Tag Archives: douchebags

online dating

Signing Off eHarmony

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The time came to renew or cancel my 3 month eHarmony membership and while it has provided some great fodder for this blog, it just didn’t seem worth the ROI to continue.   When you cancel, they ask if you met someone (no…) and why you are leaving the site so I really put some thought into my feedback.

To provide a little background, I spent 2.5 years doing community management for an online media site and it was The. Worst. Thing. Ever. Imagine getting hate mail every day from strangers on the Internet including on Christmas day for almost 3 years. I’m still emotionally scarred (and clearly a little bit bitter). So I figured if eHarmony really wanted my feedback, I’d give the poor community manager who has to read these responses something to laugh about. Below you’ll find my response:

I thought about continuing your service but it’s kind of expensive, and I decided I wanted to buy a new pair of shoes instead.

Truthfully, the shoes are going to be more fulfilling than most of the dates I went on over the past few months. I don’t think this is your fault though, eHarmony. It’s not you; it’s LA.

Sincerely,

A.

P.S. If I ever rejoin, can you please not send me matches from La Canada Flintridge? I didn’t even know what that was and had to look it up on Google Maps; that place is too far away to travel for any dude, even if he’s like a 98% compatibility match or whatever.

Guess I’ll have to go back to my old ways of trolling Brentwood bars for douchebags to date. Good luck to me!

dating, online dating

The 30Somethings.

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I have received some of the same unsolicited advice over and over again over the years: date older. Because men my age (28) or younger don’t want to commit, don’t know what they want, are immature, just want to get laid (um, newsflash, all men of any age just want to get laid), have a Peter Pan complex, etc…

I tend to agree with all these points about the gentlemen of my generation. So I have — from time to time — gone on a date with the odd 30+ year old.

Guess what. Those dates with the 30somethings went worse than the dates with the 20something Peter Pans.

I’m the first to point out that I have some immature tendencies so it’s probably not a good idea to try to date a 35-year-old when I possess the mental age and maturity of 24-year-old post-college sorority idiot. That being said, I have found men in their 30s to be smarmy, arrogant, hands-y, and just kind of annoying.

Case in point: I recently went on a drinks date with Jake*, a 34-year-old real estate broker from eHarmony. When I met him outside the Santa Monica bar, my first thought was, “Is this really what 34 looks like?” Because the guy looked way older than that. But I soldiered on and gave him the benefit of the doubt that he was being truthful about his age.

The conversation went alright but I felt very self-conscious talking to him because of the disarming front he put on. For example, I was acutely aware of how often I said the word, “like” (did I mention that I really was in a sorority?). By the second drink, he tried multiple times to touch my leg, even though I was sitting pretty far from him and giving him no signals that it was okay in any way to touch me anywhere. I excused myself from the date pretty quickly after the multiple creep touch attempts and thankfully have never heard from the 34 (or 30-faux?) year old again.

2nd case in point: Mr. Pretentious.

Hopefully, this just means I’m dating the wrong 30somethings and there are plenty of lovely, not horribly jaded 30+ year olds out there. Single ladies of the Internet – what have you found? Is it better to date your age, older, or younger?

dating, online dating

Online Dating Deal Breakers.

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Remember when my hero Liz Lemon wrote her successful book, DealBreakers? She helped inspire me to come up with the Top 5 Online Dating dealbreakers:

5) If he’s doing the MySpace pose. He’s holding a camera to the mirror and taking a pic of himself. This is alarming because:

  • He looks idiotic.
  • He may not have any friends that can take a picture of him.
  • He might still be using MySpace.

If you are not sure what I am speaking of, please review the following MySpace mirror shot.

4) Multiple spelling and grammar mistakes. Fine, I’m a bit of a spelling Nazi, but the way I see it – you have this one online dating profile to impress people and you can’t bother to use the free spell check in the Firefox browser? That screams lazy and stupid.

