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Saturday, March 30, 2013

It was the best of dates, it was the worst of dates

For a 26 year-old, I've been on comparatively few dates (maybe? sometimes this is hard to determine). For the purposes of this blog post, I'm defining date as a one-on-one outing that happens prior to the establishment of a serious/committed romantic relationship, because it's sometimes hard to determine what a date is, too. So, with my limited experience, I don't have any real horror stories along the lines of "he got way too drunk and then vomited on me when he leaned in for a kiss" or anything. But I do have a personal best and worst--excluding from consideration my most recent experience, because that wound is still very tender--and now I will tell you about them.

Best

I think the best dates combine chemistry with novelty or atmosphere to become fun and memorable.

I spent a lot of my first year of university with a giant crush on a boy who ultimately ended up rejecting me halfway through the year. I started my second year of university resigned to never speaking to him again, until we reconnected halfway through that year. He was the first male of the species that I met who was like me.

Both shy, and in my case having been burned before, we had to get a bit creative with our suggestions for hang out time, neither of us willing to initiate a conversation about what would turn out to be our mutual attraction. Anyway, imagine my luck when I had an English assignment that took me to the main library on campus, a place I previously hadn't visited except for internet access on my lunch breaks, but which he happened to be very familiar with!

So one way or another, we ended up meeting at the library. I arrived first and was so nervous that I almost ended up hiding and not speaking to him, except that somehow I managed to psych myself up to say hello after all (in case it's not clear yet, I was terrible at social interaction when I was 19).

Once we were talking I was glad I hadn't flaked out, but my heart was pounding the entire time that we spent wandering through the library, from the microfilm room to the place where they keep the books about Shakespeare. We teased each other, or at least I remember him teasing me. I was just generally thrilled to be surrounded by books, with the boy I liked much more than I was willing to admit yet, except to myself.

That date and a few others turned into a little spring romance and then disproportionate heartbreak. In spite of that, the time I spent with him, including our library excursion, holds pride of place in a few different categories of my past.

Worst

My worst date experience was one that I never should've agreed to in the first place, which was one of the elements that made it bad. I could've easily avoided it! I'll keep details to a minimum about the gentleman in question. He was a random dude that I had really awkward sexual tension with, but his personality put me off on the several occasions we'd been in group situations. The invitation was made under questionable circumstances, the venue was his choice (a bad one), and the conversation was lacklustre. I'm kind of a terrible conversationalist at the best of times, prone to getting distracted by anything in the vicinity that's moving, but I was in especially bad form that night, and strangely he made almost no effort to draw me out.

I spent the lead up to the date just dreading the experience, and for the only time in my life I arranged an excuse to leave early. Maybe predictably, this was much more of a learning experience for me than any date I actually enjoyed. In particular: if you really don't think you're interested in someone, don't go out with them. It's a waste of everyone's time.

He asked me out again and I turned him down, and eventually I think he gave up on me.

***
And now I can't help wondering whether these two dudes read this blog. Eep. My apologies to both of them, anyway.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Online Dating and "Things in Quotes"

Many people have told me that online dating could be a great solution for me.  The logic is sound.  I spend a lot of time away from home, and most of my free-time activities are not the greatest for meeting new, single people.  So finding available, compatible people using the internet sounds great.  I could do it on my own time, and I could skip the pickup stage.

As I said, the logic is sound.  That, coupled with crushing loneliness (I exaggerate) has convinced me to try online dating on several different occasions.  Actually the most recent time I tried it was due to sheer boredom.  I was stuck at a site, away from home and almost all my days were standby.  So what better to do than peruse matches.  But that is a different story.

I have tried a few different sites, and tried at a few different times.  All in all it has not been very successful for me.  I have found that free sites are heavily geared towards random hookups, and seemed much shadier. After a while I decided to try a site with a paid membership.  This site had an overall better experience, but I grew tired of it after a while for several reasons.

The site did help me get a few dates, and I met a few interesting women, but in the end I think we were just going through the motions.  I know some people who have had great success on this site, and at least one couple who met through it, and are now married with a child.  So I am not trying to say these sites don't work.  I just don't think they work for me.

The basic method of the sites are that you fill out your profile, and lengthy questionnaire.  Then computers use this information to discover your compatibility, and matches you to "compatible" people.  All at once this process works too well, and not at all.  When I say "not at all" I mean that the majority of my matches did not seem overly interesting to me.  And when I say it "works too well" I mean that the majority of my matches were carbon copies of each other.  If there weren't pictures I would swear there were 5 women out there with 500 profiles!

This made me a little jaded about the whole thing.  It made me wonder if the general population is actually that bland, or if these women are just afraid to actually say something original.  Based on all the profiles there are only about three books being published today.  How can no one read anything outside those three books!  Are they trying to fit into a mold, and say all the right things?  I am sure the men do it too.

