Along the process of online dating, I’ve chatted with a number of men. Some chats were brief, some were over a few days, a few were a week or longer. There isn’t any one reason why I stopped chatting with any of them. Of course I ended chats with those easily identified as scammers. A few conversations that lasted 3-7 days just kind of ended with no follow up by either of us. No biggie. A few chats lasted more than a week. One chat in particular taught me a few things. It’s a man I started communicating with shortly after joining Plenty of Fish. I’ll call him “Keith.” He is a cute-ish, nice man that lives pretty close to me. After about a week of chatting he finally asked to meet me. I balked. I thought perhaps it was because I’m still not sure about the whole online dating thing. That was until I started chatting with someone else I wanted to meet right away. I quickly realized it wasn’t the trepidation about online dating, I just had no desire whatsoever to see Keith.
I generally try to be as honest as I can be, and with men specifically because good communication is one of the keys to a successful relationship. I had every intention of doing the same with online dating. Everything in my profile is accurate, pics are all current, etc. I wanted to be honest with Keith while also sparing his feelings as much as possible. So I told him I was listening to my “gut” when deciding which men I wanted to see. That is exactly what I’m trying to do when it comes to men I meet – listen to my body not my brain. My brain is hardly ever right. Marvin made my stomach upset which is how I knew it wasn’t right. Others have given me back pain or other physical indicators. When I thought about seeing Keith, I was filled with dread. I told him my gut was telling me it’s just not right for us, and I wished him good luck. Oh boy.
Keith freaked out. How can I say that when we haven’t even met (valid point from his perspective), he doesn’t understand why this keeps happening to him, I lead him on (I didn’t, our chats were always as friends, nothing romantic or sexual), blah blah blah. I felt berated, and he wasn’t going to let it go. So I decided to be more honest. I know it probably wasn’t the best way to handle it, but I told him the truth: I am really sorry. I was trying to spare your feelings. I thought my reluctance to meet you was because of how I’m feeling about dating. I realized that wasn’t the case when I started chatting with a man I wanted to see right away. Apologized again. Oh boy. As you can imagine, Keith freaked out again. He sent me a few kinda nasty messages. I sent him 1 more message, apologizing again, letting him know I was trying to spare his feelings, but when he berated me I opted to be totally honest. While telling me he’s not, he again proceeded to berate me. Keith had to send 2 more kinda nasty messages. Thanks for proving me right.
Lessons learned: if I have no desire to talk to a man on the phone, I’m not interested in him; if I know I don’t want to meet him, I’m really, really not interested in him; honesty is great, but maybe not always the best option; don’t get into extensive chats with someone if I know I don’t want to see him; if I’m filled with dread at the thought of talking to him or seeing him, pretty sure I’m not interested; if I’m in the bathroom for half an hour at the thought of talking to him, you guessed it – I’m probably not interested.
The man that made me realize I had no desire to meet Keith? My next post will be about him, the Fire Captain.