I’ve been out of the dating game for awhile.  Four years to be exact.  When I started law school back in 2008, I was not-so-seriously dating someone.  That petered out somewhere in the spring semester, not surprisingly, and then law school just got in the way.  Now that I’m done, I wanted to “get back out there” and hearing about S’s adventures inspired me to give online dating a try.  Things started out slow.  A lot of “Hey what’s up?”, which I don’t respond to because if you’re going to be lazy, then so am I.  There were a few nice messages as well, but none that really piqued my interest.  And then N sent me a nice message and asked an interesting question, so I responded. To understand N, I can’t start at the first date, I have to share the messaging history. 

We exchanged sporadic messages for a few days.  Everything was going nicely, and it was getting to the point where we both seemed interested enough to warrant a date.  He asked at the end of one message if I had any plans that weekend.  I actually did, so I shared them, and then he asked what I was up to during the upcoming week.  Expecting that he was going to ask me out, I answered that it was actually a pretty quiet week for me.  His response was “Nice, a quiet week is good every once in awhile.”  That was it.  I was a little confused, but he continued to message me for a few more days.  He finally asked for my number on a Tuesday, and texted me that night.  For over 3 hours.

Here’s the thing.  I know that texting is the norm now, and an accepted form of communication.  But I hate it.  The only thing I like texting for is the occasional hello/thinking of you/funny anecdote and to make plans.  I don’t like it for extended conversation.  It takes too long, it’s distracting and impersonal, and things get easily misconstrued.  Conversations should take place in person or over the phone.  This rant makes me sound like an old, crotchety grandmother, and I’m cool with it.

But I went with it, because it is pretty common and a phone call without having ever met would have been awkward.  So I texted with him until I was tired, and said goodnight.  The next morning I get a text from him around 10, asking how my day was going.  I kindly told him we could catch up later, but I was busy at work so no daytime texting (meanwhile, I was actually playing minesweeper, but he didn’t know that).  That night, the texting picked back up again, for another 3 or so hours.  I was starting to lose my patience.  The conversation was pleasant enough, but why were we still texting?  I don’t understand why someone would want to spend that much time texting someone they had never met.  So Thursday night, after a half hour of texting with no sign of asking me out in sight, I said that I really wasn’t much of a texter, but would he like to get a drink and chat in person?  He said sure. 

Planning the date was a project.  When I provided two options for a place to meet, his response was “sounds good.”  What sounds good?  We haven’t decided on anything.  Eventually we had a date planned for Monday night after work.  Despite my annoyance with all the texting, I was excited to meet him.  He was nice and funny, if not a little obsessed with the details of my being a lawyer.  Questions about what types of cases I worked on, my workload, and billing were endless.  They comprised at least 62% of our 7 or so hours of electronic communication.  It was a little weird.

Monday night came, we got to the bar right at the same time, and ordered drinks and apps.  It was a little awkward at first, but conversation flowed pretty nicely and covered a broad range of general topics.  Hobbies, family, my job again, sports, etc.  He earned bonus points when he agreed that Wings is a fantastic show, and even hummed a little bit of the intro music.  After about an hour and a half we wrapped things up.  He asked if I would want to go out again.  There wasn’t really any sort of a spark, but the night had been pleasant enough and a 2nd date seemed warranted to really get an idea about him.  So I said sure.  As we walked back to our respective cars, he seemed confused about how to plan the next date.  I had to explain that he could text me, there wasn’t a ban on all texting.  Just, not as much texting.  To which he responded: “I don’t really understand, but we’ll figure it out.”  This did not bode well.

-D

Date rating: 6/10.   The extreme texting had been a little off-putting.  But the date itself wasn’t too awkward and conversation came pretty easily, so it was a pleasant evening, and by all accounts a successful first date.

The 2nd date though, was far less successful.  Stay tuned.