Misadventures in dating.

So... I'm a cheater.  I know that I've explained that the whole point of this journey and blog is to take my mind off of dating all the time, but I'm human.

In what may be the most self-confidence destroying move of 2013, I signed up for Eharmony (long before this journey began).  As they suckered me into a great deal for a year's worth of membership and I can't leave until I've gotten my money's worth, I've occasionally chatted with people there, but haven't gone out on a single date since my 29th birthday.  A friend convinced me to try out a new site "Coffee Meets Bagel" and I agreed to try that with him also.  Since my dating life is typically a comedy of errors, I haven't REALLY cheated on my tiny adventures mission until a few weeks ago when I planned a date.

So, this Coffee Meets Bagel site is brilliant in theory since it supposedly matches you up with someone you have mutual friends with on Facebook.  In the true spirit of dating as a late 20 year old, me and my friends give everyone an appropriate nickname to keep men straight... so I met "Cartman" on the site and we began text messaging on their text messaging line service, which is kind of brilliant since it allows you to text with someone without sharing your real number.  We traded messages almost daily for about two weeks, and he suggested we meet up.  We made plans for a specific day, and we texted once more about them when I had to change the plans to a casual lunch date since a friend was having "Friendsgiving" and friends and food obviously outrank potentially bad dates in my book.

The day came and went, and I didn't hear from Cartman a few days beforehand, or for about a week afterwards.  About a week later, I had pretty much forgotten about him (score one for my year of adventure if I can forget about someone that quickly!) when I got a strange voicemail that was mumbled and mostly unintelligible.  I texted the following day, and he immediately asked me to hang out the following weekend.  I was busy, but also asked... "what happened to you last weekend?"  He said he owed his uncle one, and had lunch with him instead.... UM.... coulda called buddy.  He suggested we hang out during the following week, and I stopped responding to give it some real thought.

Deep down, I just didn't WANT to give this another shot, but it took me a while to come up with why.  Since my last relationship, I've dated a few people, but while we kept talking and continued a friendship, no one has been willing to make any kind of commitment to me.  I couldn't figure out why I was attracting this kind of person until this conversation with Cartman.  After thinking quite a bit about this situation, I realized that there came a time in each one of those friendships/relationships, where this kind of thing had happened, and I had given those guys another chance, or sometimes 2 or 3 more chances.  At heart, I'm just a hopeful person about love, but because of this, I think I've wasted plenty of time with people who clearly showed me exactly how things were going to be.

I talked to a few friends who both encouraged me to give Cartman a chance, but I didn't respond right away because I knew I REALLY didn't want to meet up with him.  I knew that I deserved better, and maybe that is part of this journey even though I originally meant the journey to be more of a man-free one.

A few days later, Cartman offered to tell me a story about his day, and gave me a call.  I literally understood NOTHING he said, and asked "WHAT?" about a hundred times in a 20 minute conversation.  I didn't get his sense of humor, and he literally talked like Cartman from South Park (hence the nickname).  Seeing as how I couldn't carry on a conversation with him, I went with my original feelings and decided not to go out on this date.

Because I deserve better.  And maybe we have to show the universe what kind of love we want to receive with the actions we take.

Always go with your gut.  Lesson Learned!