One of my (many) issues in the dating scene is that I approach all new relationships as a potential friend. Despite evidence to the contrary in this blog, it takes me a while to actually form a real desire for someone, and I tend to keep it on the level longer than the average guy.
This can be quite off putting for the women of my age who have spent the past decade and a half fighting off drunken party boys like Aragorn to Orcs at the Battle of Helm's deep.
With that in mind I put up a profile on a "Social Networking" website. I'm somewhat wittier when taken in digital form, and it's more or less impossible to take an online relationship at the wrong pace.
About a month ago I exchanged a few emails online with a girl named Maureen. She was a super cute girl who seemed smart, age appropriate, and above all else pleasant. And that was the issue. There was no real spark.
Maureen seemed very much to be looking for a significant other where I was looking for a friend, possibly a hiking buddy, and maybe somewhere down the road something more. While my daily thought process usually doesn't extend past lunch, I have a feeling that she was the girl who had most of her wedding already planned. You know that girl. She already owns the dress and has yet to get the ring. In some rare cases she's already picked out a school for the kids. By the way, you're having two. Their names are Addison and Fuller.
Her insistence on being serious made the conversation difficult - getting off the island in Lost difficult. The emails consisted of her asking "deal breaker" type questions and me responding with jokes and smart ass comments.
Maureen,
I gotta ask up front what you have against divorced guys. Bad experience in the past? Is it a blanket rule? I myself have never been married. I'm just curious why the strict rules. Seems like you might have a hard time finding a guy who's never married, no kids, and doesn't drink a little on a regular basis.
That being said, I'm a 31 year old guy who's never been married, doesn't have kids, and I've actually never even been drunk before in my life. Most people who meet me think I must be Mormon or super religious since I'm a bit on the straight and narrow on those sorts of things (if you catch my meaning). I'm not though. I'm Agnostic.
Soon enough she asked if I'd like to meet, and as she seemed mostly harmless, I agreed to meet her at the Starbuck's at the local out door mall. I arrived promptly at the arranged time to find the the Starbuck's both closed and deserted.
My nerdy side was beaming as I whipped out the phone and Google reported another Starbuck's a solid 150 feet to the East.
Karma is getting you for that Lewis Black article.
I arrived at the second Starbuck's five minutes later to find it... both closed and deserted. I waited another 20 minutes before calling it a loss and heading home. I had given Maureen my phone number, but as she had not reciprocated, I was out of options.
I had been stood up.
The phone chirped with an email from Maureen as I was on my way home. She had forgotten my number at home, but was still in the area. A phone call and 10 minutes later we met at the gelato place down the street. She was slightly looser in real life than the emails had been, but the conversation was still overly formal and therefore quite difficult - Solomon's Key difficult.
We parted ways an hour later, and I left realizing that the evening had not gone well. For good measure, the next day I sent an email offering to take her hiking or some other activity. It was my hope that maybe something a little more active would loosen the tension, but her reply read simply:
Jesse,
You're a really nice guy, but not the one for me.
I had been stood up and shut down by the same girl.
This is the first "normal" blog entry I feel like I've done in a while. It was a bit difficult getting around to it since I didn't feel like there was really a story here. In the end I wrote about 4 pages and had to trim it down to a closer to acceptable range.
ReplyDeleteI ended up breaking a few of my personal rules.
1) I made "mean" fun of someone who I don't think would appreciate it. 9 out of 10 jokes I make are self directed, and the other 10% are shots at my mom. At the end of the day Mom knows I bear no ill will towards her. Maureen? Not so much.
2) She got no chance to defend herself. Aside from random elevator meetings, every person I write about gets an email letting them know so they have a chance to respond or veto. So far, only one story has ever been changed due to request. (Thanks Ruth)
In the end I'm more or less happy with it. Hopefully there are more to come, and I'll try to stop with the obscure Solomon's Key/Lord of the Ring's jokes.
That sucks that things didn't go well.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, since it's 6:30 in the morning and I'm just waking up, I wasn't paying super close attention to who's blog I had actually opened. For about the first half of your post I thought I was reading someone else's entry, a female someone else. While she has been known to swing both ways in the past, she currently is dating a guy and the whole thing made absolutely no sense to me. Thankfully, I'm a bit more awake now.
you're a phallus.
ReplyDeletei would never steep to such a level.
you've lost a valued reader....for at least a good day or so.
Trassin,
ReplyDeleteIt's cool, there are a lot of women in the world who are more manly than I anyhow, so I can see where you'd make that mistake.
Geremy,
You can't spell Phallus without "Us".
I have no idea what that means.
You never know who you're going to meet on those sorts of sites. The woman might turn out to be a real freak.
ReplyDeleteIt could have been worse, you could have found out that 'Maureen' is actually a man...too late, waaaaaay too late.
ReplyDelete