Damn You Internet Dating

In a moment of stupidity I signed up for Match. Actually, it wasn't stupidity, it was defiance.

The night Work Guy shattered my heart I paid $75 to meet a man online. My broken thought process was that I had fallen off a horse, and everyone knows the best remedy for that is to jump on another one. For a couple weeks I browsed. Laughed at the idiotic profiles that said "I want a woman who takes care of herself- does her nails, works out to keep her body nice, gets her hair done.." Men bitching about what they don't want and how they're tired of "games" or "drama" all stated beneath a profile picture of him cropped so close to his face you can see his ex's hair against his shoulder. Loser needs to find a picture where he's not obviously attached to another woman.

After some emails back and forth I gave my number to a guy. He called me, we talked about the general things. Believe it or not he's more into his dog than I am into mine... Seems all we talked about were dogs. He does real estate and sighed mournfully that he gets by, the market has been rough but he hopes to survive it. Eluded to the fact he lost his house and bought a condo. I mentioned I own a house, stay away from all those pesky neighbors who try to talk to you. "Don't you talk to your neighbors now?" I laughed. "No, that's why I bought a house in the first place. They can do their thing and I can do mine." He seemed unable to respond to that. Kept saying "huh."

In order to end the conversation I told him my dinner was ready and vowed never to talk to him again.

A week or two later I told my guy friends at work that I was going on a date with an Internet dude, different one. They were all up in arms about wanting to accompany me. Work Guy seems to stand up a lot at work and was watching us. Jeffy glared at him. As I left for the day, grumbling about how dating sucks because I had to go home, wash my hair and attempt to look pretty.

We met up for a drink. He was witty, nice, fun conversationalist. Unfortunately he had horrible teeth. Not like Hugh Grant, more like someone who had spent too much of his life gnawing on chew. I felt bad, but I was never going to kiss him, so this wasn't going anywhere. He later texted me that my eyes were mesmerizing. More guilt.

Next Internet date, different bar. Again with the freshly washed hair and casually applied makeup. On this one's profile he'd said he was 5'10"... I was in my Uggs, flat on the ground and I towered above him. I proceeded to talking about all of my animals, my mom's, my sisters. i really didn't care. Call me the honey badger.

Conversation via email regarding a 1st date with dude from the Internet:

J: So…..how did it go? Was he cute? Conversation? Connection?

Me: First of all, in his profile he said he was 5’10”. So not true. I was in Uggs and stood taller than him by like two inches. No spark. Ok conversation. I talked about my animals way too much because I really didn’t feel like we had anything to talk about. And they had a special on the giant mugs of beer for $2.99, only issue was my arms are so sore from hot yoga I could barely lift it. It was torture…..

J: So do you think he’ll contact you to go out again? Do you think he was into you? Was he attractive?

Me: I hope not, because then I have to tell him thanks but no thanks. I don’t really know if he was into me.. Told me I looked nice at the end of the evening, so at least I got that out it. He was attractive for a Christmas elf…

Sent to my sister:

Meghan: Ha – so mean :-)

Me: He was really short. And petite. If I hadn’t been so sore from yoga and had more beer I might have asked if I could try to pick him up…

Meghan: literally I suppose

Me: I bet I could have gotten him up over my head.

Seriously, this guy looked like he was barely breaking the 5’5” mark. I had a minimum of 20lbs on him. There would be no need for pepper spray in my future.

Inserts from my guys at work on dating:

“We hear your voice so often sometimes we just need to hear our own.”- Serial Killer in Training on why men like to hear themselves talk.

“If you want to pick up a man, wear that purple dress with the tights and boots when you go grocery shopping.” - Football Junkie

“I could probably do without sex if I had around the clock sports and beer. Yeah, I could do it.”- Serial Killer in Training

“I don’t need a guy to be super tall, he can be my height. I just feel like if I broke my leg hiking or something he should be able to carry me to safety.”- Me

Damn you Internet dating. If you were more like Google I would spend less time searching.