Meditation on a Mantra

It's been a while since I posted anything.  Here's what I've been up to:

About a year ago, I adopted a new mantra.  I'd never had a mantra before and I'm not sure where it came from, but it's helped me to be a relatively happy me for that length of time.  The mantra--I will cultivate a life I love.  There's something about the word cultivate that really gets my juices flowing.  It brings to mind images of planting seeds with the hopes of reaping a good harvest, pulling weeds from time to time, and getting my hands dirty but having a feeling of contentment.  Cultivating isn't something that will be easy, but it is something that will be rewarding.  

And it has been rewarding.  In the last year, I've played volleyball on several teams, played pub trivia with new people, bought myself a Fillaseat membership to attend cultural events around Austin, set up monthly quirky activities with a group of friends, attended book club meetings, and maintained meaningful relationships with good-hearted people.  I reorganized my entire apartment over the summer so that I know exactly what I own, which means that I no longer feel the need to shop.  I created a new budget for myself with the idea that I will purchase a house in the near future.  I made a new career plan and took active steps to meet the goals I set for myself.  All good things.

But there is one important parenthetical that always went along with my new mantra: (and if I meet a man who wants to be a part of it, then great!).  Initially, this parenthetical was probably the main reason that I formulated the mantra.  I wasn't having any luck with the internet dating and I really wasn't meeting any men out in the world and it was starting to get me down.  I kind of had a "come to Jesus" talk with myself--"Lisa, it is possible that you will be on your own forever.  Or at least for a long, long time."  So instead of doing what I'd done for the last decade--putting all big life decisions on hold because of the possibility that I might meet someone--I decided to create the life I wanted to have, even if it meant I would be on my own.

I think the problem with parentheticals is that they really are always in the back of your mind.  So even as I was meeting up with friends and pursuing the things that I thought would make my life better, I was always hoping a guy would come along and we’d hit it off.  Honestly, in this one year, I’ve met more single men than I probably have in a decade.  There are single guys in my volleyball leagues.  There were single men at parties and outings with friends.  There are single guys at trivia.  Cute ones.  Smart ones.  Funny ones.  Kind ones.  All good qualities.  But it’s so hard to find someone with the right mixture of qualities who also likes your mixture of qualities and then for there to be enough of a spark to get the ball rolling.

So here I am.  I really am enjoying life so much more these days, but there’s still something missing.  I guess without completely deleting that parenthetical from my manta, I’m never going to be rid of that sensation.  But do I really want to delete it?  Do I really want to believe that I can be completely fulfilled on my own?  I think that’s the sort of thing we all tell our single loved ones to put a patch over the holes they have. 

The thing I dread the most is the idea that it might be time to give internet dating another go.  I guess that's part of getting my hands dirty...

The Internet Dating Chronicles: Eh. Just OkCupid

Before I dive into more dating stories, I want to pause and talk about OkCupid.

OkCupid embodies the phrase: you get what you pay for.  (It's a free site.)  

I've had an OkCupid account for about 4 years now, though I've activated and deactivated it so often that it's probably only been available to the mens a total of one year.  I find the site appalling but feel compelled to look at it often when my account is active for reasons that I do not understand.  

I'm a fan of lists.  Here are the benefits and detriments of OkCupid:


Benefits:

• It’s free!  When you inevitably do not find the love of your life through the site, you don't feel bitter and dead on the inside because of how undesirable the opposite sex seems to find you.
• More creative freedom.  The questions asked when creating your profile are much more open and allow for a greater word count in the response section than eHarmony.  This means it’s possible to get more of a sense of someone’s personality from looking at his profile.  Check out the bulleted list (my favorite kind of list!) I made on my profile.  Plus, you know that if he really didn’t fill in anything at all, he really doesn’t give a shit.

Bulleted list within a bulleted list.  I'm so meta.

• You can look at anyone’s profile.  With eHarmony, I can only look at the people the program has matched me with at the rate at which they decide to deliver them to me, but OkCupid lets you look at anyone in the world regardless of age, match status, gender, or location.
• You go straight to the messaging.  There’s no multiple choice question section.  Once you start communicating with someone, it’s often within a week that you meet up at some bar around town.
• Fun quizzes and questions!  The part of me that is still a 15-year-old girl loves that there are all sorts of personality quizzes on the site.  When am I going to die?  When I'm 78.  What is my dating persona? The sonnet (whatever that means).  What type of man turns me on?  The mystery man.  Quality stuff for procrastination.  Once I answered a series of sex-related questions in a row and forgot to answer privately; my activity was posted on OkCupid and I was extremely popular for about an hour...oops.

But does the way this person answers about kids correlate to how much privacy they'll give a partner?  Tricky.

