Just when you thought it was safe - OK CUPID PART 3: The Return of the WOO!

^^ I do this, too. I am pretty much either the "I think that was a date I went on, and we hung out a few times" or "I was in a six month relationship" guy. Really could use a happy medium. Or more variety.

yay laurel!

i am pro drinking and making out, obvs.

my new okc crush plays in a gamelan ensemble among other things! but we don't have any plans to hang out yet despite exchanging 50+ multi-paragraph messages AND he is only looking for "new friends" :/

congrats laurel! I was supposed to have a date today but it fell through and now I'm going to be on the road until the end of the month. ehh.

that's a lot of messages bg!

have date tmr, and the lazy part of me realllly wants to cancel b/c of how much of a pain the 7 train service change is...

out with people off of okcupid sunday, monday, tuesday, thursday and tonight and tomorrow and sunday and maybe tonight's again on monday.

whoa
i'm both impressed and freaked out, but the latter only because i would never ever be able to do that - too many people, too much small talk, would make me want to stay inside and read for a week

i have been dating the same guy for like 2 months now! approaching relationship status... we shall see. i only feel slightly weird abt it because i didn't get the chance to date a bunch of other people, which is what i thought wld happen, but i know that's kind of silly.

I just pissed someone off by email, he told me, "This conversation is over." Because I questioned why his desired age range, which only went up to 4 years younger than him. He said it was because he was used to dating shorter women(!!!!), and then blamed someone his age who scarred him by wanting to get married and have children.

Yeah, gotta watch out for that growth spurt between ages 36 and 40.

younger -> shorter

panicked language issue, weird freudian slip, or admission of guilt? you be the judge!

we shall call him "shorteyes"

oh man, I was talking to a friend about how I hadn't really dated a woman taller than me before:

"I don't know, I'm not good at approaching women anyway. How would I approach a taller woman?"

Her: "You could probably sneak up behind her if she's taller"

I just pissed someone off also. He seemed interesting but wrote a somewhat passive-aggressive email suggesting a date. I thought I'd 'give him a go for various reasons but gently teased him about the message style. He told me he didn't expect me to be so business-like' in my response. Then I suggested a time and day, and he disappeared.

Shorter! Classic.

Her: "You could probably sneak up behind her if she's taller"

Guffaw

I have no idea why I'm looking at that stupid site again. After my (OKC-originated) relationship blew up in my face last year, I've felt increasingly-convinced that I just need to come seriously to terms with being alone. Seeing my current OKC matches (none of which even break 90%), I think I've probably been on the right track. </bitter>

(I should point out, btw, that OKC is only one of the venues within which my bad dating luck has played out in recent years.)

laurel, how'd the date go on sat??

did it get snowed in?

It got flued out, annoyingly. After I got all nervous and everything. Trying to reched but we have opposite schedules.

earlier tonight, when i was ending the thing with the okc girl...

― your pain is probably equal (Z S), Friday, November 18, 2011 7:22 PM (2 months ago)

holy shit, i'm STILL trying to end things with okc girl. uuuuugh. i mean, things did sorta end, but then about 3-4 weeks later we ended up seeing each other again, and then.

uuuuugh

My date never called back to resched. Back to square #1.

I know this isn't helping you ZS, but the phrase "okc girl" keeps reminding me of the snorg girl.

Not helping at all I presume.

i will note that adam schefter's use of GAAAAAH on the snorg girl thread is incorrect. GAAAAAH is when you have the lovey doveys

that is true actually. Godspeed ZS, move on beyond her and flame on!

My date never called back to resched. Back to square #1.

boo.

i've remained on okc out of laziness but i've been told i should check out match

the more time you put into it, the more response you get. This is both because people want to see who looked at them and because OKC tries to keep you engaged so it routs people to you

I looked at the profiles of a handful of people I could be interested in, some of them multiple times, but apparently they either never looked back at me (hidden browsing, I assume) or didn't like my prof enough to write. Kind of feel like writing to them now would be desperate pestering. Kind of meh about whole thing if the dudes I like the sound of aren't interested.

i also would not like to belong to any club etc

yeah i know the more i do, the more response i get. i think my not having logged on is my subconscious telling me that i need a break. i'm tired of seeing the same people in my list of high matches.

also laurel if they're browsing privately, i think they can't see that you've looked at them.

it's only since i've come to this thread that i learned the value of openly browsing.

Oh, that's a good point, I forgot you can't see others if you go hidden. I should write to some dudes, I guess.

