Tuesday, May 30, 2006

..........know when to fold em

Ok, so, I've posted rants about online dating in the past, and at the risk of beating a dead horse, I offer up the following that I hope will be the last time I have to say anything on the topic.

Online dating is a farce.
Situations are created by a lack of being able to detect one's motive or actions solely based on what you read in those little chat box. Case in point:

I'd decided I'd send a 'flirt' to a gal on a site primarily based on her proximity to me.
Yea, she was easy on the eyes, which didn't make it a hard decision, but the fact that she was only an hour away made me throw caution to the wind and extend the hand of friendship.
Upon chatting, we seemed to hit it off pretty well.
She has a wonderful sense of humour, and got my personality quite nicely.

We found out that we were both looking for the same thing:meeting someone nice, that didn't live too far from us in the hopes of finding "everlasting love". (ok...I think I threw up in my mouth just a little bit)

Because of her living arrangements, she could only get one weekend a month to herself, which I figured "ok...............", and was willing to roll with it.

*note:it would be about a month before we could even think of meeting in person

Within the first week or so of chatting, she told me she was taking her profile off of the site we'd met on, and made a rather large mention of it.
I thought it was kinda sweet and decided I'd follow suit. I'd was in the process of deleting my profiles off the various sites I'd had, but hadn't gotten around to this one yet.

So another week or so goes by, and things were getting kinda hectic for me, which would make getting online to chat with her tricky, so I'd sent her a message (as she wasn't online at the time) telling her I'd be offline for a few days.

That weekend, out of boredom or something, I decided to go back to the site and do just a basic search. Call it sadistic curiosity.
Upon getting the results, I noticed that she had put up a new profile 'in search of dating'. hmmmmm

I thought about it a bit, and decided "ok, this gal is playing with me, and I don't do mind games".

I then decided to call her on it by sending what would end up being an offline message (as again she wasn't online) basically stating that I was confused by why she would resubmit a profile and I wasn't about to compete for her "one weekend dating window". So I wished her well and signed off.

A few days passed, and while online, she messaged me.
She said I was trippin' and the only reason she put a profile back up was due to the fact that she hadn't heard from me for a few days and decided I'd either met someone or just wasn't interested in her any longer. hmmmmmmmmmm.

*note:hadn't I sent her a message stating I wouldn't be online for a few days?

Whatever. Maybe she hadn't gotten that message as sometimes messenger services lose messages. Ok. I can buy that one. So, once again, she took her profile off the dating site, without my even asking mind you.

So we chatted for the next week, and once again, I wasn't going to be online for a few days, which I let her know, (this time during a chat).

Well, turned out, I ended up being online (not in a sneaky way or anything. It just ended up that I wasn't doing what I thought I would be doing to prevent me from being online for the weekend).

So, once again, due to morbid curiosity, I did a basic search on that site and guess what? Yep, her profile was right back where it was before.

Ya know that old adage "fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me."?

This time, I sent her a basic "thanks for playin' the home game" salute all the time wondering "why is it I ALWAYS pick the whack jobs??".
Because it seems that mostly people that are lonely, pathetic, jobless, carless, and basically social misfits spend their time in online dating sites.

And yes, I realize I fit into that category somewhere, so please don't accuse me of being a hypocrit. That subject is for another entry.

So this time I get a message from her saying that I'm the one that's trippin' and how she doesn't need someone like me playin' games. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

So I ask you:do I trip over nothing, or am I better than reading a woman's actions better than I'd ever given myself credit for?

All I know is that while some people think that online dating is the 'way of the future', I have found through trial and error, (resulting mostly in error), that unless both people have an understanding of each other, it ain't gonna work.

People have to be able to read one another and trying to do that in a little box through typed conversation can not and will not work.

Just go back to dating the way it was meant to be done:find a woman you like, bonk her on the head and drag her back to your cave.

2 comments:

OzzyC said...

You knew I'd be putting my two cents in sooner or later...

I think you've got two things going against you... you do tend to read too much into innane things, and you tend to get too involved too quickly. That tends to scare women off as much as it scares men off.

At the same time, you're on to something when you say that you can't get to know someone by just chatting with them. With text chatting, you miss out on the subtle verbal nuances, and the in-person non-verbal cues. I think that face-to-face meeting is generally better.

Paulius said...

I once started chatting (just chatting mind you) with a girl on IRC. Just regular stuff, TV, movies, music etc.

She asked if we could chat in a private window. I said OK, because it's confusing trying to hold a conversation with 50 other people chatting in the same space.

Then, while chatting privately, she saw I was talking to another girl 'in the clear' and totally flipped out.

I'd unfortunately given her my email address earlier, and spent two weeks getting love poems and alternating "I love you, I hate you" messages.

She was acting like we'd been married for 50 years and she caught me cheating. I'd only been chatting with her for 15 minutes!