The RN: To Makeup or Not to Makeup?

So you probably thought this was going to be a post about fighting with your date and whether or not to get back together with him. But actually it's not about that at all. It's about wearing makeup. My whole life I've basically been a cross between these:

The Tomboy	The Bookworm	The Nerd

Which basically means my idea of putting makeup on consists of throwing a little bit of mascara on my blonde eyelashes and maybe a little cover-up on any zits/red spots then calling it good. In all honesty when I put my OK Cupid profile none of my pictures had me wearing makeup. The Boy Next Door had to suggest I put a picture where I was dressed up. It didn't even occur to me put up a picture with makeup. My sister has been yelling ... uh ... hounding ... uh ... suggesting I wear make up since about 1992.

Over about the past year, The Window Shopper and The Dirty Little Secret have been slowing wearing me down on the makeup topic. It started with subtle hints about me actually wearing some and progressed to me be attacked in restaurants and bars with makeup from their purses (love you guys :).

So eventually The Window Shopper, convinced me to allow her to go through all my makeup and throw away almost anything she wants. Listen, I like my mascara! We haven't quite gotten around to her going through my makeup, but The Window Shopper and The Dirty Little Secret did take me to the makeup store and get me to buy new basics. The throwing out of the old makeup is supposed to come with a lesson on how to actually use the new make up, you know because I don't use enough. Guess we'll have to see how that goes.

The RN: Eating Worms

So, I started writing this post in November. Well I created the post and started thinking about what I wanted to write. But, then life happened. I hurt my foot pretty bad in the half marathon in Miami. Not as bad what some of my friends have been through, but still one of the worst injuries I've had.

Then in December, it felt like my life was starting to get out of control and it hasn't gotten back on track yet. The Marine (not sure I mentioned him here - he was pre-online and the first after my ex) started texting me and trying to convince me to visit him in ... some where in one of the Carolina's I think. I was like we haven't spoken in over 4 months and you want me to visit you? Um, maybe. But as it turned out that didn't quite work out. More on that later. Maybe.

Within a 4-week period during late December early January, I visited Reno, NV; CT; FL with CT; and Las Vegas. Well that was exhausting. I think I'm still recovering. More on all that later. Probably.

What I really wanted to say in this blog, was The Gentleman is both crazy and right on the money. As women enter their mid thirties there is a shift in the way they are treated. This effect is not only present in dating but in many areas of their lives. This is the age where society (both men and women) believe women should be craving families.

Women are expected to start feeling real pressure from their biological clocks. Other women start to judge when they find out you went to the club instead of looking for a husband, "Aren't you getting lonely yet?", "If you wait much longer, you could have trouble during your pregnancies.", "When are you going to settle down?". Men aren't much help either, they think women in their mid thirties are all trying to "trap" husbands so they can have a bunch of kids before they get too old to able to.

To this I say, Fuck You. I don't want kids. That is the truth, but no one actually believes me. I know; I see it when they talk to me. I see thoughts like "Her clock just hasn't hit hard yet.", "She'll get there. Soon.", and "She just hasn't found the right man yet." flash across their faces. It's okay, they're entitled to their opinions. Thing is it affects my life, in many ways, that you don't believe me. In dating it means men tend away from you since they aren't sure they're ready for a family. At work it means managers tend to shy away from giving you too much responsibility - What if she leaves to have kids? We need someone stable in that position.

Yeah, it sucks. But that doesn't mean you have to let it get you down. There are options; you don't have to give in. The real kicker is for most women these perceptions aren't wrong. Their mid thirties is when a lot of women really start hearing their biological clocks and they do want to settle down and have families. And, because that's true they start behaving differently than they did in their twenties: "Should I really be wearing this out?", "Am I too old pull this off?", and "Is this okay when I'm in my thirties?". If you are asking those questions the answer is: yes, you are too old. But not because of a number, but because of where you are in life. You have moved past the club stage and into the I-want-a-family stage. There's nothing wrong with that, but expect people to treat you like that's where you are in life.