Detriments:

• It's time consuming.  There’s a lot of sorting that has to happen if you’re taking a proactive approach. Since it’s free, it seems that everyone and his brother has signed up for the service.  Some of these guys are super active and others create a page and then rarely come back to it.  It’s also just a larger pool of users and you can access them at any time. 
• It makes you feel unworthy. OkCupid classifies its users into leagues according to how many people have rated your looks or personality highly.  This doesn’t mean that you can’t search and find people in a higher league than your own, but it does take more work.  And it’s kind of depressing to look at the matches on your list and realize they’re a reflection of how the opposite gender views you.  From what I can tell, I’m about a 4 on a scale of 1-10 in the world of OkCupid.  
• Less monitoring.  OkCupid isn’t always great at monitoring uploaded pictures the way eHamony is.  I’ve seen a few penises in my time on the site…
• Kockamamy matching and labeling.  The algorithms used for creating match percentages is flawed, in my opinion.  OkCupid uses multiple choice questions created by users to who is a good match.  Users are presented with a question like “How willing are you to try something new in bed?” or “Would you ever get an abortion?” that they answer.  Then, you decide which answer selections would be acceptable from a possible match and select how important that question is to you.  Are these really good indicators for a love connection?  The tricky part is that anything you rate as being really important or mandatory, often shows up in a tab called “personality” on your profile.  Something I answered led to me having a “more kinky” label on my personality tab, which led to a bunch of weird dudes sending me messages.

Here's my personality, according to OkCupid.

• Serial daters and dudes just looking for hookups.  OkCupid is not necessarily the place where people looking for serious relationships should flock.  Yes, it does give you the option of stating if you are looking for new friends, activity partners, casual sex, short term dating or long term dating, but people lie.  I went out with a guy who was supposedly looking for new friends who only wanted to get in my pants, and I went out with a guy who was supposedly looking for long term dating who only wanted to get in my patns.  There are also, clearly, guys spamming the inboxes of the women in their match list.  Why in the world would I reply to someone who cut and paste the same message into several messages and then maybe added one little P.S. that related to me as a human being?  Gross.  

Through OkCupid, I've met some of the worst, most disrespectful or awkward men and also some of the most interesting.  I don't think this is where I'll meet my ultimate match, but it's absolutely a good place to find a date.    For anyone looking to get back in the saddle of dating after a divorce, break-up or long ass dry spell, I highly recommend the site.  It allows you to wade in slowly by browsing profiles and ignoring messages or to jump into the freezing water all at once by meeting the first person who contacts you.  

The Internet Dating Chronicles: Fish Lips

So I lied in my post about eHarmony when I said that I only went out with one teacher.  I forgot all about the guy that started it all.

Fish Lips and I met on OkCupid back in 2009.  At the time, I was probably the heaviest I've ever been, but I was experiencing a surge of interest in fashion and jewelry that boosted my confidence enough to finally giving internet dating a go.

I was also completely immersed in my job as an English teacher and thought that my ideal mate would share my choice of profession.  I imagined us sitting to grade together on weekends, bitching about "our kids" at dinner and chaperoning prom together.  So when Fish Lips showed up as a high match according to OkCupid's cocamamy algorithms, and he was a math teacher, and he was a heavier-set gentleman, I thought--perfect!  At the very least, we'd have something to talk about; we're both fat teachers!

Friends who talked like old pros about the unwritten rules of internet dating instructed me to try to ensure that the first date is as low key as possible.  You wanted the first meeting to go one of two ways:

1. You realize quickly that you don't like each other and end the evening politely after one drink, be it coffee, tea, beer, wine or even a glass of water before a meal comes out, or
2. You realize you like each other and take the options of extending the evening somehow--add an appetizer, a meal, a dessert, or have the ability to easily, and safely, walk someplace else to keep the night from ending.

I took their words as gospel truth and chose The Gingerman as the location of the date.  It was dark.  I knew it well.  And we decided to meet on a Sunday evening, so it was the least datey date possible, except if we'd gone to Sunday brunch or a funeral or something.

Since this was the first date I'd ever been on with a stranger, I agonized over what to wear.  I didn't want to overdo it, but I didn't want to look like I didn't care.  After trying on who knows how many outfits, I settled on a black dress, black tights, and what I referred to as my kissy boots.  Looking back, this is the kind of outfit one wears to impress girlfriends, not the kind to wow a new potential mate with legs and boobs and booty.  I'm pretty sure I looked like a nun wearing hiking boots--an Alpine nun.  

