jerks

No Means Yes?

As I’ve said before, I’m girly and not super anti-gender roles, or so I think. I guess I’m just into people doing what they want, more so than being anti feminist. I want a pink couch and doilies on my tables but I’m not taking my husband’s name if I get married.

This Stanford rapist business has really got my blood boiling, as it should everyone’s blood. And whether it’s that or just my own changing expectations in the face of a (legally at least) more accepting world, I’m just continually shocked/infuriated at interactions I have with racist, sexist strangers.

Take, at the library.

I’d like to test drive Chrissy Teigen’s cookbook* because her food looks awesome and she’s enjoyable. I ask the librarian to put it on hold.
She rolls her eyes.

I say “you don’t approve?”

The librarian goes on to explain how John Legend is so classy and articulate (aka safe for white people) and she’s stupid and raunchy and should just keep her mouth shut and look pretty. Repeatedly.
Maybe librarians should read and not talk. And not revile people they saw once on a talk show.
Next, take every guy I’m talking to right now.
Yea, I’m a pain in the ass. I want to hang out with you on my terms. But if we’re meeting for the first time, I think that’s ok, especially if you’re trying to meet me after less than 24 hours of messaging. And if I say no, I don’t need to explain myself and you don’t need to try to analyze me.
Do you want to hang out tomorrow?
I’m working
You can take a break.
Actually I can’t
Is it because I’m younger?
No it’s because I’m working.
I’m promise I’ll be a gentleman! I just want to get to know you.
Listening to my answer would be a good start on knowing me.
I’m sorry. I’ll stop talking to you. I’ve ruined our chances.

And so on…

Another fun one is the “hey add me on snapchat (by the way I’m sending you nudes)”

I’ll say gross and they’ll say why don’t you like it. Having to even explain that much is too much but if I’m feeling generous maybe I say I don’t like sexual talk or pictures. I’m up for hanging out but not that.
Why not? You can trust me. I won’t share them. Is it because you don’t like mine? You won’t send me any?
I know my mailman better than you, dude! What kind of creep prefers talking about sex to getting a drink! And ps if you won’t take my explanation for why I don’t want your dumb pics I certainly won’t trust you to respect me in person.
People are pretty transparent. Give it a second chance after one I’m busy, but two mean get lost. Don’t make us spell it out.
Just stick with the golden rule. Treat others as you’d like to be treated, and keep your dicks and racism to yourself.
*get the cookbook. it’s good. and get it from a library to support sustainability and community resources and making middle aged white women everywhere uncomfortable by bringing up “raunchy” celebrities.
Advertisement

Customs

Ok readers. (Reader?).

I need to solve a debate here.

I have made clear before in this space that I refuse to follow weird rules about asking questions and following conversation protocol with online acquaintances. But I hit a snag in this realm with a guy I thought was a normy, and now it’s sounding like I could be in the wrong.

What gives???

Here’s the deal. Had an enjoyable date with Guy on Wednesday. He suggested meeting near my place, which won him a million points right off the bat, then he proceeded to pick my fave bar. Up two million points. Had several drinks, some fun banter, and a front-seat make out. Seemed like another date was a lock.

Fast forward to Thursday afternoon. He texts “Hey, we’re short a person for softball tonight and thought I’d see if you’re interested since we talked about it last night.”

I responded “I can’t go tonight but thanks for thinking of me!” and waited for the invite to a real date.

I didn’t suggest other plans.

Know why?

He wasn’t asking me out! He was asking me something you’d ask your neighbor you run into taking out the trash! There was nothing to respond with unless I had an empty seat at book club. [side note: this isn’t a socially awkward guy who doesn’t know how to ask someone out]

Fast forward again until today when I texted “hi, how was your weekend, haven’t heard from you [winky tongue out face]”

His response: “I thought it was polite and customary that if someone asks you out, and you cannot make it, you counter offer with another time that you can make it.”

fuck.

that.

I thought it was customary that guys grow a pair after age 30.

If your idea of a 2nd date is joining your company softball team, we are not well matched. If you can’t recover from a girl being mediocre at texting, we are not well matched.

But from the 2 guys I’ve surveyed, apparently I’m totally in the wrong here. If he had asked me to dinner, a movie, the park, anything that wasn’t a last-minute technicality outing, I’d say “I can’t but maybe this weekend?” or something along those lines. But this is not a date.

