For now, match.com is relatively easy because I just go to work all day, and come home to winks and emails in my inbox, and can pick and choose. Over the last two and a half weeks that I've been back on, however, I noticed that I don't pick and choose - I mostly say "no thanks" to people because there's something "off" with a lot of the guys who decide to contact me. Feeling a little badly about this (but not too badly), I wondered what this was about.
Online dating poses an interesting issue that in-person dating does not. First, there is a virtual limitless supply of people you can connect with, and people that you would never meet in real life, because you have nothing in common (or because the cyber-geek actually never leaves his home). You basically peruse dating "resumes" of candidates, browsing through the pictures and "likes" of people until one catches your eye. My problem? Not many catch mine.
In real life, you strike up conversation and get butterflies in your stomach when there is chemistry--you can tell if there is nothing there, or if something is off. And if you meet someone you have great chemistry with, say at a concert, you're going to pay attention to the chemistry first, and the person's specific characteristics later. Online, however, you consider the separate characteristics (interests - the ones they choose to list, that is - appearance, etc.) before you even know whether there is chemistry! Because of this, I have decided that when dating online, I am allowed to be incredibly picky - it's like shopping, or hiring an employee. I can only judge based on the two-dimensional information I am presented with online. This means that I can be shallow and say "no thanks" to someone who has no picture, or who appears completely un-photogenic, or took a shirtless self-photograph of themselves in the bathroom. I can also say "no thanks" if he's too fat, or too skinny, if he's too ugly, or too pretty, if he's too dorky and shy, or too macho and egotistical. Basically, if there is something I don't consider "just right," I have permission to immediately reject the guy.
Go ahead, call me Goldilocks. That's the privilege of online dating.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
setting boundaries
I'm not a big fan of new year's resolutions, but this year I kind of decided that I would try setting boundaries for myself.
I didn't do a great job at the start of 2010 - I continued to talk to modesto, albeit half-heartedly because some things he had said over the holidays made me see (again) that he was never going to motivate and allow our phone-lationship to progress. I also let sales guy (a guy I met in october who seemed pretty cool until I found out he was an immature douchebag of a man-boy) take advantage of my niceness for a few weeks into 2010. That all ended when he called, drunk, asking for a ride home or for me to pick him up so he could crash in my car because he'd missed the train from sf to sj. I stood my ground (thanks to some prodding from my bff), and was surprised that sales guy actually wasn't mad at me later, but thought I was mad at him, and apologized. Damn straight! Finally. Bottom line on sales guy, though, is that it was yet another dead end. It did, however, remind me that I needed to set boundaries going forward (since I hadn't set those when I met him in the Fall of '09, however, it was difficult to add them with him).
With that in mind, I also ended things with modesto. I really wasn't ready for them to end, but had they really ever started? We hadn't progressed in 16 months of knowing each other. Sure, I'd dated other people, but I still had him on the back burner, and could count on him to satisfy a major emotional void that I have without a "relationship." I finally decided that I needed to be honest with him - and myself - and to tell him that I wanted and needed more, and that either he was going to have to give that to me, or admit that he was unwilling to do so and that was that. Unfortunately, it ended up being the latter. Modesto thought we lived too far from each other, he had originally been too scared of ruining the great thing we had to take it any further, he thought too much time had passed as us being phone friends and something had changed, he wasn't ready for a relationship, etc., etc., etc. Lots of excuses. Lots of signs of fear and immaturity. Lots of things, but one bottom line: modesto and I weren't going anywhere.
Modesto still wanted to be friends, though. Because why would modesto want to have me mad at him? Why would he want his self-proclaimed "best friend" and the person who he's "had the best connection with in his life" out of his life completely? Why would modesto want to tell the "first person [he] told his friends and family about" good riddance? Yeah, well, he wouldn't want to do that. He just didn't want to have a relationship with me, either. So I decided that I needed to set my boundaries, and tell him about them. It sucks that setting those boundaries for myself means that I don't get to talk to my best friend anymore, either. I can't - it will be too hard, and I won't be 100% honest with myself about what he and I have (or don't have) if I continue to use him as an emotional crutch. And so, here we are. To me, the worst part is that he admits we are best friends and have more in common/a better connection than anyone else we've met. To add insult to injury, he even said:
I just don't think he gets it. He must have a wall up--he certainly has his own boundaries--"I can't be in a relationship with the new house and new job," "I don't have time to put into a relationship what I want to." Ok, fine, if you get to decide that you just "can't" do these things, then I get to decide that I just "can't" be your friend.
I didn't do a great job at the start of 2010 - I continued to talk to modesto, albeit half-heartedly because some things he had said over the holidays made me see (again) that he was never going to motivate and allow our phone-lationship to progress. I also let sales guy (a guy I met in october who seemed pretty cool until I found out he was an immature douchebag of a man-boy) take advantage of my niceness for a few weeks into 2010. That all ended when he called, drunk, asking for a ride home or for me to pick him up so he could crash in my car because he'd missed the train from sf to sj. I stood my ground (thanks to some prodding from my bff), and was surprised that sales guy actually wasn't mad at me later, but thought I was mad at him, and apologized. Damn straight! Finally. Bottom line on sales guy, though, is that it was yet another dead end. It did, however, remind me that I needed to set boundaries going forward (since I hadn't set those when I met him in the Fall of '09, however, it was difficult to add them with him).
With that in mind, I also ended things with modesto. I really wasn't ready for them to end, but had they really ever started? We hadn't progressed in 16 months of knowing each other. Sure, I'd dated other people, but I still had him on the back burner, and could count on him to satisfy a major emotional void that I have without a "relationship." I finally decided that I needed to be honest with him - and myself - and to tell him that I wanted and needed more, and that either he was going to have to give that to me, or admit that he was unwilling to do so and that was that. Unfortunately, it ended up being the latter. Modesto thought we lived too far from each other, he had originally been too scared of ruining the great thing we had to take it any further, he thought too much time had passed as us being phone friends and something had changed, he wasn't ready for a relationship, etc., etc., etc. Lots of excuses. Lots of signs of fear and immaturity. Lots of things, but one bottom line: modesto and I weren't going anywhere.
Modesto still wanted to be friends, though. Because why would modesto want to have me mad at him? Why would he want his self-proclaimed "best friend" and the person who he's "had the best connection with in his life" out of his life completely? Why would modesto want to tell the "first person [he] told his friends and family about" good riddance? Yeah, well, he wouldn't want to do that. He just didn't want to have a relationship with me, either. So I decided that I needed to set my boundaries, and tell him about them. It sucks that setting those boundaries for myself means that I don't get to talk to my best friend anymore, either. I can't - it will be too hard, and I won't be 100% honest with myself about what he and I have (or don't have) if I continue to use him as an emotional crutch. And so, here we are. To me, the worst part is that he admits we are best friends and have more in common/a better connection than anyone else we've met. To add insult to injury, he even said:
I like you as a friend, and love you as a person.
I just don't think he gets it. He must have a wall up--he certainly has his own boundaries--"I can't be in a relationship with the new house and new job," "I don't have time to put into a relationship what I want to." Ok, fine, if you get to decide that you just "can't" do these things, then I get to decide that I just "can't" be your friend.
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