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!