A fellow blogger bud Jen Jen http://tavernwench.blogspot.com/ suggested right before Christmas I write about some bad dates and my luck, or lack thereof, with internet dating... And why I've totally given up on that avenue. I've been reading my other blogger bud's posts lately and a great many of them have been describing bad dates with guys and guy bashing in general...
As a guy, I'd like to show the other side of the coin. Fair is fair.
At first, right after my separation and divorce, it looked promising. I had been off the market for almost ten years, and to be frank, I was clueless on the dating scene. With the hours I worked, I was (and still am) never going to meet anyone the conventional ways. So I gave it a shot.
I did meet one very nice woman... But it was very early on in my separation... Very early on... Way before I moved to West Virginia. And we both were the wrong people for each other. We were just perfect for each other for that time, but we both realized early on that it just wouldn't last and parted very good friends. We still keep in touch and I've just learned she's started attending church again and I'm happy that she's happy. I have a lot of respect for her, but I could never join the Mormon Church or ever bring myself to move back to Arizona...
Anyway, fast forward to this past year. I'm not going to discuss one person because it's far to painful... Except that although they said they cared... Never thought enough about me to ever really get to know me. I'm not saying I'm perfect, far from it, you don't get to be 40 and divorced without some baggage... But don't fault mine when in the same breath deny your own baggage. A few real assholes really did a number on her and she never took the time to look beyond her own past and see how much I really cared for her, that I wasn't those other guys. The only thing I ever asked of her when we were dating was that she and I would date exclusively. I took my ad down, but she never took hers down nor would give me a definitive answer. Always hemmed and hawed or changed the subject. But now that's truly and completely over.
So after that, began my second try at internet dating, sometime around March of 2005.
First attempt... Meet a woman through Yahoo personals... Talk a few times on the phone and decide to meet at the Omelet Shoppe in Princeton. We meet up, and suprisingly, she looks just like the picture she posted. So we sit and order coffee. Start to talk about things we both like. Flea Markets are big with me in the summer. I love going to them. So I ask if she'd like to go to a pretty big one outside of Hinton... Reply:
"I'm not allowed out of the county for a while..."
Heh?
The she goes on to tell me she's on probation... For prescription fraud. Fan-fucking-tastic. That's all I need... It was somewhere in this conversation that I began to take notice of her behavior... I won't go into it in detail, but it was the classic signs of chronic meth use.
See ya!
Second one was a very nice, well educated woman with two bachelor's degrees... Finally someone I could actually have a conversation with. We went out on several occasions until something happened... All I can say is I was stunned. I blogged about that one but it's too precious not to give it a second look. Go here:
http://rangertomsrants.blogspot.com/2005/03/another-one-for-books.html
Needless to say, we stopped seeing eachother.
Then there was another well educated woman... We dated a few times but she was still very hung up on her ex... That's all she would talk about and it got to the point where I was being mentally compared to him in everything... And I mean everything. It was later I discovered she was taking some very serious and heavy-duty, industrial strength antidepressants... And would have these massive mood swings and bouts of deep depression. She didn't need me, she needed a rubber room and an army of headshrinkers.
Then there was the very pretty woman from Wytheville, VA... Who over-analyzed everything... Example:
Laying out in the park on a really pretty spring afternoon... My head in her lap and I'm just enjoying the day looking up at the clouds. Just enjoying her company.
Her: "What are you thinking?"
Me: "Nothing."
Her: "Oh, you've got to be thinking something!"
Me: "Actually, I was thinking that cloud kind of looks like a frog..."
Her: "Don't patronize me! You're thinking about her, aren't you!"
Me: "Who the hall are you talking about?"
Her: "Your ex! That's who!"
Me: "No, that cloud really looks like a frog..."
Her: "You're going to leave me, aren't you! Go back to her!"
Me: "Oh, yeah, that's going to happen..."
Her: "See I knew it!!!"
Everytime we were together. What the fuck...
It was that and her inability to cut the umbilical cord from her four kids... Couldn't go anywhere without them. We never had a "date" alone. The were 10, 12, 14 & 16... Not like they couldn't be left alone for a few hours. Don't get me wrong here, I like kids... I like spending time with someone's kids, you have to when you're dating them. I even took the whole clan down to North Carolina one weekend to ride a tourist steam train that one of her sons was dying to see... But when you're trying to get to know someone... You need some alone time. She would show up at my place with the whole clan in tow... And my apartment, well to say it's tiny is an understatement. The two of us and four kids made it claustrophobic. What should have been a huge red flad in the very beginning was that all four of her kids were from four separate husbands...
