What Do You Get When You Get A Notification?

A fellow .com dating friend recently mused about the feeling you get when you get a notification of contact from someone, and how in the long run the feeling is usually more negative than positive.

I have to agree.

Every single time I would get a notification that someone was initiating contact I would think, "This isn't a drill! Make sure your seat-backs and tray tables are in their full and upright position, and let's DO THIS THING!" Then I'd proceed to view the initiators profile.
And, like my friend said, 9 times out of 10 there was just "something" missing.
You know what's the worst thing to have missing from a profile? A profile picture.

It's ridiculous really.

People who don't post a picture usually have some excuse that they aren't posting a picture because it forces people to be shallow; that people place too much merit on physical appearance.
I think people WITHOUT pictures are the real culprit of placing too much merit on physical appearance. Just post your picture already! If you don't have a picture, I guarantee I'm not delving any deeper into your profile.

Even if there IS a profile picture, 9 times out of 10 there is some unnamed "something" missing.

What's hard about all that though, is that there is no possible way you can fit yourself into an online dating profile. So 9 times out of 10, even if there was "something" missing, I'd respond to the contact, because maybe the missing "something" just didn't fit into their profile.

PS: Did anyone get the reference to my post title and the picture?

Cyber Staring

Most dating websites allow you to see who has been viewing your profile.

The site I pay for not only tells me who looks at my profile, but how many times they've looked at my profile.

There are a few men who have viewed my profile over 25 times, but they have NEVER contacted me in any other way. It's weird.
I'm going to call it Cyber-Staring.

If I cared enough I might contact them, but I don't...so I won't.

Can I Have A Definition Please

How does one go about defining their online relationship?

What's even trickier is defining an online "relationship" that is long distance.

Ideally the people you "meet" online live relatively close; close enough that meeting in person isn't that big of a deal. But what if the person you meet lives 13 hours away in Texas?

Is your relationship any less valid because you haven't held hands, hugged, kissed, or even SEEN the other person in the flesh?

If you couldn't tell...I've immersed myself into the above stated situation. To be honest, I didn't immerse MYSELF, the other person involved kept tossing buckets of water at me essentially saying, "I'm all in, and I'm going to keep dumping buckets of water on you until you realize you're all in too."
(you know me and my metaphors, haha)
While talking on the phone yesterday, he referred to himself as, "my boyfriend".
CAN he be my boyfriend if we haven't met? Or does he automatically become my boyfriend when he steps off the plane in St. Louis and we meet "for real".
He feels like a boyfriend.

Everyone who knows our "situation" thinks he is my boyfriend.

Obviously HE thinks he's my boyfriend.

There is no doubt in my mind that if we lived closer, and had met already, I would be calling him my boyfriend.

I guess what is really holding me back from calling myself his "girlfriend" is the stigma of being in an online relationship.
I've judged others for their online relationships. I've also judged others for their "hastiness" of defining their relationships.

Maybe this is yet again a slap in the face by a humble pie.

I found this pinterest-ism the other day:
Sometimes the greatest relationships are the ones you never expected to be in. The ones that sweep you off your feet and challenge every view you've ever had.
If that's the truth, then I guess I'm in the greatest relationship.
I never EVER expected to have the "feelings" that I do for this guy. It's so unexpected that I spent a good two weeks trying to talk him out of it because I thought he was crazy.

But it's happening. And it's weird. And exciting.

Some of the advice my co-workers and friends gave me about "relationships" (because I've never really been in one and I had no clue how to be in one) was that once you find someone worth being in a relationship with it'll be effortless. And I thought I knew what they were talking about. I thought the relationships I'd formed with the other people I'd met online were effortless. I was wrong. WAY wrong.

THIS relationship is effortless.
Well...except for this "defining who we are to each other" bit.

Silent Understanding

I am the queen of remembering people.
In fact, I'm a Super Recognizer, which is someone with an amazing ability to recognize faces.

I learned a long time ago that not everyone has this ability. I use to recognize someone and I'd say, "Hey! Remember like 4 years ago you were in Nauvoo on family vacation, and your family went to the Fudge Factory?! I was working that day!" Or "Remember that class of 175 students you were in last semester, you sat in the 3rd row and had a purple checkered book-bag? I was in that class too!" People don't remember stuff like that, and to have someone basically say "I was watching you!!!!" is unsettling for them.

I've learned to not say anything to someone I recognize until they say something to me. If I'm with a group of friends I'll say, "See that guy in the green shirt? He was in the Allyn House last year and bought a bookmark!"
I was working on Saturday and a man walked into the store who I knew I had seen before.  My mind started making connections, placing his face into different scenarios in my head trying to figure out where I'd seen him before. Then it hit me; I'd seen and read his online dating profile. What's more, he had emailed me a couple of times.

It's been a good three months since the last email, but I felt really weird. I kept trying to hide my face so that on the off chance he DID recognize me, we didn't have to have that awkward, "Hey!" conversation.
As far as I know he never made the connection. After about twenty minutes of wandering around the store with his friends, he left without buying anything. For which I was actually grateful, because then I didn't have to 1 on 1 interact with him.
I'm surprised I haven't seen more people wondering around Nauvoo from online. It's an LDS dating site, and Nauvoo is a LDS tourist destination.
I hope that if I see someone whose profile I've seen and they reocginze me too, we'd just do that casual head-nod/smile that says, "Yeah...I know you're a .com dater, and you know I'm a .com dater, but we don't have to talk about it!"

