5 posts tagged “the perils of dating”
There are few things worse than discovering that a guy you hooked up with at a party not only knows one of your ex-flings, but is friends with them and in their major and graduating class. In fact, I think there's only one thing worse than that: discovering those facts by running into them together in the school cafeteria.
Excuse me, I think there's a rock around here that I need to be under.
Guy: So, I see from your profile that you're writing a thesis. What's it on?
Me: Toni Morrison.
Guy: Yeah, he's a really great writer. I've read some of his books myself.
Me: ...
The end.
About ten months ago, my mother decided that I should try internet dating. It made sense: I'm an introverted nerd, the internet is full of introverted nerds, and maybe an e-romance website would help me find an introverted nerd of my very own. This is fast becoming a new entry in my running list of advice my mother gave me that I never should have taken, because damn, people are seriously crazy.
You see, I'm not just introverted and nerdy. I'm also fairly attractive. This is a problem, because other introverted nerds see the conjunction of relative nerdiness, intelligence, and hotness and start acting creepy, which freaks my introverted self the ever-loving fuck out (in addition to making my inner radical feminist throw temper tantrums). You would not believe some of the weird-ass things people have actually said to me:
1. "Have my children." Not only has this actually happened, it's happened multiple times. Ew. Gross. While you can argue that dating is ultimately a quest to find a suitable person to combine DNA with (unless you're childfree, I guess), it's definitely not one of those things you mention on the first date, much less on an internet dating site. Seriously. What on earth would possess me to mix my awesometastic DNA with that of a freaky pervert who happens to be older than both of my parents (42 and 45)?
2. "Be my sub [or insert any other variety of recipient of freaky sexual preference]." Thanks to the internet, I have reaffirmed the fact that I am a freak magnet. I'm really not sure how or why that's happened, but I really wish it would stop. I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but seriously, folks, discussions of weird sex practices shouldn't happen until at least the fifth or sixth date (or whenever you determine that there is a realistic possibility that sex will actually occur). Hardcore BDSM is not an appropriate springboard for a conversation, unless you are on a special forum for that kind of thing. Asking random strangers on the internet to dress in head-to-toe latex so your fiberglass ropes won't chafe them is not cool, daring, edgy, or sexually arousing (even if I were into that). It's creepy.
3. "Have a three-way/poly fling with me and my girlfriend/wife." This really bothers me for a couple of reasons. I think a lot of this is the direct result of me making the grievous error of honestly stating my sexual orientation (which is really unfortunate when you think about it). Once again, unsolicited sexual propositions (outside of appropriate forums) are sketchy. That said, people really need to get it through their thick heads that being queer is NOT the same thing as being polyamorous or into three-ways or other forms of group sex. To assume something like that is really obnoxious (and kind of offensive).
4. "Hi, I'm (at least) fifteen years older than you, think your profile is 'deep,' and want to date you!" I can't think of any not-sketchy motivation that someone that much older than me would have to want to date me. I'm fairly mature for my age, but I'm still twenty-two, not finished with undergrad, and think I know everything. I'm pretty sure I'd drive anyone from that age group up a tree, and yet they still insist on hitting on me. Ick. Bonus creep-out points when they're older than my parents (which isn't difficult, since my parents had me at fairly young ages).
5. "Hi, I am a hard-core Christian Republican who hates everything you stand for. Will you have sex with me?" I really love it when people with blatantly misogynist opinions hit on me. Really really. It's like, "Oh, you hate my ideology but you'll grace me with your sex because I'm hot enough to meet your dubious standards-- but only until you find a Nice Christian Woman to take home to your parents and eventually marry?" And they always seem to think that I'll be more than happy to hop in the sack with them and get completely offended when I inform them that I don't have relationships of any kind with sexist cretins who don't respect me. I've kicked guys out of my room for being anti-choice before, and I'll do it again. It's not negotiable. The entitled attitude that they have makes me ill.
6. "I just got in from Iraq and I'm a WAR HERO. It's your patriotic duty to nail me!" See above. Once again, I'm not sure what would possess a DECORATED WAR HERO to hit on me, an ultra-liberal pacifist who has opposed the war in Iraq since well before it even started-- except for the prospect of hot sex with an easy liberal chick. Sorry, Bubba, it doesn't work that way. I hear they sell confederate flag bikinis down near the Country Music Hall of Fame. You can find you a nice woman there.
This is just the short version.
I'm still keeping my account. The LOLZ it's provided me with have been
invaluable in times of stress, and I've made several really cool
friends from it as well. I'm not really interested in romance at this
stage, anyway. And when I get interested again, I'll hit the bars,
because they're way less weird than the internet.
Back in another life when I was a creative writing major, one of my professors told me that my work resembled this story. I looked it up on Google, and what I read has stayed with me ever since.
After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming sadness, an elusive gaping worry. You don’t try to explain it, filled with the knowledge that it’s nothing after all, everything filling up finally and absolutely with death. After the briskness of loving, loving stops. And you roll over with death stretched out alongside you like a feather boa, or a snake, light as air, and you . . . you don’t even ask for anything or try to say something to him because it’s obviously your own damn fault. You haven’t been able to—to what? To open your heart. You open your legs but can't, or don't dare anymore, to open your heart. It starts this way:
You stare into their eyes. They flash like all the stars are out. They look at you seriously, their eyes at a low bum and their hands no matter what starting off shy and with such a gentle touch that the only thing you can do is take that tenderness and let yourself be swept away. When, with one attentive finger they tuck the hair behind your ear, you— You do everything they want.
Then comes after. After when they don't look at you. They scratch their balls, stare at the ceiling. Or if they do turn, their gaze is altogether changed. They are surprised. They turn casually to look at you, distracted, and get a mild distracted surprise. You're gone. Their black look tells you that the girl they were fucking is not there anymore. You seem to have disappeared.
Looking for meaning in something inherently meaningless is a waste of time.
It's been exactly one year since I dumped Jacob, my most recent ex-boyfriend. We dated for over two and a half years. By the time things ended, we were engaged and set to be married sometime next year. I was totally convinced that He Was The One For Me and that we'd be together until the day that one or both of us dropped dead (we had an agreement that it would be the same day), to the point where I ignored years of escalating emotional and physical abuse. I'm often tempted to look back and kick myself for being such an idiot and taking so much shit off of him, especially since, in retrospect, he so obviously didn't deserve me. But that's pointless; what's done is done and I can't take it back. And even if I could, I'm not entirely convinced that I would.
At the end of the day, I guess I'm glad to have gotten my Relationship of Total Hell on Earth out of the way by the time I turned 21. It's good that I was young, because it didn't screw my life up as badly as it could have had I been older; there were no kids involved, I didn't have a career to work around, we didn't live together, and we never actually got married, all things that could have conceivably happened had we both been older when we started dating. What a relief. And although the healing process has been long and hard, I'm glad that I've finally made it most of the way through. I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was.
It's taken so long, but I finally feel like I'm ready to talk about
everything that happened and let go of all the awful things he put me
through. A year ago, I was a sobbing wreck who couldn't go five minutes
without calling her mother to freak out about whether or not she was
really doing the right thing. I ended up taking him back in a moment of
extreme (but justified) weakness, but even that ended up working out
for the best because it removed all doubt in my mind: I really didn't
need him. I still don't. It's been a year, and I've never entertained
the notion of taking him back. Ever. That's the best part. The freedom.
And the knowledge that I'm never going back.