I kind of have this issue where I'm sort of unenthusiastic about dating and hoping someone else's enthusiasm for me will pull me into it without my having to work hard to convince some stranger that I'm cool enough for him to want to meet. Toootally irresponsible and one-sided, I know.

Still dating someone I met on OKC in November.

i've remained on okc out of laziness but i've been told i should check out match

― rayuela, Friday, February 3, 2012 7:45 PM

Eh, my experience with Match.com was most of the folks were just boring professionals without any unique qualities. Others on there seemed obsessed with exercise and triathalons too, if that's your thing (or maybe that's just the W. DC area).

i'm running an experiment and trying to diversify my samples. okc will be the control group, match will be the variable.

That makes sense.

does Nerve even exist anymore?

There was or is what I thought was an offshoot of it called "fastcupid" which was not bad, but just had few participants.

Nerve.com was the Spring Street Network or whatever. It's probably in a few different places?

man friggin exercise and triathlon people

I have a friend who isn't really one of these people (and doesn't enjoy running while she's actually running( but keeps doing it because it is a thing that keeps her from going insane

Date arranged for Sunday 4pm. My profile doesn't say I'm a Britisher, but I think I outed myself by scheduling for Superbowl Sunday just before the game. Wrote back to offer to change the time/day when I realised, but he says he doesn't mind.

Sounds like a decent early litmus test! Which he passed! Hope that you have a good time.

Thanks krakow! The date started with a sinking feeling that this was a terrible idea, not sure why, and he seemed pretty nervous. It was impossible not to watch his face twitch, which I was trying really hard *not* to watch. Then he got more relaxed, and there was a sudden sharp upturn where I started to think 'you are a very interesting person'. Immediately followed by a nervous realization that he reminds me in certain ways of my ex. But the good things, rather than the bad things. He gave me a ride back to the metro. I sort of flubbed the end of the date when we I said 'stay in touch' and he said 'we must do this again sometime' and I started babbling about the superbowl instead of saying 'yes, we must'. Up for a second date, at least.

woohoo!

question: is there any way to block your okc profile from being seen by someone? i ask because i recently ended things with someone i met on ok cupid, and i was kind of itching to get back on there and try my luck again, but i know she'll see it and bla bla bla

there is, i've definitely blocked people before. don't know the parameters but assume it means you won't show up in their searches etc.

I've never found it. You can 'hide' people from searches but they can still find you. Imo just create a fake profile with nothing in it to use for browsing for now, then go back to your real one after a decent interval. But 'decent' isn't very long in your case I think - a couple of weeks? Really, if you wanted to dive straight back in now I would say that was ok. It was a couple of months tops with a break in the middle, right?

yep. i dunno, i just feel bad. it's weird to imagine what your profile looks like to someone before they first date you, after, and then after you end up breaking up.

Ok I went in to investigate how I've done it in the past. If you go to a message you've exchanged w/the person, there is an option on the right hand side to block them. I guess you can't block someone you've not exchanged messages with.

yeah, i think blocking them just makes it easier to ignore them, but what i'm looking for is something to make myself invisible to her.

looking at what i just typed, maybe this is all deeply fucked up and i should just go on living life and not stress out too much about if someone sees my profile and hates my guts now.

my last sentence otm. that's what i'm going to do.

"fuck it"

otm

but i'm also going to wait a couple weeks before getting back on.

stay tuned next week, as i think about whether or not to do my laundry or go the coffee shop and document the thought process on ILX!

Since my wary return, I've only received messages from women who are in no conceivable way good matches for me. Like, messages that don't seem to indicate that they've given my profile even a cursory once-over. I can't tell if it's spam or if some people really are that desperate...? Is this a thing anyone else has experienced much of?

At any rate, I'm beginning to think I may have moved past this online dating thing, for better or worse.

if someone's going to be all judgey about you going out and looking for a date after breaking up, then they can go ahead and think "he's a jerk who would go out and immediately try to find someone else" and it'll stop them from being hung up on you

wanting an ex to think you're not interested in other people is like a "he would rather be alone than be with me, or maybe I can get it back together" enabler

^^^ otm and ZS has the right to get immediately back out there. But all logic aside, when someone who broke up with you is immediately back on without a day's break, it can be upsetting: pride (not logic) demands that even though they weren't into you, they're at least mildly sad enough to want to have a short pause. Why not indulge this and help the other person get back into their stride?

Two weeks is plenty in your circs though, ZS.