Take A Leap

A million points to whoever can name where this image comes from. And just like the the Swiss army, the points don't matter! Also...a million points if you can name where that "line" came from!

.com dating is scary.

I've mentioned in previous blogs how hard it is to trust what you are reading in people's profiles, and what you are being told by the people who talk to you.

How do you ever really know that what they are saying it real?

How do you ever really know what their intentions are?

I don't even think those "worries" are exclusive to .com dating. You never really "know" people. People you thought would never be capable of doing something, do the very thing you think them incapable of. How do you trust people?!

I'm not a weirdo who thinks no one can be trusted. I KNOW some people in the .com universe are honest. I know this because I'm one of those people, and others have to exist. Plus I've seen real live .com dating success stories.  Still, I'm very very very skeptical of the strangers I meet online.

I was contacted by a guy recently who was very forward. Not inappropriately forward. Just very much like, "This is what I'm thinking...how do YOU feel about it?"
I've had other guys be forward, but this guy's (we'll call him, Nonso) forward was different.

After a few days of talking to Nonso, I confessed to him that .com dating is kind of creepy, and scared me for the above stated reason: You just never really know who these people are.
I said to him, "You don't know me, and I don't know you!"

He then called me out.

He said for someone who professes to be a Christian, trusting God 100%, I don't have any faith.

He said, "If you really want to know if my intentions are pure, ask God, because He DOES know me."

I was...surprised.

Nonso is 100% right.
I spend all this time worrying about who these people are, and the answer is SO simple.
But sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to grasp.

Men vs. Women

Ain't that the truth!

Make Your Own Kind Of Music

That quote/phrase/saying, (whatever you want to call it) sums up my feelings exactly.

I was taught by my wonderful mother that I have worth, and I shouldn't base my success as a woman on if I have a boyfriend/husband. As a result of her constantly reminding me to love ME, I feel like I DO love me. I am a confident, independent woman.  I don't "need" someone to complete me, because I AM complete. If I had a husband he wouldn't be completing me, he'd be an addition to my complete-self.
Metaphor Warning: It's like singing a solo compared to singing a duet. Both can be beautiful, both can be awful; but one isn't better than the other just because there is an additional voice. Does that make sense?
But...just like the picture above says, there is something so appealing about having that "someone".

Which is why I ".com date". Because even though I'm happy singing my own song, it doesn't HURT to want someone to sing with.

Right?

Curiosity Killed The Catfish

Ever heard of Catfishing?

It's something we online daters have keep an eye out for.
According to urbandictionary.com, catfishing is:
The phenomenon of internet predators that fabricate online identities and entire social circles to trick people into emotional/romantic relationships.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I caught myself a catfish! And by caught, I don't mean I was in an emotional/romantic relationship with a fake person. I mean I caught a person red-handed, pretending to be someone they aren't. We'll call him.....Darius, because guess what...THAT ISN'T HIS REAL NAME!

About two months ago I went through this kick where I'd look at the man catalog and message a person a day. Darius was one of the people that I messaged, even though his profile was very lack-luster. The thing that made me message him was that one of his two pictures was of his buff arms. It would be an understatement to say that I LOVE buff arms.

I had forgotten that I messaged him until a week ago when he replied to my message and said, "Hey u! Sorry it took me a minute to reply. How r u?"
Red Flag Moment: Please spell out simple words like, "you" and, "are".
After a snarky response of, "A minute....a month...whose really keeping track?", we emailed back and fourth for a few hours. Then he sent me his cell-phone number and asked me to text him.
We text for a couple of days, which basically means I grilled him with a ton of questions, because my curiosity knows no bounds. Still though, you have to take their answers with a grain of salt, because they could say anything, and I wouldn't know the difference.
TANGENT: There is a very fine line between cautious curiosity & creeper. I feel like when you're online "dating"  you are constantly having to toe that line. Because I'm always worried that the person on the other side of the screen isn't really who they say they are, I am always in "Find out about them" mode. Which often means googling the tiny bits of info they give me and hoping they return a result. The perverted Jew-to my utter surprise-was exactly who he said he was...I looked him up. That's when you start to feel creepy. Because now...instead of going through the "get to know you" process WITH someone, you already know things about them. BUT you only feel bad if they turn out to really be who they say they are. But you can never tell, until you do that "research".
We went a couple of days without corresponding at all, which was fine with me. I decided that if he wanted to contact me he could, but I wasn't going to be the one making the effort.
Last night he text me, and after getting into our conversation, I decided to do some of my "cautious curiosity research".
Taking the info provided by the dating site, and the info he told me about where he worked, and what his name is; I did a google search. His job seemed to me like something that would have a news article or two written about it. What I was hoping to find was something that would verify what he was telling me.
The whole time I'm doing this "research", I was still texting him, and asking him questions; getting more details that I can enter into my search.
In doing my research I found out he isn't who he says he is. The names, and dates, and stories he told don't correspond with the info I found online.
The pictures I found of him from the news articles look like the two pictures from his profile, expect the profile pictures are like 10 years old.