So what do you think? Am I right? Or is it becoming more and more clear why I don’t have many second dates?

Gallery

How to Date

Step 1: Send increasingly panicked messages during the first interaction

Step 2: Immediately ask girl out in response to her snarky response

Step 3: Block her when she said no thank you

To meet or not to meet

So I met this guy on Tinder, and he seemed delightful. I even asked my friend, what’s secretly wrong with this guy, he seems attractive and nice. Her guess: recently divorced (not accurate). Turns out, the real answer is superjerk.

We started texting to make plans to meet. Tentative plan: Friday night after work. He texts me at 8 to see if I’m still interested and when I texted him back 30 min later (can’t seem too eager!) he said it had gotten too late. Also he wanted me to drive to him, which, seriously?

As we continued chatting after the plans went south, he started to get mean out of nowhere. Like after I asked where he lived he said “Do you live with your parents? I know how [girls like you] are.” Or later when he tried to make fun of where I was hanging out and I said “there are some older people here” he said “Oh I forgot [girls like you] are sensitive and can’t take a joke.” I mean wtf. I wasn’t even being sensitive! It wasn’t like a flirtatious back and forth. I haven’t even met him!

Anyhoo, he wants to hang out again this weekend. I planned to never meet him but now he’s being nicer and what if this is my big chance? Or am I just a glutton for punishment.

What would you do?

Gallery

New Frontiers

As if Tinder wasn’t enough of a pain before, now I’m gonna have to start carding my dates.

This guy said he was 32. His pictures were totes from a high school dance. Maybe prom, but he even looked to young for prom.

PS: Are MILFS really a thing? Do people sleep with their teachers as much as Amy Schumer says they do?

PPS: Congrats to me on figuring out how to blur out stuff on photos. A whole new world of tinder screenshot posts awaits.

A Monday OKC treat

This guy has been creepily messaging me on and off for a year. I believe we sent a few messages but never made plans to go out, and then it started to get weird, like if I disabled my account then came back, within minutes I’d have a “hey you’re back!” message from him. [Also, he requests people under 4’9″ not message him. Is there really that much of a issue with very short people contacting you that you need to explicitly discourage them?]

He’s continued to come and go with different profile names every few weeks sending equally creepy and over-familiar messages to which I did not respond. And today:

hey stranger… hope things are well and you’re surviving this winter! wondering if you’d like to go out with me and a girl I met here on OKC?

No!! NO! I don’t want to speak to you let alone get sucked into you weird group sex life.

So between this and yesterday’s post, my question: is online dating this weird for guys too? Yes, it’s an inherently weird endeavor, but I just can’t imagine guys getting the same low-level harassment from girls. Even the guys who “aren’t creepy” use it to their advantage by promising not to be creepy since they “know how tough it is for girls on here.” (Unfortunately this medium also brings out guys with the worst social skills.) The only time I get feministy is when dealing with this, but where else can I go for love?!

 

I Don’t Want to Be Alone Forever But…

More and more as I’m on dates, there’s a part of me that thinks “I’d just assume be doing this alone.” The date gets me out of the house but probability says it’s not going to work out. And somehow I’m constantly surprised by the ways in which it won’t work out. Options for red flags are never ending.

Tonight:

Started out great! He was interested in an outing that I hadn’t gotten any friends to agree to. We met up and he was cute and smelled good (an underrated bonus) and conversation was flowing, even though he was allergic to the sun*, my most beloved companion. Unfortunately it flowed right into whether or not it was appropriate to use certain derogatory terms that were ok 20 years ago. He felt it was ok and explained that opinion in a way I understood, until he kept saying the words over and over.

Guys: as a rule, don’t use any potentially offensive words until date 2.

Next taboo topic was religion, another thing he had very strong, repetitive ideas on, many of which happened to attack my own beliefs.

Guys: don’t criticize religion or any other major beliefs until you know your date’s stance.

These things were in the back of my head but otherwise it was all continuing to go well. Then it came time to get another drink and he started saying things like “hey, I’m going to get a drink, but don’t feel like you have to stay.”

What?

I guess since we weren’t somewhere like dinner with a definitive end point this was reasonable?

Anyway, we hung out until after 12, at which point I decided to go home (which I had foreshadowed since I had to work the next day). So we go out to get cabs and he hangs back. “Oh I’ve been texting some friends to meet up so they’re going to come get me.”