3) Holding a child does not give you brownie points with the ladies; it makes you look like you have kids (a dealbreaker for some ladies, yes), or that you are just that creep who uses cute objects (baby, dog, monkey) to catch the attention of women.

2) If he doesn’t have any photos, it means he’s too lazy to complete his profile and no girl wants a lazy boy. It could also mean he’s hideous. In both cases, I say Dealbreaker.

1) If he starts his profile with any of the following clichés “I thought I’d never try online dating, but LA is so hard to meet people, here I am!”, “I’m looking for a fun girl but no commitments” (okay, appreciate the honesty, but not a good first-liner), or “I’m a fun-loving guy who loves the outdoors, hanging out with friends, and am happy grabbing a drink out or watching a great movie with a glass of wine at home for the night.” Hey Mr. Originality, 99% of people in LA love the outdoors, have friends they generally like to be in the company of, and go to bars but – gasp! – also are content to sit at home with a bottle of wine and “Serendipity”. Dealbreakers all around!

dating, online dating

The Nice Guys.

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I realize and recognize that I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about the many, many (too many?) douchebags I’ve dated and been subjected to in Los Angeles. Now let’s take a second to reflect on their brothers on the complete opposite side of the dating spectrum: the Nice Guys.

Nice guys are not urban legends. They are indeed walking among us every day (or in LA’s case…driving in the car next to yours). We just may not notice them because they are not as aggressive or as loud as their douche-y counterparts. I’ve encountered many of these nice guy anomalies in my dating years, including the following 2 good guys:

Pete the Pilot.

A fellow I dated while I was living in San Diego 3 years ago. Everything was great on paper. Everything. He was a pilot for a private plane (how hot is that?). He was good-looking. He was incredibly sweet and planned our 3 dates down to a T. We had really good conversations about Lost.  And he could rock a goddamn set of aviators. And yet by the end of Date 3, I felt zero chemistry for this guy. Nothing. But I knew the absolute best thing I could to him was bite the bullet and end it. And guess what – we’re still Facebook friends and I know that he found love with a nice girl in San Diego and still flies a giant private plane. So, one person won out of this situation and it was the nice guy.

Mr. Oklahoma. 

Oh, Mr. Oklahoma of eHarmony. He was like a humble slice of pie to remind me that there are hidden nice dudes in LA. I recently went on a 2-hour date with this guy (USC grad, born and raised in Oklahoma, now works in film) in Santa Monica and while he was perfectly nice and attentive, I just knew by the end of the night that I wasn’t interested in him at all. It all started to awkwardly fall apart at the end of the evening when I politely leaned out to give him a good-bye hug (most likely ass-out, as demonstrated in the picture below) and instead he went all pounce-y and tried to make out with my face. In a last-minute effort to hide from his incoming lips, I turned my cheek so he clumsily kissed my cheek. And when I tried to run off, he called after me, “I’d love to see you again!” and I replied with a “Umm…just text me. Bye!” Sure, maybe I should have just stood my ground right then and there and said, “No thanks, I’m not interested”, but I was just trying to make a quick getaway.

Image: Cosmo magazine. (yes, I read it. Don’t judge.)

At exactly 10 AM the following morning, he texted me asking me on a very specific, well thought-out date for Saturday night, even suggesting to get sushi since I had said I really liked sushi. I had to spend the next 8 hours thinking of a polite way to say, thanks but no thanks. Eventually, I figured out there was no way I was going to escape this situation without looking like a female douchebag. Finally, I came up with some sort of politely worded rejection, sent it off, and never heard a word back. The whole situation made me feel bad for this perfectly nice, small-town guy that is just trying to find love in a hopeless place (read: Los Angeles).

I’ve probably only learned 1 or 2 things in my dating days and otherwise I’m pretty damn clueless. But here you go: if you are dating a nice guy that you don’t like but you just feel too bad or guilty or you keep hoping chemistry/feelings will magically develop, just rip the band-aid right off and end it. It is a very unfair thing to string this nice guy along and on top of it — keep him from meeting his Ms. Right. Because if there’s one thing I believe, nice guys don’t finish last.

dating, douchebags, online dating

Mr. Pretentious. Part II.

