by Maggie Voysest

The Terrors of Online Dating

“I officially, officially, officially, – How many officiallys am I at now?,” she would habitually ask her best friends, “GIVE UP!” Gigi threw down her iPhone in disgust. Things were so much easier when Gigi was younger, before the divorce, before the teenage children, before being in her 40’s, before the absolute terrors of online dating.

Whatever happened to meeting someone, falling in love and happily ever afters? Whatever happened to meeting someone the normal way, face to face, feeling that instant attraction, dating each other, and building a serious relationship? When did dating become like picking your favorite ice cream, demolishing it in seconds, discarding the cone, and moving on to another flavor within days? When did dating become a choice of picking out a face on the computer, reading a profile (almost always filled with horrendous grammar and spelling mistakes that made Gigi cringe right down to her painted toes – in her very stylish heels), having to (gasp!) be the one to make the first move, and then go through all the online steps of asking about his favorite this and his favorite that, arranging to meet someone who looks nothing like the ten year old photo he had posted, and then wanting to run away screaming into the night?

“Oh how low the mighty have fallen,” she thought to herself. This was after a month of arranging blind dates with, in the following order, but not necessarily in order of craziness or hilarity: Nelson, a small, bald, big-eared Honduran man who looked like Gollum in Lord of the Rings, who told her that he had fallen in love with her at first sight and wanted to meet her children and be their best friend (”Do we get a say in this?” asked her oldest son when he heard). Nelson proceeded to try and feed her from his plate, and asked her when he could see her again, and wasn’t it an amazing first date, and didn’t she just feel the connection? He gave her a belated Valentine present: a set of 24 animal encyclopedias from 1975, you know the ones – the encyclopedias we all had as teenagers before computers and internet replaced them all. Whatever happened to the poor men who tried to sell them? Nelson bought them for her because she’d told him she loved to read. Encyclopedias! 24 of them! About animals yet! Whatever happened to chocolate and roses? To books of poetry? It took a month of phone calls on his part to gently ease him out of her life. Gigi was a kind soul and hated to ignore phone calls, unlike many of the online men out there.

He was followed by Steve, a paranoid obsessive compulsive Jewish man who called every five minutes to see if she was on her way to their date, and when would she get there, and how far away was she now, and why wasn’t she there yet? Because HE was there. So where was she? And she even arrived ten minutes early! He then spent the whole dinner complaining about his ex-wife and her family, and how it took all his money to get rid of them. Whoever said that Jewish men make the best husbands (dear Aunt Frieda) had never met him.

Not being picky about race, nationality or religions, she then tried Chris, a Mexican gentle giant who spoke not a word unless spoken to, except to repeat over and over again what a great band the bar had (great band it was NOT). Supposedly he had just sold his enormous home and his sports car and was now living with his sister (what a catch!). He had walked to their date, expecting her to drive him home. He was so huge, he could have crushed her with one hand. Thank God he was gentle! He reminded her of Herman Munster and she had no desire to be Lily Munster, no thank you.

Then came Ken, a truly nerdy African American computer geek who kept asking her what she was thinking every five minutes till she wanted to scream at him exactly what she was thinking: “Someone rescue me!” He was pulled over by the police that night for unpaid speeding tickets and spent the night in jail. Honest to God! She should have run away when he went to the bathroom.

Next was Tom, an engineer who at age 44 had never been married and had no children, and was probably still a virgin. “There’s a reason for that,” thought Gigi in despair, as she saw him picking through his salad telling her that he simply adored red tomatoes, but could not bear the thought of onions. He then proceeded to thoroughly pick to pieces the great movie they had just seen (Juno) and rant and rave about teenage pregnancies and what a terrible role model Juno was for today’s children. She’d loved the movie and had admired Juno’s plucky character. She almost felt like lying and telling him that she’d had her first child at age 16!

