Compare and contrast

If you’ve learned anything about me by reading this blog, it’s that I take a pretty rational approach to dating. Pros and cons, red flags and bonus points, test questions, and feelings all figure into the mix when I’m trying to make up my mind about a guy. It’s not a coincidence that feelings are last on that list. Part of it is out of necessity. My gut luvs a wounded bird. Show me a nice guy who’s struggling to get it together and my gut will call out to help him. No, gut, no! So you can see why it’s best to substitute rational thinking when my feelings get involved.

When I compare the two guys I’m dating, I find I’m going in opposite directions on each. Rationally, the glasses guy has the advantage. He has long-term potential. It’s stupid to get involved with someone whose priorities are completely different than mine. But my feelings are telling me something else. I am in full-on crush territory with my boy toy while glasses guy’s assumption that I’d accompany him home after our last date left me very uncomfortable*.

Head or heart? Is it ok to have an inconsistent policy? In terms of the glasses guy, the decision is easy. My rational mind is not dumb enough to ignore my gut when it sounds an alarm. With the other guy, my gut is having no problem ignoring my rational mind. It’s not a fair fight, either. Rationality stands alone; Feelings gets to bring along Hormones into the ring. And we all know how much of a punch hormones can pack.

Ok, enough torturing that metaphor. This is all going to end badly. Hopefully it will make for some good blogging.

* I wasn’t altogether sure if I’d hear from the guy again after refusing his offer, but I got an email from him today. I never get an easy out.

Since when do things work this way?

I seem to be living in an alternate dating universe where I do everything wrong but it all comes out ok in the end. The first wrong move was giving my number to some guy I met in a club. But I ended up having a great date with him. Next, I did something that somewhat goes against my personal standards. I don’t believe in giving my dates tests. Generally, testing on dates means setting someone up to fail. And my test fits that rule too however honestly I present it as a choice between two viable options.

Option 1: Have sex with me on the first date. Run the very high risk that I will freak out about it, get awkward, and never want to see you again.

Option 2: Don’t have sex with me and be assured of seeing me again.

The first time I issued the test the guy chose option 1. He was utterly convinced that I would not freak out and would want to see him again. This was a strange conviction since I had never agreed to go out with him in the first place—I was attending his house party as a friend when he basically attacked me after working up enough liquid courage. Needless to say, I block-sendered his ass the next day. The conviction was doubly unfounded when you consider he had no skills in bed.

The second time I issued the test the guy chose option 2. He took me at my word and definitely wanted to see me again. I gave him the choice not because I had no real interest in the guy like last time but because I liked him and didn’t want to fuck it up. So rather than being told to grow up and ask for what I want, I got all the foreplay that had been missing from before and then some.

What do I do next? Invite the guy out to trivia night with my friends before our planned second date. Let me just double check myself here. Yup, in my list of relationship milestones you should definitely have more than one date before meeting the friends. The guy should not be up for this (oh god, she’s going to give me a drawer for a third date!!!), and he should not come out, have a good time, get a shitload of questions right, and then want to see me again. Lucky for me, the reason he came out was that almost none of my friends showed. I spent the night in awe of his skills and waiting for someone to figure out he was only 23.

The date where I show up and I’ve already met the guy

I was very nervous about the traditional date for a couple of reasons. First, what would we talk about?! I didn’t have a whole profile on the guy that I could study from beforehand. Second, he did not cop to his age when we met at the club. I knew he was getting a master’s degree, but not how long he’d been at it. I guessed him around 25, which moved out of my age range last birthday. Third, I mean seriously, how could this possibly turn out well. You do not meet a guy in a club, exchange a handful of shouted words at each other, and then find out you’re a good match. You’re supposed to meet a guy in a club, exchange a handful of shouted words, and then have him text you two nights later for a booty call. 

Well, I guessed wrong on all three counts. There were lots of things to talk about. We managed to cover politics, religion, our upbringings, our families, and lots of other things. It was the kind of date where you’re so excited to bring things up, you end up interrupting yourself. And we are a surprisingly good match (so far—early days). Despite having completely opposite backgrounds, we’re well matched on our beliefs and values. Also, we both know what it’s like to be saddled with glasses in elementary school and to never have a date in high school.

Of course there’s a catch. I don’t have a problem dating younger men. But much younger men? What am I going to do with a 23 year old? Ok, I can think of some good answers to that. All joking aside, I'm not one to throw back what the universe sends me, and right now it has sent me the first guy in a long time that I can connect with. The relationship has no future so at some point if exclusivity becomes a problem I'll have to deal with that. In the mean time, I'm doing myself a favor by seeing someone whose company I really enjoy. Stupid universe.

