Tag Archives: what’s wrong with me

S’s fall dating to do list

Posted on by

0

Good morning, readers. I trust that we’re all in a…fragile state after a long holiday weekend and the official end of summer.

sobbing-uncontrollably

Source: wifflegif.com

Speaking of the end of summer, how much do you hate me for putting the word ‘fall’ in my post title? I’m like those ill-informed Starbucks executives who think people want to drink pumpkin spice lattes when it’s still 90 degrees out. I know I may be rushing it, but I’m just so. excited. for fall.

so-excited-sbb

Source: popgoesthearts.blogspot.com

Sitenote: DID ANYONE WATCH the Saved by the Bell Lifetime movie?? Was it as horrific/amazing as it looked? Was this iconic scene referenced?

Anyway, if you’ve been following this blog, you may recall that it’s been a somewhat dark summer (darker than Jessie Spano’s pill addiction-hiyoooo), at least in terms of dating. Basically, things started out low and continued to suck pretty much right up until now. The Summer of YOLO, while a an inspiring idea, didn’t lead to much of anything, unless you count L and I continually embarrassing D with our unironic use of the term ‘YOLO’ (a delightful, albeit unintended, bonus). Psyching myself up to just sign onto Okcupid currently looks something like this:

paul-rudd

Source: flavorwire.com

So yeah, mama’s excited to move on from all that (and to stop designing my date outfits/hairstyles around how much I’ll inevitably be sweating. East coast humidity is no joke, people.) Fall always feels like a fresh start, and it’s a great opportunity to hit the reset button on my tired dating practices. With that in mind, I’ve outlined my fall dating plan for you lovely readers because 1. posting it here will hold me accountable to actually do these things, and 2. I currently have no actual dates to tell you lovely readers about #datelessdatingblogger.

S’s Fall Dating To Do List

  • Update the ol’ profile pic–I have an assortment of cute pictures from this summer where I look arguably tanner than my pasty self has ever looked, and as we’ve covered previously, profile pics are pretty much the only things Okcupid users pay attention to. So why the hell haven’t I uploaded those babies? I’ll change that ASAP before I go back to looking like a Vitamin D-deficient basement dweller. Done.
  • Brainstorm new first date locales, and be open to unorthodox suggestions—I’m not saying I plan to retire my go-to first date suggestion, because it’s convenient and I love it. But there’s something to be said, I think, for throwing out a fresh location, mainly because at this point in my online dating…career… I have a lot of history in my standard bars. For instance, I couldn’t help but think, while being fist-bumped by the Good Message Unicorn outside Strangelove’s, that just over a year beforehand I was having the best first kiss after the best first date of my life. Right there in that very spot. Oof, was that depressing. Depressing and unnecessary. There are plenty of bars in the city and damn it, I’m going to try some new ones (I realize I have to actually secure a date first, but shhhh details). Also, if hell freezes over and a date actually makes a non-bar suggestion, unless that suggestion is ‘Tea Party rally’ or ‘anonymous orgy’, I’m going to throw caution to the wind and just say yes.

staying in

Source: the-girlieshow.tumblr.com

I really only started to think about this after reading L’s tale of downgrading her first date location and remembering that I’ve also pulled that move (making two out of three Stucu bloggers the worst!) Last year my ex, D, who was an unusually thoughtful planner, suggested go karts for our second date. I remember thinking at the time that this suggestion was totally random and weird (which let’s be honest it kind of was) so I pushed for a bar instead. But looking back now, all I can think is, what the hell was wrong with me?? A cute guy was attempting to plan shit, fun and different shit, for us to do. I should have done it! I should have capitalized on dating a planner while I could, loosened up and had some fun, because Lord knows I may be waiting a long ass time (read: forever) for that to come along again.

