Random, Not Online Dating Love Rant

I am in misery.  I found this guy who is remarkable in every way, who IS the Check List of my ideal guy.  He's got it all.  He's smart, funny, silly, cute (in an unassuming way), humble, kind, full of drive (but not for money).  This guy is cutting back to four days a week at his retail job so that he can devote more time to volunteering.  This guy loves Jesus (!!!) and still has an open mind about the world we live in and shares the same liberal-sided points of view that I have.  This guy openly talks about things that I think about but am afraid are too controversial for my conservative friends.  He's brave.  He's great with kids.  The way he thinks about money is how I think about it, and that's to not give it much weight in my life.

But I am in misery.  If my life were a Disney movie, this is the point where he would see everything in me that I see in him and realize we're perfect together.  He'd be drawn to me, intrigued by our similarities and captivated by my inner beauty.

My life has never been like a movie.  My life is a romantic comedy that you'd see where I'm the "best friend" who supports the leading lady in her love crisis and who nobody really notices is still single herself at the end of the movie.  I am Kristen Wig in Bridesmaids without the cute Irish cop.  My life isn't even a movie where I get to be the leading lady.  That's dumb.

This amazing guy who has stumbled into my not online dating life has shown himself, over and over and over again to be overwhelmingly not into me.  He's really nice to me, and has even started getting involved volunteering in the organization where I told him I help out.  But none of the signs are there.  There's no spark in his eye when he talks to me, he doesn't try to be where I am, he tells me about his dating life like I'm an older sister.  Oh yeah, I am five years older than him.  That's not nothing to a lot of guys.  I don't know if that's the problem, I don't know what the problem is.  I don't know if he wants a 24 year old, I don't know if he only likes Korean or Blonde girls.

But it's pretty clear he isn't interested in me.  Friends tell me to just wait and see if it changes, but I've already put my love life (and other parts of my life) on hold to see if it leads anywhere.  I'm too old for that waiting around for maybe someday shit.

Even so... I am in misery.  I wanted Mr. Perfectforme to like ME.  I would have felt lucky to have him and I realized that I WANT to feel lucky to have the guy I end up with.  There's been almost nobody like that and absolutely nobody like that who I've gotten to know as well as him.

Waaaaaa.

The Post Where Everything/Nothing Changes a Paragraph In.

Here we go again.  Again.  Again!!! 

The Skype guy has disappeared for (what is obviously now) forever.  He had his hernia surgery and wrote me to tell me that it hurt to stand up, I wrote right back and said that God must have wanted me to suffer with him since I threw my back out the day after his surgery.  I waited for his reply.  A week later, both worried that something happened in his recovery and worried that he was flaking on me, I checked his profile to see if he’d been active lately.  He’d been online only hours before.  My last email was on the 29^th and I haven’t heard back from him for just about two weeks now. 

Well… actually I had to jump on the “freesite” to check the date and guess the frack what?  He emailed me a couple of days ago.  Like a really long email.  BUT did not say anything like “Hey sorry it took me so long to respond”, but merely picked up like he didn’t miss eleven beats (days).  And it’s only long because he was telling me a mildly funny story about his bowel movements post surgery and to get all super analytical about a link I sent to him about rediscovering joy at church with a video of a worship band I thought was rad.  Apparently the website has a lot of other articles on it that are maybe questionable theologically.  He brought up all this stuff that didn’t have anything to do with what I had actually asked him to look at, and then asked me what I thought about several of these articles I don’t know anything about.

So right now I feel like he’s given me a lot of homework to do, just so I can respond with an educated opinion on these questions.  An opinion that might not be the same as his in every case.  My one hesitancy about this guy before The Great Silence was that he described himself as “very conservative” politically.  I tend to be middle-of-the-road to liberal myself so I was worried about when this would come up.  It coming up immediately following his offending me with his half-interest is totally not how I want to start the conversation.

