Author's note: A big "thank you" to our fearless leader for allowing me to post tonight. I don't think he believed me when I first told him the whole story. He asked me to post this as a warning to online daters out there. While this is a story about me, a woman, meeting a man, I think this can be relatable to both men and women, gay and straight. When I tell this story to others, I get mixed reactions ranging from "eh, it happens" to "should we call the police?" Enjoy.
I don't date a lot. I'm not sure why; I'm pretty good at it. I think it comes down to the fear of meeting someone and knowing they won't be whom I expect them to be.
I've never had much (read: any) luck meeting men while out at a bar, grocery store, library, gym, all the other places people tell you where they met someone. Many times I've had to resort to the online dating phenomenon.
It starts with such promise! First you start the profile, and then the excitement of finding pictures of hot men that you think will have so much to say! But then you start seeing the patterns of the profiles:
"IDK what to say! I'll finish this later...."
or
"I'm really into travel, sports, and working out. I don't have time to stop and watch TV"
or
"I am a lawyer"
So they are either too self-absorbed or rely too much on their photos to attract wmen, they don't have any time for anything other than themselves (read: NO time for you), or they are too intelligent for the likes of women. (Note: not every profile is like this; I've seen some decent profiles out there and men who have turned out to be nice guys).
The few times I let my guard down, I was lowering my expectations. But, that's the beauty of it in the end: lowered expectations helps you realize how much better of a person you are. But this story isn’t about me finding the perfect match after I gave a guy a chance. This is more of a “Maybe I Should Have Ran: A Choose Your Own Adventure” story.
I’ve tried the main three sites: eHarmony, Match.com(twice), and then finally OKCupid. I don’t know why I had to try it again. I did my normal routine; found some recent photos (one of the few good things left about Facebook) and watched all of the emails come in waited.
Nothing happened for a while. Occasionally I would get an email, most of which would say “Hey, your cute” or “ur hot”. I wouldn’t respond. I just gave up and stopped checking. But alas, a magical email using proper grammar, capitalization, and punctuation came in. Doth my eyes deceive me? It was like the heavens opened up and a ray of sunlight hit my cubical!
Before I begin the rest of this tale, I have to tell you that there are levels of a scale of escalating intensity of danger, sort of like Airport Threat Levels. Level 1 is minimal; Level 5 is “get the fuck out of here”.
So, I was impressed with his profile. He looked attractive and his profile had matched my requirements. We wrote back and forth a lot. I found out some interesting things about him, he seemed to enjoy my wit. Then we got into the details of our past and present lives.
One thing about me is I used to work in the motorcycle racing industry for 10-years. I use this as an icebreaker with men. It is effective 99% of the time. What peaks the interest varies between men; some men love to talk about racing with me, some just picture me posing in a thong next to a motorcycle like on some poster, and the rest just pretend to be interested so they can get laid.
Level 1: He was not interested in the least about my background in motorsports.
He didn’t even ask a single thing about it. Actually, he didn’t ask about any other details about my life. Instead he told me that he used to work on the hill, was in the armed services, and he likes jazz music. I know a lot about the music he likes and which senator he worked for. I know all of these things because due to our similar end goals. Pretending to be interested or not, I asked the follow up questions.
I did not run though. The threat level wasn’t that high. Instead I agreed on the first date. He allowed me to pick somewhere near me, but I opted for a different neighborhood. A rule I have (which I broke) is to not share my location with someone I haven’t known for at least two-weeks.
I’m going to skip the first date details. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good. It was a first date that was good enough to lead to a second date.
He asked me out for an afternoon date; I had plans in the evening with a couple of friends. But first he had asked me something very strange: he asked me if I had received my flu shot yet. I hadn't. He insisted that we went to an Urgent Care to get one.
Level 3: That's weird, right?
At first I found it weird. But when he said he didn't want me to get sick because the flu was so bad this year, it was almost sweet. A gentleman thing to do. I called my mother, who always has witty and great advice, and she said that it was a nice gesture. She was impressed with him being so caring.