  • Try Hinge, because co-blogger D is having wild success on it–Okay, “wild success” might be a slight overstatement, but co-blogger D’s been thrown some seriously eligible bachelors in our extended social circle in the week that she’s been using Hinge, including a college friend of L’s who she and her friends refer to as “the one that got away”. Okay, Hinge. I’ll bite. Let’s do this (comically, I just tried to download the Hinge app while writing this and it made my phone semi explode. Foreshadowing?)
  • Don’t be an asshole about replying to messages and then complain incessantly about messages–Real talk, I will never not complain about messages. That’s just a totally unrealistic goal. But I am going to work on being a more decisive replier. Example: sometimes I will get a message from someone who seems kind of meh, and I’ll mentally earmark him as a ‘maybe’, but really I only mean ‘maybe if I’m bored or there’s no one else promising or I stalk an ex on social media and feel bad about myself’. L revealed a similar pattern of hers in her delightfully real post last week (seriously can we all tell how inspired I was be her realness?) As my girl pointed out, this is kind of a dick move, and if we’re going to call dudes out for being dicks, well, we’re going to put ourselves on blast, too. In the future, I’m going to try to give every message a simple yes or no, and move the hell on.
  • Stop taking everything so personally–If you online date, you know how easy it is to take “I’m not getting any good messages” and twist it into “I’m not getting any good messages…

 clueless what's wrong with me

Source: sarabynoe.com

In other words, just because it’s been a slow, shitty summer date-wise doesn’t mean this is about me. People have been outside, on vacay, enjoying the beautiful weather and living their damn lives. Everyone is on Okc and other sites less, and the people who aren’t tend to be looking for a casual summer fling/jump off. It’s been a slow summer for almost every single person online dating that I know, and if it hasn’t, congratulations/I hate you/please don’t tell me about it and just let me live in ignorance believing this theory. Thanks!

  • Continue to gleefully boycott and malign eHarmony–You didn’t think my to do list included giving that wretched site my money, did you? HA! I’ll see you in hell, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, before that happens. What I can promise is to follow up on my original post with some more hilariously awful things I encountered during my tenure as a fake free member of the site. Because as L said when I asked her if a second eHarmony post was overkill: “Hating on eHarmony will never go out of style, on this blog or in life”. Wise words, Lady L. Wise. Words.
  • Repeat the affirmation: your time will come. This is some serious zen shit, am I right? It goes hand in hand with one of my favorite quotes that I may need to have tattooed on my forehead by the time I turn 30: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” God damn, Teddy Roosevelt, not only were you a bonafide badass, but you also threw down some sage advice. Seriously, though, I have to stop focusing on what everyone else has (successful relationships/boyfriends/fiances/husbands) trust that things will work out some day, and just continue to do me. While I wait for someone else to do me. HAHAHAawkwardsexjokethatmymomwillread. Basically…patience. I need some. And now this beautiful song is in my head:

Lest you think I’m making a wildly ill-advised attempt to compare my silly little dating woes to the Civil Rights Movement, let me assure you that I really just love the Dreamgirls soundtrack. A lot. And I wanted us all to rock out to this amazing jam. So enjoy, maybe with a pumpkin spice latte?

Just kidding, it’s 92 degrees here.

The return of the Good Message Unicorn (or how S learned to not GAF)

Posted on by

9

Something is happening here at Stucu. Maybe we’ve got the 1.5 to 2 year itch (a figurative itch, people. Gross.) Maybe it’s the recent rejection my co-bloggers and I have endured. Maybe the summer heat is making us crazier than usual…

crazy

Whatever the reason, we have kiiiiind of stopped giving a fuck. About rules. About conventions. Especially about being breezy. When I started online dating, I was fairly preoccupied with not coming off as pathetic or crazy or desperate, to guys, to you readers, to myself, to anyone. I’m not sure where this weird stigma comes from that says single girls in their 20s are batshit insane…

(OH WAIT)

…but I wanted to stay as far away from that stigma as possible.

However. As L mentioned, the more we date, or maybe the older we get, or maybe both, the less this stigma affects and concerns us. Two years into online dating, I’m basically like…

sound of music

Source: www.somegif.com

The other issue is just general human decency. If a guy acts like a douche, I’m feeling less and less inclined to just let it go. We know from experience that the standard of online dating behavior is laughably, pathetically low, but to quote a certain Disney ginger heroine…

