Tag Archives: online dating

dating, online dating

An Update: Mr. Face Twitch.

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I repeat: Los Angeles is a big city, small town.

I had the most awful revelation a few months ago: Mr. Face Twitch and I work at the same company. Thankfully, this is a large enough company with multiple buildings that I ran into him about Month 4 of this new job and I only see him now about once a month. I have politely tried to make eye contact and smile on all occasions but he makes a blatant effort to not acknowledge my presence.

The first time I ran into him in the office hallway, the world’s most awkward date (circa March 2011) came flooding back to me. He HAD mentioned he had just started a new job in IT at a company near the Santa Monica Promenade and that it sounded like the company was in a similar field as my previous 2011 job (online advertising).

Now that I mention it, the guy is in IT and can probably hack my work laptop and find this exact blog post…

Well henceforth, he will be known as Mr. Face Twitch/Awkward Coworker. If you are hacking this Mr. Face Twitch/Awkward Coworker, maybe work on your social skills and I’ll try to be more careful who I blog about 😉

dating, douchebags, online dating

Mr. Wine-No

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Not too long ago, I found myself on a second date with Short Mark*. I’m allowed to actually call him Short Mark because he lied about his height. He said 5’9 on his online profile but I quickly realized on our first date he couldn’t possibly stand taller than 5’6. However, I have been trying to be more open-minded about short guys, so I chose to ignore this rather irrational lie on his part (you can’t fake height so why would you lie about it online??) and agreed to a 2nd date with him.

We went to a Brentwood Italian restaurant I had never been to before and that meal was the best part of the whole evening. He admitted to being more of a beer drinker than a wine drinker and asked if I had any wine recommendations (no judgments here; I love giving wine advice!). I said, “Since we are in an Italian restaurant, I think Chianti would be a good bet. Red wine always go well with this sort of meal and Chianti is one of the best values.” Mind you, of course I pronounced Chianti as “key-ant-ee”, as any wine lover or anyone who’s ever watched Silence of the Lambs should know to do.

The waiter asked to take our drinks order and this short dude apparently felt he was ordering for the two of us. Short Mark said, “We’ll each have a glass of the Chee-ant-ee.” I wanted to hit him across the face. The waiter grimaced and politely walked away without correcting him. It wasn’t the fact that Short Mark didn’t know how to pronounce a relatively well-known red wine. It was the fact that he clearly wasn’t listening to what I was saying as that I’m pretty sure I said the word Chianti (correctly) at least 4 times.

Needless to say, the night took a turn for the worst at that point and I haven’t seen Short Mark since.

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!