 I'm pretty proud of myself for being such a sleuth! I can't imagine our "friendship" would have gone any further anyway...but now I can totally call him out on being a catfish!
I want to say to him "So If you're Darius....who is (insert his REAL name here)."

Age Is Just A Number

I have always had a love for old men.  They are adorable to me. I used to joke that I wanted to have an old man "zoo" so I could just observe them at my leisure. (I know it's weird...I'M weird).

On a completely unrelated note...haha....I've always pictured myself "ending up with" a guy who is older than me. I think every girl does. From the time I was little I always thought my husband had to be older.

Online you can limit your search down to the tiniest detail. My typical search is pretty broad. I usually search for a male, with a profile picture, who is 5'5 or taller, and is between the ages of 29-39.
I recently had a friend tell me, "Tacy, age is just a number!" We'd been talking about the dating potential around here. I said everyone was too young; he did not agree.
I guess I do agree to some extent, that age is just a number, but let me throw a couple real life situations out there, just to play devil's advocate.
On more than one occasion I have had "flirts" (which are vague, "cookie cutter"-site generated messages you can quickly send to someone whose profile you are viewing. Example: "I'm interested! Let's get to know each other!") or personal messages from men who are WAY older than me. As in 60+!
The first one I brushed off as an accident, saying "Meh-that's just a computer illiterate man who accidentally sent me a "flirt". But then the next day he sent me another one. And he's sent me yet another one.
I also had a guy, screen-named Gunslinger43, who saved me as a "favorite" and sent me a personal message telling me he was impressed by my profile, that he liked my pictures, and he wanted to "get to know me". He didn't have a picture posted, so I clicked on his profile to see what he was all about. The 43 in his screen name? That's the year he was born, haha. He's 71 years old! I ignored his message, and he sent me another one about a week later! The only reason I'd be half tempted to respond is if he was going to leave me a whole lot of money sometime soon (if you catch my drift), but his profile says he, "Lives a humble life". 

Maybe Gunslinger43 was sitting around with his friends and they said, "Gunslinger, age is just a number!"
Haha!

So THAT'S What Crow Tastes Like

1. . Fig. to display total humility, especially when shown to be wrong. Well, it looks like I was wrong, and I'm going to have to eat crow.

The morning after I wrote the post about R2 being a complete jerk, he contacted me and we made plans for him to come over to my sister's house for dinner and a movie.

Later that afternoon it started to rain, and because he drives a motorcycle he told me that if the rain kept up he wouldn't be able to make it. I told him if it came down to it, I could pick him up.

Just before dinner I text him my sister's address. Here is the conversation:
way out there?!
I guess so!
Idk if I want to drive out there, lol

I wasn't 100% sure if he was being sarcastic or just stupid...because I don't know him THAT well, so I said:
well that's lame!
Ten minutes later (because he hadn't said anything) I said:
So are you coming or not, R2?
It's like 30 minutes away :(
Wow.....for real?! I normally live 30 HOURS away!
Haha
NOT "haha", R2. you could have thought about the distance THIS MORNING, I mean....hello!? Jeesh
Sorry!!!! :(
whatever
you leave tomorrow morning?
at 4am
Then no correspondence for an hour and 15 minutes.  In that time I was drafting up a mean text message to send, expressing all the angry thoughts going through my head. As I was typing out my "you suck" text HE text ME and said:
I guess not then huh, :(
Guess not what?!
You aren't coming to pick me up
I don't even know where you live! I didn't even know you WANTED me to pick you up! Why would I pick you up? 
i messaged you at 6:40
the last thing I got from you was at 6:30 and you said "you leave tomorrow morning?"
ok, it was 6:41 not 6:40
:(
this sucks
Don't just send a sad face, R2! We're freakin adults! If you still want to hang out give me your address!

So he gave me his address.

Since he didn't show up for dinner everyone in the house (especially me) was FUMING because of his ridiculousness. When I announced that I needed to borrow a car to go meet up with him, my sister and brother-in-law thought I was insane.
But I HAD to meet him so I could know if he was as big an idiot as he was coming across as.

I'm SO glad I went over to his house!
I pulled in front of his house (behind his drenched motorcycle) and he was standing on the porch, smiling like a ninny and waving at me. Almost like when you get home and your puppy is really excited to see you.

Trying to describe him would take WAY too much time.
I'm 99.9% sure his mind didn't even register that canceling plans at the extreme last minute is....rude.

We talked on his porch for about an hour and a half. It was great to finally get to know him! Instead of trying to see what he is like through messages. And now he makes sense to me. I will never have to read another text and be like, "What does he mean by that?"

He is a great friend! A great TEXT friend...like I wanted all along!

Moral of the story: You NEVER know what someone is like until you talk to them face to face. And you should NEVER read anything into a text message.

While driving home I kept thinking how comical it was that I thought he was "stringing me along". I'm pretty sure there isn't a malicious bone in his body. In fact, the whole time I thought I was being snippy and argumentative in my texts he probably didn't even realize I was trying to be snippy and argumentative. Haha!


I'm hoping this is the last blog I write about R2. Because between eating the humble pie and the crow I'm getting pretty full.

