It’s been a while since I posted any strange dating emails. A few years in fact. What can I say, I’ve been busy with other things. Not to mention that I have gotten better sorting out the dysfunctional ones. But sometimes you let your guard down and one slips through.
This one is one of my own, it happened today, it’s fresh in my mind. Said mind still trying to figure out
“what happened?”
This particular woman responds to my profile on match.com. It’s a somewhat expanded version of this blog posting.
Oddly enough just the other day I was talking to another lady prior to our first date. She mentioned that she had been so entertained by my profile that she printed it out and brought
it to dinner with friends. It seems that I was the hit of the dinner party. The profile was read out loud to much laughter. In fact one of the single guys there decided it was time to update his own profile and a couple of the (married) women said that she better meet me. That meeting has been tentatively scheduled for tomorrow.
Anyway I get this first contact email from (let’s call her) J in response to my obviously witty, fun and hilarious profile.
Steve
Hi I love your profile- too cute. 🙂 If I let you subnet my network, then will it be as good for you as it would be for me? 🙂 You have a sweet sense of humor. You are also right about the “criteria”. I love that you ride a Clyde. My ride is a tall half-Arabian sweetheart that would love to do a trick horse show for you personally. He gives good kisses and hugs and will bow for you too. He does lots of tricks. My mini does some pretty neat tricks too. Hope to hear back from you. I know I am a bit older than you, but not is my heart. I feel very good about myself, and want to meet a very happy person. I ride English and dressage too. I used to live and work in Austin. [I have family in Austin]. Most of my favorite horse owning friends live there also. My name is [removed]
. M c # is [removed] My home and busness # is [removed] Bet you are
so much fun. Thanks , J
OK she did a couple of things right. She tied some part of my profile into her first contact email: the line in my profile offering to subnet your network and that I ride horses. Yeah the line about a horse giving hugs and kisses is a little strange but no more so than some of the others I have seen. What is extremely strange is that she offers up her full name and two phone numbers. Hell it is not unusual for a woman to give you only a made up first name only and insist that she call you with caller ID turned off.
But I ignore all of this. Why? Because I don’t do long distance dating. She lives in a town over 3 ½ hours away.
J,
thanks for your nice note but you live too far away.
Steve
For some reason, lately, I have been getting a lot of email from women too far away. I never have figured out why. At the top of every profile it gives your acceptable dating range:
[…]within 25 miles of Austin, Texas, United States
Not surprisingly I get a response to that. Usually it is an “I understand, thanks for responding.” type of email but not this one.
Hi Steve. I visit my [relative] in Austin occasionally. I was wondering
if you would like to meet next time I am there? THere are so many
wonderful places to eat and to go there. It would be nice to see your
handsome face inperson. I almost have to see you since you want to
play “hard to meet”-haha. J in [town] (an hour from [big city]).
In a moment of weakness my curiosity gets the best of me.
J,
OK you talked me into it. Next time you are in Austin we should get
together for a lovely beverage. When might that be?
About an hour later her response arrives. It contains one thing, a single smiley face. A little while after the smiley face I get this one.
I was thinking more along the lines of a good steak and baked potatoe,
and sauteed veggies. I do like a sweet, red wine with half Sprite
in it(small glass thank you). There is a fine Italian resturant in the
hills I have been to. It is excellent, and sevice is great.
Thanks, J
I guess her spelling teacher was Dan Quayle.
I have pontificated ad nauseum about first dates with women you meet on the internet. So my response should not be too surprising.
J,
that would be a fine second date. I don’t do dinner/lunch on first
dates any more. Mostly due to online encounters from women who seemed
great in email and on the phone but turned into an embarrassingly bad
and seemingly endless wait for the check.No matter how great someone seems online and on the phone you just can
never tell if it will work out in person. So if we decide to meet
we will need to do it for a drink. It could be a Starbucks or a bar of
choice at any time of day or night but no dinner or lunch, sorry.Steve
OK so maybe I should have avoided the descriptions and explanations of why I don’t have a meal with a first date. Maybe something like “I prefer that first dates are quick and easy, just a drink somewhere.” But noooooo I have to be Mister Big Explaineypants. I should have expected a bad reaction. But really does it warrant the nuclear option?
