After you’ve had some experience viewing profiles and pictures and then meeting them in person you start to notice some trends to be aware of…I also like to refer to these as “red flags”. Now, maybe some people would know from the get go that these are signs of potential problems but it took me a few to get it down. Some things to watch out for:
-no picture…regardless of how cool they sound in their profile, how witty they are and how well they write (which is usually indicative of their intelligence level) no picture should be a no go…more on this later
-they’re wearing a hat in all of their pictures…this means they are balding. Please note, NOT bald as in they realized they were going there and decided to shave their head (which I personally think on the right guy is a really good look) but balding. Nothing wrong with that folks, just don’t falsely advertise!
-above the shoulder shots only
-pictures taken from 20 feet away and they’re wearing sunglasses
-all of the pictures are mysteriously blurry
-pictures where they smile but never show their teeth
This last one brings us to our next experience. This was a nice fellow that I emailed with for a bit. He seemed genuine and funny, so of course I was excited to meet him (one of these days you’d think I’d learn NOT to get excited). We agreed to meet for a couple of drinks on a Friday after work. This was perfect I thought because you weren’t taking an entire evening but it’s still enough time to get to know each other. Besides, if it’s going really well you can always just keep going with it.
So Chili’s it was for some margaritas and tex mex. I pulled up and parked and was walking up to the door when I saw him waiting. Oh this was going to be fun! I’m smiling as I walk up to him and the rest goes like this:
Tricia: “Hi! So nice to meet you!”
Date #3: “I know! I’ve been looking forward to this…………………………………………………………
I can’t tell you the rest of what was said as the world came to a halt and all sound was muted when I noticed it looked like he had spent his formative years chewing on a mouthful of rocks. Yes folks, we’re not talking a crooked tooth here…we’re talking about the kind of damage that could have only been done in a run in with a bulldozer or something of the like. WHY pratel, wouldn’t you have those fixed? I mean this is the new millennium! The miracles that can be worked through dentistry are abundant!
This was especially challenging because I was trying not to let my eyes wander to the wreckage in his mouth for the entire time we were together. NOT an easy feat I tell you. It’s like a bad accident you see on the highway…you don’t want to look but you can’t help yourself. And never mind what we talked about, I couldn’t tell you.
My thoughts were consumed with wondering what havoc these teeth reeked on the food we were having. When he bit into the nacho chip did the configuration of his teeth send little bits spraying everywhere in his mouth? If he weren’t cutting into the quesadilla with a fork and knife what would the bite mark look like? An octagon? Jigsaw puzzle? It was all too much, the places these teeth took my mind.
So the lesson here? Beware the smiling toothless picture. Needless to say it will come back to bite you.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Never Let 'Em See You Sweat
It should be said that my first online date wasn’t bad at all…if it had been bad it would have been indicative of what was to come and I might have been able to avoid it all. Not to say I blame this nice young man. I mean who would think that an average date as your rookie outing would be setting the bar too high? He was nice…a med student who was born and raised in Manhattan. Ironically enough, the date that popped my online cherry was intelligent, cultured and polite.
That being said we shouldn’t spend much time on him since he was clearly a fluke of the (or MY) online dating world. At the end of the date I don’t feel that either one of us was feeling any fireworks, though we agreed to be in touch and go out again. We would exchange some emails and texts but never made it out on that second date.
This quickly led into Date #2. I should say here that the first few weeks on a site are complete mayhem. Matches fly in one after the other, most or all requesting communication. It gets so overwhelming you think you need a personal assistant to handle it all. Luckily I had one…my best friend of 25 years. She knew me better than anyone and was just bored enough at her job to be able to relay all communication to me and handle all admin work so I could provide my answers and she could go back on the site and post them. In the interest of time management this helped greatly, and her synopses of the matches were always entertaining. There were few I didn’t reply to, I mean this was an experiment in trying something new! Being open to guys I wouldn’t normally consider, dates that were not typical and conversations that were eye opening. Now, understand, as I did not at the time, that everything I’ve just listed can be a good thing or a bad thing.
