ok, so about 9months ago, on a rainy saturday afternoon my friend did something silly. after bullying me about joining match.com, and me refusing (no judgement just this, and this and this prove it’s not for me) repeatedly, he signed me up.
he created an account, filled out the profile with his best ‘me’ impersonation, included the requisites (ice cream, love love love, bike rides, parks, place pigalle, astrology, and laughing), uploaded photos from fb and that was that.
then he told me to go on it. that i’d like it. i’d get hooked. i was skeptical. and played around for a few days, logging in to see who looked at my profile. but after a while (read: two weeks tops) it just didn’t feel right. i wasn’t responding to any of the emails. because, well a) i hate formal dates, and b) i wasn’t interested in any of the guys. something like 35 emails, and none of them seemed right. and then i started to get down on myself. and blah blah blah remembered why i don’t do online dating in the first place.
i hate dating. in it’s formal and totally awkward sense. because, well, i have absolutely no idea how to act, and i focus entirely on making sure that everything is good for the other person, and i have extreme weird issues with the rules of a date like paying and making plans, and then um the goodbye. dear lord. it is all so whacky that i become some crazy cuke that looks like steph, sounds like steph, but is absolutely NOT steph. so WHY would i do all of that when the person i’m on some sort of set up date with would not even get to experience me?
also, i’m a sucker for words. i obsess. can’t get enough. so really, it’s totally crazy for me to be reading 75 perfectly crafted paragraphs written by you telling me all about you. because i like stories, and writing, and words, and meaning. so i’m all outta whack with my ‘into you’ radar right off the bat. it’s like excitement transferral.  i mean, let’s just say it how it is. most likely i don’t like you (sorry, it’s just rare that i like people, trust me, it’s worse for me, a curse in fact), but i like the fact that i am reading antagonizingly written prose. carefully crafted words.
so yea. for all of those reasons, i completely forgot all about match.com and my friend’s little experiment. until a few days ago.
i have no idea what made it pop into my head, but i remembered that silly day in march and logged in the account (that’s name is totally NOT wholesomemidwesterngirl sounding, ps.).
and i started spiraling through all of the same crazy thoughts that i tempered above. and then, before logging off, i decided to do a search. for men, in my area, with my physical, personality, educational, and recreational preferences.
and that’s when i got it. what i needed from the silly site. after perusing through the 200 profile photos and 20 word descriptions, coming up basically dry on anyone i’d even be interested in meeting, i remembered that all of these guys are out there ‘wanting it.’ believing in relationships, and dating, and looking for a “cute girl who I can hold hands with at the farmer’s market” or “Someone that I can make laugh and visa versa. Someone with a good head on her shoulders (keep up in intelligent conversations as well as goofy banter)” or “a woman that is charming, intelligent and beautiful, with a sense of adventure” or however else you want to say it. and they are trying. and going for it.
and though this realization didn’t make me change my mind whatsoever about the rightness, or lack thereof, that i feel about online dating, it did give me an overwhelmingly rejuvenating kick in my dating reset button for good old twenty ten.
so yea. he’s out there. waiting to serendipitously experience our meet cute. and with him i’ll get drinks. i’ll get dinner. i’ll go to a baseball game. i’ll go for a trip down the coast. i’ll get bi-rite ice cream and  spend the afternoon in the coffee shop reading. i will go on ‘dates’ that feel right, and know they’ve seen the actual steph. cause there is way more cuke to this girl than meets the eye.
so thanks match.com. not for any actual dates, but the refill on hope. and i’m ready, 2010, for whatever dating life you throw my way.

she led the modern sunset to your window, gestured with a plane jane hand, she said, “let’s go.”

this is cool. i’m obsessed with words. in general. and dating, duh. when a friend directed my attention to this, it was obvious why.