For me? I'm handling it by being super thankful I look nothing like my age and acting like I'm in my twenties. And being committed to acting like I'm in my twenties. In short, I'm avoiding it in the dating world by having some really fortunate genetics and being immature. And I'm having a blast! If only it was that easy to avoid in my career, but that's not what this blog is about.

In the mean time, I'm going to continue to eat worms and be glad I took a baseball bat to my biological clock - there's no way that thing will ever start ticking.

Yes! Life is fun; enjoy it!

As the Clock Ticks, The Worm Turns

One of the inevitable tensions of online dating is the traditional push-pull of gender dynamics. As so many of us already know, straight women traditionally are the gatekeepers of dating.  Straight men pursue; women get pursued.  Only the highest-status men get to choose between a wide variety of women suitors.  In general, men aren't constantly fending off approaches from  women looking to hook up with them.

Some of these tendencies are equally evident in online dating.  Women that aren't hideous get tons of messages.  Men generally don't get a lot of messages by comparison.  Women who are average-looking or above get so many messages that their inboxes can't support them.  Even if they wanted to give every guy a chance by reading his profile and looking at his personality, they can't.  There are just too many suitors and not enough time.

The somewhat ironic effect of all that attention is that it leads some women to treat men online the same way they complain that men treat them.  For instance, I've received some very generic opening messages from women online.  One-word introductions.  Or one sentence.  Or a brief snippet that doesn't indicate any knowledge of my profile whatsoever.

It's a bit of an extension of what men and women experience offline.  The offline stereotype  is that most women work on their attractiveness (usually in the physical sense), live fulfilling lives (hopefully), and wait for 'the right guy' to come along.  By contrast, men work on their careers, accomplishments, and hobbies in the hopes of eventually possessing the cachet to go forth and woo 'the right woman'. Both generalizations are kludgy, overly simplistic, and leave massive gaps in the full story.

This post will fill one of those gaps.

There's a famous saying: "Youth is wasted on the young."  It's a saying that is way, way older than any of us.  And there's a very good reason that women past a certain age repeat this saying a lot more than men do.  For men, age usually brings career advancement, stability, and (hopefully) maturity. As men get more experienced, many make the transition from walking, talking id/libido monsters to becoming somewhat more sophisticated creatures that know how to please women.  These are all qualities that many women tend to find more attractive in men as they get older.  I've found that my own stock has not fallen with age; if anything, it has risen.

By contrast, age usually cripples a woman's appeal to men.  Men tend to be much more focused on looks than women are.  More specifically, men have been programmed by evolution and socialization to find youthful looks beautiful. Most damaging of all, despite pop-culture portrayals to the contrary, most men looking for long-term female partners want one who will bear children.  Since pregnancy becomes riskier to both the mother and baby as a woman approaches 40, many single women who indulged in the selectivity that traditional male/female sex dynamics afforded them suddenly discover their desirability begins to plummet once they hit their mid-30s compared to men their age.  Unfortunately, there's no way to reverse the decline in appeal that age burdens women with: at the end of the day, most people -- including most men -- are either breeders or programmed to think like breeders.

Lest readers accuse me of exaggeration, data bears this out.  Here's a choice quote from that link: "I made these calculations in the chart below, and we can see that women have more pursuers than men until age 26, but thereafter a man can expect many more potential dates than a woman of the same age. At the graph's outer edge, at age 48, men are nearly twice as sought-after as women."  

My oldest female friends have experienced this shift firsthand, both online and offline. They'll meet a guy who seems interested, but who backs away once their age is revealed. Relatives will suggest they initially lie about their age so as not to scare off potenital suitors. This is very real.

Thus, each gender faces shifting obstacles during the (straight) pursuit of an intimate relationship. For the most part, men have to pursue women to earn their affections. But as women age into their 30s, this dynamic falls apart: the most desirable men in their age group have growing long-term options, even as women's decent options steadily - and irreversibly - dwindle.  As the clock ticks, the worm turns.

