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Monday, June 23, 2014

DC Dating: Back to Gut Instincts. Again.

My friend Matt was talking about my blog and mentioned one post in particular about my dating life that was his favorite. It was about a guy I met years ago online who I've now nicknamed the Ninja Turtle (I'll explain more in a bit). Online dating may still seem strange to some, but it's the norm in urban areas. We are a fast-paced people, living in homogenized worlds where you quickly make out with become friends with everyone you ever see and in order to get variety, you need to look outside your circles. I also like it because it's like shoe shopping. Pick the make and model of the guy you want, then wait to see what the inventory looks like. And it's especially good for me because I'm only interested in getting serious with someone who shares my faith, so this way I can always note that I only want to see Christian inventory.

And then it never works and I'm consistently offered everyone else.

How about this atheist?

Nope.

Agnostic? He's nice!

Still no.

What about this Buddhist? You might really like this Buddhist....

No! Stop it!

So I've only dabbled in the online dating world a bit. I tried a couple different sites years ago, got bored and quit them all, then joined one again just recently. I figured the guys I was meeting in the wild haven't been so great either so why not try the virtual world again?
The last guy I met in the brick-and-mortar world (as opposed to the virtual world) ended up being a closeted LARP'er. As in, he eventually admitted that he dressed up in costume and role-played in his spare time. He then went on to tell me about his ex-wife and showed me a photo of his multiple children. They were all wearing matching outfits. Matching each other...and him... Clearly, offline dating has its flaws as well... (Not that there's anything wrong with LARPing and matching clothes. It's just not my preference.) 
So I'm back to giving the online dating pool a try. And I hadn't had anything too note-worthy (well, except for the date that ended up with me and the guy discussing life sitting on top of buckets in the mayonnaise aisle of a grocery store at 2 a.m., but that is a story for another day....) until last week when a guy contacted me and I got a nagging feeling that I'd seen his photo before.

I could not put my finger on it, so I just figured that I'd probably seen his photo pop up on the site before. So I reply and I ask him what brought him to D.C. And he replies: "I said what brought me to D.C. in my first message :)"

Oh no, no. You cannot wash away a passive-aggressive "schooling" by adding an emoticon, Mister. I immediately felt scolded and turned-off.
This is a challenge I have. I believe I have really good intuition about people in general so I've learned to rely on that probably a little too much and I instantly categorize people into 'That Guys'. Oh, you're that guy. You're "uptight/'I need to teach you the proper way,'" Guy. You'll be the guy that one day walks up to me - smiling - and "kindly" says "honey, is this the way we fold the dish towels? Is it? I didn't think so." *smile*
And I know you are sitting there reading this thinking "she's wrong, she's too picky" but I gotta say, people, I'm typically right in the end. That's the problem. I've tried multiple times to go against my gut instinct, to "have an open mind," and it always ends badly. And isn't telling me to go against my instinct in love the same as telling me to go against it in the stock market? Who says "oh, you feel like this stock is going to tank? Then by all means, put your money in it!" Yet everyone says that in dating.

I end up replying to this guy with just enough to answer his questions and kind of be done. Then he replies, "Did you have any other questions for me?" And I don't even know if I want to respond.

UNTIL.

I'm sitting on my balcony later, zoning out and watching people walk their dogs. At some point, I start to think about that blog post Matt loved and how maybe I'll re-post that again since my friends do love my dating disasters and I haven't really had any to share in a while. And in the background, another part of my brain is also thinking "I wonder why that guy online looks so familiar..."

And then both thoughts crashed together and an image slowly emerged:

He's the Ninja Turtle!

The reason this guy looked so familiar is because we went out. We must've met on a different site, years ago, and somehow found each other again! I've apparently reached the end of the dating pool and I've somehow circled back to the beginning! I'm definitely going to need to buy more cats now....

I start giggling and cannot believe this, and I start to reply to him: "Actually, I DO have a question....."

And he doesn't remember. He asks if I remember how long ago the date was.

And now I'm walking a line, because I do know when it was, I know exactly when it was, because I wrote about it. How do I remember you, Scold-y-pants? Because I basically keep a public diary. I keep a public diary, and I write about bad dates, and now people in Ghana and Azerbaijan and the Netherlands have potentially read about you. So yes, I do remember how long ago the date was.

Clearly, I had to be careful not to give too many details lest he think I'm just a creepy stalker who remembers everything about one date four years ago. I reply in vague terms and he asks (rather adorably, I must say) "Do you recall how the date went?" So now I have to say something about the fact that since neither of us really remember each other, it must not have been a spectacular date so we should call it a day.

What I didn't say was - "You took me to an underground mall, forced me to buy coffee for myself, then proceeded to scare me about a hike I was taking the next day."

But that's actually how the date went. After I made myself go out with someone I had a bad feeling about. A guy I would again have a bad feeling about years later. And what was the name of my original post about him?

"Back to gut instincts."

Back indeed. Will I ever learn....

Enjoy the original date HERE.

4 comments:

  1. Yea that's a bad date. I met my wife at our small conservative college and we bonded over being the "normal" ones. 14 years later we know now that we are both actually very not normal. Your instincts are always better than any algorithm online.

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  2. Haha, I like that. I've always loved the Dr. Seuss quote: “We're all a little weird and life's a little weird. And when we find someone who's weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

    I just need some compatible weirdness, I guess :)

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  3. Being able to threaten people with "I'll probably blog about this later" is one of the biggest perks of this whole schtick, and something I use with my kids now that they're too old for me to threaten to call Santa when they misbehave. Now, I must read about that date...

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  4. Haha, it's so true. Although I fear becoming the Taylor Swift of blogging where no one wants to risk going out with me anymore....

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