Yeah, there’s a little part of me that keeps wondering if I dodged a bullet there. My only guess was that when she cancelled and I said “No big deal, how about tomorrow night” she was expecting me to call/text her the next day to set something up. As far as I was concerned, she cancelled, I said “How about tomorrow” it was up to her to respond to me (you know, like a conversation).
Anyways, too bad, she seemed really nice. I’m glad I never sent any kind of mean type response back to her (and I never would). I just stopped responding. Not even a ‘you’re probably right’ I’ve found in my years on these sites that a lot of friends seem to sign up together, and that’s just what I can tell from seeing people in each other’s pictures (Hey, I think that’s…[goes to other profile], yup, that’s her]) how many people on the site are friends and you have no idea. So I’d never want to do anything mean (and, honestly, I’m just not a mean person) and burn a bridge and end up chatting up their IRL friend. I imagine them comparing notes or showing each other the guys their talking to and having one of them say “Hey, that’s the guy that…”
Also, I know we’ve talked about this a few times up thread, but this is a good time to mention it again. For all the guys out there just starting out. At some point you’ll have this question “I’m talking to a girl, and someone else emailed me, should I talk to her too?” Yes, the answer is always yes. There’s nothing wrong with talking to multiple people and besides, in all likelihood, you’re not going to meet the person you’re talking to anyways.
I’m sure she seemed nice in the e-mails, but when it was time to actually meet, presumably the purpose of such a site, she became weird. The constant flaking would have annoyed me, for one. I get that people need to cancel sometimes, and sometimes people need to cancel on first dates even though it’s unseemly. But cancelling twice mixed with general lack of responsiveness, and then the added weirdness about “Well if it’s not big deal…” and “You could have contacted me… sad face? Maybe? Kind of hard to tell because I don’t speak English and communicate as effectively as a deaf toddler?”
Maybe I have too little patience, but by the second cancellation, I would have responded “Let me know when you’re available” and would have stopped pursuing contact. If I somehow got past that point, and then a very casual “no big deal” (which should be translated as “no pressure”) got morphed into “well then I’ll stop wasting your time” I’d be entirely done.
Maybe Jesus will give me patience for my birthday.
I am done now, but since I refused to ask for help while I was in the middle of it (for reasons stated earlier), I’m just sort of blowing off a bit of steam now. There’s a little part of me that wants her to email me again with a change of heart and try to set up a new meeting. Not because I’m interested in her, not because I regret not shooting her down first after she made that strange comment, but because that would scream “Hi, I’m super flaky” or worse “Hi, I have problems and my moods are all over the board”. IOW, it would confirm to me that it’s not just a stupid mis-communication, but that it was her and not me. Part of me is always going to wonder if when she game me her number and told me it was a better way to get a hold of her (call? text?) if I should have just called her and set up a date. But the whole “You. Me. Date. Tonight. Eight.” Take Charge thing just isn’t me. I’ve always been a 'what do you wanna do" “I dunno what do you want to do” “Mexican?” “I don’t care, if that’s what you want to do” Yeah, I know, shut up. I’m the epitome of easy going. So if she was looking for some tough guy with a dominant attitude, she wasn’t going to find it here.
Anyways, time to move on. What I need is new people. I’m at the point in this where I’m not nervous to send an email to someone, it’s just that most of the people I’m interested in, I’ve already sent an email to (sometimes two emails). Everyday, the first thing I do is check to see who’s new, usually no one terribly exciting. I hope that one of those people that I was too nervous to email when I first started might show back up or that someone that says “Last activity xx-xx-2011” might sign back on.
I keep thinking about disabling Match and trying out EH for a bit, but I then I remember how much I hated that site.
No, I hear ya. I recently made my not-so-triumphant return to online dating and I’ve been bitching about it a fair amount myself. Speaking of bitching, I think I’ll do some more of that right now. So I had a date a week and a half ago and it was very meh. Is there some way to tell if someone’s only interesting and clever online but boring in person? This guy seemed engaging and funny in his profile and in e-mails, but in person he didn’t say very much and was kind eh. Lame. I need to learn how to better decode “I write well, but am actually boring as shit.”
You’re sure he wasn’t just shy/introverted? I know I am. The first online date I ever went on, I was so nervous I got there about 5 minutes before her and drank a gin and tonic to try to calm my nerves and get rid of the tunnel vision. I probably should have gone somewhere that I wouldn’t have known the bartender, bar owner and half the people in the bar.
So couple ‘introverted’ with ‘been on the site and have years to polish my profile’ and you might end up with someone that has a nice profile but comes off as a bit different. FTR, I pretty sure my profile is pretty accurate though.
Trust me, I know. I was trying to smooth out the situation, because, a date. I honestly don’t even know how long it’s been since my last date. But part of me kept saying that she’s clearly annoyed/mad at me and we haven’t met yet, that’s not good. If she’s mad at me now for something I didn’t know I was supposed to do, can you imagine how she would feel if we were dating and I didn’t do something I was supposed to do?