Date #2 definitely fell into the latter. We spoke on the phone just once before we went out when he called on a random Saturday and I was out shopping. We chatted while I browsed the shoe department at Nordstrom’s and set up a date for the following Tuesday. He finished our easy conversation saying he was excited to meet me and I have to say I felt the same.
We agreed to meet at one of my favorite restaurants in Providence with a great outside dining area. It was a fairly hot summer night and as I was walking up to the entrance I saw him from about 200 feet away. I knew it was him because he was alone and was waiting….and that was it. Certainly not because he was the cute blonde guy with the great smile leaning up against his garage with his dog as he was in his picture online. No no…this guy was bald, somewhat chunky and so pale the sun actually reflected off of him like a white sheet. Had my mother not raised me right I would have turned around right then and called with some last minute excuse as to why I couldn’t make it. But I quickly regrouped after a brief pause and set out to have the best possible date I could with this guy, regardless of my feelings of his false advertisement. Again, this was an experiment in trying new things!
We opted to sit outside despite the heat and were doing the usual introductory chit chat dance when our food was served and that’s when The Sweating began. Perhaps it was the heat outside coupled with the heat from his steak but I gotta tell you, he was shvitzing everywhere. It was dripping onto his food, he would wipe a pool off of his brow with his napkin, I mean it wouldn’t stop. I asked a couple of times if he wanted to move inside but he was insistent we stay out. Now, as if that weren’t enough to turn someone off the conversation during this entire time was his recount of his last relationship and the problems they had in the bedroom. He went on and on about how six weeks into his relationship with his ex she no longer felt they needed to have sex because that was something you only did in the beginning to get a guy.
I couldn’t help but wonder if when they were in bed (though believe me this is not something I wanted to picture but there was no way out) he would sweat all over her like he was over his poor steak and if that had anything to do with it. The longer this went on the closer I came to suggesting that that might have been the reason.
I wrapped up the date pretty quickly after dinner and couldn’t help but chuckle a little as I walked back to my car. THIS was dating! You have to have a couple of bad ones amongst the good ones and the whole thing was fun, something I had never done before. I almost felt a sense of pride having had my first unfortunate experience under my belt. I overcame my first “picture shock”, my friends would be entertained at the story and the first bad one was out of the way.
After my recovery I was refreshed and excited thinking about the multitude of matches I was in communication with and the great dates we would inevitably have.
Please note the overconfidence here and feel free to remind me of that later on…
That being said we shouldn’t spend much time on him since he was clearly a fluke of the (or MY) online dating world. At the end of the date I don’t feel that either one of us was feeling any fireworks, though we agreed to be in touch and go out again. We would exchange some emails and texts but never made it out on that second date.
This quickly led into Date #2. I should say here that the first few weeks on a site are complete mayhem. Matches fly in one after the other, most or all requesting communication. It gets so overwhelming you think you need a personal assistant to handle it all. Luckily I had one…my best friend of 25 years. She knew me better than anyone and was just bored enough at her job to be able to relay all communication to me and handle all admin work so I could provide my answers and she could go back on the site and post them. In the interest of time management this helped greatly, and her synopses of the matches were always entertaining. There were few I didn’t reply to, I mean this was an experiment in trying something new! Being open to guys I wouldn’t normally consider, dates that were not typical and conversations that were eye opening. Now, understand, as I did not at the time, that everything I’ve just listed can be a good thing or a bad thing.
Date #2 definitely fell into the latter. We spoke on the phone just once before we went out when he called on a random Saturday and I was out shopping. We chatted while I browsed the shoe department at Nordstrom’s and set up a date for the following Tuesday. He finished our easy conversation saying he was excited to meet me and I have to say I felt the same.
We agreed to meet at one of my favorite restaurants in Providence with a great outside dining area. It was a fairly hot summer night and as I was walking up to the entrance I saw him from about 200 feet away. I knew it was him because he was alone and was waiting….and that was it. Certainly not because he was the cute blonde guy with the great smile leaning up against his garage with his dog as he was in his picture online. No no…this guy was bald, somewhat chunky and so pale the sun actually reflected off of him like a white sheet. Had my mother not raised me right I would have turned around right then and called with some last minute excuse as to why I couldn’t make it. But I quickly regrouped after a brief pause and set out to have the best possible date I could with this guy, regardless of my feelings of his false advertisement. Again, this was an experiment in trying new things!