Pie In The Face

Remember the post about the humble pie? THIS post?

Well I ate the humble pie, and now I want to throw up!

I'm on vacation in the same town as R2, and we had decided previously that we'd "chill" while I was in town. I'm not here FOR him. My brother-in-law planned on me coming here a long time before I even knew R2 existed, but he was going to be a perk to my trip!

I was really excited about meeting him. We've been texting every day for almost two months, and I just really want to know what he's like in person.

Well it hasn't happened.

And HE has made it not happen.

I know he is busy with a job and all...but he has to have at least one free hour to hang out with me! Right?!

I'm just really confused by him.

We've both talked about how fun it'll be to "chill", even if it was just hanging out at my sister's house. But every time I've said, "Ok! I'm free!" he has had some stupid excuse. It'd be a whole different situation if I had just showed up and been like, "ok! Let's hang out!" But he KNEW I was coming and said he WANTED to hang out. Even after I landed in AZ he said, "let's chill!" He could have just ignored me, instead of stringing me along.

And to put the cherry on top of it all; on the website I met him on you can add people to your list of "favorites" and it tells you who had added you to their list, and tells you who your mutual favorites are. Well last night I was on the website, answering some emails from other people, and I looked at my list of "mutual" favorites and R2 wasn't on there anymore. Which means he UN-favorited me!

After the RJ incident and now this, I'm just about ready to thrown in the .com dating towel.

It's like the John Denver song where he says, "I think my heart is broken. There's an emptiness inside. So many things I've longed for have so often been denied."

My poor little heart can't take much more rejection.

I'm My Own Worst Enemy

I spent a good portion of Monday writing out a LONG blog, all about how I had been texting and talking to this great guy (I'll call him RJ) for a little over a month. And about how sometimes I go all weird with people I meet online, because I don't know how to show ME through a text or email or phone call. And how my weirdness had almost scared, RJ, off....twice.  And even though I'd given him the "Get Out Of This Friendship Free" card, he didn't cash it in, because he was able to forgive my weirdness.

Well...Monday afternoon I got a text from RJ that said something along the lines of, "I have to be honest, Rexy, I'm beginning to see us differently." (he calls/called me Rexy sometimes).

I said, "See us differently how?"

And he said, "I don't think we can be more than friends."

:-(

Too bad too, cause he was SOOO nice, and hilarious, and really good looking.

And he doesn't think it was that big of a deal, but if I didn't have him to lean on the whole week of my nieces funeral I would have gone insane.

So thanks, RJ, for being a great friend. And even though I told you I didn't want one more guy in my "friend zone" I'm sure I can squeeze you in.

I'll Have The Pie

I couldn't decide whether to name this blog, I'll Have The Pie (as in humble pie) or Judge not, Lest ye be Judged!

One of the first posts I wrote (you can find it here) was about texting, and a guy I nicknamed R2.

The last thing I said about R2 was this, "So I guess it's back to the man catalog for me! This guy was a dud!"

Well...I have to rescind that statement.
R2 was/is not a "text friend" dud. He's not very good at texting, and I get a lot of "haha" and "lol", but he's always there, and will always respond to what I say. It's great. It helps that he is 2 hours behind me, so when I'm awake at 2am, it's only midnight his time, and he is almost always ready to chat until I fall asleep. In fact, we're texting right now, and for some reason I love the fact that I am the one who will end our conversation by being the first one to "go to bed". Is that weird? Yeah...a little bit huh.

One day R2 and I were texting and I can't remember exactly what was being said, but it somehow lead to him saying, "I don't judge people," and I said, "Me either!" And I quickly realized that was very untrue.

I judge people. Especially online. And I judged R2 A LOT. To the point where I had to apologize to him, because in one of our many conversations I found out something about him that explained why I thought he was a "dud" in the first place, and I felt AWFUL.

I still think you have to judge a little, but I judged him pretty harshly. Hopefully I've learned my lesson.

Just Boil Already!

I'm a big fan of metaphors.

You know the saying, "A watched pot never boils."

It's true.

Here's the trick though: Some of us are puerile and aren't sure if we even turned the burner on. So we're sitting there watching and waiting for the stupid water to boil and the water doesn't even know we WANT it to boil!

And sometimes we've turned the burner on and we're waiting for the water to boil, but all along the water just wanted to be ice cubes, so it's never going to boil.

And the worst part is that if the water just wants to be ice cubes it needs to tell me and I'll put it in the freezer, instead of wishing and hoping that the stupid pot will boil!

Haha! Has my metaphor confused you?

Shopping Is Fun!

My mind is occupied with other things right now, but I promised people I'd blog about my YSA conference expierence. Here is what I could muster.

I have previously eluded to the idea that online dating is like shopping for men. (click here for that blog)
Recently I was invited to a LDS Young Single Adults conference (you are considered a "young" single adult in the LDS church if you are 18-29 and unmarried). By invited I mean I got a text that went like this, word for word, "This weekend I'm going to St. Louis to shop for men. You wanna come with me?"
I've never been to one of these conferences, and I'd actually prided myself on that fact.

But I'm an online dater now, I have no pride, so I decided, "What the heck! I'm in!"

Here's the tricky business about being a 28 year old woman at a YOUNG single adult conference. 

