Dating (Or Rather, Actually Failing To Have A Date) Rather Sucks

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Since I’ve exhausted my frustration upon furniture and walls, the remainder of my angst is probably unsuited for The Pit, in which I never seem to fare well in any case, so I’ll dump my Pointless Stuff here: with that, whattheheckisit with dating that makes it so gorram irritating? I finally had the first date I’ve had in–well, I can’t properly account for how long now–where I didn’t actually get stood up, only to find out, after two drinks and an hour and a half, that it wasn’t actually a date, or even a precursor to a date, owing to the fact that the young lady in question “has been seeing someone for a couple of weeks.” Sorry, what? Perhaps you could have brought this fact to my attention say, sometime before I left work and the test report I desperately need to complete by Tuesday morning, particularly in light of the continued and extensive exchange of e-mail that has occured over the past three weeks. Perhaps you could have mentioned this, even offhand, before I invest any interest into this. Perhaps you could have mentioned it before I paid the bill. (Not that I wouldn’t have covered it anyway, but still…I’m a total bloody tool for having some degree of faith that you’d be foreright and honest.)

Or maybe it was some feeble attempt to spare my feelings with regard to your opinion that I’m a hideous cretin unworthy of future contact. In that sense, it’s better than taking a break to powder your nose and never returning, but only a couple of notches above. (I should be thankful, I suppose, at not being left stranded 30 miles from home as I was by a certain redhead in high school.)

Or perhaps I’m just too wound up about the whole thing; that being casually blown off after three weeks of regular correspondence. No worries about the time spent; I enjoy writing and it was no great effort, but still, the notice would have been appreciated.

I have no patience for the entire process and the nonsense involved in it. Unlike Ella, I have my Irish whiskey to keep me warm. Now I’m going to watch something violent and nihilistic–maybe something by Peckinpah, who I’m morally convinced had no more luck with the chicks than I do, and exersized his angst in the form of poetically brutal violence, a quality I’m currently in ripe form to appreciate–and pass out in my chair.

It’s either that, or solve terrifically complicated partial differential equations, and that never goes all that well with the whiskey. You start out trying to calculate the vibrational modes of a rubber band in four dimensions and end up deriving the end of existance. It’s bad stuff, even for a hardcore bender, and I do have to finish that bloody stupid test report.

Maybe The Wild Bunch, or High Plains Drifter. Or Raging Bull; I’m feeling a little LaMotta-like right now.

Stranger

2

Meanwhile in Tokyo…handsome young male sits lonely…

Always great when the closest prospects you have for meeting someone is through World of Warcraft, with someone several thousands of miles away, who may or may not actually even be of the opposite sex (and may in fact be a three-foot, 300 pound gorilla with a horn growing out the back of its head.)

adds mini-rant to the potential pile

3

Though of course, that’s still a step up from there not being the potential of anything, let alone a three foot, 300 pound gorilla with a horn growing out the back of its head. Woohoo! :dubious:

4

Maybe it helps to look at it this way: You’re better off without a woman who would be so underhanded as to string along two guys like that (my guess is that her new boyfriend doesn’t know she’s still meeting other dudes for drinks, and she probably was hoping if you hit it off better with her she could give that guy the heave-ho).

Try not to take it personally. Dating, especially online dating, is a numbers game.
I’m almost to the point that I’ve lost count the number of first dates I’ve had from internet things that ultimately went nowhere. You often have to just try to meet as many people as you can and let most of them fall by the wayside until you finally find some chemistry with one.

I’m sure this is not because you are a “hideous cretin”. Looking around in society, I see many stupid, ugly people in relationships. Think of all the Jerry Spring episodes that featured two skanky women battling desperate over some man. :stuck_out_tongue:
Actually, my guess is that your problem is actually quite the opposite of being a “cretin”.
I’ll admit I don’t know much about you, just going by your posts here. However, from what I have read, you come across as a very intellectual, articulate guy. That’s not a bad thing, obviously. However, it does mean you do not have the broad, mainstream appeal of someone who is more…“accessible”, shall we say?
Most people are not as intellectual or well-educated as you appear to be, so a lot of the women you’re meeting are, I would speculate, probably intimidated or turned off when you use a large vocabulary, talk about technical issues, or make obscure references that they don’t understand. People want to be with others who are on their level, not significantly dumber OR smarter.
So, as I see it, you may do better if you can try to figure out how you can make yourself seem more “accessible” without pretending to be someone you’re not…or you can try to dust yourself off after each rejection and keep on meeting as many women as you can until you find one who can keep up with you intellectually and accepts oyu the way you are. It can happen when you least expect it (or so I hear…it hasn’t happened for me yet, so don’t think I’m one of those smug people in a relationship being all patronizing there).

It’s just my two cents. :slight_smile:

5

Yup.