We opted to sit outside despite the heat and were doing the usual introductory chit chat dance when our food was served and that’s when The Sweating began. Perhaps it was the heat outside coupled with the heat from his steak but I gotta tell you, he was shvitzing everywhere. It was dripping onto his food, he would wipe a pool off of his brow with his napkin, I mean it wouldn’t stop. I asked a couple of times if he wanted to move inside but he was insistent we stay out. Now, as if that weren’t enough to turn someone off the conversation during this entire time was his recount of his last relationship and the problems they had in the bedroom. He went on and on about how six weeks into his relationship with his ex she no longer felt they needed to have sex because that was something you only did in the beginning to get a guy.
I couldn’t help but wonder if when they were in bed (though believe me this is not something I wanted to picture but there was no way out) he would sweat all over her like he was over his poor steak and if that had anything to do with it. The longer this went on the closer I came to suggesting that that might have been the reason.
I wrapped up the date pretty quickly after dinner and couldn’t help but chuckle a little as I walked back to my car. THIS was dating! You have to have a couple of bad ones amongst the good ones and the whole thing was fun, something I had never done before. I almost felt a sense of pride having had my first unfortunate experience under my belt. I overcame my first “picture shock”, my friends would be entertained at the story and the first bad one was out of the way.
After my recovery I was refreshed and excited thinking about the multitude of matches I was in communication with and the great dates we would inevitably have.
Please note the overconfidence here and feel free to remind me of that later on…
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Black Cat And Online Dating
Serial monogamist. I had heard Julia Roberts use the term in an interview once and used it to describe myself going forward. That’s exactly what I had been…from the time my parents let me start seeing boys. I always had a boyfriend for a long time and when one relationship ended I seemed to have the good fortune of meeting someone else great pretty quickly that would subsequently consume the next couple of years of my life, give or take some.
That must be the reason for my state of affairs these last few years. I wonder sometimes if you only get a certain amount of relationships or loves and then that’s it, your well has run dry.
Either that or it’s that freaking black cat that belongs to someone in the condo complex where I live. The damn thing continually crosses my path and I have on plenty of occasions plotted it’s death via BB gun…it’s the main reason I don’t drink at home because I’m sure it would’ve happened by now.
Anyway, I digress. I wanted to write to share my tales of dating woe for a few reasons. First and foremost, the sheer entertainment that the stories bring to my loved ones. I have brought many a friend and family member to tears through laughter when I recount the most recent date’s neuroses, addiction or whatever else may be preventing them from being on the cover of whatever magazine out there promotes mental and emotional well being.
I also wanted to share because once I reached (and then passed) a certain amount of these experiences I started to wonder if I just had uncanny bad luck. I mean I know everyone has misses when it comes to dating, you have to kiss a lot of frogs, there’s a lot of fish and blah blah blah. But you go so long without catching a break and you really do start to wonder. It’s not even that he has to be Mr. Right…where’s Mr. Right Now?? I can’t even get that far?
Of course they weren’t all bad. There were some along the way that I very much liked…they just didn’t like me back. And while I can accept that just because you like someone doesn’t mean they like you back what happened to your fingers or tongue in the process that would allow you to actually communicate that to me? I started to feel like the Bermuda Triangle…people just disappeared…never to be heard from again. Some even disappeared after such parting words as “I’ll call you in a couple of days and we’ll make a plan to get together”. Now is there something in that line that I’m supposed to recognize as really meaning “I’m not really into you and will call everyone else in my book as a means to avoid going out”?
They could have saved a lot of money filming that movie He’s Just Not That Into You and just put a film crew on me for the last couple of years. Your loss Hollywood…I’m even cheaper than a poor man’s version of Jennifer Aniston.
The black cat was ever present around these times too. The time would come and go when I was supposed to hear from (insert any man’s name here, I’m sure I probably had one at some point) and I would open my sliding door curtains and there it was, lurking in the woods across from me. I would pull into my parking lot at night late sometimes and there it would be, darting in front of me while everyone else was sleeping. It’s as if it waited…watching…judging…okay maybe not judging but really…I never saw it jump in front of anyone else’s vehicle.
