Follow your dreams

A few nights ago, I dreamed that I was kissing a guy. He wasn't anyone I know in real life. I think he was just a symbol of every man that I, full of curiosity and nervousness and hope and excitement, have gone off to have a date with over the past two years.

I should have enjoyed kissing this guy (he was pretty cute for a symbol). But I didn't. In fact, I wasn't having a good time at all. Instead, I kept thinking, "What about the Nicest Guy in the World?" I was flattered that this guy liked me enough to kiss me. But I still wasn't enjoying it. I began to think, "I wish I'd never even met this guy! That way I could just date the Nicest Guy in the World."

Then I woke up. And before I could form objections or excuses or thoughts or any words at all, I was flooded with one insistent, overwhelming emotion.

Relief.

That in my real life, there is no other guy; there is only the Nicest Guy in the World.

And now that my subconscious has spoken, I finally know what I have to do.

:)

9 Dating New Year's Resolutions for 2009

I just discovered this interesting article by Margeaux Baulch detailing nine New Year's resolutions for dating (http://www.sheknows.com/articles/807048.htm). The nine resolutions are:

1. Define what you want in a relationship
2. Assess your baggage
3. Get your booty off the couch
4. Get out of your dating comfort zone
5. Date more than one person at a time
6. Stop trying to make lemonade out of bad lemons (ah, yes -- glad I finally took this one to heart!)
7. Ditch the deadline
8. Date yourself
9. Enjoy the journey

I think "enjoy the journey," while probably the most important, can be the hardest to keep. When you're on a date with the 12th guy in four months, only to discover he's immature, or a complainer, or cheap, or is great but just not that into you, it can be really, really hard to remember that dating is actually supposed to be FUN. But it is. And all you can do is take the perspective that the 'bad' guys are out there to remind you what's so good about the good guys.

Happy New Year, everyone, and thanks for reading!

Confession

I still have a crush on the Nicest Guy in the World! (who I did meet on Match.com, albeit two years ago...hmm, maybe that site doesn't suck after all....)
He came over today. We had lunch together, and dinner. We exchanged Christmas presents (he even brought a present for my cat). I gave him "The Office" DVD game, and we played it -- fun. Then we watched "It's A Wonderful Life," which he had brought. I love that movie. *sniffle*
When he had to leave I went with him to the train and bought my Sunday paper. As I walked back it was snowing, and I realized I was smiling all the way home.
:)

Ageism on Match.com??

I decided to do an experiment and re-join Match.com (http://www.match.com/) for one month. I joined on 11/18, so my one-month membership expired tonight. In the past I've had some success with Match -- in 2007 I dated two "Match men" for six to eight weeks (not at the same time), which is good for me.

But THIS time? Crickets. Here are the stats: over the course of one month, I wrote to 36 men whose profiles appealed to me. That's 36 personal, time-consuming, individualized e-mails -- more than one a day. And guess how many guys wrote me back?

Fewer.

Even fewer.

Way fewer.

Two.

Yes. A whopping two whole guys wrote me back. That's only a 5% rate of return! Oh, three or four guys did hit the button that sends an automatic message saying "thanks, but I've met someone and want to see how it goes." And one guy even wrote me a nice personal e-mail saying the same thing. But for the most part: SILENCE.

Did any guys contact me first? Yes -- but only five. And actually, only a couple of those were messages. The others were winks, which means all they had to do was make the minimal effort of clicking a button. I wrote back to three of them (the three who seemed normal). One stopped responding after a few messages. As of right now I'm still e-mailing two of them, or at least I think I am -- yesterday I sent them each a message explaining I was letting my membership lapse and giving them my personal e-mail address, but I haven't heard from either of them yet.

As for the two guys I contacted first who actually wrote me back, one stopped responding to me after a few messages. I met the other one for coffee last week. He seemed like he would be an interesting guy -- he didn't move to the U.S. until he was 16 and has done a lot of traveling. But we parted after an hour or so, and for some reason I haven't thought about him since. Just no chemistry, I guess? He must have felt the same way, because I haven't heard from him either.

