The Body Pic

When will men learn that women are not turned on by pictures of their bodies?

Putting a picture of your hot, muscular, unclothed chest on a dating profile makes you seem like a meathead.

Putting a picture of your saggy, flabby, unclothed chest on a dating profile makes you seem like an unattractive meathead wannabe.

Double negative points if the pictures were taken with your cell phone camera in your bathroom.

The worst part about dating for me, hands down, is having to tell my dates I'm just not that interested.  It's painful to experience when I'm out with a man who thinks that he is showing a girl a great time and he's just, well, not.

As it turns out, men aren't that picky!  We can be straining to hold a conversation for an hour, but the remote possibility of sex makes them ignore the reality in front of them- that there's no chemistry.  When they ask me out again, it's all I can do to hold back from saying, "Really?!?  What about our date do you think went well?"

I have now been on twelve first dates and was asked out for a second by eleven men who had a much better time than I did.  (The twelfth must have been hit by a car or something, which would be the only logical explanation for his lack of contact).

Thankfully I have experience being rejected too.  Several years ago I went out with a man and had a pleasant, if underwhelming, time.  A few days later he sent me the following email:

"Thanks for making time to go out, I had a good time. You're a really impressive person, I think. Dating-wise, my interests are aligning elsewhere, but it was a fun exchange."

I thought it was so brilliant, I saved it.  It was concise, to the point, and avoided any of the weird "we should be friends" stuff that no one really means or wants to hear.

I now have the privilege of passing those words on to the men of Seattle.  After every unsuccessful encounter, I cut and paste the original email and click "send."  Easy!  My dream is that one day, I will receive the same cut and pasted response from another man and I will be satisfied, knowing that the dating world has come full-circle.

To all men making profiles for a dating website:

Under "interests," do not write "sex." 

We are all interested in sex.  That is why we are on a dating website.  By writing "sex" as an interest, you significantly reduce your likelihood of getting any. 

If you are my friend and live in Seattle, chances are that I have asked you to set me up with every single man you know.  I will go out with any friend of a friend- sight unseen- as long as there is reasonable evidence that he does not have a lying problem.  Your friend is a forty year old twice divorced father of six?  Sounds perfect.  He dropped out of high school to concentrate on his improv career?  Tell him I'm free this weekend.  He's still in high school?  That's a little young, but have him call me when he's eighteen.

One blind date recently was with a friend of a friend of a friend.  That's right, it took three degrees of separation to find me an eligible bachelor.  I knew I wasn't interested immediately, but walking out on a friend of a friend of a friend would be rude, so I decided it was best to force some conversation and enjoy a meal.

I purposefully didn't order a drink because I wanted to be in and out as fast as possible and still be sober for the drive home.  He got a pint of beer with his food, and we settled in for the usual first date pleasantries.  Within two minutes I was already bored hearing about his IT job, and I started grasping for any interesting topic of conversation.  Food took forever to arrive, and I ate furiously so that we could both put ourselves out of horrible first date misery.  When we finished eating, the waitress cleared our plates and offered him another pint.

"Please say no, please say no, please say no...," I begged of God. 

He said yes.

Two pints later we had talked about our work, our friends, our families, our hobbies, the sun and the moon, how to knit a sweater, the poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson, why dogs chase cats, why cats chase mice, why mice are dumb and don't chase anything, and who the hell knows what else.  I was done and had been ever since I walked in the door.  That's when the waitress noticed that his glass was empty and did not pick up on my telepathic bad date messages when she asked, "Can I get you another drink?"

He said yes.

WHAT MAN DRINKS THREE PINTS OF BEER WHEN HIS DATE HAS NOT HAD A SINGLE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE?!?!?!?!?

So yeah, it didn't work out.

The One That Got Away

iTouch28's profile pictures were attractive enough, so when he messaged me through a dating website I responded.  I thought it was a little odd that he called me "shorty" in his initial correspondence, but hey, it showed personality.  After writing for a few days, he made a minor adjustment to his profile to include the fact that...  he had a daughter!  It was a bit of a curveball- not the ideal situation for me but also not a dealbreaker.  Not a dealbreaker, that is, until several hours later he removed his confession about having a daughter from his profile, as well as the picture he had just posted with him and his child.  Upon second thought, it seemed, telling the truth about his reproductive history wasn't such a hot idea.

Not to fear, however, because he had replaced the picture of him and his daughter with a new image!  Photo #2 displayed him proudly wearing a wifebeater shirt with a print of a hand in "the shocker" and the words that every woman wants to read on her potential date's clothing: "two in the pink and one in the stink."

I thought he was classy and a real catch.  I started dreaming about our first date, hoping he'd get me drunk on wine coolers and show me a good time in the back of his pickup truck.  But the fatal blow to our future happiness came with one final change to his dating profile.

"I don't masturbate nearly enough," he confided to the entire internet dating world.

I wasn't sure exactly how often he masturbated, but I was confident that it was enough.

I never called him like I said I would.  One week later he sent me a message wondering what happened, how he thought we'd had a good thing going and then I dropped off the face of the earth.  He sent me his number again, in case I lost it.  I told him I had a new boyfriend.

In my first act of dating desperation, two glasses of wine gave me the confidence I needed to leave my email address, unsolicited, with my bartender one July evening.

He contacted me shortly thereafter.  And by that, I mean that seven weeks later I received an email from a man who I hadn't given much thought to for the previous, oh, six weeks and six days.

He was very apologetic for the late reply.  He had been busy, something about a minor bike accident, blah blah blah.  But he would now like to buy me a drink or meal, and was I interested?

We met up that night, and immediately I had the sinking feeling familiar to so many first daters- that my date was significantly less interesting without two glasses of wine in my system.  Thankfully we were going to a bar, and I was more than excited to remedy the situation.