So I should start from the beginning. I was coming off of my last relationship that had dragged on longer than it should have and left me with the feeling that it was time to be alone for a while. I had just started a promising new career at a growing global company and was making serious strides in my professional life. The time was perfect to focus on that and forget about men for a while. Little did I know how long it would be.
Fast forward to a year later and I’m ready to start “getting out there” again. Problem was I had no idea how hard it would be. I figured if you’re out and about it’s like shooting fish in a barrel right? I’m fun, always laughing and at least fairly attractive? Apparently this did not cut it in the modern dating world, one that I had never been a part of.
So I decided to try online dating. Well…that and I really wasn’t meeting anybody in the conventional ways. Once again my false sense of dating ease coupled with what I would eventually start questioning as a bloated ego failed me. THIS would definitely be like shooting fish in a barrel! Fill out your profile, post your pictures and let the good times roll! I mean everyone on there is looking for the same thing right?
And so it begins.
That must be the reason for my state of affairs these last few years. I wonder sometimes if you only get a certain amount of relationships or loves and then that’s it, your well has run dry.
Either that or it’s that freaking black cat that belongs to someone in the condo complex where I live. The damn thing continually crosses my path and I have on plenty of occasions plotted it’s death via BB gun…it’s the main reason I don’t drink at home because I’m sure it would’ve happened by now.
Anyway, I digress. I wanted to write to share my tales of dating woe for a few reasons. First and foremost, the sheer entertainment that the stories bring to my loved ones. I have brought many a friend and family member to tears through laughter when I recount the most recent date’s neuroses, addiction or whatever else may be preventing them from being on the cover of whatever magazine out there promotes mental and emotional well being.
I also wanted to share because once I reached (and then passed) a certain amount of these experiences I started to wonder if I just had uncanny bad luck. I mean I know everyone has misses when it comes to dating, you have to kiss a lot of frogs, there’s a lot of fish and blah blah blah. But you go so long without catching a break and you really do start to wonder. It’s not even that he has to be Mr. Right…where’s Mr. Right Now?? I can’t even get that far?
Of course they weren’t all bad. There were some along the way that I very much liked…they just didn’t like me back. And while I can accept that just because you like someone doesn’t mean they like you back what happened to your fingers or tongue in the process that would allow you to actually communicate that to me? I started to feel like the Bermuda Triangle…people just disappeared…never to be heard from again. Some even disappeared after such parting words as “I’ll call you in a couple of days and we’ll make a plan to get together”. Now is there something in that line that I’m supposed to recognize as really meaning “I’m not really into you and will call everyone else in my book as a means to avoid going out”?
They could have saved a lot of money filming that movie He’s Just Not That Into You and just put a film crew on me for the last couple of years. Your loss Hollywood…I’m even cheaper than a poor man’s version of Jennifer Aniston.
The black cat was ever present around these times too. The time would come and go when I was supposed to hear from (insert any man’s name here, I’m sure I probably had one at some point) and I would open my sliding door curtains and there it was, lurking in the woods across from me. I would pull into my parking lot at night late sometimes and there it would be, darting in front of me while everyone else was sleeping. It’s as if it waited…watching…judging…okay maybe not judging but really…I never saw it jump in front of anyone else’s vehicle.
So I should start from the beginning. I was coming off of my last relationship that had dragged on longer than it should have and left me with the feeling that it was time to be alone for a while. I had just started a promising new career at a growing global company and was making serious strides in my professional life. The time was perfect to focus on that and forget about men for a while. Little did I know how long it would be.
Fast forward to a year later and I’m ready to start “getting out there” again. Problem was I had no idea how hard it would be. I figured if you’re out and about it’s like shooting fish in a barrel right? I’m fun, always laughing and at least fairly attractive? Apparently this did not cut it in the modern dating world, one that I had never been a part of.
So I decided to try online dating. Well…that and I really wasn’t meeting anybody in the conventional ways. Once again my false sense of dating ease coupled with what I would eventually start questioning as a bloated ego failed me. THIS would definitely be like shooting fish in a barrel! Fill out your profile, post your pictures and let the good times roll! I mean everyone on there is looking for the same thing right?
And so it begins.
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