There are a few others... One, right after the first date decided I needed a mother... Came to my place and saw I had laundry folded on my bed and not put away yet... She decided I had it "folded wrong" and took it upon herself to start refolding my clean stuff, tighty whities and all...
Then there's the ones who were just full of shit from the start, married women out playing... Ones who looked nothing like their photograph... (Quasimodo comes to mind...) Or the picture was their highschool graduation pic and they were 39 or 40...
So I'm done with internet dating. In fact, I'm done with dating all together right now. I'm sick of the bullshit, the lies and untruths. The ADHD, OCD and PTSD... I don't have a degree in psychology or family counseling so I guess I'll just have to be alone. This may sound really selfish but I've got my own problems I'm dealing with, I don't need anyone else's. Being alone really sucks sometimes, waking up by myself... But I'm not going to sacrifice my own mental stability to have someone to hold at night.
Copyright 2006 Thomas J Wolfenden
At first, right after my separation and divorce, it looked promising. I had been off the market for almost ten years, and to be frank, I was clueless on the dating scene. With the hours I worked, I was (and still am) never going to meet anyone the conventional ways. So I gave it a shot.
I did meet one very nice woman... But it was very early on in my separation... Very early on... Way before I moved to West Virginia. And we both were the wrong people for each other. We were just perfect for each other for that time, but we both realized early on that it just wouldn't last and parted very good friends. We still keep in touch and I've just learned she's started attending church again and I'm happy that she's happy. I have a lot of respect for her, but I could never join the Mormon Church or ever bring myself to move back to Arizona...
Anyway, fast forward to this past year. I'm not going to discuss one person because it's far to painful... Except that although they said they cared... Never thought enough about me to ever really get to know me. I'm not saying I'm perfect, far from it, you don't get to be 40 and divorced without some baggage... But don't fault mine when in the same breath deny your own baggage. A few real assholes really did a number on her and she never took the time to look beyond her own past and see how much I really cared for her, that I wasn't those other guys. The only thing I ever asked of her when we were dating was that she and I would date exclusively. I took my ad down, but she never took hers down nor would give me a definitive answer. Always hemmed and hawed or changed the subject. But now that's truly and completely over.
So after that, began my second try at internet dating, sometime around March of 2005.
First attempt... Meet a woman through Yahoo personals... Talk a few times on the phone and decide to meet at the Omelet Shoppe in Princeton. We meet up, and suprisingly, she looks just like the picture she posted. So we sit and order coffee. Start to talk about things we both like. Flea Markets are big with me in the summer. I love going to them. So I ask if she'd like to go to a pretty big one outside of Hinton... Reply:
"I'm not allowed out of the county for a while..."
Heh?
The she goes on to tell me she's on probation... For prescription fraud. Fan-fucking-tastic. That's all I need... It was somewhere in this conversation that I began to take notice of her behavior... I won't go into it in detail, but it was the classic signs of chronic meth use.
See ya!
Second one was a very nice, well educated woman with two bachelor's degrees... Finally someone I could actually have a conversation with. We went out on several occasions until something happened... All I can say is I was stunned. I blogged about that one but it's too precious not to give it a second look. Go here:
http://rangertomsrants.blogspot.com/2005/03/another-one-for-books.html
Needless to say, we stopped seeing eachother.
Then there was another well educated woman... We dated a few times but she was still very hung up on her ex... That's all she would talk about and it got to the point where I was being mentally compared to him in everything... And I mean everything. It was later I discovered she was taking some very serious and heavy-duty, industrial strength antidepressants... And would have these massive mood swings and bouts of deep depression. She didn't need me, she needed a rubber room and an army of headshrinkers.
Then there was the very pretty woman from Wytheville, VA... Who over-analyzed everything... Example:
Laying out in the park on a really pretty spring afternoon... My head in her lap and I'm just enjoying the day looking up at the clouds. Just enjoying her company.
Her: "What are you thinking?"
Me: "Nothing."
Her: "Oh, you've got to be thinking something!"
Me: "Actually, I was thinking that cloud kind of looks like a frog..."
Her: "Don't patronize me! You're thinking about her, aren't you!"
Me: "Who the hall are you talking about?"
Her: "Your ex! That's who!"
Me: "No, that cloud really looks like a frog..."
Her: "You're going to leave me, aren't you! Go back to her!"
Me: "Oh, yeah, that's going to happen..."
Her: "See I knew it!!!"
Everytime we were together. What the fuck...