Raining again

It’s annoying how dating is feast or famine. Ok, so after meeting a couple of duds, I ended up going out on a good date. As much as I curse this evil time of year for making me sneeze and cough, the high pollen count did do me a solid. The guy I was meeting changed out of his contact lenses because his eyes were so irritated and wore glasses to our first meet up. Mmmmm, I love me a guy in glasses.

Then that weekend a friend and I went out dancing at the hipster club in my neighborhood. It’s fun to go dancing there because they play music I like and the guys don’t try to grope you. My friend quickly got picked up by a guy and sort of left me dancing on my own. This eventually led to me being approached by a guy. He kept a respectful distance, so who am I to complain? My friend ended the night making out with her guy; I ended it turning down an offer for a "guaranteed good time" (it was sincere and cute in person). But I gave him my number. I used to never give out my number until I tried it a couple of times and realized they never call anyway.

To my utter shock, he did contact me. We swapped a couple of texts then kicked it over to email. From there we got into the pattern of swapping several short emails throughout the day. To my even greater shock, his emails were funny and smart. So we agreed to go for drinks that weekend. At which point I got incredibly nervous. No kidding on how pervasive online dating is, I can’t even remember the last time I went out on a traditional date.

Conversational black hole

I guess the vetting process works pretty well for online dating, because I’m actually surprised it took until now for this to happen. I went out with a guy and ended up in a disagreement about animal welfare. Uh-oh. The one issue that I just can't get behind at all. For the continuing anonymous record:

Animals can’t talk. That makes them inferior to people.

Doesn’t mean I’d eat a developmentally disabled person. And aren’t you an idiot for trying to equate the two.

I would, however, eat a chimp. Animals is animals; peoples is peoples. It’s not a spectrum.

All of those points came up in our discussion. So I defused the situation by hedging and saying that we can agree that choosing more humane ways to raise animals is better than less. Which is almost a complete lie, but storming out didn't seem like a good way to go. And it was irrelevant because he had smaller hands than I do and no lips. So we parted ways and then he emailed me the next day asking me out. But he made this big thing like it should be a date and someone should pay. Someone? You asked me out, how is the payer unclear? Apparently, one can love animals but eat them and like me but not buy me dinner.

The triumph of the internet

Lately, I’ve been lamenting the fact that after about a year of living here no one has asked me out in person. (This post is a week late—I met a guy last weekend who asked me out.) I used to get asked out all the time where I was living before; I thought my numbers would go up living in the city. And I thought I’d even want to say yes to the guys who asked.

So I was pleasantly surprised when reading the comments section of some crap article on dating in Salon. A commenter mentioned that online dating has become so pervasive that no one asks people out in person. She mentioned receiving a message from a guy through the online dating site that said he saw her in a café, recognized her from her profile picture, then went home and emailed her! Sure it’s an extreme example, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s true. If online dating makes it so much easier to ask people out and provides an endless supply of potential dates that doing it the old fashioned way has lost a lot of its appeal. I’ve been doing all this online dating thinking it’s passing the time while I wait for Mr. Right to show up. What if no one bothers showing up anymore?

The newbie

Oh man. Some background on the guy—he went to a notoriously liberal university then joined the Army. Now a military man is not my cup of tea, normally. I’m not into following rules, short hair, or wearing navy blue and black together (I’m talking to you, Marines!). But I thought, great, I’ll get the best of both worlds: a liberal, progressive guy who’s actually manly. As opposed to the limp-wristed type I normally get.

People who are more familiar with the military than I am are likely shaking their heads at my naiveté. He was not manly. He wasn’t even in shape! I was once again a victim of very old pictures. Which he admitted and then asked if having a beard now was false advertising. It might be if it weren’t overwhelmed by the extra 40 pounds and the new hairline.

We had a fun night together, he drank too much, and then tried to walk me home. To be fair, it was my idea for him to walk me home. But then, when I asked him to be more situationally aware, he didn’t know what I was talking about. He was in Iraq! Don’t even analysts have to go to boot camp? Whatever, I was forced to deposit his drunk ass at the nearest bus stop because I was safer on my own.

Hotmail is the new cool

Ok, two things apparently really stand out about me because the guys I’ve been dating can’t seem to stop commenting on it. The first is my hotmail account. The comments range from surprise to snarky, but everyone seems to get some kind of kick out of my hotmail address. But I see no reason to give up a perfectly good email address just because Amazon sold it to anyone who would pay. Of course, what should be perfectly obvious is that this is my spam address. Dating candidates have to earn the upgrade to gmail, with the added bonus of my real last name.

The second is how fast I pee. Put those smart phones away guys because I will literally be back before you know it. I’m sad that I’m keeping this anonymous because I’d like to broadcast that the secret to my incredible speed isn’t that I skip washing my hands. I’m always worried that’s what people think when I arrive back at the table in record time. So, for the record, I do wash my hands.