Adventures in Online Dating - 2018 Edition

Originally Published November 2018

 Well, the fact that you’re reading this proves that, no matter how much I try to get out, it keeps pulling me back in.  Yes, I once again dipped my toes into the water of online dating and, as usual, came back with some, “Are you fucking shitting me?” stories. 

 Let me take you back to about mid-September when I put up a new profile for me next go-round.  I was going to come into it with a clean slate, I figured.  I know my personality can be a LOT for people to handle.  And while I usually kept it low-key online until I’d meet someone, I figured, fuck it.  Let them see me as I am from the get-go.  Love me or hate me, I’m not going to suppress any of me to try to appease the lowest common denominator.  See what happens. 

As always, I would come across profiles of women whom I had seen before years ago when I last tried the dating pool.  Obviously, they weren’t having any luck either.  And one girl in particular, I know I had seen multiple times, I would send messages each time, and this is going back YEARS now.  And never once had she ever replied to me...  until now.  I think it was the first weekend I had logged back in.  She must have lowered her “standards” to decide to talk to me finally.  And talk we did.  A LOT over a span of a few days, leading right into the weekend.  In fact, when we started talking on Thursday, we were already making tentative plans to go out on Sunday.  And then it all came to an abrupt halt.  She stopped talking to me Saturday night while her daughter was at homecoming.  And then on Sunday, ignored all my messages from that point on.  Did she find a better suitor?  Hardly, she was still pretty active on the dating website, updating new photos.  She just chose to not speak to me anymore.  Oh well... 

There was another girl...  I can’t even legitimately use the term “girl.”  This woman, we got to talking right away, and she had no problems sending me lots of photos of herself.  But what I thought odd was that she was sending “adjusted photos.”  She had that smooth skin feature on her cell phone camera turned up to MAX.  I mean, every photo she sent me looked like she was wearing a fine layer of putty over her face.  Totally unnatural.  Except that the camera could only do so much for her neck.  I hate to sound like an ageist dick but, I’m going to be an ageist dick.  I’d say there’s no way this woman was 49 like she claimed to be.  Unless she was lived a HARD 49 years of life, she looked to be closer to 60.  Her neck resembled a turkey.  You know exactly what I’m saying.  We only met the one time and I was cordial but that was in a dark, loud bar and that was intentional on her part, come on... 

Another girl I HAD been speaking to during that time, hey, I wasn’t about to put all my eggs in one basket.  Anyway, this other girl, she was really EXCITED to talk to me.  Wanting to meet up and join me on a few of my adventures.  Going so far as to pretending to be upset that I was going to Olvera Street without her.  So you know this is now early October.  We talked/texted for about a week and once again, just as we’re making plans to meet, she pulls back abruptly.  She thinks maybe we should slow down and just be friends first before we start dating.  Uhh...  You’re on a DATING website and you want to be just friends?  How about, no?  She gets really defensive, almost angry about it and that was it.  Just like that we stopped talking.  But unlike the other girl, she pulled her profile from the website.  Translation: she met another dude, decided she wanted to date him instead.  That’s why she got rid of her profile and pumped the brakes with me.  Keep me on the bench in case things didn’t work out with homeboy.  Sorry kid, I’m not playing “In case of emergency” for anybody. 

I will say, during this stretch, there was a chick I met that was really cool to talk.  She’s even a Disney Passholder and we did have a Disney Date out of it.  But the distance between us, I felt, would be too much to deal with on a regular basis.  We’re still friends though.  We still text every now and then.  And hopefully we’ll have another Disney Day or two coming out of it.  

But the final straw, the kicker of them all was actually a girl I DID go on a date with many years ago.  I came across her profile and I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t remember her at the time.  I mean, she KIND of looked familiar but like I said before, there’s a lot of women on there that have been doing the online thing for years, like I have.  Anyway. I wrote, she wrote back and as soon as she told me what field she worked in, it all clicked.  We DID go out years ago.  And if anyone’s read my stories from 2013, you’d remember she was the elementary school principal that pulled a ghost on me after our one date.  She was back.  

 It’s funny because as most of you are aware of by now, my memory is like a steel trap.  Which is why it’s funny that I didn’t remember her outright.  But as soon as she told me what she did, everything came right back to me.  How we were talking for weeks, we finally went out and then she was going to do a Disney Half-Marathon and I offered to go cheer her on which is when she ghosted me.  

 So as we’re talking, I mentioned MOST of that to her.  That I did remember her, and told her everything right up until the ghosted part.  I’d like to say I was giving her the benefit of the doubt.  I mean, honestly I could have just said, fuck it.  Once bitten, twice shy, kick rocks.  But I didn’t.  I let her be herself and see if she’d be willing to give it another shot, too.  (You all know where this is heading, of course.)

 So we get to talking and texting again.  And I’m kind of letting her lead the way, see how much she wants to open up or even admit to what she did.  She remembers most of it but she had to go looking for her old cell phone from almost 6 years ago to find the messages we were sending to give her an idea on why we stopped talking.  

 I’m pretty sure she found it and was almost apologetic for it even though she never fully addressed it.  Not to me, anyway.  We met up for brunch a couple of weeks later and what she did admit to was that she has a habit of overthinking/over-analyzing every scenario and situation to the point where she’s out-thinking herself over any subject.  And yes, obviously dating is one of them.  She goes so far as to admit that she may end up ghosting me again so I should be ready for it in case she does.  (This is what’s referred to as foreshadowing)  We’re texting a LOT over the course of the next few weeks.  We first started messaging again in mid-October.  In fact, I would be texting her when I was at Knott’s during Haunt a few times.  So things did seem to be on better grounds with her this time.  We made plans to see each other again a couple of weeks after that first brunch.  While she wasn’t a school principal anymore, she was working for the district and was taking coursework for her doctorate, so she was pretty busy, I wasn’t going to press.  But I did tell her I was hoping I’d see her often with the holiday season upon us and she was going to be taking holiday time off from work and school.  Plenty of time for us to see one another, right?  

 We kept messaging one another and leading into Thanksgiving, I wanted to see her.  If not the day of, at least during the weekend.  It’s not like she had plans.  Her family lives up north and she wasn’t going to see them until maybe Christmas.  Wished her a Happy Thanksgiving and when I was going to get to see her?  Black Friday she writes back: “Definitely not happening this weekend.”  Then the text immediately after that: “Now that I look at my weekends I’m all booked up through the holidays.”  

For a girl who admittedly hardly ever went out of the house, she was suddenly busy for the next month and a half.  At least she didn’t ghost me this time.  

 Yes, I’ve cancelled my dating profile once again.