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

i'm my own 95% enemy.

so i'm about to head to america for a month and doing my yearly "what the hell i'll send out a few okcupid messages and see if i can't go out with an american girl again for a change" thing. as usual i start out skewing my messaging to ladies in my own age range, but once again it seems only the 25-and-under-crowd (if 2 responses makes a crowd) are even remotely interested in dating someone who isn't marriage material (ie. at least lives in the same friggin country)

i'm not really complaining i guess, but 30-somethings, where's your sense of adventure already? couldn't we just hit up some art galleries and hang out for a few weekends? does it always have to lead to a long-term-relationship?

i suppose my profile could just look better to the younger crowd, what with all the surfing and djing and not saying what my income is and stuff. or maybe it's something else?

People are just so busy... at least I am....

If I had more time to hang out with people who are not in fact romantically available, I'd have gone on a bike ride with Ian on Sunday, an invitation I had to turn down because of beef short ribs thawing in my kitchen. ;___;

Sense of ADVENTURE? Stop wasting people's time or use a site that sets you up with people for specific activities.

Hahaha, not to pile on, but why not hang out with 24-year-old American girls while you are in America? They'll want to do stuff, which presumably you also want to do while travelling. Your lack of responsibility while visiting another country kind of makes you an honorary twentysomething.

Everyone wants to do stuff--I love doing stuff! But my life is full of people I actually care about to do stuff with, is what I'm saying. If you're not romantically or geographically available for more than a one-off weekend, that's asking a lot.

On a dating website, to be clear. Presumably not on some website that had as its basis "Tourists temporarily in area to do stuff with."

Exactly! I spent a lot of time with twentysomethings when I lived in Argentina because they had more time to do whatever... the older folks had rather full lives to attend to.

Sense of ADVENTURE? Stop wasting people's time or use a site that sets you up with people for specific activities.

that's an awesome idea actually, i've heard of such things but never tried one. meetups.com or whatever is really anemic in bali unfortunately, but i'd totally try that in the states. so what's a site that sets me up with people for specific activities - did you mean meetup or is there another one you're thinking of? i googled "site that sets you up with people for specific activities" but didn't get a thing.

ps. for the record i'm in the states for 5 weekends not 1, and you guys might have noticed okcupid has options for "short term dating", "pen pals", and "casual sex" - these are the profiles i write to. also, if i've read "i travel a lot and i'd love to meet someone who can show me around a foreign country" i've read it a million times. perhaps there's a nice lady out there dying to visit the tropics but doesn't actually know anyone in indonesia?

also, i mean sorry to get defensive but i am actually feeling a wee bit piled on here so i'll go ahead and mention that okcupid introduced me to someone nice last visit home and we had a good time together - unfortunately she has a serious boyfriend now but i think i was a pleasant reboundy diversion for her right when she needed it, and everyone involved was cool with my temporary resident status.

i'm just finding that i'm not getting any responses from people my own age, and i wish i was. what, i'm not allowed to vent like everyone else on here?

you're allowed to vent

everyone else is allowed to respond

actually meetup.com looks pretty promising, thanks for the suggestion in orbit!

as a non-user i quite liked this piece on using okcupid http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n20/emily-witt/diary . maybe i'll start using. i feel i've long been on the verge but i don't know what it would take to tip me over.

That piece is pretty OTM.
The last guy I met from this, I think we're pretty much of a thing now. Weird because I told myself I would be a jet-setting single gal forever. Everyone probably gets that pretense for a while sometimes.

an ilxor suggested that I drop my [VERY PRESTIGIOUS, COMPLETELY MINDBLOWING] academic credentials somewhere in my profile. yay or nay? my instinct is nay because who would want to mess with someone who chose you based solely on that? but idk.

I vote no. If you can convey your excitement about your subject, that's fine, but 'credentials'?....

There is an OKC question that's just "do you have a degree from an Ivy or [couple other schools]" Y/N, prob at least some people in larger cities have that set on "accept only Y answers pls."