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{ a continuation of Mr. Pretentious Part I }

There’s a wonderfully quirky bar in West Hollywood called Bar Lubitsch; inside that bar lurks a not so wonderful gentleman named Mr. Pretentious.

Once we arrived from the jazz club, he ordered another martini and I elected to nurse a Stella since I had a long drive back to West LA. Since Bar Lubitsch was noticeably quieter than the jazz club  he took this as his chance to ask such insightful first date questions as “When was your last long term relationship?” and “They say a person makes a judgment about another person within 5 seconds. So what did you think of me?” As I was starting to lose my patience, I informed him of the truth that I hadn’t been in a long term relationship in 4 years and what the hell was with that handkerchief.

After the handkerchief mockery, the conversation got very awkward and I realized maybe I should attempt to be a little nicer to even pretentious guys on a first date. I asked why he was running for local office. He in turn gave me the most ridiculous spiel about how nothing ever gets done in politics because too many old people are in control and they don’t care about making a difference anymore and are too lazy to push changes through. My cynicism reared its ugly head at this point and I told him that in my opinion he was being naïve. I said he’ll get into office and realize how much red tape there is and how difficult it is to actually get anything done, and that is why the people currently in office seemingly get nothing accomplished. He retorted it would not be that way for him and he’s here to legitimately change things.

That was my cue to use the bathroom, check the time to ensure that I would get back to my car at midnight when the garage closed, and text multiple girlfriends that this was the night in Hollywood Hell. Upon my return, 2 lemon shots sat on the table. I glared at them and announced, “I’m not drinking that.” So he drank both and then suggested we dance. Since I had 20 minutes and a beer to kill, I acquiesced and then bore witness to the worst thing ever: this man on a dance floor. Imagine a robot with a broken hip but this robot thinks he’s sexy. It was still worse than what you are imagining.

11:30 was my cue to get back to my car before it turned into a pumpkin at midnight and as much as I attempted to leave him in his lemon drop haze at Bar Lubbitsch, he insisted on ensuring I make it back to my car safely – right after he pounded his last martini. The following series of events took place between 11:40 and 11:47 PM on this Friday night:

11:40 PM: Taxi pulls up to garage and the gate is closed and there is no sign of escape for my car.

11:40:20 seconds PM: I get angry.

11:41 PM: “I’ll handle this, don’t worry” he slurs. His version of handling it consists of him screaming at the gate “Is anyone there?”

11:42 PM: politicians can’t get anything done, but I sure can. Just as I’m iPhone googling the parking garage management company (I can read signs, apparently Mr. Pretentious cannot), a nice gentleman in a car pulls up and says he works in the building and he can buzz me into it and I can get my car out that way.

11:44 PM: I get to my car and Mr. Pretentious is still somehow beside me. Now I’m not sure how he would get out of the locked garage so I let him in my car and say I’ll drop him at whatever bar his alleged friends are at. He says to just drop him at the corner at Sunset.

11:45 PM: Corner of Sunset. Of course he won’t get out of my car. 2-minute conversation ensues of the following, “Get out, I’m going home. Unless you want to be dropped off nearby, get out.” “Wait, are you serious” “Yes.” “Wait, you are seriously telling me to get out of the car?” “Yes.” “What?” “I’m going home, I’m tired, I have a long drive home, get out.” He finally opens the door and glares at me – “Is this seriously happening right now?” Me – “Yes, get out!” he throws his hand up at me in anger, exits, and slams the door.

The last martini must have been a mind eraser for Mr. Pretentious because at 7:30 the following morning, he texted “Did you have a nice night last night?” I ignored him and my instincts to write back “Were we on the same date?”

I did wind up getting back to Mr. Pretentious eventually and wishing him good luck on his campaign. After all, he’s just what Washington and Los Angeles need in office – another douchebag.