# Dating (Or Rather, Actually Failing To Have A Date) Rather Sucks **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 30, 2006, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405 "2006-10-30T04:21:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2006, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/21 "2006-10-30T16:04:09Z")
Yep. A similar thing has happened to me on both of the last two weekends. Not on dates, just conversation I started at parties. Anyway, a long conversation, and then they tell me that they are unavailable. The second girl even stated: “If I tell people early that I have a boyfriend, then they often just leave, and that is no fun for me.” Me, I work out my aggressions by lifting weights and listening to heavy metal really loud. ---
**Author:** ![Gut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@Gut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gut)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2006, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/22 "2006-10-30T16:08:39Z")
Was the meal tasty and wait staff friendly at least? I have a terrible dating track record as well so I try to at least think that I had a good meal with some conversation. Then I feel like an ass for thinking I had a shot at a series of dates much less a relationship. Then I finally go back to being happy with what I have instead of wanting to be happy with something I don’t. Yep, dating sucks. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2006, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/23 "2006-10-30T16:13:55Z")
Don’t give up. Sooner or later, you’ll find that special someone, marry them, and within a few years you will hate every quirk that attracted you to them in the first place so much you will dream of the days of being an angry loner. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2006, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/24 "2006-10-30T17:30:52Z")
[QUOTE=Gadarene] I utterly sympathize, **Stranger**. (And **phouka** , and **hajario** , and…) [/QUOTE] Thanks but I am in no need of sympathy. I am having a blast. Sure most dates don’t work out but I am getting tons of dates, way more than I imagined I would when my marriage broke up. I’ve gotten laid plenty and had three “relationships” that lasted for six weeks or so. Not bad for my first year. So someone I like doesn’t want to go out for a second dinner, or someone likes my wit over a few emails but stops communication after she sees my picture or someone ends up being more attached than she admitted at first? So fucking what. None of that compares to a fifteen year relationship/marriage breaking up. Shit, even that wasn’t that bad compared to most. I’m even going to see Lou Reed with my ex-wife in couple of days. You can either sit around and feel sorry for yourself and give up or consider it another funny dating story and keep on trying. I agree with **twickster** that intellectual women have a tougher road than intellectual men but I would love to have a date where I wasn’t asked my astrological sign or be told about some homeopathic remedy that cured their shoulder pain. **msmith537** also makes a good point except he left out then you get divorced and end up missing all of those quirks. ---
**Author:** ![Grossbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba8739/32.png) [@Grossbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grossbottom)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2006, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/25 "2006-10-30T19:33:35Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] 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.’ [/QUOTE] Dude, I know you might not want to hear it, but don’t get hung up on that. Who knows what the real deal is? When you’re on the trigger end of that gun you’ll say a ton of friendly bullshit to try and help the other person save face. “I kinda met someone else a few weeks ago, I’m really sorry bye” can be way better than some of the alternatives. Last time I said that line it was really just a substitute for “Your giant tits in the picture managed to mask the fact that I could land a B-52 on one of your ass cheeks.” So who knows what her problem is. If she cut you loose with a supposed scheduling conflict, take it for the mercy killing it was, at least she liked you enough to lie. I think you need to aim lower, hit an easy mark and get the scent of a woman on your sheets. Other babies can smell that, it’s like when the neighborhood dogs all have to whizz on the same tree and stuff. Once you get scented up your options will improve and girls start coming out of the woodwork to sniff around your tree. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2006, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/26 "2006-10-30T19:45:03Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537] Don’t give up. Sooner or later, you’ll find that special someone, marry them, and within a few years you will hate every quirk that attracted you to them in the first place so much you will dream of the days of being an angry loner. [/QUOTE] Been there, done that, lost the t-shirt in the divorce. Upon reflection (or the pale facsimile of it resulting from a night of heavy drinking and watching violently misogynistic movies) I’m mostly pissed off about how pissed off I get about the whole thing, which makes it rather a circular reference error in my embedded neurological code. These are all standard and minor irritations that go along with the dating gig, and yet it vexes me for days on end every time I get stood up, tossed over, shilled, taken for a ride, or otherwise deceived about the probability and genuine intent therein, not to mention the waste of time and effort. And in this particular case, over a woman for whom my interest was tepid at best, thus emphasizing my inability to cope with all things pertaining to dating and romantic relationships. I just need to stick to the plan to avoid the whole business and die an early, highly stress death at my desk in the midst of computing a fiendishly difficult vector calculus problem. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![anu-la1979](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@anu-la1979](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anu-la1979)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2006, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/27 "2006-10-31T01:59:35Z")
Hey fool, I still do owe you grub at some point. It’s killing the Indian in me. Unfortunately my last single law school friend in the area got engaged or I’d try to set you up with some of them. Though I don’t think I could deliver on their niceness, they’re all allitigators (I kid, I kid). I have washed my hands of dating entirely. Netflix is cheaper and more entertaining. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2006, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/28 "2006-10-31T03:52:30Z")
[QUOTE=Malacandra] Really? I’ve heard of this interesting mythical beast, but I’ve never even seen its footprints. :dubious: [/QUOTE] They only come out when you need one the least. Like a Snark. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/29 "2006-10-31T03:56:58Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] 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. … Maybe _The Wild Bunch_, or _High Plains Drifter_. Or _Raging Bull_; I’m feeling a little LaMotta-like right now. Stranger [/QUOTE] I’d read a few R. Crumb comics. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2006, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/30 "2006-10-31T03:58:19Z")
Actually, I’d read the collection of Charles Bukowski’s short stories illustrated by R. Crumb, and then watch _Trees Lounge_. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2006, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405/31 "2006-10-31T19:00:10Z")
[QUOTE=phouka] 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)… [/QUOTE] Hey there…I’m in my mid-thirties, single (well, divorced), Unitarian (my congregation is geriatric as all hell too) and live in Texas too! Only difference is you’re female and I’m male…hey, wait a sec… 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-or-rather-actually-failing-to-have-a-date-rather-sucks/378405.md?page=1)