Ariel-i-want-more

Source: justgraphicinterchangeformat.tumblr.com

Co-blogger D, what do you think of this GIF? (Co-blogger D has an inexplicably intense hatred for The Little Mermaid, which was my FAVORITE Disney movie as a kid. I know, she’s insane.) (It’s not inexplicable. In fact, I can easily explain it. Ariel is a selfish twat who shits all over her family, signs a deal with the devil, completely changes herself for a man she barely knows, and then is SHOCKED when it all goes awry. That is, until Daddy comes along and, despite all of her bad behavior and poor life choices, fixes everything with magic and gives her exactly what she wants. There is literally nothing to like about that horrid movie, other than “Kiss the Girl.” And Flounder is kinda cute. Yet everyone goes around touting it as great and “a classic.” THAT’S the inexplicable part.) (You see? Insane. Tempting as it is to take the bait and get pulled into D’s crazy world where animated movies for children make total sense and Disney characters are “twats” for not behaving like realistic, responsible adults, I’m going to spare you readers an impending Disney cage match and get back on topic.) (One last thing – the real Hans Christian Andersen version is so much better, and Ariel gets exactly what she deserves. Ok, carry on S, I will now abide by the cease-fire agreement and not comment any further.)

ANYWAY. As you read in her post last week, L and I have christened this summer ‘the summer of YOLO’. (What’s that? YOLO is a thing my roommate’s little sister said two summers ago when she was eighteen? It’s tired and lame and completely over? We can’t hear you, haters, because we’re too busy unironically YOLOing).

Basically, our goal is less of this:

clueless what's wrong with me

Source: rrrrubberbiscuit.tumblr.com

And more of this:

beyonce

Source: www.iworeyogapants.com

Now, for a real life example of this attitude shift in action.

Remember the great message I received literally days after D dumped me? When I was in what some might call a “fragile state” that essentially consisted of sobbing, sleeping, and ordering Thai takeout?

Refresher can be found here. In summary: I received a great message from a cute, seemingly eligible guy but was in no way ready to date again. This Good Message Unicorn and I messaged back and forth a few times until I revealed that I was post-break up and like a newborn foal wobbling around on its shaky little legs out in the single world. I asked him if I could contact him when I was ready to date, and he said that would be great.

Fast forward six weeks. Feeling confident that I was up for sitting across from a stranger over drinks again, I messaged GMU. He messaged back immediately and enthusiastically–WOOHOO! Then I replied, and…

tumbleweed

Source: choualbox.com

You guessed it, readers. Just like the mythical creature for which he was named, Good Message Unicorn disappeared into thin air.

Now, 2013 S? She would have been annoyed, and confused, but she would have dropped it at this point. She would have been afraid to demand an explanation for fear of seeming, well….

But 2014 S? Summer of YOLO S? She’s like…

life goes on

Source: pandawhale.com

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not rolling out some plan to go after every dude who’s ever pulled a fade away. Most of the time, if we haven’t met and a guy disappears, I take it as a sign that he lost interest, shrug it off, and move on. Because most of the time my interest level is only slightly above ‘would rather be watching House Hunters International’ at that point anyway, so it’s no skin off my nose.

But I liked that Unicorn. He had potential, and he seemed pretty into me before he rudely disappeared with zero explanation. I decided I wasn’t cool with things ending this way, so I messaged him. SUMMER OF YOLO, people.

In my message I pointed out that he’d disappeared without warning in the middle of (what I thought was) a great conversation, and told him I wanted to know why. I decided if he’d lost interest, met someone else, or was turned off by something I’d said, whatever it was I could handle it. And more importantly, I wanted to make him say it. No more slinking off like cowards, single men of Okcupid. You jerks.

Use your words

Source: theonlygirlamongboys.blogspot.com

Unsurprisingly, GMU didn’t reply that night, so I thought that was the end of my little experiment. But the next morning I woke up to a semi long-winded response. Allow me to summarize:

  • GMU was super apologetic he’d disappeared and insisted it wasn’t because he’d lost interest
  • He claimed he’d been “really busy at work” and hadn’t had time for Okc lately (sidenote: I call BULLSHIT on this excuse. It had been a week and a half since GMU disappeared, not two days. Are you a brain surgeon? Are you Secretary of State John Kerry and are you currently negotiating a cease fire in Gaza? Oh, you’re not? Then you’re NOT. THAT. BUSY. We all work; we all have a lot going on. If you don’t have literally four minutes out of your day for some human interaction, then don’t join an online dating site and initiate conversations with people. OR alternatively, just shoot me a message saying ‘hey, it’s a crazy week for me but can we meet up next Tuesday for drinks?’ Do I have to bust out the ‘use your words’ GIF again??
  • He claimed he had started to respond to my message, was trying to be witty and funny, never finished it, and by the time he went back to it was afraid too much time had gone by and he’d blown it.
  • He ended with something to the tune of “clearly I’m really bad at this online dating thing, but I’m definitely still interested, so if you’d be up for it, I’d love to take things offline and meet for drinks.”

