I have finally given into online dating. I tried to avoid it as much as possible. The funny thing is with me being such an introvert and not really getting out much. It has left me with trying to meet people on “the apps…” as my friends and I call them. Now, it is not that I want to go out and do things. But the want to do things with interesting male counterparts trumps wanting to hang out with my married friends. My married friends are super cool but I do want what they have. And I won’t get it sitting on their couch watching tv with them.

I set out creating dating profiles for Bumble, OkCupid, Hinge, and Tinder. I had tried this previously but I really had no intention on coming out to meet with anyone. Meeting new people is scary especially for women. So this time around I said I would at least start meeting guys for coffee. One of the conversations that plagues my single friends and I is where do the eligible guys hang out. My friends and I aren’t really clubbers. So what does that really leave for a well educated, hard working black woman in her 30’s?

Sad thing is there are still men pretending like sex is not all they want. That always confuses me since in this day and age… there is someone women out there that are cool with something casual. I would figure you could be upfront with wanting just sex nowadays (It is actually a setting on Bumble ‘Something Casual’). I have gotten so many penis pictures and requests for pictures of my breasts. When dealing online, I figure that it is one of the things I just have to deal with right? Just block and move on.

I have found though… Black women have a hard way to go online. (I am speaking from my personal experience and not saying that it is not hard for others out there.) Lots of profiles from all ethnicities (Including my people) saying they only prefer White/Latina/Asian women… smh. It is fun when no ones preference is you. I hardly ever get any interest from men who look like me and yes I understand what preferences are….  On the other side of that coin, there is an onslaught of men (all races) who have an idea that black women are easy and desperate. I have noticed there is a level of fetishism in the messages I do get. As if there is something exotic from a black woman born in NYC. Two messages stand out to me: “I thought you would be more open to sex after one or two dates.” And “I mean I don’t date black women… I would f*ck the sh*t out of you though.” Wonderful. Thanks for telling me I am not good enough to get to know but you could see past all of that for sex. But I digress.

Being nerdy is nothing new to me. I understand that media has made that sort of thing cool now. But it is funny to see the looks on guys faces when I say that I am into manga, anime, hockey or baseball. I have had a few guys even say “I never heard a black girl say they were into this sort of stuff.” Talking about hobbies is one of my favorite things and I try to just barrel through comments like this. Even though I know sometimes it is meant to be a compliment… Worse when it comes from men who look like you. It is so annoying to realize that you don’t fit in because all you are allowed to like is rap music, and football/basketball.

I have had a few disastrous run ins recently that I recall to laugh… But they are sad really.

First I matched with a guy on OKcupid. We will call him John. He was super cute and nerdy like me. He was the first to reach out to me and we discussed anime and our love for DC comics. He followed that up with asking me out on an actual date. Not coming to my house, not Netflix and Chill, not Hulu and hump or whatever. He picked something (going to the movies to see the Joker) asked me and I accepted.

So I get dressed up and agree to meet him in the next town over. We decide to have ice cream before heading to the theater. So we stop at the Coldstone and he bought my ice cream. Pure gentleman. So we talk more about books we’ve read. Super interesting. He did seem nervous, not really talking much. So it was on me to keep the conversation going. That got tiresome quickly. We head into the theater and I pull out my wallet to pay and he insists on paying for the tickets. We decided to skip the concession stand (I don’t buy snacks from the movie theater for myself, way too expensive… so I don’t expect others to do it for me. Not on the first date anyway.) We pick our seats and settle in. Once it gets dark in the theater, he pulls me down to lean on him… wraps his arm around me. It was the most uncomfortable thing mostly because my back hurt. But it was also hot in there. Too much body heat. We stumbled through 2 hours of the movie…. Me mostly cramped and hot . He had fallen asleep in the theater…. even though it was a movie that he picked and insisted that we see. He then decided that we should have dinner at 10:30pm ( a bit late for my taste but hell we started with desert) and picked the Hudson Grille. We get there and he orders a bunch of food. Almost $70. Here is where things went downhill….  We had nothing in common. And I had to ask him questions which made it like pulling teeth. He didn’t care for music in general, didn’t like theme parks, or cruises, sports etc etc…. so the conversation which I had been holding up all evening stalled. He didn’t ask me much about me and that should have been a red flag but I missed it. He talked about traveling to Japan to visit family and how he was going to school part time and had like 4 part time jobs. My initial thought was how are going to have time to do anything? But we ended the date at about midnight… I felt bad because he spent a bunch of money but he followed up by asking me out a second time. I didn’t see a reason why I shouldn’t go out a second time. We exchanged numbers and we spoke for about another week. He made a comment about wanting to go on a road trip with me to see the Downton Abbey exhibit in Connecticut…. he then agreed to allow me to pick the second date. I said that I would like to go to the Botanical Gardens which he agreed to but alas for some reason I never heard from him again. Seems like a lot of effort and money spent to just run away. I texted a few times but when I got no response. I blocked him. At the time I thought ghosting was stupid, I mean why not just say you aren’t interested. If you read on, you will see my thoughts on that changed.