The RN: Sorting out the Details

So, after the craziness of the last weekend in Sep I only went on two more dates in the first half of October. I was training for a Half Marathon, so I was a bit busier than normal. I also decided the boycott of OKC would last for all of October, so I'm almost ready to entertain logging back in. Besides as I mentioned at the end of the last blog I mentioned that there were 4 guys I was kind of interested in.

The first guy is Date #3 now known as Connecticut (or CT). We had a really good first date, that lasted longer than expected in a really good way. We have been texting and talking on phone (which I hate to do) since that weekend. Why haven't I seen him again? Our first date was on his last day in town before his work assignment was over and he had to go to home to Connecticut. I'm actually going to visit him in CT in Nov. Yes, our date went that well.

On the Thursday before the Half, I did manage to go a second date with Date #6, henceforth known as Baseball Guy (or BG) since our first date was a baseball game. I wasn't really sure about this guy after the first date, but I thought I'd give him a second chance. He took me to an out-of-the-way restaurant just because it was Gluten Free (yes, I generally eat gluten free, no allergies, just for my health). We had a nice dinner, but I still wasn't really sure how a I felt about him. Then I gave him a third chance the weekend after the Half. We went to the movies and then he made me dinner. Which he had to modify because of my food allergies. I had to give him props for remembering that I was allergic to some foods and then asking me about what he could put in the dinner. So even though he chose a girlie movie (yes, my friends had to talk me into being okay with seeing "Pitch Perfect"), he did make a really good a dinner and the evening progressed ... well, really well.

The third guy is Date #5 aka Late Guy. On the Tuesday after the Half we went on a third date; dinner near my place at a bar that I suggested. What I didn't know was that it was trivia night there. So we sort played along, but it was super complicated and we weren't doing that well so we didn't turn in our answer cards at all. I'm kind of on the fence about this guy. He's really nice and I have a great time when we see each other, but there's no real spark. He hasn't even tried to kiss me yet, but I have such fun and I love our conversations. I guess I'll just have to see how this one plays out. I don't want to lead him on unnecessarily, but I am still having fun seeing him.

The fourth guy was Mr. Fascinating now forever known as Fish Face. This date went about the same as the first one, the conversation was good and the food was, well, a little interesting, but still eatable. It didn't really start to go downhill until the drive back. Then somehow we got talking about superheros, which was fine with me until he started asking which ones I thought were hotter from the summer movies. Um, that got awkward really fast.

Then, after that conversation was finally over, he walked me to my door and asked to use the restroom. Which seemed a little odd since he'd already gone 3 times during dinner, but maybe something was going on with him. Anyway, then he asked for a tour, which I didn't want to give because my roommates were in bed and I didn't want to be loud and I kind of just wanted him to leave. Then the conversation got even more awkward when he wanted me to hit him in the hand. Which I really didn't want to do; seriously who wants to actually, really hit their date? Not me. Then it got even weirder and more uncomfortable when he said I must really know how to hit and that he had previously been "beaten up by a girl". At this point my only thought was, "Oh, dear god, this means drama. Get out! Get out now!" And if all of that wasn't enough this, of all the times, is when he decides to move in for a kiss. I swear he had a crazy fish face that looked some thing like this:

I really don't know how my entire face didn't get wet. It wasn't a terrible kiss, but by that time I really didn't want to be kissing him. I did my best to get him out the door as soon as possible after that. Thankfully he only sent one more text after that date and it didn't get anymore awkward. So he is officially off the list.

So, as of now, I have plans to see all three guys still on the list in the next 2 weeks. And I've been off OKC long enough that logging in again actually seems like it could be fun. Maybe I should let The Window Shopper and The Peach go through and screen all the guys messaging me so I don't end up on another date like that one. On the other hand, I do have three guys that I'm still talking to that I really like. At least one of which I was warned not to message back by both of them.