So I wonder if the lack of responses and the lack of guys contacting me first is because I'm now 36. When I was on Match as a 34-year-old, and then again briefly as a 35-year-old, I certainly didn't get tons of responses, but it was definitely better than 5%, and more than 5 guys contacted me per month. So I'm thinking maybe a lot of guys search the site for women 35 and younger? In which case, I aged out of a lot of men's searches three months ago. I'm not sure what else it could be -- I even had the same photo because I couldn't figure out how to switch to a new primary photo. Guys did view my profile -- 342 guys, to be specific (the site lets you know). They just didn't contact me.

So much for Match.com.

Artsy Photographer: disappointing

Sorry it's taken me so long to post about my date with Artsy Photographer from HurryDate (http://www.hurrydate.com) -- but unfortunately, you weren't missing much! I can see why my friend barely made it through her first (and only) date with him a few months back. I like quiet guys, but he was too quiet in an awkward way. I would bring something up, like telling him about a trip I went on to Ireland last year, for instance, and he would basically just say, "That's nice." No tales of his own vacations, no questions about mine, nothing. So I found myself talking too much to cover up the silence. Once I realized I was doing this, I forced myself to let the silence linger. And then, just as I was about to pass out from the awkwardness, he would FINALLY ask me a question or contribute something to the conversation. That did not, however, make it any less uncomfortable. Even when I asked him a question, he would give me a short answer -- not in a rude way, just matter-of-fact -- but it made things difficult. If I'm on a date, and a guy asks me, for example, "Do you have any brothers or sisters?" I won't just say, "Yes, a sister." I'll also add where she lives, what she does, you know, to liven up the conversation, and then I would ask him about his siblings. But this guy would just say, "Yes, a sister." I would wait for more, but there wouldn't be any more, just that awkward silence. I had to pump him with questions to continue the conversation.

And at the end of it all, wouldn't you know, he didn't even treat me to dinner! I swear, when I had a full-time job, the guys I went out with paid 95% of the time. But I lost my full-time job in early October, and suddenly none of the guys I go out with ever pick up the check, just when I can least afford it! Is the bad economy making them all cheapskates, or is it just bad timing of who I'm dating? To be fair, Artsy Photographer had just lost his job the week before (on the day of the HurryDate event, actually). But he's a computer science person, so you know he was making more than I ever have, and he told me he'll be able to find another job quite easily when he wants to. And HE was the one who suggested dinner! If I'd known for sure I'd have to pay for myself, I would've preferred meeting for coffee. I was also slightly annoyed because as I looked at the menu, I asked if he'd ever tried the Ethiopian wine (we were at an Ethiopian restaurant). He said yes and that he liked it. I said I'd never tried it, then went to the restroom. When I came back, he had ordered us each a glass of wine. Nice gesture, but I had never said I wanted, or could afford to pay for, a glass of wine. Arrrgh! (But I must admit, it WAS delicious.)

Then when we hugged good-bye, I got a distinctly creepy feeling. I can't even explain why. But when I talked to my friend who'd had the date with him a few months ago, she asked, "Did he give you the creepy good-bye hug?" So she had gotten a weird vibe from his hug, too!

It's too bad because he was a smart guy, interesting when he actually talked :O and he did have a good sense of humor. I didn't send him a thank-you e-mail, though, and I haven't heard from him since.

Artsy Photographer

From the HurryDate (http://www.hurrydate.com/) speed-dating event last week, I received three mutual matches, and four other guys picked me who I didn't pick. One of the mutual matches I had was with the Artsy Photographer, the one who showed me the photos he takes of topless pregnant women (!). We had actually met once before, at another speed-dating event several months ago. I liked him and picked him, but he didn't pick me. He did, however, pick the friend I'd gone with to the event. They only made it through one date, after which she told me, "We had nothing to talk about. He picked the wrong woman -- he would have had much more in common with you!" You have to set up a profile on the HurryDate web site when you sign up for an event, so she gave me his username, I looked up his profile, and I really liked it. We even said something really similar at one point in each of our profiles and worded it almost identically. So I sent him a "virtual drink" on the site, and -- he never responded.

But I guess he didn't recall any of that at the event last week. This time he chose me, he e-mailed me first, and we're going out for dinner (Ethiopian food - yum) tomorrow night!

