OkCupid Gems

Back to OkCupid, the dark abyss of tech, nerddom, and polyamory with an imaginary light at the end of the tunnel.  Although I have no success with internet dating I keep doing it, time and again, because somehow, after three years of searching, I still have hope.

I have gotten about thirty messages since I reactivated my account a week ago, and I haven't responded to a single one.  They range from the lonely and verbose:

"Hi,

What were you up to this weekend? I am having a really nice weekend. This morning I went on a run around Queen Anne. I am trying to work up to running the Seattle Marathon next year. I still have a long way to go, but I think I can do it. Nice days like today provide a reminder of how scenic Seattle is when the view isn’t obscured by the mist. The view while running on the top of Queen Anne was really spectacular. I then met up with a friend to see The Unknown Known, the new Errol Morris documentary interviewing Donald Rumsfeld. His use of language is something like a rainy day in Seattle, except it isn’t covering up something pretty. We went to the Sundance Cinemas, where they now serve beer and real food. I am going to have to remember to go there more often."

To the desperately boring: 

"Hey there, how are you doing today?"

To the obnoxious and creepy: 

"It's kind of weird
I just need some honest advice

Truthfully how much does size really matter?"

 

The men have screen names like TallCleverKinky, nerdoutchampion, aboveaveragejoe, greatguy6375, and dudeosaurus. 

 

One man has, as his opening line in his profile, "Yes, yes, I admit it. I watch porn. Get over it."

 

He goes on to say he is a "bestial lover" and that he has been "known to make people laugh until they have to pee."  He also reports, in his self-summary, that he likes sex, which is helpful to know because that's unusual for a man.

 

His IQ is 186.  He had weight loss surgery.  He once talked a woman into an orgasm.  He thinks rainbows are pretty but he doesn't like ponies.  Okay he lied, he does like ponies.  And he loves "the flabbergasted expression on the faces of geniuses when they realize that I'm simply out of their league intellectually"

 

We are, according to the OKC algorithm that filters my romantic prospects, an 83% match.

The Third Man I Went On At Least Four Dates With, and How It Ended

It wasn't the fact that he has been unemployed for nearly a year, that he drinks and smokes pot daily, or that he still has emotional baggage left over from a failed engagement. It wasn't the beard or sweatshirts. It wasn't his lack of a criminal record. The moment that I realized we were not going to progress to full relationship status, we weren't even together. I was at work.

My patient was dying. I had seen her a week before for bipolar disorder, and she was going downhill. I frantically adjusted her medications the best I could and did a referral to psychiatry, knowing full well that a psych referral for my patient population takes three months- an eternity for the acutely mentally ill. I was worried, and she was too. We made a safety contract, and she agreed to come back to see me in one week.

That day, with the little energy she had, she found a way to make it to her appointment on time. She had cut her wrists the day before but in survival mode, thinking of her children, she put on her nightgown and drove the hour it took to get to our clinic from her rural, medically underserved town. She was not wearing underwear, hadn't showered in several days, and whispered to me, "I'm so sick. I need help."


"Do you have any pills or weapons with you right now?"

"No."

The questions that I have to ask.

I called 911 and when the paramedics arrived she was sobbing in the fetal position, clenching my hand, apologizing for crying into my dress, and worrying out loud that this is how her children would forever remember her. She agreed to go to the hospital, and they took her away.

That, effectively, ended my hopes of a relationship with my neighbor. The man I fall in love with will need to understand, on a personal level, poverty and hopelessness in the community I am so passionate about working with. While this man is kind and liberal and an all-around good person, that connection wasn't there.

But one thing that was going great between us was the sex!  MmmMmm.   Physical chemistry was spot on, and the sweet, post-coital tenderness was there too. We had our best conversations in bed, and I felt an intimacy that fulfilled me emotionally. I was hesitant to let that go, but I also didn't want to lead him on.

It weighed on me, how to tell him that it wasn't going anywhere, that my feelings were stuck in "I like you a lot" and not progressing. Would I hurt him, or did he feel the same way?

I hadn't seen him for a few days, and when he came up to my apartment we started making out. I was hesitant, he could tell, and although I insisted I was fine he appropriately read my body language and knew otherwise.

"What's going on?", he asked.

I sighed. "It's not that I don't want to have sex. I WANT to have sex, that's not the problem. The problem is, that's all we do..."

He sighed back. "Alright, we need to talk about this. You're a great girl, but-"

I cut him off. I didn't want him to finish his sentence because it didn't need to be said. There was no reason for each of us to explain our lack of significant feelings for the other, to add insult to the injury of our dating defeat. It just didn't work out. We were on the same page.

"Okay, I'm just gonna come out and say it," he said. " Friends with benefits? The sex is really good."

Even more on the same page.

Seven weeks, the average length of time I can holding together a romance with a man I'm dating in Seattle. Par for the course.

Stay Tuned

There will be a 63rd first date.  OKC reactivated.  Details to come.

Whoops!

Guess who found my blog.