TWS, Day 1

Surprise twist! This morning I woke up with this song stuck in my head:




"She put a bag on my head -- still counts!"

The RN: 5 Days x 6 Dates

Some how, over the course of 5 days at the end of September I managed to go on 6 dates. I've decided that I'm never doing that again. It was really stressful and not worth it. I had 5 first dates and one second date, in the retrospect of a couple weeks, I guess three of them went pretty well. If you had asked me right after, I would have said one went really well and two were okay. The other three were pretty much disasters.

Date #1: On a Thursday night, I met a guy at a place not far from my place (for the first time) and we had a pleasant conversation, but there was like a negative connection. He acted way older than what his profile said he was and was clearly looking for something that my "I swear I'm a twenty-something, drunken-ass-hole" ways were not going to be compatible with at all. For reference see rejection letter one.

Date #2: On a Friday afternoon, we met near my hair salon (so sue me, had I already made the hair appointment 8 weeks prior) and we didn't really have a plan. We walked around looking at buildings since he used to be interested in architecture (yes, I agree very Ted Mosby), still it was kind of fun. We talked for a few hours, but nothing really came of it and he was a smoker so ickiness level was super high. We haven't spoken since then and I'm totally okay with that.

Date #3: On a Friday evening, after going home and changing into evening date clothes (yes, evening gets nicer clothes). We met near his "place" since there was a restaurant he wanted to try, so why not? I'd been out in that area before, so we met for dinner at a place neither of us ever been. And it turned out pretty awesome. We got drinks while we waited for a table and he didn't even blink when ordered one of the house special drinks, an Earl Grey Julep, which was awesome. I think I need to start trying more bourbon drinks. Then we had dinner, which was interesting to order because it was a cross between tapas and family style, made all the more interesting by him being pseudo-vegetarian and me having vegetable allergies. After dinner we were having such a good time that we went to another place for more drinks and dessert. And then I may have forgotten to go home that night, possibly making me a little late on Saturday afternoon ;)

Date #4: On a Saturday afternoon, I met Late Guy (yep, The Window Shopper, has rubbed off on me too) for a second date and a movie. He somehow got squeezed in between two other plans this time as well. The first being a manicure and pedicure (don't laugh it's probably the most girlie thing I do, plus, you know, having to keep oneself in dating shape) and previous plans to see Lewis Black with a bunch of friends. Regardless of being fit in, the date went well and I got to see The Expendables 2. So, no complaints.

Date #5: On a Sunday afternoon, I met a guy (you only get a nickname if you last past date 1, maybe date 2) for some supposedly good Mexican food. Anyone who has spent any time out West knows that DC sucks for good, authentic Mexican food. This guy had spent several years in San Deigo, so had the proper appreciation for hole-in-the-wall Mexican and was on a quest to find some around DC. We did alright, but it still wasn't quite what we were hoping for, neither the food nor the company, leading to rejection letter two.

Date #6: On a Monday evening, we met for a double date with one of his girl friends (note the space) for a Nationals -v- Phillies game. I wasn't sure about meeting up with his friend and her boyfriend, but it was just one game and a guy from OkC, so if it went poorly I could always bail. The first issue was in our messages he said "Go Nats!", and I've only ever attended Nats games with Phillies fans  so all my normal games clothes say "Phillies". But I managed to find a nerdy (trust me this was the kind of date for nerdy) t-shirts that was close to Nats blue and some jeans. The date turned out alright and he kissed me when he dropped me off at my house.

After that weekend, I officially decided to boycott logging into OkC. If you are keeping track (I won't blame you if you aren't) at this point in the dating saga I have had dates with 4 guys that I kind of like and they are all contacting me through other means. So I haven't logged in since the end of this weekend. (The last time I logged in was to copy the text for the LSS blog.) The first three weeks of October will have to wait for another blog.