I went speed-dating tonight

Because a HurryDate (http://www.hurrydate.com/) speed-dating event I attended in the spring was rather sparsely attended, everyone there (the few of us who WERE there) got a credit to attend another one for free. Since it was going to expire at the end of this month, I finally hauled myself out to a HurryDate event tonight -- and I have to say, it was pretty fun. It was much better attended than the last event, I got to see the same cute host again, ;) and I met more than the usual number of guys I'd like to see again: 7 out of 22 -- almost 33%!

Not the first guy I talked to, though. He made this big show of saying, "I RARELY go south of Houston Street, but I decided to for tonight."

"Where do you live?" I asked.

"Jersey," he admitted. Um, I'm from Jersey. You can't be choosy about where in NYC you'll travel when you live in Jersey! He also picked the strangest topics of conversation, like, "There are more swimming pools in Long Island than in NJ." I thought, a) who cares? and b) seriously -- who cares!?

There were also some random men there who I already knew. Back when a friend and I were both unemployed in 2002, we used to go to these free parties and events where we eventually started seeing the same people over and over (which is why we eventually stopped going, ha!). Well, TWO of those guys were there tonight! One completely remembered me, and one didn't remember me in the slightest ("2002 was a long time ago," he said plaintively).

There was one guy there who was totally obnoxious, though. He was making up all these crazy stories, like that he was 48, "thrice-divorced" and had lost his kid to his ex-wife in his latest divorce, even though she wasn't the kid's mother. He even told the woman two seats away from me that he'd killed a guy in a bar fight the night before. (!!!) But he told the friend I went with, "I actually want to date you, so I'll tell you the truth," and explained that he's friends with someone who works for HurryDate, so since they were short a few guys tonight, his friend "made" him come to fill in, even though he's only 23 and the men for this event were supposed to be 35 - 45. So ridiculous. As my friend said, I'd rather sit there and do nothing for four minutes than waste my energy talking to some doofus who doesn't even want to be there. Ah well. At least he was entertaining.

But the strangest part of the evening was with one of the guys I'd met before at another speed-dating event a few months ago: the Artsy Photographer. I had liked him and chosen him, but he hadn't picked me (I didn't remind him about that part - awkward!). I remembered he had some sort of artsy hobby, and he said, "Oh yes, I do photography. Lately I've been doing pre-natal photography."

"Pre-natal?" I repeated, trying to figure out how you take a picture of a baby before it's born without using an ultrasound machine. But he explained that "pre-natal photography" means taking pictures of pregnant women.

"I actually have some photos with me if you'd like to see them," he said, pulling out his digital gizmo and passing it to me.

So I looked at the first photo: a pregnant woman, lying on her side in bed, wearing a halter top type of thing so her belly was bare. In the next photo, she was wearing even less clothing. They were beautiful photos and all, but it was bizarre to look at these intimate pictures of some pregnant woman taken by a guy I didn't really know, but who was sitting across from me. Then I got to the third photo. The woman was topless. OK. This was getting really weird.

"Great photos!" I said brightly, quickly passing the gizmo back to him.

After the event ended and most of the speed-daters had left, I was chatting with the friend I came with when suddenly she nudged me, hissing, "Look!" as she pointed to the bar. The cute host was totally making out with some woman! We weren't sure if she was one of the speed-daters or not, since we'd been paying more attention to the men. If she was, then wow -- good for her. That's putting the "hurry" in HurryDate!

You know you're dating too much when...

I was meeting a friend at the movies yesterday afternoon, and I arrived a few minutes early. As I was standing around the lobby, a guy suddenly came up to me with a big smile on his face and called me by name. "Good to see you!" he said. "How are you?"

I managed to stammer "Fine" as I stared at him. Even bundled up in a winter hat and coat, he did look familiar.

"Good day for the movies, huh?" he said, indicating the pouring rain outside.

"Uh, yeah," I said, trying to smile and appear friendly while frantically going through my mental Rolodex of the guys I've had a date with over the past two years.

"This is my wife," he said, introducing me to a woman who had just approached, holding the hands of two small children.

I looked at him even more closely, and suddenly I realized who he was.

My doctor.