To Date or Not To Date....

So I was thinking about trying to get back into the dating pool. Well, let me backup a little bit for when I say get back into. I haven't been out on a date in, oh, approaching over two years now. Electively. Mostly. Some people choose to be single, some people have singleness thrust upon them. I seem to keep falling into the latter category. I can't totally blame that on the women. I'll have to use my Elizabeth Taylor theory of divorces, after the fifth divorce maybe you are the problem. After running through so many dates, maybe I am the problem. First off, I am a horrible dater. See a prior post about that. And that's not being fair to people who are actually horrible daters. And I try, but I guess I just don't have the ability. Apparently you may as well ask me to be a foot taller, it's not happening. No, seriously. I must suck at it. Some people are bad at math, some can't drive a stick, some have problems learning French, I can't date. Have you seen "Tommy Boy"? The scene where he's describing how he kills his sales is illustrating that point with a dinner roll? That must me me, except instead of him killing his sale I screw up my date. Exhibit A...I am 37 years into my life, still single and could point you to the string of failed and bad dates that I've left in my wake. So my thinking of getting back into the dating pool I'm sure must be fantastic news to all single women at large. "Gee, glad you're back because we didn't already have enough average, bald, fat guys to go out with!" they must be saying. Well I'm on the fence of coming back, it's just a lot of effort any more. I might have had game at one point. Who am I kidding, not even that. It's more of the closing time trophy...trophy may be a little strong. You could probably better call it the 'settle for guy'. I mean, no women ever went out of their minds saying, "I've got to take that guy home with me tonight right now!". So I don't even know how it ever happened. Blind luck or something.

Anyway, I'm thinking about getting back into some kind of dating. When I was actually trying, which let's face it, was less than impressive, I was trying with eHarmony. Like I'd said before, I'm on my computer a lot, I work a lot so let's see what the online world holds for me. And eHarmony was a very tepid success. And I think tepid is the right word to use there, that and you don't really see it in print much. Or digital print. Whatever. Tepid because I was never "on fire", but at the same time I was never totally ice cold. But I can't say that I was overly impressed with the outcomes. So I'm thinking of where I might look next. Laziness would dictate I go back to eHarmony, aside from updating my profile, I'm already set up with their little service. And they keep sending me just stupidly discounted renewal offers. So that's always a thought. Then there's match.com. I know of a couple people who are either on there currently or have been and they seem to have had some pretty decent luck with it it. It also helps that they're both obscenely attractive. And interesting. And fun....ok, I need to stop before I make myself want to go to the garage, turn the car on and suck on the muffler. So they have a few points up on me. But they've all gotten to meet a lot of people and have gone out on quite a few dates, with some repeats. Ok, a lot of repeats. And for at least one of them, my roommate, I always say to her, "and I feel contractually obligated to say that it also doesn't hurt that you're hot." So that could also help explain why they've also got a leg up. But I've kinda signed up for match. I say kinda because when I was visiting one of those friends I just mentioned earlier this year, I was looking at her profile and how it was all set up and how it worked and while I was there I at last filled out a profile to see who all was in the program around me. Seemed to be a lot of people...and seemed to take a lot of time to sort through everyone. I know what they say, anything worth having takes time but man, that seemed like just a lot of extra paperwork. But she had a good eye for who I should go out with, and considering how well I've done to this point picking for myself, maybe I go that way and let her pick for me. So that's match. Then after that I'm not sure. I've heard of chemistry.com and singlesnet.com. Of course Yahoo! has their own singles/personals site, again, see previous post. And there's always craigslist.com. Get a date and sell a used chair, all at the same time. It's like the Walmart of sites, everything under one roof. And that's about it as far as the online stuff goes, and lets face it folks, I'm much better on paper than I am in person. Aside from some of the afore mentioned visual unpleasantness, I'm an idiot with women so that doesn't help. I mean I have a lot of female friends, and I'm good with them, but when it comes to dating I seem to turn into half a retard. So that probably doesn't help either. I mean I don't do anything horrifyingly wrong. No picking my teeth or blowing my nose on the table cloth. I'm not checking my cell phone, I'm paying attention, I'm opening doors and all that kinda stuff. Maybe I'm just a snooze.

There is always that option. I mean even on the dates where I haven't gotten 'the look', I haven't gotten a second date. And yes, we all know what 'the look' is, weather it's you giving it or you receiving it. Regardless of how long you've emailed, texted and talked and seem to have gotten along well, that first in-person meeting when you get 'the look' you know the date is as good as over. At that point I like to call it a courtesy date. How can I describe it. Like when you get that birthday or Christmas present, let's call it socks, and you have that look like, "oh goody...socks" and unless you're a big fan of socks, you don't want the gift giver to feel bad. That's the kind of look. So I guess by that analogy that would make me the pair of socks. Maybe I need to start thinking about how I could sell socks. People need socks, well, maybe not so much in Hawaii or Jamaica but you know what I mean. I'm not saying people need me but it starts to get to a point where I'm conceivably not a bad option regardless. I'd like to think that kind of thinking wouldn't come into play and that I could land someone on my charm, wit and dashing good looks alone. But lets be serious people, the threat of 'it's this or a lot worse' never hurts as an option to steer the potential ladies my way. So how do I want to wrap up this particular big bowl of sad. I'm not sure, normally when I start writing one of these I have a snappy little ending that comes to mind and then I can kinda fill in around that. But this particular topic just kinda hit me and I had no real idea of how I was going to end it. Which I guess seems to be the exact opposite of most, if not all, the women I go out with. They know exactly how they're going to end it.