Maybe it's the reason I don't get a lot of responses.  I talk about liking video games, and going to comic conventions, and reading science fiction, skiing in the mountains, and seeing live music. I try to show a bit of myself.  But I find that most of my matches "like to travel" and "go for drinks with friends".  And that's about it.  I have even tried re-doing my personality profile, but to no avail.  So with the abundance of generic profiles I find myself reverting to the basics of "hot or not", which isn't a good basis for a relationship.

My last gripe is that when you sign up you get a bunch of new matches, which is great.  But then there is barely anything new coming in for the rest of your 3-month membership.  Then as soon as your membership expires, you get loads and loads of new matches everyday.  As well as "offers" to sign back up and "find happiness (TM)".

So to finish my little rant.  The sites seem dishonest in their intentions.  And most of the people seem dishonest about themselves;  "I do the cool kids stuff, I read the cool kid books, I am a cool kid too".  But you are all exactly the same.  If I wanted Ms. Generic I probably wouldn't be single.  So I have grown tired of the online dating scene, as it seems to have removed the human element.  Everyone seems like a robot, with a human face (and not in a sexy Cylon sort of way).

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Dating Co-Workers

My job occupies a large amount of my time.  Last year I spent roughly 50% of my time away from home for work purposes.  When I am home, I spend time on my own, or with family and friends.  And my group of friends is mostly a small, well knit group, without lots of new people to meet.  And I am not the type to lurk in bars trying to meet people.  So this pretty much narrows my dating pool to random encounters and co-workers.

Fortunately I work at a good place with lots of eligible bachelorettes.  But unfortunately, I have never really grown comfortable with the idea of dating someone I work with.  Even in my office there have been several successful office romances.  But, I am still unsure about it for many reasons.

I think one reason is that I am a pretty private person.  At work I have my more professional appearance.  It is hard for my nerdy core to come out.  Opening up to a potential romantic partner at work seems daunting enough.  But if that partner is a co-worker then it seems like you are opening up to a whole lot more people, because relationships are what people talk about in an office (among other things).

Another reason is the possibility of it going horribly wrong.  What if the relationship ended with a really bad breakup.  You would still have to see that person all the time.  You might not be able to keep your personal and professional feelings separate.  What if it was bad enough that one person had to leave their job over it?

And perhaps a silly reason, is that there is too much choice!  I feel like with office romances you kind of only have one shot at it.  What if you pick the wrong person, and it doesn't work out?  If you bugger it up, you can't just jump to the next person.  This isn't Mad Men.  I don't think the modern professional environment operates on that level.  Or maybe it does and I am just oblivious to all the inter-office shenanigans.

Or maybe these reasons are just excuses for me to avoid taking a chance.

What does everyone else think?  Is dating a co-worker something to go for, or avoid?

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Dating Advice for Nerds

Hi again!

I've got another dating-related link I'd like to share this month: Dr. Nerdlove. It's a dating and relationship advice column written with an eye to advising specifically geeky/nerdy types (he tends to aim his advice towards dudes, for several reasons he goes into fairly often), so this kind of fits with the "socializing engineers" idea of th'blog. I can't say that I agree with everything that he writes, but I stumbled upon the site when he was getting a lot of publicity for talking about nerds and male privilege - and ever since then, I've rather enjoyed reading his column.

He's perceptive, compassionate, and engages the social issues at work in the dating world in a way that I think is pretty effective and non-shitty, rather than spouting the often scary/manipulative PUA kind of stuff that seems to ooze out of the internet. (He does, however, need a better copy editing process :/). Take a gander!

Saturday, March 2, 2013

OK Cupid Goldmine

Since this month's topic is Dating, I thought I'd share one of the most hilarious (and unsettling) blogs I've found recently: OK Cupid Goldmine.

Aside from the slightly sketchy posting of other people's dating profiles for judgment (something I'm not 100% comfy with), this site reveals how varied people can be, and how lots of people end up rambling on their dating profiles about things that may be better left until ...much later in the process. Let that be a lesson to ye?

Friday, March 1, 2013

March Topic!

Hi everybody!

The February poll closed with the following breakdown of votes:
  • 0 votes: colours, bridges, rainbows, the sea, cacti, personal finance
  • 1 vote: counting, body mods
  • 2 votes: coworkers
  • 3 votes: dating

So the topic for this month is dating.

Contributors: You can interpret this topic any way you want, and you can write as many posts about it as you want (within reason, obviously, not like 200 posts over the course of the month, but I don't think any of us have that kind of time on our hands). When you write your post, make sure you tag it with the topic and your name/blog identifier, so that if any potential readers like you and hate the rest of us, they can find your posts easily.

Everyone: There is a poll for the April topic in the sidebar, and you can vote until the last day of this month. Whichever topic gets the most votes gets written about next month.

Colours, bridges, and rainbows got kicked off of the poll this month. If you really want to see what we have to say about them, you'll have to suggest the topics again. Also, considering that we're down to only six topics to choose from, you should seriously consider suggesting something new this month. As far as I'm concerned, any topic is fair game, so suggest away!

Comment on this post or the topic ideas post if there's anything you'd like to see added to the poll in April.