Getting you through your Adventures in Dateland

As am I sure you all know, when you are out and about on the dating scene you need a drink every now and then.  For me it is mostly now, and rarely then.  Generally, I stick to red wine but will be adding a new drink to my roster.  I recently found the Francis Ford Coppola Sofia cans of champagne! He created them for Sofia’s wedding years ago.  Although her and Spike didn’t last, her handy single servings of champagne have lived on.  It is perfect for when you want a glass of champagne but don’t want to drink waste a whole bottle.  I was constantly searching for them, only to have most liquor stores look at me like I had three heads.  Well, I am happy to say the drought of champagne in a can is finally over. I found them over the weekend and the lovely store in Crossgates Mall For the Love of Wine.  And even though it was advertised as a great picnic treat, the very helpful employees assured me it is stocked year round.  I did refrain myself and just buy one pack, but I am sure I will be making a return trip.  

Not only are they pink, but they come with tiny pink straws! It is like adult juice boxes.

Amazing Email of the Day

From: XXXXXXX

Date Received:  February 22

Subject: (none)

Wanna rock out on some guitar hero?

 

My first initial thought was ‘How does he know I like guitar hero?’ But then again, who doesn’t?  My next thought was ‘this is a man who says ‘pshaw’ to the common social mores of match.com’. None  of the standard ‘I liked your profile’ or ‘I would love to talk to you more’.  Nope. He is skipping all of that by and going straight to the guitar hero playing.  Would you be surprised to learn that this was the same man who complimented on my chest?  I guess he was just trying a different approach.

Getting to know you

Everyone sing along with me “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you, getting to like you, getting to hope you like me..”  I have been humming this tune all day today.  Why, you ask?  Well, I will tell you.

Between crazy work  schedules, weekend trips and friend’s weddings the Cowboy and I have not had an opportunity to see each other since our first date.  In an earlier post I mentioned that the Cowboy was using the phone more than any other man I had dated.  It is still a pleasant surprise to see that as a result of our crazy schedules, we are talking on the phone even more.  And I have to admit, I like it.  I should have prefaced this by saying, in general, I am not a huge phone talker. Don’t get me wrong, there are friends that I can talk to for hours on end (I am looking at you, N.), but we have known each other for so long that the conversation is always easy.  When it is with a person you are just getting to know, I think my fears lie in the awkward silence.   Can’t you just hear that dead air hanging between the two of you? Ahhh! It gives me the shivers…but, I digress.

Back to the Cowboy.  I feel like the phone is allowing me to really get to know him and get to be his friend before we jump into the crazy dating thing.  And given my past experiences, I cannot say enough how nice it is to have the opportunity to do this.  The last few people I have gone out with have been strict emails and texts only. It always seemed like there was a rush to quickly meet and meet again.  I appreciate that this is going slower.  And I am learning to overcome my fear of awkward silences or maybe we are learning to fill them during our talks.

Amazing Question of the Day

If you are not familiar with Eharmony, I will describe it for you in a nutshell.  No, you don’t instantly match with your soul mate and go straight to production on your commerical while ‘This Will Be an Everlasting Love” plays in the background.  I just want to clear that up right there.  Basically you pay a large sum of money for their time tested compatibility scale rates you “matches” you with men that you share 29 dimensions of compatibility with.  So far, I have been lucky if a match and I have half a dimension going for us.  Again, in my quest to be open and receptive to this online dating, I try to answer everyone that requests communication with me.

 Eharmony places the control of the process in the woman’s hands, which is nice.  You go through guided communication where you and your match first answer multiple choice questions and then send each other things you “must have” and “can’t stand” and then you move onto short answer/essay questions and this is how I came to get this amazing question of the day.

I knew this particular gentlemen was verbal and that was a welcome change.  However, I was a bit turned off when I read the essay questions that sent me. On Eharmony you have the option to send preset questions like “Why did you joing eharmony?”, “What do you look for in a partner?” etc. Pretty standard dating site stuff.  You also have the option to compose your own questions.  Let it be known that I have never sent my own questions nor has anyone every written therir own for me.  I now understand why.  Something about this feels more similar to my grad school work than dating. 

