Three strikes and you're OUT!

*Sigh*

This was an eventful and emotionally draining weekend, and for a brief moment (approximately 1 hour), I gave up on match.com. But I did some thinking and I'm ready to get back out there.

So here's what happened...

Strike 1: Friday night, I had my first date with Whitey McMidwest. Oh man, over text message, he was the perfect guy. And I had really high hopes for this one because we really seemed to connect and, in his words, "it [felt] like we already [knew] each other." Our first conversation over the phone lasted for one hour! That conversation took place on Saturday, January 7th and we made plans that day to do dinner and bowling the upcoming Friday night. Each day following, Whitey texted me and we had riveting textersations. We seemed to have so much in common, including an intense love for the show, Jersey Shore. He would text me things like, "Friday couldn't come sooner" or "I can't wait to meet you" in addition to things like, "We should do this..." or "We should go there together..." Things that, as a vulnerable single woman who tends to read into things sometimes, I was weary of getting excited about.

I've been in the non-relationship before where the guy talks up all the great things we're going to do together and then dumps me for some unexplained reason (before, of course, any of those things ever happen). So in order to prevent myself from getting too excited about Whitey, I continuously responded to his comments of "We should..." with, "We'll have to see how Friday goes!" No one wants to set themselves up for disappointment. I've done it before and I am learning not to read into everything a guy says.

So, with that in mind, we meet for our date Friday night. We enjoy a nice dinner and split a bottle of wine. We have great conversation - talk, laugh, learn about each other. It's nice. I feel like it's going well. After dinner, we head to the bowling alley and we bowl two games. When our games are over, he suggests we hang out in the bar where karaoke is about to begin. We are having a fantastic time. He doesn't appear to be bored nor disgusted with me as a person. Phew! Then, nearly five hours after it began, we finally decide to end the date. As we walk out, he gives me a small kiss on the lips, tells me he had a great time, and that he'll call me. I leave feeling excited and optomistic. I am even more optomistic when he texts me to tell me he's excited to do all those things we had talked about doing "after Friday." I smile as I fall asleep.

Fast-forward to the weekend. I do not hear from him. I become Crazy. I am even crying at some points because I do not understand WTF is going on. Three days go by and I finally hear from him on Monday evening when I get this text: "I've been doing some thinking and I just don't think we're a good match after all. I've had fun getting to know you and wish you the best of luck!" Don't cry for me because here's the honest truth: when he didn't call me for three days, I already knew that that was the text I'd be getting. It's called Women's Intuition and it involves the sick feeling you get in your stomach when you know something isn't going right. Ladies, DO NOT IGNORE THIS FEELING! It is real! No, something didn't happen to his phone. No, he's not just busy with his buddies. No, he didn't die suddenly. No no no. He is just not that into you (even though the guy who wrote that book is an asshole, he's right!) And only God knows the reason why he's not into you. But don't obsess over that either. Just do what you can to overcome the Crazy, and then move on.

So after a few tears shed - not over a simple white guy from the midwest, but over the disappointment of another lost possibility of finding love - that's exactly what I did. I moved on. Final vote, obviously: bud.

Strike two: I went on a first date with Foody McGradSchool on Saturday afternoon. I was not feeling nearly the connection with Foody that I did with Whitey, but who am I to turn down a free meal, right? I broke my first date rule and agreed to let him pick me up because he was driving all the way down to Sunnyvale from San Bruno. I found this guy interesting because he had a very positive outlook on life and he seemed to be really spiritually centered. I find that attractive, as long as it isn't too in-your-face. When this guy picked me up, I'll admit that he definitely looked like he did in his profile pictures, except for the fact that he was probably 100 times skinnier. I have actually never seen a skinnier man in my life. He was a beanpole. When he turned sideways, he disappeared. I felt like a giant beast next to this guy.