What the heck do I do now?  I’m not good at pretending nothing ever made me upset.  That’s pretty much what took the wind out of my sails for that date where I was 100% sober. So do I tell him that he sucks?  Do I just try and get over the slight and start talking to him again?  Do I wait three weeks before responding to his email, just to get the hand?  I hate dating and boy do I hate long distance "not that into me" guys.  Thanks, but I can (and do) get that in my own city.

This is the part where you give me advice.

My First Second Virtual Date

***The below entry was written about a week ago, but I never got around to publishing it.  An update for the past week's happenings/ponderings will get posted soon enough.

All of the insecurity , uncertainty and cautious hope that I feel after a great first date are exactly all the same after a first Skype date.  We Skyped last Thursday and I didn’t hear from him Friday or Saturday, then couldn’t take it anymore so I sent him a quick email on Sunday, then heard back from him right away suggesting we Skype again this week.  Unlike my last in-person experience like this, he actually followed through with the second date!  But oh, the torments that he made me go through when he was three minutes late calling me!  It didn’t occur to me until 8:01pm that I might get stood up.  At 8:02 I started squirming.  And at 8:03 he called and immediately apologized for calling late.  And of course I had to laugh at him for being sorry like I hadn’t thought a thing of it.

Anyway, he’s really great!  We talked again for over two hours even though he had to get up at 4:00am to have a hernia surgery.  HERNIA SURGERY!  Maybe that’s a sign that he likes me?  We were having some video and sound problems, mostly on my end, and when his end cleared up he said “Well everything looks beautiful on my screen”.  Consequently, I’m sure that he saw me blushing at what seemed to be a slick compliment.

Last night I had a pretty vivid dream where I was woken up by him on Skype and he said that he’d rather not talk to me like this anymore but would rather email because somehow he didn’t feel like he was being himself with me.  In both mediums, but especially video chatting.  He did add, just to confuse me further, that he’d like to meet me in person soon.  In the dream I felt both disappointed in him and completely to blame for his attitude.  

I've maybe got some issues?  Ha!

If You Install Skype, He Will Come.

The last time I went home to California I had the privilege to hang out with some of the greatest people I’ve ever been friends with.  They are people that are on the same wave length as me, who inspire me and motivate me to be myself to the 100^th percent.  One friend called this bond “my people” and said that it was hard to find your people sometimes.  But when you do, you know it.  It’s like in Anne of Green Gables where she makes friends, even has a friend she loves very much, but sometimes finds those people she calls “kindred spirits”.  I’m still looking for my people here.   There are glimpses of it in acquaintances, but our generation is so busy that it’s hard to make new, true friends that stick.

And isn’t the dream that I could find a man whom I recognized as a kindred spirit, then grow a friendship that (hopefully) is leading to an exciting relationship?  Where are my kindred men?  Are they in Iowa?    

Yes, I do have a couple of updates from the world of online dating!  I have met or "met" both of the men I mentioned in my last post.  The one I met in person was the ethnic loving guy Forrest.  We ended up going out to breakfast on a Friday morning about a week ago.  Right off the bat I was feeling way more awkward than I usually do on dates, maybe mostly because I didn’t find him attractive in person.   I was hoping his personality would turn things around, but it didn’t.  He went on a lot of long monologues about things that I can’t even remember to describe to you.  And I was surprised to hear him mention that he was previously married and talked about his children that weren’t biologically his, but that he considered his own.  This was a surprise because he didn’t mention kids at all in his profile.  To be fair, it seemed like he was intentionally mentioning it since he knew I had no idea.  Anyway, it just wasn’t clicking.  Haven’t heard from him since either.  Whew!

The other guy, Brad, asked me if I wanted to Skype after we’d exchanged around fourteen emails since the beginning of June.  I’ve never Skyped before so I had to install it to make it happen.  How do you even have a first date on Skype?  People do this.  I have a friend who lives here that got to know her now boyfriend in Texas this way.  The combination of nervousness and a bit too much time on my hands caused me to flat iron my hair and thoroughly clean my bedroom where the Skyping would take place.  I realized when I finished that he would definitely not be seeing anything but the wall behind me.  But my hair looked great so at least that was a good move!  