Hmm. Well. I’d gotten my response. A long-winded response, some of which made no sense, but a response nonetheless. Now the real question was, what was I going to do about it? I briefly considered sassily telling GMU that he had blown it, dropping the mic and exiting stage left…

mic drop ben

Source: theonlygirlamongboys.blogspot.com

….but I thought about what the he’d said, the fact that he’d sincerely apologized, and the fact that he’d ended with getting to the effing point and asking to meet me in person. Sure, I was annoyed that he’d pulled the ‘I’ve been soooo busy’ BS excuse, but he was otherwise appropriately contrite. That’s what I was looking for. So, wouldn’t it make no sense at all to go to all this trouble and then not at least agree to meet this dude who claimed to still be into me? And who I clearly was still into?

1371257249_tumblr_lo9et1q9711qzbyhpo1_500

Source: genius.com

Yup. I YOLO’d again. I messaged back, gave him some shit for the ‘I’ve been busy’ line, gave him my phone number and left the rest up to him and the universe. I was done putting in any effort at this point; if homeboy really wanted to meet me, this was his chance, and I wasn’t doing another thing to make it happen.

Spoiler alert: we did meet. So, was it worth all of that trouble? Did the YOLO approach pay off? Stay tuned, dear readers, for a post on my date with the Good Message Unicorn with answers to these questions and more.

Lastly, D, nice try attempting to have the last word on our Disney feud, but it’s my post. Please enjoy some of the great Disney songs of our time, readers, and have a great weekend!

Can’t get a date. Seriously.

Posted on by

6

Oh hey there, all you friends out in cyberland. Remember me? Founder of the very blog you’re reading? Single person who recently pledged to blog more often? It may not have escaped your notice that directly after I made that claim, I pulled an Irish exit and disappeared for over a month. I swear, I didn’t even realize I was gone that long. In my mind it had been like, two weeks since I’d posted something. Then I jumped on the blog to read L’s most recent post and out of curiosity, scrolled down to read the last thing I wrote. Ummmmm that was on October 2nd. It’s November 8th. What. The. FUCK???

How can I explain this time warp/my absence? I have no excuse. I haven’t been in jail, or in LA developing the pilot to my TV show (I hear Amy Poehler is really busy shooting Parks and Rec at the moment), or doing anything else remotely exciting or interesting. I’ve been slogging my way through fall and experiencing the worst writer’s block since my paper on Madame Bovary was due in 12th grade AP English. Meanwhile L and D, the best co-bloggers EVER, have been keeping you boos entertained and cheerfully carrying my dead weight while gently prodding me to get my shit together and post something, ANYTHING, and I’ve just been like….yeahhhhh. Sorry, girls. I’ll get around to that…soon.

But seriously. This is a blog about dating. I’m not writing federal grant proposals. I’m not defending my thesis on astrophysics. So what the hell is wrong with me? As it turns out, a few things. First, I think I took the H thing harder than I’d like to admit. I’m not trying to sound dramatic; I’m fine. I promise, I’m not going to cry (lucky for you guys I’m not drinking red wine while writing this. Yet.) But honestly after everything went down, thinking or talking about dating has just not been a fun experience.

https://i0.wp.com/img.pandawhale.com/53467-Seinfeld-Elaine-miserable-gif-1Y5M.jpeg

Second, it’s been a soul crushingly unsuccessful month of attempting to get back in the saddle. As in I’m currently batting .000. As in, I have not managed to go on ONE first date since I ended it with H. I’ve had string of inexplicably bizarre, boring, and just all around awful interactions with men I don’t even like. So when I say writer’s block, I mean yes, I’m having a hard time putting my thoughts into words, but mostly I just mean I literally cannot seem to obtain new subject matter to share with you fine people.

