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."