The next two jokers I met on POF… and that in itself should have been a red flag…. (I kid, I kid.) Person A, we will call him Jack… He responded to my message and we discussed our jobs and interest… We had a lot more in common that John and I did… and again he asked me out. Which is very few and far between on the dating sites. He said I could pick…. I decided on McCallister’s so that we could get a quick bite to eat and him maybe some coffee (I do not drink coffee).. I set up the time and place… I drive to the next town to meet him and he never shows…. no call or texts or anything… and I waited a few days to see if he was ever going to say something…. NOTHING…. Not even an excuse…. oddly enough weeks later I get a random ‘Hi’ from him. No explanation… and when I said hi back he disappeared again. My guess was that he didn’t mean to message me again in the first place.

Person B whom we will call Paul was pushy and self righteous in the most quiet of ways. Another flag I ignored… but he spoke eloquently in the messages online so when he asked for my number… I gave it to him. He and I were from the same city up north… and I was looking forward to conversing with someone regularly again… He wanted to talk to me on the phone which in itself wasn’t all that odd… (I had to beat down my anxiety because I never talk on the phone  if I can help it)… I quickly learned that he wanted to talk on the phone every day….. He would often schedule a time to call me and then call 30 minutes later than scheduled. But all he ever talked about was his job…. He gave me a brief background on his family… he had several siblings which I thought was great. Any time I made a move to talk about interest, or hobbies he steered the conversation back to work. How he was always working, how he just got home from work, how he needed to log back in to work, how he needed to travel for work, how the people below him at work need to work harder and prove themselves to get a promotion like he did (Translation: They should do more things outside of their job description, go above and beyond to help him complete his job so he can collect the big bucks and they can continue to make the same wage and gain “experience”.) You all should be able to hear my eyes roll from here. The downside was this talk would be impressive if we didn’t work in similar fields… I talked about reading more, creating a blog, watching different shows…. but he never expounded on those… I even bought up travel. He would never say more than a few words on anything other than work. (Does anyone else get the feeling that he defined himself by what he did?)

Paul and I talked a lot about cruises… I love them and on some level it was the only type of vacation that I could afford when I was working an hourly job. They have their issues but cruise hold a special place in my heart. I know plenty of hard working families that go on cruises because they are all inclusive. He expressed how his parents always go on cruises and are Platinum members on most cruise liners… Me, being happy not to be talking about work or the climb up the career ladder, would tell him about the cruises my family and I went on a few times. A few days later he sends me a YouTube video about how cruises were ruining the environment. Which he claimed was a joke… what struck me was his need to try and ruin something that I told him I enjoyed. And when I said I was familiar with this information… he then started being condescending by calling me an “intelligent little girl.” Here I am a 32 year old woman (older than him) with a bachelor’s degree and he wants to refer to me as a little girl…. I actually pointed that out to him and he claim that I was just being “triggered.” What I realized was whenever I offered an opposing idea on any topic, he would say… “You’re so cute…” Or “My little girl is so cute.” Needless to say that our final conversation had to do with politics… it was the final nail in the coffin…

Now… I am friends with a lot of people who have different beliefs than me both religiously and politically… I am not opposed to having a discussion with people who have different thought processes than mine. But as far as dating is concerned, I stay away from those topics right away because I am not one that likes rudeness… the amount of adults that can’t have a mature conversation blows my mind. The more condescending he became both on the phone and in text… the more I understood the idea of ghosting… He had asked me out for drinks just before Thanksgiving, said I could get together with him after he came back into town… needless to say I blocked him too. He made the comment that his own father told him “Just because you went to school doesn’t mean you are smarter than everyone else around you.” If your parents are pointing that out to you and you are still acting this way… I need not even waste my time… and duck out when I see the red flags. So I blocked him without another word…. (I know, I know… I deserve all the judgement.)

While I enjoy the swipe culture that dating has become…. and I will continue to use the apps my first foray back into dating hasn’t been that great.. Do I think these guys for bad people…? Of course not, they just were not for me…. I have set some new rules for myself in the new year and if you stick with the blog you will see what those things are and how they pan out for me in the next couple weeks.