It was that and her inability to cut the umbilical cord from her four kids... Couldn't go anywhere without them. We never had a "date" alone. The were 10, 12, 14 & 16... Not like they couldn't be left alone for a few hours. Don't get me wrong here, I like kids... I like spending time with someone's kids, you have to when you're dating them. I even took the whole clan down to North Carolina one weekend to ride a tourist steam train that one of her sons was dying to see... But when you're trying to get to know someone... You need some alone time. She would show up at my place with the whole clan in tow... And my apartment, well to say it's tiny is an understatement. The two of us and four kids made it claustrophobic. What should have been a huge red flad in the very beginning was that all four of her kids were from four separate husbands...
There are a few others... One, right after the first date decided I needed a mother... Came to my place and saw I had laundry folded on my bed and not put away yet... She decided I had it "folded wrong" and took it upon herself to start refolding my clean stuff, tighty whities and all...
Then there's the ones who were just full of shit from the start, married women out playing... Ones who looked nothing like their photograph... (Quasimodo comes to mind...) Or the picture was their highschool graduation pic and they were 39 or 40...
So I'm done with internet dating. In fact, I'm done with dating all together right now. I'm sick of the bullshit, the lies and untruths. The ADHD, OCD and PTSD... I don't have a degree in psychology or family counseling so I guess I'll just have to be alone. This may sound really selfish but I've got my own problems I'm dealing with, I don't need anyone else's. Being alone really sucks sometimes, waking up by myself... But I'm not going to sacrifice my own mental stability to have someone to hold at night.
Copyright 2006 Thomas J Wolfenden
11 comments:
Oh my..... I'm not quite sure what to say, I'm still dumbfounded over the woman with the 'pregnancy belief'. LOL
To be honest, I would be scared to death to meet someone on an internet thing. I know it's not any different then if you just happened across them by chance somewhere, but, you don't actually get to see them right from the start. How they behave, if they are clean..... etc.
Ya know - I've known some people who have had really good luck with meeting people on the internet, and some who have met strictly scum bags. I think it's pretty hit or miss, but I don't blame you for your decision to leave it alone...sounds like you've met some real winners on the internet, huh?
You make me want to never have to date again.
If anything happens to my husband, I'm becoming celibate.
Oh my goodness. See...this is what I'm talking about, people are freakin' crazy. Are there any sane, single people other than us?
You fold clothes?
Wow.
What's OCD?
P.S. Your word verification has the sequence 'wankr' in it. Are you trying to tell me something?
Sherri: I've totally given up on it. Besides the nut cases, then there's the women who are looking for some male supermodel or Brad Pitt look-a-like which I'm far from and they themselves aren't exactly a prize package...
Courtney: That's an understatement. There was a few others inbetween those I omitted because of space and time constraints... But that's it in a nutshell.
berly: I've been involuntarily celibate for several months now.... LOL
Linny: Linny, apparently you and I are the only sane ones left out of 300 million American citizens.
Dirk: Of course I fold and put away my clean clothes... Old habbit from the army... And I'm NOT OCD ( Obsessive~Compulsive Disorder) And I don't think you're a 'wanker'... LOL! Now where's that slab of VB?
Diana: True... But you were about the only honest one I met... No one is able to tell the truth anymore... It's far to easy to hide behind the screen and keyboard and when the going gets rough to hit the 'delete' key...
heh, i know where you're coming from. i've given up too. don't get me wrong, i like girls, i like looking at 'em, and i like lots of other stuff with them too. but i think i just give up
although the woman who was hungup reminds me of a joke i read once (and found on the intermanet http://www.psc.edu/~deerfiel/Jokes/horse.html)
Wow. I had missed the story about the woman who thought oral would get her all knocked up. Jesus.
Aww, good luck Tom. I'd take a hiatus if I were you, too.
Not to man-bash too much, but the most common thing with internet dating are the men who post a photo that's, like, thirty years old...
I missed out on the internet dating thing. I have been spoken for since 1994 by several ppl and sometimes at several times. I never had a chance to look on the internet for ppl. I meet all my crazy women the old fashion way, at work. And it was just as bad just not as varied.
And to that chic with the issues on going down on a guy because she thinks semen can surpass the stomach acid and all the tubes in your gut leading to your rectum: WoW! I have yet to meet someone that stoopid. Lets hope she is sterile and cannt pass these genes on to contaminate the rest of the world.
Alone isn't being lonely - at least not always. And personally, I'd rather be alone than with any of the nutjobs I've met in the past! I'm too old and too set in my ways to settle for anything less than exactly what I want, which I'm thinking I may never find. But I'm ok with that - I'd rather be alone than settle and be unhappy.
There are alot of crazy women out there. And men too. The St.L dating market sucked.... And that was in my 20's. So I can't imagine how sucky things are in smaller areas.
I'm with berly. If somethng happens to my hubby, I can't imagine I'd ever date again. I hated going through it...
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