I got stood up yesterday as a matter of fact. I got a text message half an hour before we were going to meet for a walk with my dog. We planned the date three days earlier via email and a phone call.

The weekend before I was also stood up. We agreed on a Saturday dinner on Wednesday but didn’t make specific plans. She then didn’t answer my next two emails trying to arrange specifics.

Oh well. I had one hell of a hot streak going from the first of the year through the summer so things were bound to cool off. Don’t let it bother you, these things happen.

6

You’re right, Stranger, it does suck. But, as I’ve come to discover, there’s really not much that can be done about it. I’m trying to convince myself that it’s just as well, as I’ve got little to offer anyone anyway, but it’s small consolation.

7

The problem is that my number suck. Back when I was actively trying to do this thing, the response rate was on the close order of 1:50. This was a totally unsolicited approach (on a dating site I thought I’d cancelled).

In this case, at least, based upon the extensive exchange of e-mails I had with the young lady in question (my work and travel schedule precluded an expeditious meeting) she seemed to be quite well-educated and intelligent. Nice, interesting, intellectual, energetic; not immediate dream-girl material, precisely, but certainly worthy of consideration, and I had the perhaps mistaken belief that I fell in the same range. Upon reflection, I have the sneaking suspicion that I somehow failed to incite the same interest in her, and that the “I’m seeing someone else” explanation was naught but a ruse to escape my unwanted invitation for dinner, but still; a bitter pill to swallow, especially after the past few weeks of work and the imprudence of investing more than a passing interest in meeting said woman in question.

Your advice is stated in erudite and eminently sagacious fashion, but I fear it is wasted upon the likes of me. While the interest in the opposite sex is a biological imperative, my actual enthusiasm for the vicissitudes of the courting process is on the waning phase. Besides, I have Kuipers Quaternions and Rotation Sequences begging my attention (along with untold number of loanded books to read) and no doubt some fleeting and ultimately fruitless romantic endeavor would simply interfere with that.

Damn, I wax lyrical with a few ounces of Jameson in me. To think what damage I could do with a good whiskey.

Stranger

8

Okay, one depressive to another, but dude, you have an exceptional knowledge of evolutionary zoology, and while that might not be a selling point with the majority of humanity, it’s got to rank high with some young lithesome thing. (Dawkins scored Lalla Ward; clearly, the strategy is to latch onto some best-selling author and find one of his adoring fans who can appreciate your brilliance.)

I’m mostly just pissed off right now, and any avowals to foreswear the fairer sex are merely transitory and subject to reversal upon more favorable circumstances, but at this particular moment, and particularly in light of other stresses, frustrations, and intoxicationg influences, I’m just damned irritated by the entire business, which is not anything like the whole John Cusack experience I would so much like to emulate. All that guy has to do is show up and make some offhand comment and he has women swooning over him. What does got have that I have not? (Oh, yeah, the winning smile, the careless charm, and the easy wit. Like that has any adaptive viability. The human race is doomed, doomed I tell you.)

Stranger

9

Then perhaps the lady is " friend-material?". I’m a girl, and it would bug me tremendously if a guy really wanted to be with me (because I’m so nice, interesting, intellectual, energetic) while we were on a date, and then lose all interest like that if we were not. The only thing worth considering, should be, IMHO, if you prefer an evening spent with her to an evening at home drinking whisky. Of course, friends go Dutch on the bill.

Besides, if she likes you, she might have friends she wants to set you up with. There’s a machtmaker inside most girls.

If she had been seeing the other guy for just a few weeks, she might just have not known yet if you were a better bet. She probably thought you were potentially promising from you e-mails, and decided to go see it there was chemistry.

10

There was no extension of “friends”; just an after-the-fact “Oh, by the way, I’ve been seeing this other guy for a couple of weeks, but hey, good luck to you (dont’ contact me again, please).” It’s not an issue of money–I’ve readily spent vastly more on/with friends without a wince–but rather that this woman would feel free to sap away my time without a hint of being involved with someone else. No extension of wanting to “set me up” with other friends, either, or otherwise being interested in ongoing (if not romantic) contact. I feel like a ufcking injut for even having expected such; of course I’m there to be spurned like waste tissue.

And while weighing against the current beau might be accepted practice in some circles, it just doesn’t set well with me. This, I admit, might be my own inadequacy, having been jilted and cuckold, but ogdamnit, I pulled time out of my own schedule when I could least afford it, invested interest and some admittedly small but nonetheless measurable degree of enthusiasm toward meeting, and perhaps unrealistically expected something more definitive than being “the better bet,” or at least a definitive statement on the order of, “Sorry, you seem nice/chivalrous/sociopathic, but I don’t think your my cup of tea,” instead of some complete waste of time and/or an utterly deceptive evasion.