I could have at least chosen some sexier boots...
Photo Source: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_luvkfmRVPe1qdz26to1_500.jpg

One of the quirks of my personality, which I like to think my friends and family have come to view as endearing, is my punctuality incessant early arrival to any event.  This especially becomes the case when I'm doing something out of my comfort zone--going to a new place where I have to find parking, going to a place I've been to several times but at a different time or day of the week, and meeting new people.  Getting there early, wherever "there" is, calms me.  It gives me time to stop sweating before people arrive because, let's face it, I'll be sweating.  It allows me to be the one to choose where we'll sit, a place where I won't be distracted by TVs or a lot of traffic flow.  And it allows me to do some nerdy self-talk and preparation on a date.  The night with Fish Lips was when that habit started.  The inner dialogue goes something like this:

Stop sweating.  Stop sweating.  Are there napkins around so I can dab the sweat?  Do I need to go to the bathroom?  Better go to the bathroom before he shows.  I can check to see if the sweat is noticeable, too.  Ok, you just look dewy...for now.  Better sit still for a while.  Breathe.  Deep breaths.  Ok, so what can we talk about?  We're both teachers.  There's that.  I just saw insert movie title here.  We can talk about what we've done over the winter break.  That should fill a half hour, right?  Maybe I'll get a beer before he shows... Is that him?  No.  Is that him?  No.  Maybe he's not going to show and I can just go home.  Oh, look, that's him.  Here we go.

By the time Fish Lips showed up, I think I'd actually ordered a beer already and was about a quarter of the way down the pint glass.  I'm sure I appeared cool and collected, but inside my stomach was doing flip flops.

But the flip flops weren't the good kind that also make you tingly all over just a little.  There was no first-meeting-sweatiness with Fish Lips.  Nope, I was not attracted to him.  

Here's the deal, though.  There have been men in my life who I was not attracted to at all when I first met them and then became incredibly attracted to as I got to know them as people.  And I'm a teacher, I'm bred to give people the benefit of the doubt and a bazillion chances before I really give up on them.  

So I spent my half hour with Fish Lips, like my seasoned internet dating friends suggested, and we had some somewhat interesting conversation about teaching.  We discovered we had a mutual acquaintance.  He told me that most people assumed he was a mean guy because his lips were perpetually stuck into kind of a frowny face, and we bonded over that because people always think I'm angry or bitchy when they first see me.  

In my head, this is what his lips were like.
Photo Source: http://files.coveringthemouse.com/images/uts03.jpg

So I agreed to another beer.  And another.  And after about an hour to an hour and a half, the conversation was coming to a slow and painful halt while my intoxication level was slowly making its way past the point of tipsy.  By now, I knew I was not interested in Fish Lips.  We were not a match, we just had a profession in common.  But then he suggested we get food.  My beer addled brain knew my sloshy stomach needed sustenance.  And so I committed the unthinkable act--I went with him to a second location.

By the time we walked out of the bar and onto the street, I could tell that he was thinking this was going pretty well.  I must have pretended to be interested in what he had to say pretty well--must be all the practice pretending to care about what my students talk about.  In any case, based on his proximity to my side as we walked through the December cold, he was definitely interested in holding hands.  I kept mine in my pockets.

He didn't have a place in mind (another sign that he was not the one for me; I like a planner), so we ended up at Jo's.  We're probably three hours into the date at this point (All you internet daters are shaking your heads at me right now, I can feel it.  I should have cut it off by now!).  We split a sandwich and chips, another stupid move on my part.  While we're sitting and eating, he starts making veiled comments about sex, which make me uncomfortable.  Not because of the sex, but because I know now that I have definitely led him to think that I'm, like, super interested.  And I'm not.  

But it'd apparently been so long since any man expressed interest in me that by the time he walked me to my car, four hours after our date had begun, I was exhausted and full of beer and pastrami and when he asked if he could kiss me, I thought, why not?

That is no way to begin a lip lock, friends.  Suddenly, I realized how much larger his head was than mine.  And how huge and u-shaped his lips were.  When his lips met mine, they didn't move.  At all.  But they were open, which for some reason, I took as a cue to French a little.  So we stood there on 2nd Street: me, mashing my thin lips against his stoically frowning mouth.  Thinking of it now, four years later, it still makes me shudder in horror.  It was the worst kiss of my life, both because of the technical awfulness of it (the Russian judge gives it a 2.7) and because I felt so uncomfortable but just couldn't stop for some reason.  It was like I was just hoping he would move those lips at some point, but he never did.  It was like kissing this guy:

Photo Source: http://www.progressivekitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/sadfish.jpg

The worst part is that he must have enjoyed it.  He contacted me the next day to see if I wanted to meet up with him again.  Finally, after all that, I did the thing I should have done 30 minutes into our date and politely told him that I thought he was a nice guy but that I didn't think he was the guy for me.

And that is how I started my internet dating experience.  Reflecting on it, I think it went so terribly because I was not being myself.  I was being the woman-who-goes-out-on-dates, trying to play that part.  I was doing what I thought I should do, instead of what my guts were telling me.  And, even though I let the date continue on that long out of my own fear of being mean by saying I wasn't interested, ultimately I was meaner by not telling him early into the date that I didn't think we were a match.  I'd like to say that I learned my lesson the next time, but you'll see that that is far from the truth. It took me three years to give it another go.  I made many of the same mistakes, and more!