Then there was poor Dan, whose fiancee had died. That should have been a real warning flag right from the start. Forget about never living up to momma’s cooking. Who could ever live up to a dead fiancee who had been perfect in his eyes? But still Gigi tried. He loved to dance like she did, so they arranged to meet at a salsa club. He told her he had taken ballet lessons for years (and still took them – yes I KNOW another huge warning flag that was ignored). Gigi showed up in her flirty little black salsa dress, and his poor eyes almost bugged out. She should have realized at that moment, that she was already intimidating the poor shy man (a computer geek who worked from home, so as not to have to leave his dog alone. The dog was all that he had left from, yes you guessed it, the dead fiancee). She took the salsa lesson with him, and when the music started, she asked him to dance. He told her he wanted to observe for a bit, so she first danced with a friend. This friend twirled and swirled Gigi around the dance floor so that her hair swooped the floor, and she saw poor Dan edging towards the exit. She was able to dance one dance with him. His ballet feet were not able to translate into salsa feet and muttering about having to drive all the way to Ann Arbor to let out his dog, he ran away… Poor Dan…. he probably resolved to stay away from European women forever.

By the time it was the turn of the high school drop out truck driver recovering from cancer (I kid you not) she’d had enough. She cancelled their date, telling him she had developed a sudden contagious illness: SDOD (Severe Dislike of Online Dating). To this day she cannot recall his name. She still feels rather bad about breaking off their date, but such is life.

And that was just one month out of many in the two years of online dating. And she had tried them all: eHarmony, Match, Chemistry, Singlesnet, SpeedDate, You-Name-It.com. All these comical dates didn’t include the many she turned down because they wanted to know, after just five minutes of talking to them, what she was wearing. Calling her “Babe” or “Sexy”, and wondering why a gorgeous woman like herself was alone! AGHH! That comment never failed to make her scream silently in despair every time she heard it.

Then there were the mysterious disappearances (still under investigation by the Online Dating Police): the kidnapping of online men by aliens or maybe they were unwilling victims of Witness Protection Programs. If you have ever chatted to people online, you’ll know what I mean. One minute they are talking non-stop to you, the next they are gone without a word, without a goodbye or an explanation, simply vanishing into the nether world of online dating. Serial daters, Gigi called them… extremely rude serial daters!

The worst of it was the one date that had gone amazingly well. She had truly bungled it, to put it politely. They had emailed and called for almost a month before meeting in person. Ronald was so funny and made her laugh so hard at times, that she drew the attention of total strangers in stores as she bent over gasping and yes, snorting with laughter in public. He called her Sha Sha Na, and she called him Le’Ro. He was African American and so he could make fun of ghetto names, and he invented a background for her, one filled with six kids from four different men. He actually told this story straight faced to his family after their second funny laugh-all-night date. He even told them that she had shown up to the date dragging three of her badly dressed kids with her, and had to wait for their ghetto father to pick them up. At this point in his story, his sisters (who had unghettolike names) realized he was pulling their legs and burst out laughing.

But it was not to meant to be, due to a bungling of Titanic proportions, one that would go down in the annals of history of dates gone horribly wrong – the bungling was all once again due to technology, and would never have happened in her youth. She could have been well and truly happily married by now, if it hadn’t been for her darned iPhone and a teensy weensy little iPhone text mix up…. ok, a holy heck of a mix up actually, maybe hilariously funny now, but downright horrendous and mind boggling at the time. She sent a text meant for her girlfriend to Le’Ro after their great second date… as she saw the text on its way to him, she screamed “Nooooooooo” trying to stop it. No luck. He was able to read in full and complete detail just what she thought of him (all good), and how her other two dates had gone that week, and how she was looking forward to her next two dates (not so good). Needless to say that was the end of Le’Ro for a very long time. He came back months later and is now just a good friend. He actually became a very good friend of Gigi’s, gives his male perspective on her love life, and loves hearing all about her adventures, but that’s another story. Strangely enough, they have not once ever mentioned that teensy weensy text mix-up.

This month of dating was so terrible that Gigi made an error next. She settled. For the very next nice man she met whose son went to the school district where she taught, and she thought was made for her because they read the same books, watched the same television shows, lived just one mile from her house, and he had been to her hometown where she’d grown up. She’d actually been on his Navy ship when he was on it, and he had her initials tattooed on his arm, so she thought it was meant to be. It took nine months of dating him before she realized she had settled. Settled for someone who couldn’t even tell her that he loved her. Settled for someone who wouldn’t let her be involved with his children. She realized that she had to be brave enough to move on, and OH God, try it all over again.

The first 30 chapters of Gigi’s adventures are posted here on T21. They will continue on the Gigi and Helen blog on dating found at :
adventuresindating.net

To read Helen’s Part I, see Helen’s Horrors of Dating – Part I