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

;)

Oooooh, get you!

lol oops wrong thread

Okay, change of thinking: this is for me, this is supposed to be fun for me. Dates should be fun. I am not on trial. I can do whatever I want in order to have a good time, however I am defining good at that moment. Wine.

Have fun with Crabbits!

this is the torture of OKC. dearly prefer to turn to a dear friend and say "can we keep on like this except start having sex and vacations together?" but it always goes wrong.

Go Texas!

:)

I hope this rising tide lifts all ILXor boats!

I don't understand, he's smart & educated & gainfully employed at his life's passion, and has useful life skills & a totally own separate LIFE with things happening in it--I borderline-seriously do not know what to do when someone is so functional and thoughtful and not needy. Like, they are just doing this because they like me? That makes no sense.

She responded! ^_^
My neediness paid off!

otm xpost

Not to say I had all of my shit all the way together, but I do know that at the core of the dissolution of my last relationship was the fact that nothing I said or did was ever enough to convince her that I liked (and even, gasp, loved!) her. So with that in mind, I would universally encourage people to try tamping down their insecurities and accept the possibility that they are legitimately likeable (and even, gasp, loveable!).

tall orders, tall orders

think I'll opt for 20-40 years of anxiety-ridden wild mood swings beneath a calm, drunk exterior.

I kid, I kid, that is sound and welcome advice.

Yo, we've only been on 5 dates, I have time to grok the fact that he likes me. Calm down.

i had an incredibly awkward/underwhelming second date last night. i feel bad because i became very standoffish and probably it was really obvious i wanted him to leave (i made dinner at my place and actually pulled the "i have an early meeting tomorrow" line and started washing my dishes) . i was also kind of in weird brain space because i smoked pot for the first time in a realllllly long time (maybe a year?) and felt weirdly twitchy and withdrawn so i think the "not feeling it" was mutual.

i have no other irons in the fire.

Feeling really unloved after signing into OKC for the first time in three weeks to no messages.

that's not uncommon ime. I think the robot takes you out of rotation when you don't log in

I realized why the restaurant date made me nervous: because I feel like there are specific behaviors that are appropriate for that setting, and I feel constrained by them? Of course it's silly, probably why it took me like 3 days after the fact to realize, but I worry that I won't be able to express how I feel if it conflicts with the script for that occasion: making light conversation, laughing, keeping it going, not being disagreeable or disagreeing, etc. Being railroaded into good behavior, basically.

Sure enough, at least one thing was said that in a more relaxed place I would have questioned, possibly mocked, but I'm p sure I just smiled vacantly instead.

WHY AM I SO HOPELESSLY DUMB?

Beholden to (silly/imaginary) rules of propriety? No one expects you to follow a script -- you expect that for some bizarro reason. Glad it went well obvs!!!

I know! But I'm not the only one, I had this realization while talking to someone else last night who said this is why she doesn't like to do anything "special"/formal to celebrate special occasions--the pressure to conform to how the occasion is supposed to go.

Which I guess just means that some of my friends are at least as crazy as I am.

I think I am being negged and/or insulted? Some guy wrote me and asked if I could add chapter markers to my profile so he could save his place. And his profile clearly indicates that he hates fat people (Says someone even "slightly overweight" is a deal breaker in his questions, and in the question, "Can overweight people still be sexy" he answered "No"). THIS SITE IS SO WEIRD. I HATE IT.

just block him and move on.

I know, I will do so... it's just more and more this is a useless endeavor for me it seems.

there is definitely a terrible signal/noise ratio but sometimes you meet cool people

Sometimes OKC messages are like when certain ILXors post in a thread that doesn't interest them simply for the sake of expressing disinterest. They're part of a whole mass of people that I will probably never understand.