TWS Catching Up, Month 10

I saw each guy – MH and RH – one more time before I never saw them again. It was a week in the books for me: I had three dates that week. This was a month ago. One was Wednesday with a random guy that went well enough but I think we were both fine it didn’t go anywhere. Or maybe it was the fact that he kissed me at the end of the date when I literally ran away into a cab. (To be fair, I was drunk and forgot it was Wednesday and cabs are not at all hard to find at 1am on Wednesdays in downtown DC. Whoops.) Oh well, he had this weird way of reminding me of my brother-in-law anyway. And worked from home, had all married friends and I’m fairly certain only went out with girls for something to do…and nookie.

Friday, I ditched RH to go to a free concert in Baltimore with a friend of mine. Instead, I offered him Saturday. After an 11 mile training run, I was just about to hop in the shower to get ready when he texted that his friend fell and he had to take her to the hospital. He’s a clumsy person. That was fine with me; I went to The Nurse’s house party. He later called to apologize for cancelling, which I said was fine, but what wasn’t fine was having hung up on my earlier. His frustration with his stuff is not mine, nor do I intend for it to affect me. And I fucking hate being hung up on. After he went to hang up again, I called him out on it and he quickly apologized after I offered my brief explaination of why that was unacceptable. Lesson of Note: Men respond well when you speak to them like children in a soft, subtle voice. So I quickly masterminded a plan and told him that we could go out tomorrow afternoon to Frisbee golf and maybe that would make him feel better.

Here’s the thing: I just really wanted to Frisbee golf. It really had very little to do with his day gone wrong. And I had already made plans to play that afternoon with MH.

So I texted MH and started to talk about the next day’s plans, slyly suggesting that we meet that evening so that he could watch his football team play at 1 and frolfing wouldn’t interfere. He agreed and in 20 minutes I seemed like the hero to both guys.

I just got way too good at this.

However, that Sunday was the last time I saw either boy. MH decided I was “fucking with him” because he waffled about inviting himself to sleep over my house and going home. Eventually I suggested – after he again said, “I’m just going to stay” – that he just go home and would thank me tomorrow. He got flustered and I didn’t much care, but gave him a kiss (or 2 – remember: “I like kissing la la la”) upon departure to which he responded “Are you just fucking with me”. So, I didn’t hear from him again and wasn’t particularly interested so he gave himself the boot and I’m totally okay with that. I didn’t hear from him again until last night – exactly one month later – when my phone decided to call him because it somehow went to a voicemail he left me on that night. I hung up quickly, but it had connected and he texted me. Awkward.

RH just got busy. And I got busy. And there were a few incoming texts from him over the weeks saying he wanted a “reunion”, but nothing has come to fruition. So for now, that’s dead in the water; which I’m also totally okay with, however leaving me sexless still.

Otherwise the Universe has been cockblocking me. The last full moon offered me 3.5 men to take home with me. I choose one. One that had shared my bed back in February; one a stranger; and one the roommate of some jerk I'd stopped dating last year. The Bed Share was looking mighty fine: I picked him. He paid for the cab to my place and making out in front of my house, decided then to come clean that he has a girlfriend. And so, I remain temporary celebate. Damn Universe: It's up to something. 

So, currently there’s a new guy. The OkC algorithm says we're a 96% match: My highest yet. We texted for weeks before going out last week. I tried to convince him to bring me waffles when I woke up hungover on my birthday from festivities the night before, 10 days before we met. I now call him Waffle Guy (WG), even though he brought me homemade ice cream on our first date; I got to pick the flavor, because I had ankle injury (and still ran) and we are in agreement that ice cream makes everything better. It was like an edible trophy…from a stranger. He dropped about $200 on dinner. That check sat there for a while, but there was no way I was going anywhere near it. We saw each other again four days later last Saturday - for about 14 hours. I think have been in contact every day. He has his shit together. He treats his mother well. But he has four chiuauas. FOUR. And they are assholes. And they don’t like me. I’m not sure I could get over that enough to re-enter the loop’o’sex – we are now entering month 10 - but I suppose time will tell.