1. Describe one experience that changed how you think or feel. Why did it cause this change? If there hasn’t been one – explain that instead!

2. List the ten books that have effected you the most. Pick one and explain how and why. (Do you think he would accept Bridget Jones’ Diary as an answer?)

3. How much to you find yourself filtering passions, thoughts, feelings, etc. due to external norms in a relationship? Feel free to run with this how you want.

I understand he is trying to dig deeper and not just have generic questions and answers, but emailing someone that you have yet to meet shouldn’t be that much work.

Zsa Zsa Zsu

Even though I have yet to mention it on this blog, I like most other women my age, have a slight obsession with Sex and the City.  And by slight, I mean I have seen all of the episodes more than I can count, went down to NYC to celebrate the opening weekend of the movie, bought the ‘love’ keychain, and constantly reference the show in my daily life even though it has been off the air for over 5 years.  One of my favorite episodes “I Love a Charade” coined one of my all time favorite phrases/theories.  The Zsa Zsa Zsu.  To loosely quote Carrie she described the zsa zsa zsu as that feeling you get when you are with someone who give you butterflies in your stomach and you not only love them but you got to have them.  She had to ask the question “is a relationship a relationship without the zsa zsa zsu?”   

Not exclusively because of this, I use the zsa zsa zsu as a barometer when I am on a date with someone. I may be naïve, but I like to feel it right from the get go.    It doesn’t have to be the full fledged zsa zsa zsu, but I would like a few butterflies in my tummy.  But, I have to wonder am I ending things with guys too soon just because I don’t feel that zsa zsa zsu?  Or is zsa zsa zsu something that can grow and change over time?  And what if the zsa zsa zsu goes bad and become the zsa zsa eew?

Group Date as First Date

I am not sure if this is common, but on Saturday night, I went out on my first date with the Cowboy with his friends.  He had told me beforehand that they would be here, so it was not like he I showed up to meet him and 4 other people were there.  

When he suggested meeting up with him and his friends for drinks as our first official meeting, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it.   One one hand, it could take the pressure off of the first date by having other people to work off of.  But on the other hand, I was nervous that if I didn’t pass the test of the friends our first date would be our last.  I have been trying to go into all of my dating with as open a mind as possible and I figured it would be another experience to put down in the books. 

I am very happy to say that this set up for a first date worked out a lot better than I thought it was.  It definitely made it a more relaxed environment and it was fun to see the Cowboy interact with his closest friends.  I think it helped that his friends were all very down to earth and welcomed me into their circle.  They even gave Cowboy and I private time to talk and get to know each other a little more.  I am not sure if a date like this would work for everyone in every situation, but it was definitely a great experience for me.  Hopefully, I will have the chance to hang out with them again. I will keep you posted on that.

Phone or Texting?

VS.        

I have noticed that no one likes to talk on the phone anymore especially when it comes to dating.  All of the guys I have talked to and gone out with have communicated through text only.  Don’t get me wrong, I love texting, but can anything really replace hearing someone’s voice?  Particularly when you are getting ready to meet someone for the first time. For starters, I think it helps you see if you have some chemistry offline and if you do, it builds that anticpation for the first time you meet.  I realize it is not the be-all end-all of a read on chemistry.  I have gone out on dates with men who would have failed the phone test (and rightly so) and some who may have failed but who I had great chemistry with.   It is not a perfect barometer and it wouldn’t be a deal breaker in going on a date with someone, but a phone call definitely helps.

Texts are great for checking in or a flirty hello, but as the basis for a whole relationship? I don’t think so.  The last guy I was seeing, Manboy, and I only texted during the 6 weeks were dating.  He called me once during that time to tell me he would meet me at my car outside of bar-which would have been more of an appropriate text.  I have to admit all of the texting got tiresome.  I would much rather have spoken to him on the phone.  Overall, I am surprised how much this is not an option.  I assumed it went email, phone, meet, marriage, baby.

I finally “un-ruled” the cowboy last night and we had a great, hour-long conversation on the phone.  I am hoping that our phone chemistry carries over when we are face to face which should be very soon…

Do ‘The Rules’ Really Work?

Do The Rules Work?

