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

Well its how things work for me anyway. This whole strict "meet off dating site" crap isnt doing it for me at all. Ive had far more success just talking to people on forums or livejournal or IRC or whatevs and then meeting em. Obviously gonna work if its a local and interest-specific forum too!

ALso, I'm a big old flirt. That helps alarmingly well.

Aussies dont do "dates". We hang out with people and sometimes the sexing happens. Pretty laid back imo.

that's pretty much how it is for me and my friends, for the most part.

pretty laid back

xpost to K - I also want the clarity over meeting up. Also on wanting to meet up within 3 or 4 messages back and forth.

Americans invented the date, IIRC.

(Actually, I was under the impression that the traditional one-on-one date was a rarity nowadays.)

I find the American Way fun and helpful in the way Laurel describes right up until you meet someone you really like, at which point there's this excruciating uncertainty for a while about how many other people they might feel they have the right to have on the go, and the horrific 'are we exclusive' conversation I whined about extensively upthread.

^^ this

god i hate meeting people i really like.

I don't really care if you call it a "date" or if you call it "hanging out" or "let's go to the pub for a drink and a chat and maybe dinner if we're getting along nicely" - but I *do* care whether you ask "I dunno, maybe would you like to hang out, like, some time or maybe not..." or if you ask "Hi, would you like to go to the pub? I can do tomorrow or Friday night, whichever is easiest for you?"

The latter will get you a response from me. The former, I will probably just ignore the email as I can't work out if it's even an invitation or not.

well, you can always assert yourself and take it as an invitation, right?

Not if I already tried asking in the first place. Basically, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm willing to be assertive to a point, but if it's all me, asking all the questions, doing all the arranging, really, this is not a good sign of something that is gonna work out. For me.

I've spent my whole life trying to be accomodating for what boyfriends and dates wanted. It's my time to be selfish. I'm not in a hurry to be In A Relationship any more, I am willing to wait for what I want. Not have to push or corral or herd cats to get something that sort of might maybe be OK, I guess.

so basically, you want to be pursued, and for *once* to have the dude do the metaphorical heavy lifting?

All this over-thinking and (near) game playing and (unstated) expectations and rules are what puts me off the whole thing. It's such a bullshit head fuck.

Karen, you would really write someone off for some tiny nuance of wording? That seems rather drastic. Who knows what their actual thinking was behind writing as they did - it might be what you're thinking they're thinking, but it so easily might not. (For example, they might be deliberately trying not to appear too keen/desperate, or might be trying to be particularly accomodating and think that this is the way to go about it, or maybe they're not thinking so much about it at all on a semantic level and just wrote and that's how it happened to come out). It just seems to me that you're reading too much into something that might not have anything like such significance.

No, Sarahel, I want, for once, to pursue, and have the guy turn around and go "oh, you're pursuing me. How nice. Yes, please, let's do this!"

And Krakow, it's not a tiny nuance of wording, it's about a pattern of actions, and effort. And about how you view the world.

Anyway, this is all a bit moot now. I have just had a correspondance that, well... I don't often talk in these kinds of terms, but I have the feeling that I've just met my match, in more ways than one. Now I'm going to shut up so I don't jinx this. I think I have to go for a walk.

ITLL NEVER HAPPEN

nah, godspeed :D

It probably won't happen.

I am probably just using the smooth surface of internet communications to look into an imagined mirror of what I think I want. But jesus christ, what a mirror. o_0

hey sometimes our projections are met with an equally impressive reality - happened to me last time around, can certainly happen to you this time around - just hope the guy doesn't have to bugger off within a few days

the trick with projections is to look at what is being projected rationally - if there's ANY cognitive dissonance between the projection and what the other person is revealing, you're possibly misguiding yourself. if not, have fun!

For all my arguementativeness and disagreement, I wish you the greatest luck and subsequent joy.

you met someone nice if not-quite-all-there on OKC anyway and it worked for a bit, don't know what you're complaining about :P

perhaps the merest glimpse of bliss has whetted your appetite

"The void inside of me feels even bigger and more painful now that I've glimpsed something that might fill it."

krakow, some time ago.

hey at least we got some good mahler jokes out of it

because they're what really matter in life.

you'll look back one day and murmur contentedly

you make him sound like an old man eating a pudding with a teaspoon.

Maybe that's what acoleuthic's jokes are like.

If anyone makes a "2 old men, 1 teaspoon" joke I am going to hit them. Hard.

oh shit!

::punches self::

xpost Krakow, please don't give up just yet on OKC. You come across as such a lovely bloke and there are thousands of women out there complaining that they can't find such a bloke. Granted, the actual hooking up process (IRL or online) is a sodding nightmare, but nevertheless.