Since he was a bartender living on Capitol Hill, by default he was also in a band. 

"What music do you listen to?," he asked.

It's a first date litmus test, and the correct answer in Seattle is KEXP.

I replied "Um, basically Top 40.  Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas..."

His response?  "Oh don't worry, we'll change that."

Right.  Because what I want out of a first date is for a man to change the music I listen to and use the pronoun "we."

Sometimes alcohol brings surprising clarity to a situation.  Two is my magic number, and after exactly two pints of beer I had a revelation:

"Did you wait seven weeks to contact me because you had a girlfriend?!?"

His hesitation in responding answered the question.  "Well, isn't it better that I waited to contact you until I didn't have a girlfriend?"

Yes, I think it is great that you hid my number from a woman you were sleeping with for seven weeks, and then once you were done sleeping with her you moved on to me as your backup option.  That is definitely better.

Next!

He left my apartment that day and never came back.  Youth and unplanned parenthood won out over a 29 year old woman with a master's degree who has lived abroad, speaks two languages, gets paid a good salary to help people for a living, and is also- if I do say so myself- a pretty kick-ass girlfriend.  

But this blog is not about an exboyfriend who screwed me over.  In the end, I realized that a man who lies to his girlfriends and chooses his partner because she is young and has a cute kid probably does not have the values that I want in loving relationship anyway. 

Rather, this blog is about the world of dating that I was thrown into, as I try to find someone who makes me as insanely happy as he once did.  Minus the lying, of course.

I embarked on this dating journey in Seattle, home to the most passive-aggressive and facially hairy men on the planet.  I have listened to my dates talk about indie music, their philosophy undergrad majors, sustainable coops, sustainable agriculture, sustainable development, and sustainable economics as we drink microbrews and I sit there, generally uninterested in anything besides flagging down the waitress for the check and getting the fuck out of there.

I am looking for love.  I will settle for a good time.

Four months later, against all better judgment, we were furiously making out on my couch.

I had moved back to Seattle and invited him over to my apartment to share a meal and drinks.  He was dating someone new, he told me.  Nothing was serious yet, but he was excited about the possibility of a great relationship and was starting to picture her in his future.  He must have seen my face fall, and he paused for a moment.

"I'm so sorry what what I did.  I learned from the mistakes I made with you;  I just wish it hadn't been you that I made them with.  I'm going to take what I learned from you to make myself a better partner."

I was not impressed.

"Well this sucks," I said.  "I am back in Seattle now.  We had a great relationship when we were together.  And now you're telling me that you are sorry for messing up my life, and you're going to take what you learned from hurting me and apply it to loving another woman?  What is it that she has that I don't?"

He thought about that for several seconds.

"Youth," he finally said.  "And I really love her kid."

What I had going against me was that, at the age of 29, I was an old hag who had successfully used birth control for the last 11 years.

I must have started to look younger and more motherly as the night went on because he became increasingly confused.

"I don't know if you are keeping me from being with her, or if she is keeping me from being with you.  I have no idea what I want."  He grabbed my hand and held it in his.  "I don't want to hurt you.  What can I do to make this better?"

"Don't lie to me," I said.

He agreed he wouldn't. 

Then before I realized it he was kissing me, hands running through my hair, pulling me closer to him, moaning, "God, I've wanted to do this ever since you opened the door and I saw you again.  You look amazing!  I don't want to leave."

In the beginning

It all started with a Facebook post.  My intelligent, sexy, kind, funny, hardworking, compassionate exboyfriend- who volunteered to coach a little league baseball team and donated money to his baby sister's college fund- was tagged in the photo album of a woman seven years my junior who gleefully announced to the world, "My boyfriend made my roommate breakfast!" 

This wouldn't have been noteworthy, except that this was posted about one week after we broke up amidst his reassurance that he had not been seeing anyone else.  Further examination (stalking) of this young woman's public Facebook profile revealed the first joyous exclamation about her new relationship, followed by a string of Korean emoticons, less than 24 hours after he ended our union.

My exboyfriend, who in my 29 years of life is the only man I have ever seriously considered marrying, denied it to the very end.  "I bought her dinner and kissed her once, but she's not my girlfriend," he claimed.  "It would be a mistake to sleep with her.  I need to talk to her and clarify our relationship."

It sounded plausible, but I still had my suspicions.  For example, she kept posting about her "boyfriend" after he supposedly clarified with her that they were friends- nothing more.  Then he would cancel plans he had with me and invite her to the same event, another fact I found out when he was tagged on Facebook.  All the time he denied being in a relationship with her and insisted that she was a friend, his support system.  And because I loved him and thought of him as the most amazing human being I'd ever met, I believed him.

I will sum up the long story of how he was caught lying in the following steps:

1) He showed up at my house in rural Washington wasted after getting a ride on Craiglist ride share and drinking copious amounts of hard alcohol in the car.

2) I was annoyed at having to babysit my belligerent exboyfriend when we had plans together and thought I'd use his cell phone to check my email while he slept the alcohol off. 

3) While trying to access my email I found text messages to the other woman that CLEARLY indicated that she was his girlfriend (him referring to her as his girlfriend is always a good clue). 

4)  I found flirty text messages to other women from an internet dating website that somehow left out the fact that he had a girlfriend.

When I woke him from his drunken stupor and confronted him, he didn't try to deny it any more.

Intoxicated and crying, he spewed apologies...  "I was in love with you, and you moved!"  "I told my mom I found the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with!"  "I wanted you to be the mother of my children!"  Everything fell apart when you left!"   "I miss you so much!"  "I've only slept with her three or four times, and I thought about you every time!"

And still, because I loved him and thought of him as the most amazing human being I'd ever met, I believed him...