Sunday, December 06, 2009

The day I began to fail at online dating.

So I survived my night of taking it offline- but I have overall failed my mission of taking the Internet by storm. It started off wonderfully. He checked in online to confirm the date and the day of our big date I got a friendly little text about the night. I was looking my best after spending a frantic two hour period prior to the date arranging the perfect first date outfit. And I feel like I followed first date etiquette.

I asked a lot of questions, I seemed interested in the answers. At least I think I did- I at least TRIED to seem interested in the answers. I made eye contact, I laughed. At least I am pretty sure I made eye contact and I definitely laughed. It was hard to remain entirely focused because an adorable French bulldog was patrolling the premises and I did become mildly distracted by his presence.

There were subtle touches, references to future hangouts, and complimentary feedback. I left the night feeling like I was the star of online dating. I nearly felt like I could write a book on the subject with a solid level of expertise. I sent my obligatory follow up text and drifted to sleep with the notion of romantic picnics in spring and drives to the countryside dancing in my head.

So imagine my surprise when three days later, my follow up text is still dangling in the wind unanswered. And imagine that surprise exponentially increasing when I discovered that my date removed himself from Okaycupid entirely! Not only is he not interested in seeing me ever again, but also I have officially caused him to drop out of online dating completely. At first I felt mildly depressed by the thought that I caused a perfectly nice stranger to distrust the Internet, however that was fleeting. I have merely decided to continue on as if this never happened and I have launched into the newest portion of my online dating career. It is not entirely over with Okay Cupid, but chemistry.com- here I come!

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