Hello internet world!
This blog is here for all those people, like myself, who view online dating with some skepticism. I have never done it before, so I plan on chronicling my online dating experiences from the start, perhaps to provide an example of what online dating entails for those who are hesitant to give it a shot. I have no idea whether this will be a success story or a complete disaster, but either way, hopefully it will make an interesting tale.
Like online dating, the world of blogging is also incredibly new to me. I have just recently contemplated the question of whether online dating is something worth pursuing, and the very minimal experience I have had thus far has been kind of hilarious and hopefully worth sharing in this type of forum. From the very limited experience I have had, and also from listening to a few of my friends' stories, I figure it might be interesting (at least for me) to narrate my online dating experiences right from the beginning.
So, here is a little bit about me: I am a single, young professional who graduated from law school in 2009 and I've been working at a big corporate law firm for the past year (wow, this already sounds like my dating profile). Like many others, work takes up the majority of my time and makes it difficult to meet new people. Although the difficulty in meeting new people (especially of the non-legal variety) influenced my decision, this factor in and of itself is not what motivated me to try online dating.
I guess there are a few events that have culminated in my "real world" frustration that has catalyzed my new online pass time. After law school, I moved back to my hometown thinking it would be great to re-connect with old friends and family. Once I was back home, I realized, to my dismay, that my friends did not stay static during my 6 years away. They actually had the nerve to enter into relationships with other people! People I didn't know. People that had effectively taken my place.
Again, although this was unfortunate, I put up with the fact that either I would forever be the third wheel or I just wouldn't see them anymore, and did not jump into the online dating world right away. As time passed, a particular friend of mine, who shall be named Mario for the purpose of this blog, decided he would set me up with his single friends. I'm still unsure whether this was done out of pity, love or a desire not to lose my friendship once him and his new fiance settled down, but we have been friends since the days of high school and silly me, I thought he might actually know me well enough to be my successful matchmaker.
I proceeded to go on blind, double date with Mario, his fiance, and Mario's colleague, who shall be called "Jared". We went to a hockey game, which was a nice, relaxed setting for a first date. But perhaps it was too relaxed. Jared seemed like a nice enough guy with a pretty good sense of humor but part way through the first period of the hockey game, he began discussing pornography with me. He informed me as to the legal status of "crush films." Not being a pornography connoisseur myself, I foolishly inquired as to what "crush films" were and was advised that they are films in which a woman, while having sex, crushes a small, live animal under her stilettos until it dies.
If any guys ever read this blog, please take note, crush films is not an acceptable first date topic of conversation. I like to think of myself as a pretty laid back person who is willing to give people the benefit of the doubt most times, so although awkward, I didn't totally write Jared off. But immediately following the crush films discussion, I noticed that Jared had a gaping whole in the crotch of his jeans. I'm not talking a small penny sized tear here, I'm talking a hole that a baseball could fit through leaving his white, pasty, disgusting thigh visible for the world to see.
Something else about me is that I try to be as straightforward as possible. So upon noticing the Texas-sized hole, I said "Dude, you have a huge hole in your crotch." He responded with, "Yeah, I know. I can't afford to buy a new pair of pants until next payday."
I would never hold someone's impecuniosity against them, but I had to wonder why, if it was true he couldn't afford any other pants, he didn't repair the ones he had. I mean, anything would have done: a needle and thread perhaps, duct tape, or even wearing boxers instead of your tighty whities to at least make the hole less noticeable. The fact that either none of these options occurred to him or he just didn't care was his downfall.
I thought that would be the end of Jared in my life, but I was mistaken. I think maybe in a prior life I was one of those bitchy high school girls in the in-crowd who made others' lives unbearable and karma is now biting me in the ass for it. A few weeks later, I had a party and I e-mailed Mario to say that he could bring anyone he wanted except the creepy hole-in-his-pants dude. Mario, being the caring, sensitive friend that he is, forwarded my e-mail to Jared without my permission, who responded by writing, "Tell her I have a hole in my pants for her right now." Two days later, I went to a football game, where I have season tickets, and low and behold, who has season tickets 2 seats away from me, but Jared! So now I have to see this guy every couple weeks and engage in super awkward banter throughout the games.
That is but one example of several awkward dates I have been on this past year. But the event that truly made me reach my tipping point occurred this past Saturday night. Mario invited me to go out with him and his fiance, who is actually a very sweet, lovely girl who I get along with really well, which is why I didn't think I would feel awkward crashing their date night. What Mario didn't tell me was that him and his fiance were actually meeting up with a married couple as a double date.
I vaguely knew the couple from back when I lived here the first time, but I was far from close with them. And instead of the evening being an opportunity to get to know each other, they basically excluded me from the entire conversation and solely discussed "couple" topics, such as weddings, and buying houses, and I now know in detail the horrifically boring story of that couple's engagement (it happened at a church youth group, enough said). This would have been tolerable if any of them had made even the slightest effort to include me in the conversation, but although it had been probably a good 5 years since I had seen these people, not once did they inquire about what was new in my life or how I was doing.
The worst part was when the waiter came to ask if we wanted our bills separately or together. The other couple immediately said "separate" but didn't indicate how he was supposed to separate them, so I had to step up and say, "Yes, I am the 5th wheel in this situation. It's okay, you can bring me my bill alone". It was at that moment that I realized that I was never going to meet anyone even remotely compatible to me in the real world and that I would forever be the 5th wheel unless I became proactive and actually did something about it.
So that is how I ended up considering the online dating option.
I think that is about enough information for the first post, but I think I will close each post with a quote from either a random someone's online dating profile or a message sent to me.
Dusty_Blue_Eyes in a message to me: "A plethora of people think I'm an intellectual god" followed by "I'm trying really hard not to sound conceited."
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