Holidating: Week 2

Another week has come to a close in my 27 days of online dating experiment.  So far, I have practically nothing to show for it.  First, the stats:

• Page views - 428
• Emails - 32
• Winks (ugh) - 31
• IM conversations - 4
• Guys who have added me to their favorites - 1
• Phone numbers acquired - 3 (same as last week)
• Guys who requested the link to my blog - 4
• Dates planned - 2
• Dates that actually took place - 0

I think that pretty much says it all.  My profile has been looked at by 428 guys, but only 63 have tried to initiate any sort of contact - including the winkers.  That means I'm only hearing from 14.7% of the guys that look at my page.  Not bad, but not great.  When you figure in that only half of those are using email, while the other half are merely winking, the numbers reduce even more.  Then look at the success rate of those who contact me getting to a point where we decide meeting in person is a good idea and it's just sad.  And then we get the dates planned out and they end up not even happening... that's the kind of stuff that makes me want to go to the shelter and adopt a bunch of cats.

One of the dates wasn't really a "date," but rather more of a plan to meet up if we happened to be in the same place at the same time (tailgating before a Saints game).  My tailgate group bailed the day before and I had to work until all hours of the morning the night before the game, so I didn't make it out.  No worries, though. It wasn't like we'd agreed to meet by the flagpole at 11 am or anything.  In fact, my side of the conversation went like this: "Don't know if I'll make it out there to tailgate, but I'll let you know if I do."  So maybe it shouldn't be counted in the "dates planned" statistic.  Moving on...

The other planned "date" was to get together for drinks after the Saints game with a guy I'd actually had phone conversations with a couple of times last week.  I thought both conversations went well (though there were naturally some awkward pauses here and there, but those things happen when you talk to strangers), and our email messages were good too.  So he texts me after the game and says to let him know when and where.  I texted him back that I was grabbing some dinner and would let him know (drinking on an empty stomach NEVER works well for me).  Then he texted me a little later asking if we could reschedule because it was pretty dang cold outside.  In his defense, it was super cold and super windy.  It was the kind of weather that would result in you not wanting to leave your warm & cozy house.  Does that mean we have to wait until warmer weather - like March - to reschedule?  Not necessarily.  This is south Louisiana.  The last two days have seen temperatures in the 70's, and we'll see the same temps next week.  Still, I couldn't help but think it sounded like the excuse you make when, in reality, something better came along.  He said he would call me on Monday, I said ok, and that was that.  Then on Monday I got a text saying he'd call Tuesday.  And on Tuesday I got a text saying he was leaving town and would call on Friday.  Hm.... I could very easily give him the benefit of the doubt here, as my Monday - Wednesday were crazy busy with a relative in the hospital and things can certainly come up, but he could also be pulling the slow fade.  Lots of contact, a little less, still less contact, and then nothing.  Slowly fading out of my life.  Not a massive loss if that's the case, as I don't really actually know the guy.  It'll become clearer today if that "I'll call you Friday" plan materializes.

So what of the other 61 guys?  31 only winked, so now we're at 30. 12 of them don't meet my criteria, so now we're down to 18. Of those, two of them are guys I already knew in real life - guys I grew up with or went to school with and our messages are more of the fancy meeting you here variety than the let's get married and make beautiful babies kind.  Where are we now?  16.  One of those is the self-proclaimed-but-not-actually "sexy" guy.  So, 15.  Two of those 15 found me on facebook without asking if that was ok.  No, really, I'm not that anal about my fb page.  The fact is that one of those guys friended me on there before ever sending me a message on the dating site.  The other one sent me a message on fb after I neglected to respond to his message on the site.  I chose not to respond because he wasn't a paid subscriber and my only option was to email him.  I didn't want to use my email address for that, so I ignored him.  Then he found me on fb.  Uncool.  So here we stand at 13.  Of the remaining 13, 2 of them have no photos at all.  Of the remaining 11, there is either something in the profile or in a photo (or both) that doesn't work for me in 9 of them.  So now we're down to 2.  I just started getting to know one of those guys.  As for the other one, he's no longer in the running.  Here's why:

This particular character sent me a message to which I responded.  Then we started chatting through an outside service for a little while.  The first day or two of chat went decently enough.  The conversation didn't move freely and was a little forced, but it was ok.  One of his earlier topics of conversation was sex.  I told him that wasn't really ok with me, as I'm not a fan at all of discussing my sex life with strangers (or non-strangers, for that matter).  He apologized and we moved on.  He started texting me, which was fine.  At one point he got aggravated because I didn't immediately respond and wanted to know if I lost interest.  I told him I had not, but that it's sometimes difficult for me to respond right away while I'm at work.  But then the conversations became more and more forced.  They generally went like this:

Him: Hey
Me: Hi
Him: How are you?
Me: Pretty good. At work right now. How are you?
Him: Ok

And then they stop.  Because here's the thing - if I'm at work and you're texting me, all I can really provide is a response.  And he wasn't giving me much to respond to.  It is incredibly hard for me to initiate awesome text conversations when I also have to ring up purchases or help people find books, especially during the holidays.  So after about a week of this nonsense he asked me again if I had lost interest.  I was honest with him and told him that the initial excitement was definitely long gone and, without that, it's hard to keep interest in pursuing something with someone you've never met and know practically nothing about.  Maybe other people are into that, but I'm not.  The conversations were forced and ones I didn't look forward to having.  Seeing his name pop up in a chat window or on a text message didn't make me happy; it actually made me a little frustrated.  The whole thing involved far too much effort, whereas I could text or chat or message other guys I met through the site with ease.  He told me I was confusing.  His number is no longer in my phone and he can safely be crossed off the list of potential next boyfriends.

I guess I won't have much to show for this little month-long experiment other than a few new blog posts.  That's ok, though, and I'm not letting these failures get me down.  I'm working on some possibilities offline that have far more potential than any of the 428 guys who have looked at my profile ever will.