Next installment: Hotel San Jose

The Internet Dating Chronicles: eHarmony and the End Times

About a year ago, I grew frustrated with the men I was meeting through OkCupid, a free online dating website.  They were cute and funny on their profiles and in messages, but in person, they weren't great for a a variety of reasons.  A few were Ok, but they were clearly looking for something other than what I had to offer--bigger boobs? lower BMI? a smaller head? less sweat? dating with all the "perks" and none of the exclusivity and emotional connections? Could be any one of them.

So I decided to sign up for eHarmony.  What can I say?  I fell for the advertising.  A huge quiz that makes me feel like a teenager with the best edition of Cosmo ever that will match me with my soulmate?! Sign me up!  I thought that a paid service with all those questions might lead me to men who were looking for something a little more serious.  Because, let's face it, I've always been more on the serious side when it comes to relationships, even though I tried my damnedest to change that in my year of internet dating.

Well, eHarmony was no better than OkCupid in the end.  The only benefits were that I finally started weeding out some "matches" based on their initial contact before we suffered through the awkward first date.

If you've never used eHarmony (take a moment to thank your lucky stars), here's how it works.  If you see a profile you like in the mix of gentlemen holding Samurai swords on the beach and dudes hanging out with small children in a way that makes them look kind of like pedophiles, you have three options:

1. The Wussy Option: send an "icebreaker" with a pre-written statement like "your profile brought a smile to my face" and hope he responds
2. The Internet-Socially Acceptable Option: hit "start communication" and send a list of 5 multiple choice questions written by the good Christian folks at eHarmony.  These questions fall in a range between "which activity would you prefer on a Saturday night?" to "What is the relationship like between your parents?"
3. The Balls-to-the-Wall Option: screw all the eHarmony nonsense and go straight to direct messaging.  

I've weeded guys out from their profiles plenty, but I got more savvy about paying attention to their responses in the initial communication phases.  In Option 2, the second stage of communication asks you to send a list of "must haves" and "can't stands" to each other.  If he says he must have someone who is organized, I take that as code for neat freak who couldn't handle even a little clutter.  Goes in the no pile.  If he says he can't stand someone who is depressed, I take that as doesn't want to hear about my feelings at all, especially anything I'm unhappy about.  Goes in the no pile.

But if we get past that point, you get to send three open-ended questions to each other.  For me, this is the fun part.  You, again, choose from a pre-configured list of options like "how does life look for you right now?", "if you had three wishes, what would you ask for?", or "describe your best friend."  Here, you also have the option of creating your own questions, which can be helpful if you like nearly everything you've seen so far, but all those photos of him in bars bug you or you think he might be a mama's boy based on his in depth description of how inspiring she is when the question specifies that he should not talk about his parents.

After that clearance, it's on to normal messaging.  And after that, it usually doesn't take long before you actually meet in person.  Imagine that!

I'll be writing to you about the three gentlemen I met through eHarmony (and OkCupid) in the next few weeks, though likely not in the order in which I met them (I do what I want!).  Here's a few of the gems from eHarmony I'll be writing about:

• The Doctor: this guy took the Balls-to-the-Wall approach since he was in his last few weeks of his subscription to eHarmony.  He was the most intimidating on paper but like a fluffy bunny in person.
• Lady Name: this guy took the socially acceptable approach.  He was my first and only fellow teacher and the most frustratingly awkward ending of a date.
• Male Nurse: I took the Wussy approach with him.  He was so stinkin' handsome.  I still get a little sweaty thinking about his face.  Sadly, we only went out twice.

Obviously, I wasn't so impressed by any of these dates or guys I saw online that I continued meeting these people in person.  I just couldn't take any more bad dates.  I think I had somewhere between 10-15 bad dates over the course of a year.  Maybe that's normal for some people, but it was more than I've ever dated in my entire life.  If that's what dating is like, I think I might be ok just being on my own and dating a guy I actually like once every five years.  Maybe....  Anyway, the magical eHarmony system did not match me to my soul mate, or even a kindred spirit.

This past month, knowing that my subscription is almost up, I opened my search to include  more than just the Austin area.  I included THE ENTIRE EARTH!!  

Apparently a lady like me is wildly popular in Canada.  Do they just want me for a Green Card?

At this point, the internet dating websites are just a form of entertainment.  What kook from some random place in the world wants to be loved by me today, I wonder as I click on the link in my inbox from eHarmony.

My experiment in internet dating has ended, but I will capture the good, the bad, and the ugly in a series of posts.  Get ready, friends.  It's been a bumpy ride.