We “met” last night at exactly 8pm (he was punctual, like to the minute.  Sweet!) and talked until around 10:15pm.  On my end I think it went very well!  He was incredibly cute in person and has the sweetest Midwestern accent that reminded me of Kevin Costner for some reason (Iowa cornfields maybe?).  We made each other laugh just as much in person as when we emailed.  And it was nice to see with the proof of his laughter that he thought I was funny!  I told him in an email that I was afraid that he’d be sitting in a leather armchair, in front of a fireplace, smoking a pipe with a Doberman napping at his feet on a bear skin rug.  He said he was afraid that I was a cannibalistic stalker, followed by assurances that he’d lost weight recently and would be much less tempting to murder than his pictures may lead me to believe.  Have I found a winner?  I hope so.  Hope?  It’s back!!! 

P.S. Somehow he went from being 38 to 40 years old! That's 8 years older than me!!!  He's lucky he's so likable or else that'd make me hesitate!   

My God's Shotgun Strikes Again

Behold, it is now six months from when I signed up for the not free site and gave them over $200 to help me meet men.  And hark!  Today is the day when I cancel my subscription (since I researched and found it will be automatically renewed “for my convenience”).  I have not met a single man in person for my money.  I have communicated, for various time-lengths, with dozens of men.  Emailed with two (technically) and had a phone call with zero.  I hereby declare this dating adventure to be a failure.  I am not a failure (I remind myself), but it is the site and the men on it who have failed me.  And maybe God chased them all away like a Dad with a shotgun yelling “Ain’t none of you boys good enough for my baby girl!”.  I don’t really think of God as a hillbilly, but I do wonder if all this is Him protecting me.

Can I just rant for a second about boring profiles?  I imagine some of these guys aren’t boring, it’s just that they don’t know how to express who they are and show their personality in their profile.  On either site (but more so on the not free one) it’s 90% guys who say that they are passionate about working out, are easy-going, like to have fun (really!),  loves to laugh (imagine!), looking for someone “genuine”/”down to earth” (who’s the opposite of the latter, really?) and so on.  The “Things I Can’t Live Without” section, to me, is begging to have something funny in it.  Not a space to list “air, water, food, health and shelter”.  That tells me nothing about you except that you are 100% a human being and 100% without a sense of humor.

The good news is that I’m communicating with one (er… two) interesting fellows on the free site.  The first lives in my area and is 39 (let’s call him Forrest).  When did seven years older than me become a reality in people I’d date?  I guess now it is.  As of today we have a coffee date next week!  The only thing about him (enter the “er…”) is that in his profile he mentions a couple of times how he likes ethnic girls who tend to be “browner”.  Cringe/that’s me!  In our emails though he seems way cooler than that bit, so we’ll see about that.

The other fellow (let’s call him Brad) lives in Iowa, but we’re having really great emails that are much longer than with Forrest.  He’s funnier, has more interesting spiritual things to say and is a nice 38 years old.  Okay that last part isn’t a big deal. I mean, I'd date George Clooney no matter what age either of us were!

Reaching for the Stars!

Hey!  Remember me?  I’m slacking on my posts so bad, I don’t even know if I have any readers left.  But really, sadly, frustratingly, there has been no goings on in my dating life- online or off.  I’m still emailing that Indian guy, but I’m not that excited about it.  He isn’t really funny at all, and his emails are pretty long so there’s certainly the space for a joke or two.  His last email I just replied to today which was over a week later.  The reason for that was mainly that he didn’t ask me one question in the email so I didn’t really know what to say besides commenting again on the things he was commenting on that I’d said previously.  Ugh.