Karen??

there are thousands of women out there complaining that they can't find such a blok

This is true, the requests I get...

So. For the second weekend running, and this is so odd, I am not entirely convinced this is my life, I can say "I have a date this weekend."

:-)

man that's so far away, don't let the anticipation bite!

Kate you never told us about the sushi place!

Good luck anyway :)

I'm just mainly confused, and looking, as always, for the catch.

Just amazed that someone who is actually intelligent and well spoken and talented would actually actively pursue me. I invariably can't help thinking that I'm going to be a disappointment.

Have checked, in advance, mind you, that there are no girlfriends in Mongolia.

(Oh, yes. We never actually made it as far as the sushi place, only to the pub.)

on my bday i got an e-mail from them: "Happy Birthday! Still single?"

rub it in why dontcha

Yeah, I got that one as well. There's a certain "wow, gettin' up there, huh" vibe to it that's exactly encouraging.

Probably going to reactivate my profile soonish, whenever I get to that magical tipping point where the crippling social phobia is outweighed by the miserable loneliness. For me it's all about getting the right negative emotions in line to make shit happen...

OK, phew, I feel like I've dodged a bullet here.

I kind of jokingly described him as being "simultaneously the most pretentious and most down to earth person I'd ever met" - adding a little later that I didn't actually see "pretentious" as a bad thing (in fact, most of my closest friends have been slightly pretentious - see a million Momus threads) and that actually I meant it as a kind of compliment. (dude has recently sent me a 1500 word tract about the Art of Filmmaking. I don't think "pretentious" is totally out of order here.)

This is the scree I got in return:

I genuinely don’t get the observation that I am pretentious. Really. Honestly. Tried to work out how it can be a fondly ironic term of even vague endearment, which possibly means arty not remote, but I am at a loss, despite wrestling with your convoluted set of justifications later on in your email, which still seem to allude to a huge difference of opinion on the subject. Pretentious? Confabulated? Affected? Insincere? Demanding merit where none should be awarded? Using aloof hyperbole to construct some lofty and detached mindset for effect? Pretentious smacks of all of these things. And it does so to probably everyone!

You are happy to use the word because you feel no negative connotation to it. It’s merely a light, fizzy and silly side effect to being a bit brainy - and all artistes tend to be a bit flowery after all. Is that what you meant? Hmm? What upsets me about that choice of word is that I have literally gone to great and extreme efforts to be as utterly open and as unpretentious as I can with you in an effort to reach out; to actively be as iconoclastic as I can; to point out the pretensions of others; to reassure you that your are safe with a guy who will not wrap his ability up in ribbons for show! Yes, I have used emotive language and have painted pretty replete and convoluted pictures, but to suggest that that has been pretentious in any way, is actually pretty lazy and quite unthinking. Sorry, but I just don’t get it.

You mention your ability to empathise. To start an email by saying that someone is the most pretentious person you have encountered in a while, despite then adding the get-out clause that I am down-to-Earth too, was possibly lacking in empathy. Perhaps now you’ll suggest that I am precious. I strongly suspect it will be may fault, at any rate. If you mean “arty” then say so immediately, not half way through the email. You say: “not to slide into relativism but the trick is to surround yourself with people with whom one agrees about what matters and what to hoot at.” Well it matters to me that you may have missed the point.

In relation to hooting, I feel strongly that I have not, in any sense, created humour at other people’s expense. I mentioned the litany of troubled and quite unbearable women who have all but drained any faith I have in internet dating, not to step on your auto-sorority nerve, as I possibly might have done, but to demonstrate, after your confession that you have fears about meeting a new man, that I, too, have been emotionally drained and challenged by people who are somehow crippled by issues that subsequently impact on me.

Women have their own set of perplexing, infuriating, capricious and, frankly, annoying characteristics, which, while not as overtly dramatic or as physically demonstrative as the huge male failings you have experienced, can be just as psychologically damaging. That all deserves the satirical flattening that comedy affords. I made it “funny” to lighten the impact - but the truth of it remains the same.

I despise humour that ridicules innocents. It’s an appalling snobbery that feels too easy. But to find comedy and pathos in the recollection of private and very intuitively-informed experiences, is the right of everyone able to muster social commentary out of sadness.

I do not use comedy as a control mechanism or as a tool for remote judgement. I try, and in the eyes of others, wholly succeed, in using it to show insight, and, ultimately, empathy.

The crux of your email was that certain aspects of my personality would almost certainly infuriate you. Again, not the best choice of phrase when two people are tying to meet on common ground. What you mean is that you would be annoyed at the bits of me that you don’t fully appreciate.

See what I mean about control? Rather than deconstruct it with questionable phraseology, you simply could have laughed.