I quit okcupid!! Not because I found a boyfriend, though. It was just depressing me.

Quit quit or disabled your profile?

I'm finding checking OkCupid has become really useful and even fulfilling because it leaves me feeling really content with my involuntary celibacy. Like, I might be feeling lonely, but half an hour of checking profiles later and I feel totally reassured.

Left unsaid: you were browsing ilxors' profiles.

Stream of consciousness self debating! Great first date (she mentioned wanting to go to sold out gig), mediocre second date, horrible follow up phone call. Now I actually got two passes for the gig, do I tell her one of them has her name on it? What if she already got in as well?

Bad idea? Admit chances are low, probably gonna be so awkward even if she says yes.

Sure, just float it out to her as an option, all casual-like. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If she acts weird, move on.

Are you interested in her? If so, offer. If not, don't. If she turns up at the same place when you haven't offered, who cares? If you're not interested, you're not interested.

Well I got my first-ever IM today. To ask about a quote on my profile. So that at least answers the question "is this thing on?"

Well I'm off to meet my destiny. On a Sunday morning at a John Cage conference no less.

I was outside my home late last nite cleaning the gutters and drains in preparation for the hurricane that hits today, when an attractive young woman walked up to me and struck up a conversation - she lived down my street but I didn't know her. About five minutes later she gets a phone call, tells the caller she'll be right there, and then bolted away. I sure hope this wasn't one of those fake-call things they have to give ppl excuses to break off a real-life convo.

so did she want help cleaning her gutters and drains or what

that was the first thing i asked her, since she first wanted to know if i was the maintenance guy (the landlord all but ignores the place). She didn't want help.

My okc luck is holding, the one I thought was a long shot is the best thing I have ever had going. No clue how that happened, it certainly wasn't my doing.

Next date: Wednesday. Got that 'no clue who you are' feeling, but he's a 95% match or something and didn't actively piss me off in his profile.

It's a start.

She wouldn't have to do a fake call to exit in this situation, so it was probably real.

the 'search' function brings up so many people I had never seen before

Thread title strangely a propos: I've just been broken up with. Very unexpectedly, I must say.

Shit. I was getting very happy for you. I'm sorry.

ugh sorry

Did they say anything that made any kind of sense, or, as is so often the case, not?

That he's not getting any younger (!!) and the more we got close enough to have feelings, the more he felt like the feelings that should be there weren't. Which is strange, because he hasn't shown that at all.

Nngh.

Strike two for tall, cold, cerebral editors who like slumming it with someone with literary pretensions but who is actually not complicated/cold enough for them.

well it's for the best to cut it off short? sorry to hear :(

It would have been for the best if he hadn't brought me presents from his vacation and called me sweet names in other languages as recently as yesterday. In some amount of time I will find it laughable that he just said "I'm not getting any younger, and..." but not quite yet.

aw, that's awful. I'm sorry.

xp - I already found that part laughable, or at least that phrase laughable, on your account. Certainly too early for you to, though :-(

There is sometimes something 'off' about the cold, cerebral types who nevertheless enjoy the sweet-name-calling. It can be a strange juxtaposition.

How old is this dude, anyway? You are totally complicated enough! And who wants to be cold?

Whatever he said cannot be taken at face value considering that he brought you presents from vacation and called you sweet names...yesterday. All I've learned about this person is that he can't read or communicate his own feelings very well. Still, I'm sorry :(

That he's not getting any younger (!!) and the more we got close enough to have feelings, the more he felt like the feelings that should be there weren't. Which is strange, because he hasn't shown that at all.

Ugh wtf, L thats exactly what the guy I was seeing said to me!?? Tho, thats turned out to be a lot more complicated and is still a weird ongoing.. weird thing.

Ah shit dude, sorry to hear that!

I know, Trayce! I thought of you. What a weird thing to say. If you like a person and you like doing the same things and you like their thoughts and comments about stuff, and vice versa, why not just keep doing things you like together? It's obviously not really about not getting any younger, it's about feelings and how to have them.