“a project that explores the search for love, but also the search for self.” (um hello?! seriously!?)

so, i hate to say it. but i think some of you may know- i’m, uh, skeptical of social media sites and our twenty/thirty something dating lives. it’s just so new. and we are most certainly in a societal paradigm shift when it comes it relationships, marriage and dating. but this morning i was overwhelmed with excitement when i read the comment on my last post. and boom it hit me. the positive side of this gathering of information.

i’ve clearly decided that taking relationships slowly is the way  for me (and honestly, all of us, hooking up is like poison on actual relationships…but more on that later). and i know i need to take relationships slowly, and become friends with someone first, but there is just allllll this information out there. and we have ideas in our head of what our partner should and will be. and we can find out about others and their standing in out perfect mate outline by searching them on social media sites. and though i’m still totally in need of holding my self accountable for not stalking boys i may be interested in… i have a new perspective on this.

one thing i have noticed about getting older and dating (and so has the academic community!) is that we seem to want the perfect mate more than ever, yet we don’t necessarily want to do all the things that attract or create the perfect mate. such as get to know them before hooking up, not meet at a bar, take things slowly and so forth. so i see a lot of my friends in this weird stage of dating- old enough to have one or two really serious relationships in their past, not wanting to get into ‘that‘ again unless it’s with the right person so they are going out, drinking, having a good time meeting a guy/girl and hooking up and maybe continuing to see that person, knowing that they are not the ‘one.’ and ‘just wanting to have fun’ until the right one just happens to appear (uh, sorry, not that easy). so, what i’m trying to say- we go out, find someone at the bar to play the game with, flirt, hook up, and get the attention we are in need of. all while waiting for mr/s. right.

and i teeter between thinking this is just a way to dig ourselves deeper into dating/relationship purgatory and thinking that it’s healthy to play the dating game and it’s ok to know that someone is not the ‘one’ and keep dating them. so i was talking to a friend of mine who is on a dating website. and he is most certainly in the “i don’t want to jump into anything serious again but i do want to meet a cool girl that i don’t have to see everyday but i can see whenever i want that is hot and wants to hook up with me even when i only see her every two weeks but i want to be able to meet other girls too and not feel bad but really if the perfect girl came along i would totally snap out of this and do things right” stage. yes, i clearly have an opinion about this ;). but we were talking about a girl he met and went on a date with and he was like “i dunno, she’s well… nah, it didn’t work.”  i reply, “well what was one thing?” him, “she so didn’t look like her picture.” and we got into how it sucks because there are some really cute girls on the site smiling/poking/winking (or whatever flirtatious nonverbal movement the site uses) but it’s annoying that they want to email for like two weeks. and ask how many siblings he has, and what are his hobbies and blah blah blah. and i’m going to go ahead and give him the benefit of the doubt that he finds this annoying because he would just rather go on a date to find these things out (the things i do to protect my boys from my own criticism). but thinking back to his “she didn’t look like her pictures” comment made me realize something. he was most certainly NOT looking for what they are looking for. someone to date. he was looking for above super crazy unrealistic perfect guy situation girl.

where am i going with this. somewhere, i promise. so, this morning, while reading said comment on my last post it hit me. the things we find out from these social media sites are exactly the things that my friend was annoyed with having to discuss in email. the things that DO matter in a relationship. similarities, and interests, and hobbies. so this is good. but what really matters, is that, oddly finding out about someone, or ‘meeting’ someone on these social media sites slows things down immensely. you’re not fighting off your attention needing hormones and liquid courage induced flirtations.

i don’t know rickt (in all traditional senses of the word know). but somehow, based off of mutual interests and ‘getting to know’ each other via communication (!) we have created some sort of genuine connection. that had nothing to do with seeing each other across the bar and wanting to go home that night. woah. there’s hope after all!

maybe i can chalk up my self sabotage talk to my newness of fully embracing the techie world. back in the midwest my accountant, PR, sales, and other non internet/computer based career friends and i thought we were being stupid and embarrassing to talk about someone’s myspace and facebook profiles (and, no, they don’t even know of twitter) in public. and there’s still a part of me right there with them, even with all the life style change i’ve embraced over the last three months. yet, they are still on myspace and facebook because, yea, it IS our life now.

so thanks cali, for keeping it honest. duh, we all use social media sites. maybe my seeing it as self sabotage is a bit of midwestern induced embarrassment for living my life so entwined in the interwebs and not IRL. but, as “i <3 my internet friends” solidifies… what’s so wrong with that? connection is connection. and let’s be honest, no matter how we go about dating… it what we are all really after.

and i don’t think i’m better than you
but i don’t think that i’m worse
women learn to be women
and men learn to be men