I am slightly ashamed to say that I read The Rules.  I took it out of the library, so at least I didn’t buy it.  I was curious to see what it had to say as I began navigating the waters of online dating.  Should I be embarrassed to admit I understood it a little?  I mean, I didn’t think it was the right thing for me to practice, but on one hand it made a lot of sense. We always want what we can’t have, right?  It reminds me of this pair of Nine West Tinao peep toe shoes that I saw at the Nine West outlet in Manchester, VT.  I couldn’t have them because I didn’t have enough money to pay for them (these were my pre-overdraft days).  I reasoned that as soon as payday came along a few days later, I would order those puppies online and all would be right with the world.  Well, my paycheck comes and I cannot find these shoes on ninewest.com.  I checked ebay. I even went back up to Manchester and they were gone.  It was like a shoe dream that I had conjured up.  A mirage in the desert of a day of intense shopping.   And can you guess what happened?  I wanted those shoes more than anything else I ever wanted in my life.  I thought about them when I wore certain outfits or when I pressed my nose against the window of our Nine West store in Albany.  I first saw these shoes almost 2 years and still to this day I will google them or search ebay.  In reality, I would have worn them for a bit and they would have been cast aside for the next favorite pair that came into my life.  I would certainly say the rules came into play here, albeit on shoe shopping.   It only made sense that it would apply to dating as well. 

This week, unbeknownst to me,  I practiced the rules on a guy.  This is someone I had met on Match.  I will call him Cowboy.  We had emailed back and forth for a while a few months ago. Then I started seeing someone and let Cowboy’s emails kind of fell to the wayside.  I heard from him shortly after the person I was seeing and I stopped seeing each other.  We spoke on the phone a few times and I defnitely had a good feeling about him.  As soon as we were making plans to finally meet, he disappeared.  He reappeared a couple of weeks later claiming a hectic work schedule and he still wanted to get together.  Well, about a week or two ago the same thing happened.  Sensing a pattern, I was over it really quickly.  Onto the next match!

Just a couple of days ago a call, with a phone number I didn’t recognize, came through on my cell phone. I answered it and was surprised to hear Cowboy’s voice.  As I was about to sit down to dinner, I only kept the conversation to a brief minute, telling him I would call him the next night.  The next night, I ended up with plans and didn’t have the opportunity to call him.  Sure enough he called me.  And the following day he emailed me.  It was then I kept thinking maybe the rules I do work.  I might have to do more investigation into this…

Amazing Email of the Day

 

Did you die?‏

From:	R. (XXXXXXXXXX@gmail.com)
Sent:	Tue 8/04/09 6:43 PM
To:	Johanna C (XXXXXXXX@hotmail.com)

 

What happened to you?

This man had not heard from me in a whopping two days.  I contemplated simply responding that yes, in fact, I had died.  But I ended up just letting him sit with the fact that he sent that email to someone he hadn’t heard from in two days. 

First Dates

Is there anything better than a first date?  Before you call me crazy, really think about it.  I know there are the nerves of meeting someone for the very first time.  Or the fear that they will not show up or run screaming in the other direction when they clamp eyes on you. Or the worry that the date may be boring and you will have nothing to talk about.  All valid reasons for why first dates may not be someone’s favorite. 

I choose to look at the other side of first dates.

The anticipation of finally meeting that person you have been talking and emailing with.  The hope that this person could play an important role in your life.  The joke or story that wouldn’t have been the same over email.  The new outfit you bought to wear.  All of the wonderful what ifs that run through your mind the hours and minutes before you finally meet.

I have been on my fair share of first dates.  Some good, some bad, and only one ugly.  I wouldn’t regret going on a single one.  I have met people whose path I may have never crossed and people that reminded me of good friends.  Because of first dates, I finally made it to that new restaurant I had been dying to try and was introduced to great a new wine.   I learned what to do and what not to do on a date. But, probably most importantly I discovered that I enjoy these first dates and the men I get to spend an hour or two with.  So far some have gone on to second dates, some stopped at the first, and one even led to a relationship.  And as I get ready to move onto my Is next first date, I let all of those hopes run through me and brace myself for the next ride.