Other than his lack of body fat, I found him to be attractive and genuinely nice. We drove to a local Mexican restaurant. He had a white Acura with Dr. Dre playing on the stereo and it was at this moment that some things he had said in previous conversations ("I grew up in parts of Daly City and Vistacion Valley, near Hunter's Point," and "Growing up in the projects..." - btw, this is the whitest guy you've ever seen) caused me to realize that this guy is San Francisco's Slim Shady. He even had the ghetto driving swagger down, with the seat tilted back, extreme lean to the right, resting practically the entire right side of his body on the center console (which, btw, put his head about two inches from mine), and just one arm - his left one - draped loosely over the steering wheel. Man, this guy really IS from the projects, I thought. Oh, and did I mention that he was practically sagging his jeans all the way down to his thighs? I could not tell if he was going for the gangsta style or if he simply couldn't keep his pants up on his 25-inch waist.

At the restaurant, we enjoy a lovely meal and talk about many things, including how we are both really, really RIDICULOUSLY good at Words with Friends. So he asks me what my user name is and we have been playing since that afternoon (I am beating him). We even have a candid conversation about what it's like to be on match.com, dating multiple people at once, etc. I like how honest our conversation is. After lunch, he drives me back to my place, gives me a hug, and we say our goodbyes. Overall, no sparks, but a nice date. Final vote: bud.

Strike three: As you may recall, this weekend I was supposed to have Date #3 with Flaky McTallGuy. Well, guess what? Yep, that's right - he flaked. I had pretty much decided I was over him by midweek when I hadn't heard from him. Then, Wednesday night, he sent me a message. We texted back and forth for a bit until he finally asked, "What time on Saturday?" I told him anytime after 5pm. "I have plans at 7," he texts back. "What about Sunday?" Seriously!? Ugh, this is the flakiest guy I have ever met! I agreed to Sunday even though I was thinking, "You are a loser and I am done with you." A couple of days go by until he texts, then calls me at approximately 11:30pm on Saturday night. I had just arrived home from my date with Whitey. He shoots the shit for a bit until I start yawning. Sorry dude, but I am exhausted and have to get up hella early for Saturday morning triathlon practice. He tells me he has some ideas for what we'll do on Sunday and that he'll call to finalize plans. "Ok, sounds good. Good night."

Flaky seems to know when I am on a date with another guy because that always seems to be the time he calls or texts. So just as my date with Foody is ending on Saturday afternoon, I get a call from Flaky. I don't answer, of course, but listen to the voicemail when I get home." I am not surprised by what it says: "Hi Natalie... I've been thinking about things for a couple of days now and I feel like there's sort of a friend vibe coming down and I don't know if it's just bad timing for me or what, but I think you're a great girl and blah blah blah..." And then, at the end of the message, he says, "So let me know your thoughts." REALLY!? What, like I'm going to call you back and say, "NO! There's no friend vibe! You must take me out on Sunday!?" Whatever dude. I texted him back to say, "I agree" and told him to have a good life. But what I really wanted to say was: 1) grow a pair and don't leave something like that on a voicemail; 2) I think you might be gay (for real, I need to figure out how to post a snippet of a voicemail); and 3) learn how to manage your schedule so you aren't so flaky, you bonehead. But I decided to be nice. This time. he did text me back saying, "You are smart, funny, and have a lot going for you. Take care." Barf. Final vote: bud.

So now you might be thinking - well, three strikes and you're out, right? That is EXACTLY what I was thinking. For a second, I was totally down in the dumps. I wanted to give up on dating, give up on men altogether. BUT THEN... Blondie McSmartyPants gave me some good advice. After showing me an excerpt from a book she's planning to read (My Half Orange by Amy Spencer, which I will be reading as well), she decided that our problem is not that we can't find the men of our dreams, but that we're not putting all of our effort into attracting them. And she's right. I've got to focus on what I really want and use the power of optismism to attract Mr. Right. It WILL happen, I just know it.

every girl's got a little crazy in her...

Ok, this is going to sound a little psycho, but the truth is... as a member of the Female Race, crazy is unavoidable, as it is an unchangeable part of my DNA. And honestly, when one member of the Female Race gets crazy, she shares her crazy with other members and then the crazy spreads like a disease. So, what happened here is that I contracted my crazy from my good friend Blondie McSmartyPants.