I’m just thoroughly sick of the whole business and the waste of effort going into it. No doubt, I’m making way more of this than it justifies, but on the other hand, when I get one actual will-show-up sort-of date every six months or so, it kind of pisses me off not to be taken with at least minimal seriousness, or (assuming that the woman in question was being truthful) informed as to the current relationship status.

I’d like to figure that there’s something seriously wrong with me–you know, some kind of psychosis or obvious deformation–but other than a recent obsession with Russian novelists and a propensity toward vector calculus as a solution to the world’s problems, I can’t really figure what it is. (For the record, I didn’t bring up any mention of the debate of Liebniz vs. Newton notation, or anysuch.) I’ve just had my fill of the whole business, at least for the next few months.

Stranger

11

I understand your feelings, Stranger and I hope it gets easier for you! In the very least, it would have been nice to know that she was seeing other people. Relationships are weird, I really really have to love someone and spending time with them in order to be with them, I’ve realised. Fortunately, at the moment, I have that person and I hope you find someone like that too. All the best for your future endeavours!

12

Stranger, I really hope things improve for you because it’s such an unpleasant situation to find yourself in. I don’t understand the whole idea of being interested in someone and then playing them off against someone else, at best it’s deceitful and at worst it’s giving your self-esteem a real kicking at a time when you least need it.

Folks should learn to treat other people better.

13

Really? I’ve heard of this interesting mythical beast, but I’ve never even seen its footprints. :dubious:

14

I’ve met it a few times, but its taste SUCKS. Why would someone who’s known me since our age was in single figures want to hoist her uglier-than-hitting-your-Da-with-a-brick-filled-sweaty-sock-and-then-asking-for-money, dumber-than-the-aforementioned-brick cousin, just because the someone in question got married a few months back is beyond me.

15

It’s not as though you’re wandering alone in the wilderness all by yourself. I mean, yeah, you’re wandering alone in the wilderness, but there are a whole bunch of us also wandering alone in the wilderness.

Now that I’m in my mid-thirties, all my close friends are married, engaged, or in long term relationships, and so are their friends. So, networking isn’t doing too much for me. I love the Unitarian church I attend, but the single men there are in their seventies. I’ve tried a couple of online dating services, but either I get no responses (and I’m female, and I know all about the lopsided odds) or I get responses from men who fall into one of the following categories:

  • uneducated, ignorant louts
  • sweet, unreformed addicts
  • obsessive, persecuted conspiracy theorists
  • angry, angry, angry recent divorcees
  • mostly harmless but completely imbalanced jokers

Did you know that miniature horses are an abomination before God? Or that Hollywood has no problem turning a spiral notebook manuscript stolen from an eighth grader into a blockbuster action movie? Or that women in general, and myself in particular, should just be glad to receive email from a single man?

Yes, the dating world is horrific for all involved. I feel your pain, Stranger, for it is my own.

16

I hear ya, Stranger . I have been having a not-so-good year in the romance department myself. Most recently two women have not returned my calls. After giving me their phone numbers. After a goodnight kiss followed by an apparently sincere “Call me.” Blech. To hell with 'em.

Unfortunately that’s the way of things. That woman you dated did not handle the situation properly. And yes it sucks. No way around that. Yeah you are better off not dating someone who behaves like that, but the feeling of wasted time and effort still leaves you feeling used.

Hopefully both of us will find the right people. But the process is frustrating as hell.

17

Oh, and Masstricht, maybe customs are different in your neck of the woods, but I have never heard of that happening. The only women I have known who wanted to introduce me to their friends have been those with whom there was never a smidgen of romantic interest, not someone who didn’t work out as a date.

18

I utterly sympathize, Stranger. (And phouka, and hajario, and…)

Hell, this week I’m ostensibly seeing the girl I mention in this thread twice, once on Tuesday (we’re getting together to read a play with my roommate) and once on Thursday (we’re going to a play). And maybe it’s my pervasive cynicism, but I would be fairly unsurprised if one or both of those evenings ends up getting cancelled, or if it turns out that she has no romantic inclination towards me whatsoever. Part of that is because our e-mails back and forth between last week and this one have been exceptionally brief and sporadic (particularly hers), and part of that is because I actually like her a lot, so I’m bracing myself against disappointment. But mostly it’s just the nature of the beast – dating, especially in the beginning stages, is such a fragile and precarious thing, although admittedly more so for some of us than others, and you can’t really take anything to heart.

I won’t even get into the myriad times I’ve been on the opposite end of the thing. It really sucks to go out with someone, realize that they’re much more interested in you than you are in them, and have to somehow let them down before anything goes too far.

19

Stranger – it may freak women out that you’re a smart, intellectual, articulate guy – in my experience, though, it’s more intimidating in the dating to be a smart, intellectual, articulate woman.

Thank god I’ve got big tits or I’d never get laid at all.

20

Ladder Theory