I don't fit in!

I'm 99.9% sure I was the oldest female there. In fact, I stood behind a girl in the registration line who started Junior High the same year I was graduating college.

I found myself texting my friends as a lifeline for my sanity. I text one friend and said, "I'm surrounded by idiots!" to which he kindly replied, "Haha!" Though I didn't think it was all that funny, considering I had only been at the conference for 1/2 hour.

The friend I went to the conference with said, "I feel like all of these men just crawled out of their mamma's basement and forgot to shower on the way out the door." It was THAT bad.

During registration, one guy was trying to impress the women there by getting across the room by jumping over the couch...he didn't jump high enough and he tripped.

Most of the men that weekend tripped over the proverbial couch.

I'll stick to online dating for now.

That's Not How Any Of This Works

It's short and sweet today folks!
Who has seen that commercial where the old lady posts all her pictures on her "wall", and then later her friend says something the old lady doesn't like so she unfriends her friend simply by saying, "I unfriend you!" And then the old lady's friend says, "That's not how this works! That's not how ANY of this works!"

I feel that way about online dating.

Most of my time spent viewing profiles I'm quietly saying to myself, 'That's not how this works! That's not how ANY of this works!"

She Doesn't Even Go Here!

(My title comes from a WONDERFUL movie! Name it and I'll mentally give you a gold star!)

There are myriads of ridiculously specific dating sites available. From equestriancupid.com to farmersonly.com, and my favorite purrsonals.com. So why would someone who doesn't fit the "criteria" join one of these sites?

I'm a Latter Day Saint, so naturally I joined a dating site for fellow Latter Day Saints. I'm continually surprised by people who aren't LDS that are on the site I subscribe to.

I have another friend who is a Christian. She is on christianmingle.com and just the other day we expressed our mutual confusion for people who join these religion specific sites, and yet when given the chance to rate their church attendance they openly say, "Never."

Why join a religion specific site if you don't even "go there"? Join match.com, or eharmony.com or okcupid.com...something that isn't so specific.

Not that I don't love people who aren't LDS. Flirt to convert right (wink, wink), but it just seems odd that people would pay to "mingle" with a very specific group of people.

I met a Jewish guy the other day on my site. (A very attractive and successful Jewish guy might I add! That's not important, but I felt like including it, haha!) He gave me his cell #, we text a few times, and then he called me. After our long/awkward/semi-inappropriate conversation my mind was even more boggled as to why he would WANT to be on an LDS dating site.

There are plenty of fish in the sea, my Jewish friend, maybe you'll have better success casting your net elsewhere!

Tacy's Take On Tennyson!

My parents are putting their dog down today.

I haven't cried this hard since...well it's been a while. Sadly I didn't even cry this hard when my grandma died.  It's kind of funny, because for a long time we've all expected to show up at  my parents house and Nubbins will have died, because he is old. And we all talked about how it would be "easier" if he died, but now that he is going to, it is incredibly sad. He is 100% part of my family, and he will be missed.

Why do we allow ourselves to get so attached to something that is so fleeting? Setting ourselves up for heartache.

How does this tie into a blog about .com dating?

I wrote a blog a February 10, 2010 (right before Valentine's Day). I'm going to copy and paste it.

I'm sure everyone has heard the Tennyson poem ending:
'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.
But is it true?Is it really better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?
Considering I've never been in love and therefore have never lost love I can not profess to be an authority on love and loss, but the upcoming holiday has planted seeds of cynicism in my mind.After all...over half of all marriages end in divorce these days.Thinking it over in my mind I keep telling myself that it would be better to have never loved than to have lost a love, but that seems so cynical.
But I don't think Tennyson was necessarily talking about marriage.
For example, I love my dog.Nothing makes me happier than picking my dog up from the vet. Seeing him wag his tail and jump into my arms as though he thought he'd lost me forever and I'd come back gives me the best feelings. It is moments like that that I know he loves me too.Nubbins is getting old, and I know he'll die someday, so when he does die will all the good times we had be for naught because we can never have them again? Of course not!
The same can apply to a human to human relationship.Relationships are like fires. Fires have to have fuel. All relationships are fueled with good times. The relationships that end poorly just stopped being fueled. So should you never have started the fire in the first place? Of course not!Even if your fire is extinguished by no fault of your own, I'd argue it is still better to have felt the warmth of a fire then to have been cold forever.
I don't think any amount of bad experiences in a relationship could make up for the lessons learned in actually having the relationship.
So I guess in my mind Tennyson is right:
'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

It's a good thing I wrote that down. So I could look back at it and see how I felt then, and remind myself to feel that way again. Because right now I'm feeling cynical about love.

I don't know how to express in writing exactly how I am feeling.

I am the kind of person who makes friends very easily. And once you are my friend you are my friend for live. Literally...because I have been blessed/cursed with the most amazing memory in the world, so I will never forget you. I promise! The curse part of my memory comes into play because I naturally place a high value on all of my relationships, and because not everyone cares as deeply as I do about our relationship, I am often let down. And frequently when our relationship is over in someone else's mind, it isn't over in my mind/heart. So I've experienced love and loss over and over. It's times like that when I want to punch Tennyson. Because even though I know I am learning and growing from each lost "love", I am still torn up inside from each one, and it's getting harder and harder to put myself back together.
But despite all the cynicism, I still want to believe there IS someone out there for me. Someone who will love and care just as deeply for me as I do for them.
So until I find him, I will continue collecting friends, just to lose them. Because, after all, "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Say Something...I'm Giving Up On You

Another LONG one, and it's not so light hearted...good luck!