Sorry, I get the impression you’d be the kind of woman who would feel obliged to comment on everything just because you can, and not because the situation calls for it.

That’s not the same as having a curious, active mind. It has more to do with having issues that social interaction won’t completely address.

You advertise on what is essentially a dating website but spend a large part of our time corresponding by outlining all the bits about our possible romance that won’t work, or that you are apprehensive about. Projecting notions of what will infuriate you or will not infuriate you onto a burgeoning dynamic, however deliciously flippant it might feel to you, suggests to me an unconscious fixation with control.

I have waited a lifetime to encounter a gifted, informed and funny woman who places so much importance on logic and reasoning in the way you do, and I may be throwing away a great opportunity here, but I think falling in love with you would come at a price.

Please understand, that I know you meant nothing too damaging by your words, and I am sorry if I have pissed you off by dwelling on stuff. As you say, we are strangers, but we have already exchanged a lot (remember needing to take a walk after one mail I sent?).

You weave such a discursive conversational web, not because of your clear and obvious renaissance abilities, but because you don’t actually know what you want.

I do.

Good luck with everything, and thank you for giving me so much of your time.

Um. Whoa. I really don't get it.

For the record, I did ask him, after my experience with the guy with the girlfriend in Mongolia, if he was actually single or if he had any girlfriends in Kent or Canada that I should be aware of. In quite a joking, lighthearted manner. I got back a detailed list of scathing and quite sneery character sketches of the last 8 women he'd been on dates with. Which he probably thought was funny, and indeed, it might have been, had it been posted in a Guardian Guide article about internet dating, not a personal email to a girl he was trying to impress.

The guy sends me, initially, like, 3 or 4 emails in a flurry going on about my red hair, my being a vegetarian, how my name is "his favourite name for a girl" - and has gone on at great length about himself, his career first as a failed pop star, then as a writer and now as a film maker, but beyond a few sexual suggestions, has made *no* attempt to find out what I'm like as a person, what I like, what I'm interested in, any questions about what he was like were brushed off with "Oh, stop asking so many questions and trying to work out reasons the relationship wouldn't work, let's just dive in!"

This guy is actually nuts, right? I'm not just being over-sensitive, thinking that this dude is now setting off all of my "psychotic" alarm bells?

Sorry to quote the whole thing at length but I think that email is just slightly overreacting, right?

This has really rattled me, actually. I'm extremely glad I never gave him my email address or my phone number.

Jesus.

I am actually this close >< to deleting my whole account after that. :-(

I've disabled my account. I'm going on holiday next week anyway, so I won't be able to actually meet up with anyone anyway. I'm sorry, but I am actually a bit shaken by all this.

wow. uh. whoa.

I get the impression you’d be the kind of woman who would feel obliged to comment on everything just because you can, and not because the situation calls for it.

pot, kettle..?

He's quite right, that I don't KNOW what I want in a relationship. Really, I'd like to meet a person I have a spark with and who I'm compatible with, and then go from there.

Jesus, Karen. That's frightening. Don't blame you for being shook.

Yeah, it's like... I dunno. This is like my very very worst tendencies, when I'm in a bad mood and got my back up, to misread a word or a phrase and go on an ILX rant about sexism or something. Sure, if someone uses a word about me that I don't like, I'll try and explain carefully how that word is *inaccurate* or if that fails go on a bit of a rant about how it's a Bad Word. But like...

See what I mean about control? Rather than deconstruct it with questionable phraseology, you simply could have laughed.

Pot, kettle, doctor heal thyself?

I thought I made it clear in my profile that I'm a bit of a contrarian, that I enjoy debating and deconstructing things, that it is just a bit of fun because, well, I'm an ILX0r, that's how we roll.

I think I must have struck some kind of nerve, hence the scree, but seriously. There's quite obviously someone who "simply could have laughed" here and for once, it's not me.

any questions about what he was like were brushed off with "Oh, stop asking so many questions and trying to work out reasons the relationship wouldn't work, let's just dive in!"

Regardless of the rest, I'm afraid I think he's OTM here. You do not analyse a relationship with someone you've known for five minutes. You just don't.

Allow me to paste a quote a respected friend of mine said that even gave me pause:

"sometimes i think i'm a traitor to my gender, but honestly who wants to talk about their feelings after a first date?! crazies, that's who. first dates should be about sneaky glances, accidental touching, tummy butterflies and sparks. take your feelings and fuck off. sheesh." - bronte lee

Now, i'm not excusing asking general "what do you do?" questions here. I'm talking about "where will this go and what are our goals?" questions.

Theyre for later. Initial dates are for fun and letting go. Not for working out one's future.