Emotions in an Online Dating World

So it’s been a LONG time…but I was trying to muddle through and build up after a disappointing event and writing through it came to me, so here I am.

I have delved back into the online dating world. I truly wish I didn’t have the compulsion (or the need frankly) to go this route. My job and my personal life are limited for meeting  men on any real level. Hence, the online scene.

I truly seek to find someone with whom I will have undeniable chemistry with that I also want to stay up into the wee hours of the night just talking and laughing with. My standards are high. I know that. I don’t want to settle.

I can go on dates with many men that are perfectly nice and normal enough, yet feel no interest in wanting to kiss them at the end of the date. I’ve been on a couple of those in the past few weeks. Nice guys. Nothing glaring. Just not my cup of tea. No sparks flew. No desire to continue the date beyond the first location.

Then there’s the guy that I hit it off with almost immediately when we started “messaging”. There was good banter, his answers were spot on for making me smile to myself and think “hmmm, so that’s refreshing” and we had an easy flow to the conversation well into the night. We exchanged numbers to move to text and pictures seemed on point. He even talked about how I was his “last hope” from the site because he was done with all the other BS and took down his site after we moved to text. He sent pictures to verify/validate and by the middle of the morning we were both interested in hearing the other’s voice. Our conversation had gone long into the night and when it was 1:00 am, we spoke in the hush of the night and I was smitten. His voice was comforting and sexy at the time. Our conversation wasn’t overtly sexual. We didn’t go there. He seemed super respectful, yet at the same time interested in the chemistry that seemed to underly our conversation. We finally ended the conversation in the early hours to get a little sleep before work the next day.

So, the next day, ‘it was probably too good to be true, I’m sure I won’t hear from him the next day. Theses things don’t happen in real life and work out…” yet, I DID hear from him! We were making plans to meet in person. It was right before the weekend. He had plans he couldn’t break, but definitely wanted to meet up. Offered to just come the hour drive from his place to mine just to see if our first kiss would present all the expectations that we had dreamed up through our conversations. Of course, I’m not an idiot. No, you can’t come to my house at midnight! Lol, but the idea of someone wanting to see me that anxiously was flattering. Needless to say, we chatted throughout the next day. He tried to reach me when he finished up his time with his friend, and I had already fallen asleep. When my dog woke me to go out around 3, I saw his text and responded with the “sorry, fell asleep” to which he was awake and responded almost immediately. We texted again for a bit, he called again and we spoke on the phone, and finally ended the conversation after a couple hours around 5.

Surely this is all WAY too good to be true, right? Nothing will happen day 3…he’ll have lost interest because he knows I’m not inviting him over to my house, because even though he SEEMS to be cool about the waiting for sex I keep asserting, we can’t stop talking about having a proper kiss and how it may be pretty nice. So surely, he’s just hoping to sweet talk me enough to get an invite and seduce me into sex once he’s here? But now he is thinking it’s a lost cause and is going to drop off…

Nope. Day 3 we text a bit throughout the day (his initiation) thinking that it’s a strong possibility to meet up by 10 because he has this golf thing with his friend from out of town who is in town for business (same guy he got together with the previous night also) and they should be wrapped up by then. Well, 10 comes and goes and he doesn’t reach out, see, he’s not really in to me…except he texts around 11 instead and says he can be here ASAP. To which I still say no, I’ve already prepared to be in for the night since I hadn’t heard from him earlier. Then we proceed to talk about how the following night he didn’t have plans and the 8:00 normal public meeting places and times are available and he talks about how he can’t wait to finally see me in person.

By this time I’m super excited and now getting super nervous. What if he isn’t all I expect in person. What if he really doesn’t like me when he sees ME in person. What if, what if, what if…but I’m invested.

And I’m hopeful. I want to believe that he’s legit and the meeting is going to go off with fireworks and the start of a great relationship is on the horizon. I seemed to be getting the same hopeful feelings back from him.