Confession: I've never dated. I've always been afraid of "feelings".
I get all kinds of emotional at the thought of "lost love". I cry when celebrities get divorced. I cry when I have to break up with my literary boyfriends (aka...I finish a book). I cry when friends break up.
I place high value on every friendship, so when I lose a friend I have a really hard time. So I never wanted to have a "boyfriend" because I know there is no way I would ever recover from losing him.
I am (or was) a huge fan of the friend zone!
So the idea of online "dating" scared the pants off of me.  I expressed my trepidation to my friends that wanted me to "go online". In return, I got a few different pieces of advice over and over:

#1: "Don't take things too seriously!"

#2: "Just have fun!"
#3: "You won't have any contact with anyone for a week or two, and then it'll flood in!"

#4: "The first person you talk to is going to be a jerk, but don't let that stop you!"

Advice in mind, I joined a site, and after two hours or surfing the man catalog I found a guy that seemed worth of saying, "Hello", to. I'm going to call him Goliath for a few reasons, one being that he is 6'8.

Not expecting to hear from him for a week or so (or at all) I kept surfing, and was 100% surprised when he emailed me back right away. (Advice #3 thrown out the window!)

After a few days of multiple emails he sent the, "So...you wanna text?" email.

Our "text sessions" would start at about 11am, and end at about 2am. We had amazing, fun, flirty, informative, TWO SIDED conversations. There were periods of time that he, or I, would leave for an hour or two, because most of our texting was while we were both at work, but we always came back to our conversation as though it hadn't ever ended. He has one of those jobs that automatically makes someone sexy. I was questioning if he ACTUALLY had his job, because it was just one more thing that made him really ridiculously attractive. One night he talked about the uniform he wears at work, and I told him he should send me a picture of himself IN the uniform so I could see it! Which wasn't an odd request, mind you, because we had both at this point sent several picture messages to each other. Let me just tell you, he is very, very attractive (sigh...). Unfortunately he wasn't in a position where he could take a "selfie" (or so he said) so I was going to have to wait. He did send some pictures of the "equipment" he was working with, which was enough of a confirmation for me that he was actually employed in the job he said he was.

After several days I decided piece of advice #4 could be thrown out the window too! Not only was Goliath good looking, he was nice..and funny...and he was enjoying getting to know me, just as much as I was enjoying getting to know him.
He initiated most of our conversations, which was great, because no one wants to be that girl who is always the first to text. On day 9 of our friendship I had text him first, so on day 10 it was his turn.  I had a hard time not starting our conversation, because I was having SO MUCH FUN talking to and getting to know him. My patience paid off when at 8:30pm I got a picture message from him, a picture of him in his work "uniform". Oh boy...! He said that his job fulfilled a childhood dream of his, and guess what...seeing him in his uniform fulfilled a childhood dream of mine. Haha! We started our usual texting banter of questions and conversation. It was his turn to ask a POINTLESS question, when he came up with this, "When was your last serious relationship?"
Oh boy...
Here it is...
Time to confess how much of a loser I am.
The conversation:
Me: Well that's not pointless!
Goliath: Sorry :)
Me: Sorry as in I don't have to answer, or sorry as in I still want to know :-)?
Goliath: Sorry it's really none of my concern.

Then I thought, "Why not just tell him! It's going to come up later anyway if we ever "become" anything other than text friends." So I told him that I've never been in a "serious" relationship. I've never even been in a NOT serious relationship. That I'd never given anyone the chance to be my "boyfriend" because I never wanted to get my heart broken. That I cry when I lose friends, and I cry when my friends lose their friends. That I cry when strangers get divorced, so I never thought I could handle a breakup! That I've had lots of GREAT "guy friends", but they never left the friend-zone.
To which he replied, "Stupid friend zone!"
The rest of the conversation:
Me: None of those guys were right for me anyway. I wasn't ready for a relationship, so it's good that they were in the friend-zone!
Goliath: I've run from every one of my relationships.
Me: Because you are a heart breaker? Or you don't want to get your heart broken?
Goliath: The latter.
Me: Aren't we a little old to be running away from relationships?
Goliath: Have you ever been walked on repeatedly?
Me: No, cause I never let it get that far. I have no desire to walk on someone, I'm just trying to find someone to walk BESIDE :)
Goliath: My ex-wife cheated on me, and I took her back.
Me: Sometimes girls suck...you shouldn't have to live through that again!
Goliath: I won't!
Me: I learned (after a hilarious series of events last summer) that I'll never "find someone" if I think no one can ever love me for me, and YOU'll never find someone, Goliath, if you think all women are going to treat you like your ex-girlfriends.
Goliath: You mean my ex-wife?
Me: Anyone that made you question if they really loved you!