Blondie McSmartyPants, as you know, recently ended a relationship with Tooly McWankFace. And when I say recently, I mean like last week. This is a fresh wound here. So as per standard crazy post-breakup behavior, Blondie immediately began scouring match.com to see if he had re-posted his profile. Then, on Tuesday, she discovered that he had indeed re-posted his profile. Crazy just got crazier.

Now, there is one inherent problem with match.com: when you look at a dude's profile, it shows up on his "See who's viewed you" section of his page. So if you view it today, it shows up. If you view it tomorrow, it shows up again. How in the world do the match.com creators expect us to secretly stalk dudes if we're constantly showing up on their "Who's viewed me" page??

So there are two things that caused the crazy to spread from Blondie to me: 1) She told me about finding Tooly back on match. That wanker! 2) She asked me if I had ever searched for my ex. Dammit! I hadn't even considered that! (For those of you who don't know the back story, my ex - Douchey McF***Face - and I broke up in August. While Douchey and I didn't meet on match, that doesn't mean that he wouldn't sign up to try to find the byatch of his dreams. And just for the record, I am COMPLETELY over him, but honestly, I am just a curious person by nature).

Here's what happened. I got curious. Duh. So I conducted a search for men of his age range, height, location, etc. I was very specific so as to narrow the field. And after browsing just two pages, I found him. My heart stopped. What a douche. But, I hate to say this, the crazy didn't stop there. It really does get worse - way worse. I did not want to click on his profile, because the last thing I wanted to do was to give him any sort of impression that I think or care about him at all. So, I immediately IMed Blondie. What do I do?? She was in the same boat as me. She had been consumed by the crazy. I know I should not have turned to her, but the crazy was running coarsely through my veins. I was not thinking straight. In haste, we shot ideas back and forth about what to do. How can we properly stalk our exes without them knowing it?

"I've got the BEST idea," Blondie wrote (in reality, not a good idea at all). "We can create a FAKE PROFILE!"

"OMG! That is such a good idea!"

No it's not. But... it was too late. The crazy had already won. Blondie moved quickly. She suggested using the photos of her coworker, who is happily relationshipped. Brilliant!

So immediately upon getting home from work on Tuesday, I set out on my task of creating a faux stalker profile using Blondie's coworker's photos! We'll call our newest match.com member Hottie McAsian. Let me tell you this... it is hard work making a match.com profile! So many questions! So many things to make up! But by the time I had sat down in front of my laptop and created a fake gmail account for Hottie, there was seriously no turning back. I was in it to win it. I had to create a fake birth date, a fake college, a fake degree, a fake job, and even fake interests (Hottie really loves the beach and experiencing new adventures - ok, maybe there is a little bit of me in this fake profile...) I felt like Dr. Frankenstein creating my monster. It was so much fun! After about 40 minutes of hard work, my creation was complete. I just needed to wait for the profile and photos to be approved.

When I finally had my chance, I logged on immediately to stalk Douchey's profile. Eew. So glad that relationship's over. Viewing his profile ultimately brought me no satisfaction, other than knowing that I am glad I am no longer with him. (That, and the thought that I am way too hot for him anyway.) After viewing his profile, the crazy started to slowly wear off. WTF were we thinking? But, since we already had the profile up, we figured we'd check on it every once in a while to see who's winking at her. If Douchey or Tooly wink at her, we both thought, they're going down. (Crazy clearly still lingering).

As a non-paying match.com member, the only thing you can do on the site in terms of communication is wink for free. You can also see those who have winked at you. What you can't see is "who's viewed you" or emails that have been sent. We didn't envision this being a problem because we were only anticipating using her profile to stalk our exes.

But here's the crazy part... Hottie has had a fake profile now for about three days. I logged on to her profile this morning, just to see what kind of action she's gotten (and to see if Douchey winked at her, which he did not). You will not believe this, but she has 19 new emails and 40 winks! Are you kidding me!? That is more emails and winks than Blondie and I put together! How is it possible that our fake profile is more popular than our real ones!? Waaaah we are crying!

If there is a lesson to be learned here, folks, it's that stalking is bad. And so is creating fake people. Or using real people to make fake people to secretly stalk real people. Ugh. What a giant, crazy mess...