Since I have no new dates to tell you about, I thought I’d give you the next best thing… October Okc highlights! Here’s the roundup:

  • Mr. Mensa sent me two more incredibly boring messages and managed to fit one more name drop before (predictably) disappearing. For a dude with a self reported crazy high IQ, he was really lacking in social intelligence.
  • I messaged back and forth with a guy who eventually gave me his phone # and asked me to text him. Which I did. Later that night, I received this response:  

wrong number 1

Shit, I thought. I typed his number in wrong. But I double checked and nope, it was right. So I responded.wrong number 2

I thought to myself, this is one of three things: 1. a really bad elaborate joke on his part, 2. a bizarre way for him to ditch me, or 3. an honest mistake. So I messaged him:

wrong number

My bad? That’s it? Am I just being cranky, or is that the most humorless response to this scenario ever? What kind of person wouldn’t take the opportunity to respond with something like ‘hahaha so sorry, can’t believe I gave you the wrong number.’ Or, ‘this is amazing, what did the other person say? Do you have a date with them now instead?’ Or even just, ‘WOW I can’t remember my own phone #…embarrassing’. Something, ANYTHING that indicates you have a sense or humor/actual pulse and aren’t, in fact, the most boring person on the face of this earth. UGH. Needless to say the conversation petered out, and that was that.

  • I briefly messaged back and forth with a guy who earned the nickname Don Draper for what I discovered to be his wildly antiquated, Mad Men era views on gender roles. I should have been suspicious when he asked me wayyyyy too many questions about whether I liked to cook. Then, when I casually mentioned I wasn’t into football, he replied with something to the tune of: “Well that’s fine, I like my women to be women and only have girly hobbies anyway.” Oh good, so glad we cleared that up. Hey Don, would you also like “your woman” to grab you a whiskey neat and your pipe and slippers on her way into the kitchen to bake you a pie? F*ck off, Draper*.

https://i0.wp.com/i.imgur.com/QrSQr.jpg

*Actually this guy WISHED he was 1/10th as hot as Jon Hamm. A more appropriate nickname would have been Pete Campbell, and even that would have been a stretch.

jeff martin

Ummmm what? Seriously. I thought, what the hell does this dude want? Because he must want SOMETHING, right? Right. So I responded in the most vague, neutral way possible, basically like ‘hey back, hope you’re well!’ purely out of curiosity. J then proceeded to send me a series of messages on the following topics:

    • His job, which is going great (he has a new boss)
    • His ROMANTIC LIFE… he was seeing someone but they recently broke it off because they wanted different things (???)
    • Our infamous public break up of last year. Totally out of the blue, J apologized for “how that went down” and said I deserved better. I mean, truth, I totally did, but what the hell is this guy telling me this NOW for? Is he in AA and this is the part where he apologizes to everyone he’s ever wronged? I’m over it, J. I know I trashed you on my blog, but that was for funsies/entertainment value. I promise, I’m. Over. It.

I officially do not understand men. What possessed this guy to reach out to me out of the blue and tell me his deepest darkest secrets? L was positive that he was going to ask me out again but I said no, I think he’s literally just lonely and wants someone to talk to, and clearly I was right. In the beginning I had been vaguely responding to these messages, again more out of curiosity than anything else, but it got to the point where I was like okay thattttt’s enough of that and just stopped responding.

So there you have it, friends. My October on Okcupid. This parade of freak show interactions combined with someone who I really liked saying ‘no thanks’ to exclusively dating me, well.. it messed with me. I uttered the infamous single girl words: “what’s wrong with me?” probably 15-20 times. ….A day. (To be fair, this phrase is so commonly used among the three of us that our autobiography will likely be titled: “What’s Wrong With Me? The LSD Story”.

I just felt like, and I still feel like, in order to really be over the H mess, I need a new first date. Even a bad one. Even a COMICALLY bad one. And I can’t even make a bad one happen! It’s now been FIVE MONTHS since my last first date (with H). It’s gotten to the point where by the time it does happen I’m afraid I’ll forget everything I’ve ever learned about online dating and act like a complete lunatic.

selena meyer

More importantly, I have a dating blog. I have loyal readers (okay, I have family and friends. Egomania: in check!) who come here for a laugh and to read about, you know, dates. With actual men. So is this it? Is this where I throw my dignity down the toilet and hop on Craigslist personals? Or worse, Tinder?

Not today, dear readers. Not today. Instead, I’m going to pull a Scarlett O’Hara and tell you all right now:

scarlett

I WILL go on a first date in the month of November. Not because I need to be dating someone to be a happy, successful human, or because I’m desperate for male attention or a boyfriend, or anything like that. But this inability to get a date has become a thing now, and it’s bugging me, and I need to shake it off and move on. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that actually having something to write about is going to help with my “writer’s block”.

Wish me luck!