He didn't reply right away, which was normal, because he sometimes got called off to do things at work. But it was only 11:30, and we always text until like 2am. I sent this text, "Should we go back to pointless questions? Or do you want to keep talking about this? Because I really am fine with either."
He didn't reply.
I got home from work and waited, and waited, and waited for a text.
Meanwhile, my 18 month old niece, (who sleeps at my house on Tuesday nights) was having AWFUL night terrors. So I'd fall asleep, and wake up to her screaming, then check my phone, and fall asleep, and wake up, and check my phone.
At 5am, I was a little delirious. I sent him this message, "For the first time ever I've been tossing and turning all night waiting for a text that is obviously NEVER coming, Did I say something wrong?"
And no reply came.
So like the idiot I am, wanting to make everything right, hoping I hadn't offended him, I messaged him at 10am the next morning, asking if I we were ok. Saying that maybe this is why we need to have a phone conversation so that he could hear the inflections I put into my words. Plus then I could see if he had a sexy Texan accent ;-)
No reply came.
So like the even BIGGER idiot I am, I sent a message at 5pm saying, "If you are busy I understand! Just shoot me a message so I know we are ok, and if we AREN'T ok, let's talk about it! I don't want our friendship to end on a bad note."
No reply came.
A few days later I text him again (We have already established that I'm an idiot...ok) and said, "Will you please respond to this so that I know you are being a comprehensive and unmitigated ass (name the movie and I'll give you a million dollars :-) ) instead of worrying that you are floating in a river waiting for someone with night vision goggles to come find you." (The river and night vision goggles were in reference to a conversation we had had...I wasn't just being morbid...haha)
No reply came.
Day 10 was our last conversation.
He never talked to me again.

I'm sure most people are thinking..."You only talked for 10 days...big deal!"
But it WAS a big deal. HE was a big deal.
He was the first guy to pay attention to me, to flatter me, to act like he cared, that made me feel worthwhile! Plus he fit a lot of the things on my "list". (You know...that list that you eventually end up chucking after a while, but in the beginning you compare everyone to it?) I'm not delusional about "what we were". I knew we were just beginning to become friends, but he quit before we really got to know each other.  And it was...painful. Mainly because he built me up, just to drop me.

Luckily I have amazing friends who listened to this story OVER and OVER, and analyzed every text, and assured me that I did NOTHING wrong. And encouraged me to NOT QUIT. Because I wanted to. Because it wasn't fun anymore. It was exactly the thing I had been avoiding for 28 years of my life.
Rejection.

Poofread, Proofreed, Proofread!

My high school computer teacher had a little piece of paper right next to the printer that said, "Poofread, Proofreed, Proofread!" Too bad we can't hang that little sign next to everyone's "save" button, to remind them to proofread before they submit their profiles!

I stressed out while writing my "greeting" because it's the first impression searchers get of you. Well......actually your PICTURE is the first impression, but AFTER you've passed the picture test, people read your greeting and decide weather to read the rest of your profile. I'll be honest, I change my greeting like once a week, because I stress out about it!
It baffles me when people don't proofread their profile greeting!
Some examples:

I'm glad you don't have to know how to punctuate to be in the Army.

I'm guessing English 101 is going to be in year 3 of school, because you obviously haven't taken it yet.

First, Nate, you are 18 years old and live in Layton, Utah with almost 70,000 people (And yes I DID look it up). Get off the computer and go MEET some people. Second, I feel like you have no right to be requiring such specific heights if you don't know how to use a period.

"You" only needs to be capitalized at the BEGINNING of a sentence, not the end, and if you don't know that, we aren't going to be doing anything for the rest of "are" lives.

Some people have a grasp of the English language, but they try to get clever, and it just doesn't bode well.

Yeah...No.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Lord of the Rings, but calling me "my precious" on our first encounter IS creepy. That is more like 3rd date material!

If I didn't think it would be an invasion of privacy I would have posted this guys picture, because he is CREEPY LOOKING! That is half of the reason his profile is so odd, because who feels it necessary to profess their love for the Backstreet Boys, especially Nick Carter?! Welcome to the 10's dude! No one cares about the Backstreet Boys! (Can I just point out that the 10's doesn't quite have the ring as, the 80's or the 90's, but what else do you call this decade?) 

  Unlike some people's opinion of me, I don't think I'm too picky when it comes to the profiles I choose to scroll past.

Here's my number. So text me, maybe!

This one is going to be long, so brace yourself. Hopefully it'll be worth the read!

There comes a point in every online "relationship" that you quit using the site provided email and start texting. I'm all for texting! It takes about a week to have an email conversation that would take about a hour of text time.

I'll be honest, one of the main reasons I joined an online dating site was to get a new "text friend". In college I had an AWESOME "text friend"! If I couldn't sleep we'd text until I fell asleep, or vice versa. Our texts always had a flirty undertone, which was fun because what female doesn't enjoy flirt attention from a guy?! But more than flirting, I knew he was always a text away, and it was a sort of comfort. After college our "textship" fizzled to where I didn't really need/want him anymore. But like any addict, I have since started to want another text friend. I recently met up with an old guy friend and we started texing, but he was a disappoint of a texter (as in, he actually slept at night!). So now I'm online, looking for someone to text!