He tells me he has some work the next day, so can’t text as much, but then by 5, I hear from him. We text back and forth talking about our impending meeting. He’s getting ready. Around 7 he actually tells me he has gotten in the car to leave. I’m excited enough I actually tell my daughters I’m meeting him. I leave to meet at the movie theater we agreed on to be there around the time I expect him to arrive. Shortly before I expect him to be arriving, he sends a flirty text and I ask if he’s almost there because he’s started texting more and should be driving. He doesn’t respond. I say some things about him being lost when it’s after when I expect him. He doesn’t respond. Then I get a “Hold on. Accident”. At this time it’s past when it should take him to get there and I check the highway apps to see what accident he may be talking about. I see nothing. I assume an accident was holding him up for traffic, not that HE was in an accident. So I tell him I now need to go to the bathroom and I’m heading into the theater. He responds “OK”. This is the last communication I get from him. Period. I waited and sent multiple texts of “I hope you’re ok?” “I don’t understand” “I guess I’m headed home” etc. and I try to call a couple times. No answer. I get nothing the rest of the night.

I get nothing the next day.

Around 5 pm the next day I send the “I am now worried and confused” text and request that he at the least just tell me he isn’t dead and if he changed his mind on meeting, that’s fine, but I just don’t want to be worried that he was in the accident.

Nothing.

Next day. Nothing.

Now it’s a Tuesday, after a Monday holiday of not hearing from him, and we were supposed to meet on Sunday for the first time. I’m at work and talking with my girlfriends at lunch about the events of the weekend. My girlfriend suggests that we try to call him from her phone to see if he answers, because maybe he’s dead?! We laughed and feeling very high school girlish, I say OK. She calls, he doesn’t answer, and I think, whatever. Until he calls back a minute later and she throws the phone at me. I have no idea what to say, so when he says he “missed a call from this number” all I can think is, say it wasn’t me, like how sometimes people call my number and it wasn’t me that called them because hackers can mimic your number. It’s a real thing. But it was crazy. I know. And immature. But that’s what I did in the moment of on the spot “what the fuck?” because all I can think is, well, your phone isn’t broken asshole.

It was him. It was his voice. A couple texts are now exchanged with my friend’s phone, to which I’m not sure if he knows it was me or thinks it was some other woman he has been involved with some other time (our area codes don’t match, so how would he connect us?) so I decide to just call him. I call on my phone, so he knows it’s me. When he answers I’m shaking so much from anger and irritation and anxiety. I tell him it’s me, and he responds congenially like we’re friends and the past 48 hours hasn’t transpired. So I ask him, what the hell happened on Sunday because I’m confused and honestly quite a bit pissed. He starts to respond with something to the effect of “well, it’s like I told you…” and the phone conveniently disconnects. I have no idea if he’s hung up on me or if the line was lost, but either way, I’m not sure if I want to hear what his response may have been.

I send a final text saying that the other phone was my friend’s because we were speculating what may have happened to him and I didn’t get his game, but I’m glad we didn’t get involved because I’m not really interested in liars and I wouldn’t contact him again. Surprise, he didn’t respond.

So after all that, I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how people can be so callous. I was honest and tried to be vulnerable. I was hopeful, but guarded enough to not make a thoughtless decision that could end in disaster. I trusted and tried to open myself to possibilities.

I really would like to find someone. A partner. A confidant. A playmate. Someone I can feel open to and excited about.

It’s hard.

It’s hard not to let experiences like this effect your future encounters. It’s hard not to close up and give up. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a proper relationship I feel like damaged goods that no man is really going to be interested in anyway. I don’t do hookups or flings, and I’ve noticed that many men expect sex quickly in a relationship. That’s not really my style. So now I feel like it will also be a road block in addition to my lack of ability to attract the kind of men that I’m attracted to and have a connection with. I want the connection that involves the chemistry. But I don’t want empty sex.

Don’t get me wrong, I can attract other men. There are men that message me and want to meet, and some I do meet. But most often there’s no attraction and the one’s I’ve met I just verify that there really is no attraction once I meet them, though they are nice enough people, just not someone I picture in my travel plans or playful scenarios wandering the streets of new places to explore or sitting by a fire enjoying a cuddle under a quilt.

I’m not desperate. I’m super independent and truly live my life fully without needing a man. I work hard in my field to better myself and advance. I have friends that I socialize with regularly. I enjoy a full life with my kids and being involved with their lives in the ways I can as their mom now that they are all pretty much grown. I look forward to when my youngest is graduated (2 years) and I will be moving to a new location and the new possibilities are exciting to me, though I know that the problems I have currently will follow me where I go, I’m not naive to think that a new location will solve my problems. I’ve moved enough to know better.

 

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