In real life there has been two minor flutterings of potential suitors.  When I say minor, I mean it’s likely that I’m imagining the slight indication of interest that’s been expressed.  The first guy is a guy at my church.  I served with him at this big volunteer for the city event and we picked up trash in the same group.  Didn’t exchange more than a couple of words, but I knew who he was.  He popped up a few more times since he was really involved and then one day I heard he was an Elder at church because they wanted to have one single person on the staff.  Interesting fellow.  My heart went pitter patter for real when he spoke briefly at the singles retreat last year.  He waved hello at me that weekend.  Then just recently he was- surprise!- a speaking pastor at my church!  My only thought really was that I get to look at him more often and get to know him in this pulpit way.  But we talked three (three!) separate times last Sunday and he can be quoted as saying “Angelina!  You have to go to the retreat this year!!!”.  The only thing is, I got my first good look at his eyebrows and I think he paints them on since his real ones are very thin.  Strange, but something I could live with,e specially since he's a looker otherwise. I could totally be a pastor’s wife.  Right after I become a better Christian.

The second guy is even more of a long shot.  He’s a customer at my work.  He’s a teacher of special ed teens and teaches them how to shop and compare prices- a life skills sort of thing.  The first time I talked to him I just asked what he was up to with all the kids walking around with work sheets.  He leaned in a little close to me and told me about it.  Discreet!  He shops with them once a week and has since then made it a point to say hello to me and come through my line if I’m up there.  We talk about cooking mainly, since its something we both really enjoy.  Did I mention that he’s kind of dreamy?  I was a total creep and got a look at his ID when he got his card out.  Just a year older than me.  Perfect!  Now if I can just bring up this Jesus business to either properly scare him off or make him more interested.  Tricky.  Maybe like “Oh you’re cooking quinoa for the first time?  A personal relationship with Jesus is my best tip for making it come out perfectly.”  Something like that?

Hoping for Surprises and Mayyybe Rethinking Settling.

Here’s something.  One man surpassed them all in the category of “hasn’t stopped all communication with me yet”.  He emailed me- twice!  I am almost impressed.  He hasn’t shown his sense of humor yet, but seems to be a nice guy with a bit of handsomeness thrown in the deal there.  He’s Indian too which would get me my awesome Baby of the Future should things work out.  But I’m not holding my breath. 

D’yall know that song with all the whistling called “Young Folks”?  There is a line in it that goes “Usually when things have gone this far, people tend to disappear.  No one will surprise me unless you do.”  That whole song is totally how I feel about dating.  It might not be the best approach to dating, but it’s just how I feel about it.  I’d rather not expect to be disappointed but it’s a nice idea that someone would stick around that I want to stick around, someone who gets to know me and is like “Yeah, she’s worth pursuing”.  To be surprised by someone liking me sounds pathetic… and amazing. 

I texted with that crazy-bearded musician today about hanging out when he’s in the country again.  That’s another something.  He had emailed me initially and told me that he thought of me while he was in India, since something reminded him of the play that we saw together.  That’s nice to hear!  But I’m counting on that as a real potential since he’s a touring musician more days out of the month than not.  But I’m expecting him to be able to tell me all the hotspots to visit when I’m in Nashville next month.  A musician that travels the world should be well acquainted with that town!

And on another note, I volunteered at a book swap put on by this nonprofit bookstore I LOVE and saw this book with the title “Marry Him, The Case for Settling for Good Enough”.  When I saw it I remarked “Geez that’s the saddest book I’ve ever seen in my life!”, then someone told me they heard that it was actually good.  So I verrrry stealthily added it to my collection of books that we were allowed to take.  On the bottom of the stack of course.  With my jacket thrown over the stack.  I’ve read the first several pages and think it might actually be useful to me, but is pretty offensive to my feminist tendencies.  I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it on this blog as I read further and have maybe more lackluster dates.  I bet you can’t hardly wait for that series of reflective rants!

Also on that night I met a guy while volunteering who seemed to hang around me a bit and laugh at my jokes.  When I said it was nice to meet him I could see his hands twitching and him reaching into his pocket and looking nervous.  I was probably imagining that he was too shy to ask for my number but it’s nice to suppose that he was.  I need to feel like I intimidate somebody with my charm and beauty!  Isn’t that normal?