I think I just recently figured out that people are such untoward assholes largely because it's a way of acting out their own insecurities in the face of their own romantic failure - a kind of defense mechanism to repair (or at least shelter) a frail ego damaged by one's own rejections / anxieties about intimacy / inability to honestly deal with their (unmet) need to be loved. The other day I was in a really sour mood, resenting the time I'd wasted on that site, and found myself being way more critical than I would be otherwise. Of course the difference is that I never would actually tell anyone these things without merit (and even then wouldn't bother, I hope). So, if it's any consolation, these people are pretty much assholes who can't come to terms with their own vulnerability and can only project their internalized dejection outward on others they perceive as vulnerable / want to assert dominance over. It's an artificial mastery that's far more sad than anything (it's actually really depressing when you think of it), but fuck that, life's too short to waste sympathy on these assholes. Site needs an SB system is what.

moodiness is a big part of the site for me, when i bother to visit it. sometimes it's like o man look at all these gorgeous ppl; no one would ever date me. very occasionally it's like have all of them scrubbed and brought to my tent.

but really, reaching out to a stranger who is presumably looking for love just to shit on them is the essence of assholery

While I'm still in my psychology armchair, I also just realized the extent by which I, a textbook narcissist, am way more interested in maintaining the miscellanea of my own profile than I am in that of other people. I mean, I'll spend forever rearranging the order of bands I like, and then in a second disqualify someone on the sight of "phish" or whatever. There's a real perversity by which I not only create my own ideal through my own self-presentation, but by which I project myself outwards onto a profile that I can thereby take as a kind of "perfect match." But the real perversity, of course, isn't that I just create some kind of ideal for myself, but that this ideal actually lets me direct (i.e. reflect) all my libidinal energy toward it. It's like going on the site let me find true love in myself, and that in itself is an effective (albeit incredibly problematic and superficial) source of pleasure and emotional fulfillment.

Anyways, I think that thinking about the perverse psychic mechanics behind online dating has become for me much more interesting than actually bothering with it.

just got on this ting

DELETE AND RUN

RRUUUNNNNNN!

I love that dating sites have made the internet as awful for a social phobic loser like myself as the real world used to be. Before you had to write a mini-CV and find a good picture of yourself, NOT TAKEN WITH A CELLPHONE!!!!!!! and with no zits showing (why is this still a challenge, I'm almost 40), I used to meet people all the time. Ah well.

But the real perversity, of course, isn't that I just create some kind of ideal for myself, but that this ideal actually lets me direct (i.e. reflect) all my libidinal energy toward it. It's like going on the site let me find true love in myself, and that in itself is an effective (albeit incredibly problematic and superficial) source of pleasure and emotional fulfillment.

Had not made this leap, verrry interesting.

find a good picture of yourself, NOT TAKEN WITH A CELLPHONE!!!!!!! and with no zits showing (why is this still a challenge, I'm almost 40)

Ha, I totally gave up on trying to front like I don't have full Talaxian wacky skin condition. I made it a rule not to be self-effacing on my profile but I did have a warning that I am a total pizza face. I mean, I am! It hasn't seemed to be a problem? OTOH I'm a girl. Acne shouldn't be that big a deal anyway – otoh I have a crush on Arthur Russel. Why am I still typing.,

otoh I have a crush on Arthur Russel.

a poor romantic prospect tbh

look, I know!

VP of Internet company just asked me back to her place to get high, ILXors know now: obscure musical knowledge brought me to this place

did she ask you about the brown sound y/n

Van Halen never even came up in conversation! our loss.

Going to lunch with a guy who also rides a scooter, which is a first. Are two scooters enough to establish THE RAINBOW CONNECTION>>?

Ok it would have been nice to know this guy was a STILL-MARRIED DAD.

Would also have been nice to know he looked like Ron Howard's brother but tbh that's way less of a thing.

Ok it would have been nice to know this guy was a STILL-MARRIED DAD.

christ.

Erk

Arthur Russell is/was fully crushworthy

but before anyone writes themselves off as acne-4-lyfe, get some of this from yr doctor: http://www.ehow.com/about_5156748_clindoxyl-gel.html

someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the scooters, the dreamers, the dads

after looking at a pic of Arthur Russell and thinking he looked like a farmer I went to wikipedia and found out he grew up in small-town Iowa. hmm, yup.

Oh, yuck. I'm sorry, Crabbs. That is ridiculous. I call out dumb OKC liars for being really dumb about their dumb lies right in my dumb profile. Maybe that's why all of the shlubby dudes pretending to be 85% of the women on that site have stopped contacting me.

While on the date I thought 'I should never go out on a date again with a guy who reaches out to me first,' just because they've been inhumanly bad every time. With this one being the worst (the guy was also crabby and boring). At the end I got a fortune cookie that said You'd rather be approached than do the approaching, and I thought, 'fuck you, fortune cookie.'