Dude, have the decency to pretend you didn’t spend the night working on backup plans to me.

As I often do after weird dates like this, I feel even more confident in my awesomeness (I’m good at conversation! I have varied, unusual interests! I’m fun!) and even more sad there’s no one to match my awesomeness.

*When I hear something that will 100% not mesh with my lifestyle, like not liking the sun, my instinct is to rationalize why it won’t be a problem. The question is, should I be compromising more on things like this? And is that why I haven’t found anyone? Or is it bs to need to change my life to accommodate someone else. How does anyone survive in a couple with anyone else?!

Another question attack!

This is the exact conversation we had:

Him [opening message]: How’s your weekend? When was the last time you went camping? [side: my profile mentions my hatred of camping but says “super outdoorsy.” people are…misguided about the sarcasm here.]

Me: Hi! Last time I camped was 5 years ago!

Him: tsk tsk

Me: ? [side: that should count as a question]

Him: I might be misreading you but, it seems a shame this is has been so long since it seems that camping is something you really enjoy? I probably haven’t been in 5 years either.

Me: Haha yes you’re misreading. That was my first and last trip. I actually did enjoy it but I’m much more of a beach person!

Him [8 minutes later]: Well you don’t really seem like you’re trying to engage me in conversation so I am going to assume you’re not interested. I hope you find what you’re looking for.

 

Naturally my response was “why because I’m not asking forced questions” and he responded that if you don’t ask questions the conversation ends and I was being dismissive. The confrontor in me wanted to keep attacking his logic but I stopped responding. Interestingly enough, I have a date with two guys this week who didn’t ask any unnatural questions. The banter was delightful and we even joked about how incredulous we were that we managed to converse without ending every statement with a question.

Basically I’m just refusing to play the online dating game. As such, I’ve not had much success. But is it really success if you have to play by rules set by people you wouldn’t like anyway? I’m still banking on occasional (or even frequent) loneliness beating the chokehold of a relationship with the wrong person for the sake of companionship.

Ghosting Follow Up

Can I reply to my own blog post? I should figure that out. Instead a whole new post as an addendum to my ghosting post.

The main ghoster I was referencing contacted me this weekend. The text?

“How are you! I just saw you on tinder the other day. How’s it going?”

W

T

F

Seriously you just completely stopped responding to me after 8 weeks of continuous talking and trying to hang out (which was generally thwarted by your busy schedule) and you’re texting me about tinder? And you’re going to say out loud that “my buddies made me an account to push me out there… hahaha it’s so funny….”

I responded that it didn’t really seem like he had time to date to which I got another hahaha followed by

“It probably does seem that way given our lack of communication…”

Me: “our?”

Him: “Hahaha. Thats fair…”

So suddenly you have enough free time to ha ha ha it up, learn how to use ellipses, and date.

This guy’s really not an asshole. I think he’s just a p-word and/or clueless, like many guys. And/or I’m so bad at reading guys that I misconstrue things like a month of nightly phone calls as dating. Seriously how does anyone get together ever.

Ghosting

Suggested amendment to the constitution: no one over the age of 25 should be able to exit a relationship without explanation. If you can rent a car, you can text that you don’t want to hang out anymore. You can leave a post it, email, paper airplane, but there is no excuse for ghosting!

The rules are simple: if you meet any of the following criteria, you’re in a relationship and you must close the account before moving on. Been out alone, on purpose, 3 or more times [occasionally bumped to 5 depending on nature of outing]; more than 1 sleepover; more than 12 hours spent talking on an actual telephone; the break up-er has given a gift of any nature to the break up-ee.

These things don’t make a guy your boyfriend, but they do mean you have enough of a connection that human decency dictates you’re owed closure. This is not difficult. Next time she texts you about plans, don’t just not respond or say “thanks but i have this [imaginary] birthday party” because this makes her think you might still be interested, and she’ll keep finding a way to text you when she’s a little bit tipsy even though she knows you’d make the plans if you actually wanted to hang out, and then she’ll just feel embarrassed until she finally deletes your number, causing weeks of uncertainty vs a quick band-aid pull.

So grow a pair and just say “hey thanks but I don’t think we make a good match as a couple.”

Shit that’s just as bad.

Fine. Carry on with your ghosting.