It's kind of funny, the "So...you wanna text?" email that eventually comes. I am all for it, but if you ask me for my number in the first message I'm a little leery. (Cause somehow I think I can determine if you're a creep after you've emailed me a couple time....go figure).

The other day a guy (we'll call him R2) sent me an email. We emailed a couple of times, leading him to ask if we could text. His profile was...different. The impression I got from it was that he might be a little...how do I say this diplomatically....slow. Haha! But Jessie seemed to think I was pre-judging him, so I went ahead and gave him my number, thinking that if he got TOO weird I could always just block his number.
Even though I'm so willing to hand out my number, I always get paranoid (check this old blog out as an example) and make up unrealistic scenarios in my head.
So he starts texting me during a "severe storm" which meant my cell phone reception was a little off. He asked if I was able to send/receive picture messages (which is a nice thing to ask, because some people get charged for that). I confirmed that I can send/receive picture messages, and then I stared panicking. Here is the first thought that went through my head:
"Oh no!What if he is going to send me a naked picture!"

So my phone dings, and there is a picture available to download, and because of the sub-par "storm" reception, it took a LONG time to download. The whole time I'm thinking, "Please don't be naked! Please don't be naked! Please don't be naked!" So after a couple of minutes he messages me again, "Did you get my picture, hun?" My thought: "SERIOUSLY??!?! You are calling me HUN! Isn't it a little EARLY for the cutsie names, R2??! I haven't even seen your naked picture yet!"
So eventually the picture comes though, and he WASN'T naked (phew), he was sitting on bleachers somewhere. So I asked him where he was that he was sitting on bleachers. He said the picture was at his little brother's basketball game, prompting me to ask if it was an old picture, or if school was still in session.
Then he took about two hours to reply. And how does he answer my very simple question? He says "What?"
For real dude?! Two hours for a, "What?"???!?!?!?!
It has only taken about two hours and 5 seconds for me to determine this guy is NOT my new "text friend", but it doesn't hurt to keep it up. So I said, "What? What? Is school still in session?" To which he replied (like 45 mins later) "Nope :("

We exchanged a few more texts (that took 5 hours longer than it needed to) in which he learned what I like to do for fun. And I learned that R2 likes to, "travel, swim, play & watch sports, work out, watch movies, cuddle, kiss, & relax" for fun.

So I guess it's back to the man catalog for me! This guy was a dud!

To Market, To Market

When you really get down to it there is something so undignified about searching through the profiles of an online dating site. AND being one of the searched.
My sister and I have joked that we are perusing the "Man Catalog" when we search the available profiles. I see someone I find attractive, and I mentally add them to my "wish list".
Every time I log onto the website I feel like I'm going shopping. And let's face it! I'm PAYING to see these  profiles, so essentially I AM shopping, I just had to pay to get in the stupid store!
When I'm in the mood to shop I'll go into a store not knowing if they'll have what I'm looking for. Usually I'm not even sure of what I'm looking for. I'll pull things off the rack, and hold them up while looking in the mirror. Some items are worthy of trying on, some go right back on the shelf. I scrutinize the racks knowing I want something. More often then not I leave the store empty handed, having talked myself into saving money.
But every once in a while, after tirelessly searching, I finally spot what I'm looking for, and I think, "Duh! That is what I wanted the whole time!"

Confession #1

Surprise! I'm starting a new blog!
I know no one reads blogs anymore, but I never wrote my blog for the readers anyway!

So confession #1 to the world: I created and use an online dating profile.

I feel like I'm in an addiction recovery meeting.
"Hi, I'm Tacy and I converse with strangers online on a regular basis!"
But here is the real trick: To the "world", online dating doesn't have the stigma that it used to. We live in a digital age! Everyone is "online" for one thing or another, so it only seems natural that online dating is now becoming a social norm.

Just as my friends convinced me to create an online dating profile, they convinced me to start a blog about it. I guess they thought my nightly stories were funny enough to be shared with the world.
So on this blog I'm going to share some of the things I'm learning while "conversing with strangers on a regular basis!"

So let's jump right in with the first lesson I learned:

The Anonymity of the Internet Can Work For AND Against You
I'm not necessarily a shy person, but get me online talking to strangers and I have no reservations! That doesn't mean I lie. I am 100% honest with my profile, and with any questions I'm asked. But the fact that there is a 99.9% chance I will never see these people in person helps me to say what I'm thinking. Not just WHAT I'm thinking, but EVERYTHING I'm thinking. In return I feel more open and honest, because I'm holding nothing back.
But then came the moment that I realized we don't say everything that comes to our mind in face to face conversation for a reason. And then I just felt like an idiot!
No one wants to be someone's horror story, or the butt of someone's joke, or go on the list of "online dating creepers" simply because the proverbial sock never made it to their mouth (...or fingers, since I'm usually just typing). So what I say to people, hiding behind the anonymity of the internet, can get me labeled as something I 100% am not because I paraded around saying, "Well, I was just honest!"

So the lesson here: Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say face to face!

I wondered why I felt "crazy" while I was talking to people. I even said to a few of my friends, "I don't know what is up with me! I just don't feel like ME while I'm talking to these strangers." Well, it was because I wasn't being ME. I don't say everything that comes to my brain, because only crazy people say everything that is on their mind! It takes a certain kind of decorum to hold your tongue!