Wow. I will pass on you , after all. Good God you must have a lot of
those long waits for the check….! Takes two to tango -sir. I ,on
the other hand have had magnificient dates and made wonderful friends.
I always get invited again. I have a delightful time. I do not
like cheap.or tight men at all. You need to rethink your outlook to
get changes to the good of the situation. I wish you a lot of luck,
as you sure need it. A charm class might be in order also.:) You do
not fit my idea of a true gentleman. Do not waste your time with
a return message. It is not necessary. You are unbelievably crabby-
online by the way! Why are you even on the site? You do not even
trust yourself to be happy and have a good time. Good grief Charlie
Brown! You are not the confident, happy person I hoped you would
be. You are far too skeptical- you get what you give! Please enjoy
your drink all by your lonesome. How do you ever even get a second
date? Haha. Take care. May God bless you with some type of good
attitude toward women. I have loved my dates which included a great
meal at a fine restuarant and a movie to boot. Good luck- you need it. J
Here I am stunned and gasping for breath. Not only did she take exception to my personal preferences
she also took it upon herself to provide instruction in what is wrong with me. Not to mention how much cooler she is.
Tempted as I am to fire off a brief but satisfying flame (one featuring some hurtful words of the
rude and ill-considered variety). Instead I decide, “Nope I be more growed up than that.”
J,
Think again. Your experience does not equal my experience. Assuming
otherwise is generally not a good idea. I have found that the best
formula for online dating is to respect the other persons wishes to
the point where you are uncomfortable with the request. I have had
women want to come over to my house and vice versa on the first date.
I’ve had women try and jump my bones on the first date. But the
fact of the matter of the situation is that I don’t know you. You
could be exactly as you seem or not. I choose to err on the side of
caution. If you don’t agree with that, well that is certainly up to
you. But to call my choices somehow wrong just because you do not
agree with them is more than a little offensive.Your assumptions about me and my experiences and what I “must have
had” are just that: assumptions. I don’t make assumptions about
people.I do not appreciate your uninformed opinions and “advice.” You, my
dear lady, have no basis for said opinions and have no basis for your
advice as YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.Your emails have the tint of possible disappointment and perhaps that
is the reason for these thoughtless comments you have rashly made.
While I can certainly understand being disappointed or taken aback by
an unexpected reaction, the fact of the matter is that we all have
differing expectations.I choose to temper those expectations and avoid coloring them by my
own beliefs and suppositions.Let’s face it you and I live over 170 miles away. Perhaps enough for a
casual, occasional, friendship but nothing more. One thing I look
for in a friendship is someone who can provide an interesting and
possibly different perspective and point of view. Someone who will, in
turn, accept different outlooks as simple fact instead of an assault
on their personal world view.It is unfortunate that you are not such a person.
Steve
Boy that felt good
Yeah it is rushed and some of my points are poorly made but still, there is nothing quite like calling someone an ignorant asshole. Especially if you take seven paragraphs of explanatory text to do so.
Can I say it again? Boy that felt good.
After firing this off I sit back and wonder about my tendencies to be a complete asshole myself. Often without being fully aware of said ass-holiness. So I send this whole email thread off to a lady friend I met online years ago in New Jersey. She has a fair amount of experience with the online dating thing. Not to mention lots of experience in calling me an asshole when I so richly deserve it. Her response?
S, she sounded like a psycho right from the first email!
I know you enjoy responding to these type of idiotic emails (the one after you said “no din-din”) at times, just for the fun of it, but I wouldn’t even bother. Her response was no surprise. She sounds like one of those people who thinks the glass is always full, not half full instead of half empty….just FULL! Those pathetically phony all the time happy people really nauseate me. Shit, join the real world…
So, no, I don’t think you were being an asshole. If I had responded to such an email, trust me, it would have been much more harsh.
K
See what you miss out by not doing the online dating thing?