Anyways, yeah, I just wanted to put that out there, it seemed like a good time to mention it. It’s just a reminder that even when things seem to be going well with the person you’re talking to, they can easily take a turn or just fizzle out, so don’t feel bad about chatting up another person.
Back to the drawing board. Oddly, one of the other girls I’d really like to meet just signed on. I’ve sent her one or two emails in the last year or so, but she’s one of those people that just signs on once every two or three weeks. For a while, she’d check my profile every time she was online. Problem was, I have no idea if she was just checking random profiles or profiles of all the guys that sent her emails or profiles of all the guys she liked…who knows. Never actually got a reply. To go back to what I said a few posts up about not burning bridges, I actually met one of her friends. We went out on a date. No spark. One date, that was it. I’d still like to meet her though. And her friend is really nice, just no spark, I was actually considering emailing her just to see if she wanted to hang out as friends (out ‘date’ was probably a year and half ago), but she’s not on the site anymore and if she’s dating someone, that would be weird.
Another girl I’ve been drooling over I finally gave up on. Sent her one last email (I think that made three in about two and a half years). Gave her about three days to reply and then I hid her. That’s something I do from time to time. It’s just easier on me for some of these “OMG she’s the perfect girl for me!!!1!” people. Hey, if she replies, that’s great, if she doesn’t I’ll forget about her in a few days rather then seeing her all over the site.
Something I’ve found is that if I’m enamored with a girl, finally work up the nerve after months to send them an email, eventually manage to meet them, then there’s just no way they can possible live up to the hype (in my own head). When they turn out to be perfectly average, it ends up being a bit of a let down. That’s another good reason for just going ahead and emailing that girl (or guy) you think will never write back to you for whatever reason. The longer you build them up in your head, the less of a chance they have of actually living up to it.
I haven’t waded back into the dating scene yet…it’s been 10 months now! :eek: I keep thinking about it, but outside of work my interests/activities are somewhat narrow (I’m a jazz singer) and take up a fair chunk of my spare time. I don’t think it would be cool to ask someone to start dating me, only to go off and do my thing most weekends. And I’m not willing to give any of it up; at least, not right now. So I’m in this weird space where part of me wants to be dating but part of me doesn’t.
Unfortunately, no. There seem to be a lot of guys who are fine via email – when they can take their time coming up with complete sentences – but then in person they couldn’t hold up their end of a conversation if they were Atlas. It’s very, very frustrating.
I think there’s a difference: I’ve met my share of introverts (via OKC) who were anything but boring on our first “dates.”
If only I lived near either of you…
…I’d start dating you but then abandon you most weekends
I’m independently wealthy, and have free time during the week.
Your weekend gigs could be a problem, but I’m sure there are guys whose work keeps them busiest on weekend, Emergency room physicians, pro football players, priests,…
Yeah, the problem with that (priests?!?) is that I work during the week. And I have a dog, so I can only go out on one or two weeknights…and sometimes that’s for jazz-related activities, too.
Well, just for mundane information reasons, I´m officially out of the thread as I got married, just got in to thank all the people that gave me advice early.
You know, you’re probably right that he’s just shy. He seems to be a smart guy and has some interesting things going on in his life, so maybe describing him as “boring as shit” is a bit unfair. What I should have said is he bored me.
Now, here’s the problem, a lot of those shy guys will warm up pretty quickly, then you’ve got a guy who won’t shut up (in a good way). The problem is, they’ll turn back to ‘boring as shit’ every time you bring them around new people. If you’re looking for someone to hang around with your 3 or 4 best friends with, he’s your guy. But if you’re a bar hopper and would prefer to go out with your 50 ‘closest friends’ every night, you’re going to end up dating a wall flower. That’s me, I’m never going to be the life of the party. I could date someone who is, as long as they’re okay dating someone who isn’t. If that makes sense.
This is probably a good place to put this excerpt from my profile. In the Things I spend a lot of time thinking about (it’s meant to be half joke/half serious to make sure people don’t think I never leave my house)
-Worrying that my profile makes me sound like a shut-in. I’m really not, it’s just that I see a lot of profiles that seem to spend more time talking about where they like to drink and not enough time talking about who they are and that’s just not me. I’d rather go to a restaurant then close a bar. I’d rather go to the Milwaukee Art Museum then do a pub crawl. I’d rather go to Target then try to find a parking spot on Water St. If you like bar hopping five nights a week, you’ll likely be bored with me. Don’t get me wrong, I like going out for a drink or two, but I don’t like getting home at 2:45am on a regular basis. I’ve tried that, it’s really not for me.
I’m pretty sure that he’s not my guy. I vastly prefer hanging out with a friend or small group of friends than going to bar hopping, but I’m not sure how that makes him my guy. He just wasn’t fun to talk to, possibly due to shyness, but either way, this doesn’t automatically mean he will be or make him good in small crowds. I’m just not sure how you went from “This guy seemed fine enough, but he wasn’t fun and easy to talk to in person like he was online and kind of bored me. Perhaps he was just shy” to “He’ll warm up and will be good in small crowds of your friends, unless you’re into going to 50+ person bashes and bar hopping all the time.”