As it turns out, when you're dating someone who has a basic knowledge of how the internet works and you tell him that you blog about dating in Seattle, he figures out a way to track it down.  And then- as though to make up for all of male humanity- he reassures you that anal sex is not one of his marriage deal-breakers.  I'm so glad that needed to be cleared up in the first month.

So here I am, monogamously dating the same man for about six weeks, who now has this website address.  What to say, what to say...

 

"Youth, and I Really Love Her Kid"

Whammy #2:

The Ex is engaged.  My third love and final heartbreak has committed to spend his life with the woman he preferred to be with because she was younger than me and had a child of his ethnic background.  The memory of him comparing me to her and explaining what she had over me, "youth, and I really love her kid," recurs every time I feel proud of an accomplishment.  Am I less likely to find love because of the successes I've earned?  I'd like to say I moved on, but it's three years later and here I am, occasionally stalking his Facebook profile.

My reaction was completely different from a few days before, when I found out Julio was engaged.  I didn't cry, wasn't angry, had no moments of bittersweet tenderness, and didn't even care that much.  I saw his recent engagement photos and my first thought was that I didn't find him attractive.  My second thought was that his small head and giant, toothy grin make him look stupid.  My third thought was that I never want engagement photos.  Waste of money!

Three years, still holding at 62 first dates.



 

Double Whammy

Whammy #1:

Julio- whose name I am comfortable disclosing because the odds of anyone reading this blog identifying him in Guatemala are slim- sent me an email saying he is getting married and expecting a child.

The first person you fall in love with helps you identify those feelings and sets the standard for future relationships.  The second person is special because they remind you that it can happen again.

I will always be grateful to Julio for being the second, for getting me out of a relationship with a man I wasn't in love with by helping me rediscover what it meant to connect to someone.  He taught me Spanish, a language that I speak every day at work.  He ignited my love for reggaeton music, clubbing, and drinking tequila.  We climbed to the top of Central America together and watched the sun rise at 13,845 feet.  It was a happy relationship that ended with the biggest dealbreaker I have ever encountered:

I wanted to go back to the United States and work in medicine, and he wanted to stay in Guatemala and become a Catholic priest.  In the tragic endings of my romantic relationships, it figured that I fell in love with the one Guatemalan who would turn down my offer to try for a US visa.

Obviously his goals from four years ago changed, and in the process, he met his fiancé who is Mayan, Catholic, and a much better life partner to him than I ever would have been.  I cried when he told me, not because I was sad or angry, but because his happiness overwhelmed me.  I want good things for him.

Yesterday, he sent me a message wishing me a Happy International Women's Day.  The United States doesn't observe the holiday, but Guatemala does, and he wants good things for me as well.

Blast from the Past

I am currently trying to figure out if I can have a functional relationship with the man I've been dating for the last few weeks.  It's rather unexciting.

SOOO, for the sake of keeping this blog alive while I sort out my thoughts about dating my fairly normal neighbor, let's go back to a blog post I took down a year ago, about the man I was dating who was, suffice it to say, significantly odder...

******************************************************************************************************************

The kink cards came out on the third date. We were making out for the first time on his couch and things were heating up. Shirts were off, pants were on, my ear was gently being nibbled when he started making a list: "I could cum in your pussy, in your mouth, on your face... I could cum in your ass."

 

 

EEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The kissing came to a screeching halt as I sought to clarify expectations. "You are NOT cumming in my ass." He didn't skip a beat. "Well, would you let me put a finger in your ass and cum on your tits?"

 

 

I agreed to that in the future if we got to know each other better. It sounded like the lesser of two evils. Then he laid me back down on his couch, kneeled over me, masturbated, and ejaculated all over my breasts. My ass was spared, and the third date ended.

 

 

The fourth date was a pleasant dinner with clothes on and PG-rated conversation. Aside from some manual below-the-belt stimulation, it was sexually uneventful. I was headed to Ohio for the weekend so we said we'd see each other the next week. I was planning on letting it rest for a few days but then I went to a wedding, drank four beers, and reached for my cell phone.
 

Me: I'm about to get real drunk and take full responsibility for any text messages I send.
 

Him: Bring it! Pictures are nice too.
 

Me: Can't you just fly to Ohio?
 

Him: No. But I can text you and tell you how much I liked your mouth on my cock.
 

The sexting was on full-force and several messages later, I found myself in a bathroom stall pulling down my dress to send a picture of my breasts to a man who I've been on four dates with.
 

Him: Keep getting me excited! What do you want to do to me? You know what I want to do to you.
 

 

I told him exactly what I wanted which was, to paraphrase, regular old in-and-out vaginal sex that most heterosexual couples are having by the 3rd to 6th date. He said he could do that, but I would have to beg... "Get you naked, hold my cock just up to your pussy... Wait... Wait... Not yet..."
 

I was at a wedding, and I looked around and saw love everywhere. The bride and groom, their families, my friends scattered across the country who traveled to rural Ohio in winter to reunite and celebrate love and commitment for a night. The entire room was dancing to polka music and drinking Bud Light. I was drunk and sappy, so I gave in to the thought on every single thirty year old woman's mind and texted, "I just want to get married. Why is this so hard?"
 

He didn't hesitate in his response: "For that, you will definitely need to give up your ass."