The date went well. But again, the details of my life did not entertain him. There were no follow up questions to my life story. He seemed to insist that his life was much more interesting than mine. He made it a point to ask me about my relationship with my father.
Level 3: I’m not really sure if this needs an explanation.
I had to go to the movies with my friends, which had been planned about two weeks in advance. He wanted to come along and being the appeasing, Midwestern girl that I tend to be, I said “Sure!”. Why? Because I lowered my expectations! And I was a little tipsy.
Level 3: Never try to meet the friends until at least date five. Why go out with people who are going to be quick to judge?
On the date before the movie started, he told me a few years ago he was shot, and had a bullet fragment in his chest and he would have to have surgery soon. Complete shock on my face by the bluntness of the statement, I asked “Are you going to be ok?” And right then, the theater went dark and the movie started. He whispered that he was “fine” and it wasn’t serious.
Level 4: I should have army crawled out of there in the darkness. Not because he has part of a bullet in his chest; I would never be so rude. But, the inappropriate time to share this piece of information made me react in a way I wouldn’t react if we were in a more private setting. I would have been able to ask more follow up questions, have a better reaction than just shock.
My friends wanted to go out after the movie, which was the original plan, but I wanted to go home. We got into his car and I let him know that it was time to end the date. He started to drive, and I said that wanted to go home alone. Then he proceeded to yell at me.
Level 5: I should have tuck and rolled. I actually thought “Could I make it out of the car alive at this speed?”
He tells me that I’m “terrible” for not being more concerned with his wound, that I wasn’t even concerned for him at all. I am “critical” and “judgmental” and needed to grow up. I can’t remember what else he yelled at me about. I was in such shock I couldn’t even speak. I started to cry instead, hoping the womanly tears and emotional lash out would be enough for him to apologize and pull over so I could flee the scene.
We got to my house and then he called me “crazy”. He stopped suddenly and was quiet. He said he wanted to come inside. I declined. I got out of the car and ran as fast as I could to my house. I regret allowing him to know where I lived.
As I opened the door to my place, I thought about him wanting to come in. Because that's exactly what a woman wants: an emotional roller coaster of confusion, to get yelled at while being called "crazy", then invite the man to come in and have sex. Sounds like a movie I saw once with Jodie Foster.
Not too long after I got inside, I received an email. I read things about myself I didn’t know were real. I questioned every relationship, romantic and friendship, I ever had. I wrote back with my first instinct to apologize to him. Then I cried really hard for a long time until I fell asleep.
I called my mother the next day to tell her what the “gentleman” did. I cried while I told her. I’ll spare the details, but it was pretty pathetic.
I received an email from him that day, outlining everything I did wrong on the two dates. This time I started to get scared. I shut the blinds and kept below window level to avoid getting shot. I kept the lights off. I put together the travel alarm I was gifted for Christmas and put it on the door.
The following day I went in to work and was happily distracted by a job I love to go to when I received another email: he wanted to talk. Then he proceeded to almost apologize. But he never did. Said I deserved a chance to make up for what happened. I wrote back that I would decline, that I wished him luck on finding someone. There was no sarcasm or childish remarks in my email. I really meant everything I said to him since I know how hard it is to find someone who is compatible. I received in return a hateful message, calling me a psychopath.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
What bothered me so much about everything that happened was the ending. It would have been just another bad date story had we just parted with him driving away and me running to my house, never to hear from each other again. But towards the end of the whole ordeal, he insisted on writing me. At first he was trying to make a point that I was in the wrong. Then it turned into almost a "let's work it out/I want to win you back" scenario. In the end it turned into a name calling, immature response to a woman who just wanted to be left alone.
This didn’t happen very long ago and it’s really messed me up in the head. It’s made me question a lot of relationships that I have had, or could have had. But fuck him. I’m a really nice person who will some day make a man happy. And if not, I'm happy by myself anyway, something I've learned 'just in case' it never really happens. And I’m a person you won’t ever find online dating ever again.
Epilogue
Fuck the flu shot. I ended up with a scar from that stupid date. Literally, it's on my arm! Plus, I'm at home with what is symptomatically showing up as the Norovirus strain.