But suppose he’s rad just for shits. Even if he warms up into being a funny, personable guy who’s good at conversation in small groups, I still don’t know if I’m keen on that. It’s not like I haven’t been to a large party before, and there are few things more painful than taking someone out who won’t leave your side because you’re the only one there he knows. I of course understand that some people aren’t comfortable in large crowds or talking to strangers, but I find those people frustrating to deal with. I am not, nor have I ever been, “the life of the party,” but I generally find it easy to talk to people right away and don’t really connect with people don’t. It’s not impossible, and has happened before, but at the very least those people found it easy to talk to me, if not other strangers.
Should I indulge someone’s stupid astrology matchmaking? I got a very positive response from someone, but she made it sound like in order to go further I’m going to have to tell her my astrological sign. I find this to be, of course, really fucking stupid. She’s going to make some really fucking stupid generalization either way, positive or negative, and it bugs the fuck out of me to think that whether this proceeds or not is going to be based on that nonsense.
On the other hand, she seemed pretty okay otherwise, and if this is just her one little stupid sacred cow and it wouldn’t come up again I guess I could just shut up and deal with it.
FWIW, I looked it up and I guess our signs generally go together, so her response would probably be positive (unless she says “oh I dated a (your sign once) and it didn’t go badly, and since you are the exact same person as 1/12th the earth’s population, I can tell this will go badly”), but I feel really fucking stupid having to jump through that hoop.
For a little backstory on why it aggravates me so much, other than obviously just being stupid, is that another woman and I passed a few messages back and forth and were getting along really well. We had the same sort of sense of humor, it seemed like everything was promising and we’d meet soon enough. Then she sort of casually asked me what my sign was, and thinking it couldn’t possibly really matter because who the fuck cares, we’re getting along great, I tell her and she flips out and says it could never work between us, and that was that. Holy shit. Yes, our actual interaction may have gone really well and we could’ve been really compatible people, but your fucking stupid vague magical charts have made a judgement on my 1/12th of the fucking population and that’s a way greater indication of compatibility. Don’t be fooled by the “we’re getting along great” bullshit, that’s all superficial. What month I was born in, that’s the shit that really matters.
It makes me wonder how the fuck someone can have a functional brain to the degree that they can be funny and charming and interesting and then pull that shit.
Sorry, that came off as very ranty and hostile although I suspect given the demographics of the SDMB you’ll understand. It’s not that I can’t tolerate people having stupid beliefs - almost everyone has some - it’s that I know this one in particular will color whatever comes after, and that bugs me. Even if she reacts positively, knowing that her view of how the relationship should/will progress might as well come from a magic 8 ball makes it weird somehow.
What do you mean “she made it seem like”? Did she say she’ll need this information in order to move forward, or did she ask your sign? If she just asked, I’d answer, even though it’s a ridiculous question. Some people ask just for fun, the same way they’d ask what your favorite color is. Asking doesn’t mean to imply it really matters. But if she is crazy, and requires the approval of “fucking stupid vague magical charts,” then I’d tell her to sod off.
Ditto. I’d probably say “Sorry, if you’re going to base our compatibility on our signs, I don’t think it’s going to work out between us” and walk away. In fact, I usually just move on to the next profile anytime I see something like “I have X personality traits but I’m a [sign] so it makes sense” or “I’m a [sign] and my personality is pretty much spot on with that”. Yeah, no.
The reply I got back with a bit of reference to something I wrote snipped out
I guess it sounded like a big deal, with “I do have to ask” and it was the only question she wrote to me, not a question about my profile or anything I said or anything, made it sound like a mandatory step.
I’m not exactly getting flooded with positive responses so it’s hard to be so cavalier about throwing each one away, but blah. I guess I’ll just tell her and ignore it. As I said, the stereotype is that our signs go together based on 20 seconds of googling so it’d probably be positive, but the whole thing irritates me.
Incidentally, I also met a woman on there that seemed to be perfectly skeptical - no nonsense beliefs at all, and how rare is that? Probably not working out for other factors, unfortunately.
I’d pass (but I’m not you, I’m just a stranger on the internet), based on the fact that she didn’t just say ‘sign’ she said ‘Zodiac sign’ AND she can ‘easily tell you’. This ain’t just small talk, she needs to know. I’ll bet if you dance around giving her your birthday, answer the other questions, just ignore this one, change the subject etc, she’ll bring it up again in the next email.
Try it.
Write back . “Hey, no big deal, it was just a clever moment for me, I’m not usually that good with words, I hope you had a good night’s sleep. Say I see from your profile you like Fight Club, have you seen Black Swan yet, if you haven’t you should”
I’m guessing she asks you your birthday in the next email. Either that or, just say what I said upthread about telling her that it’s not going to work if that’s what she’s going to base compatibility on. OR, you could look up something that doesn’t jive with her sign and tell her you’re that. That should yield a telling response.
