Cousin Terry visited me this past weekend, and in return for her thoughtfulness, I took her out to brunch where we accidentally became part of the most boring date in the world.
The young woman sitting behind us at the restaurant had a very loud voice, which is how we first noticed her and her date. It wasn’t an unpleasant or grating voice; it just never stopped, and at a volume we couldn’t ignore.
Terry had her back to their table, and after about 10 minutes, she asked me, “What race is that woman behind me?”
I gave her a puzzled look, and peered around her to look at the woman. “Just white, I think,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “She sounds like she has an accent.”
“I think she’s just talking very fast,” I said doubtfully.
The woman was talking so fast that at first, I couldn’t distinguish any of her words. Luckily, Cousin Terry is under 30 and therefore, according to the Internet, able to hear high-pitched sounds that we over-30s can’t, so she was able to understand the conversation and translate for me.
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Dear In-laws,
Remember when you said, less than a year ago, that you loved me and Joe just like Cindy and Chris? That was clearly a lie, and I wish you hadn’t lied, because the lie made it that much harder for me when you cut me off without a second’s thought once Chris decided he wanted a divorce.
What happened was this:
One day Chris said he felt disconnected from everyone. In that same conversation, he said he wanted a divorce. This was the first I knew about any problem, and in many conversations after that, he continued saying he wanted a divorce. It turns out that by the time of the first conversation he had with me, he had already figured out a solution to his feelings: divorce. I had and still don’t have any say in what he wants and what he decided about our life together and how it would end.
Apparently our past 11 years together was just a lie, during which he felt very little but had convinced himself this was how a relationship should be. Now that he has seen the light, he needs to re-learn feeling and emotions, and to do so, he has decided he must dump me to the curb and start over with a fresh woman, and only then can he learn what a real relationship is.
Now you know as much as I do.
Maybe you would know more, if you actually talked to your precious son instead of reading my website or waiting for information to be passed from Joe to Cindy to you.
In the last few months, my life as I knew it was completely destroyed. I had as much warning as you did, and believe me, I feel a LOT WORSE than you do. So stop making things even harder. I do not need you accusing me of treating your son unfairly, or doing things behind his back.
I do not snoop. I have never snooped. My change of address has not been processed yet for my paychecks, and my household income has dropped by 2/3 in the last few months while my expenses have gone up 1/3. In other words, I need my money the day it arrives. So on the days I go to take care of the dogs, I bring in the mail to check for paychecks. Chris knows I do this, and has never indicated that he has a problem with it.
Cindy’s envelope was in the mail one day when I happened to bring it in, and that’s all I saw — the envelope.
Do you know what my parents did when they found out about all of this? They wanted to know what Chris was thinking. They wanted to see him. They wanted to talk to him, to tell him they loved him. I asked them not to, and told them some of the things Chris had said about me, about our marriage, and how much he was hurting me, and that I needed their support now more than Chris did. I also told Chris that my parents wanted to reach out to him, but I had asked them not to.
Chris says he never asked you to stop contacting me. You chose that on your own, and you and Cindy cut me out of the family faster than Chris cut me out. Do you see the difference between my family’s reactions, and yours? Maybe this difference is why, after knowing Chris 11 years, I wanted to do whatever I could to make things work with him, even though I didn’t understand what he felt, even though I was devastated by what I was hearing. And after 11 years of knowing me, Chris only wanted to walk away, rather than have an actual conversation with me.
Sincerely,
Your former/ex/daughter-in-law, who was never a daughter in any sense of the word, and you made damned sure I was always reminded of that.
Or, How to Get a Real Woman to Respond More Favorably to Your Online Dating Profile.
Photos
- You must include a photo of yourself. Or you can totally, totally, rock the written portion of the profile, during which not one single typo is allowed. I will tell you now that you will not rock the written portion; therefore, you must include a photo to get some kind of response.
- If you have done some quick Photoshopping to crop out an old girlfriend from your half of the photo, just take a new picture of yourself. If you don’t have a camera, borrow a friend’s camera or use your cell phone, because we women are not blind. We can, in fact, still see your old girlfriend’s lopped-off arm draped around your neck. All you’ve done is remind us that if we choose to fall for you, we too will someday be just be a lopped-off arm around the neck of a tremendously lazy man.
- Don’t include photos of yourself with another woman of your generation, even if she’s your sister (“he must be already dating someone or why would he include her?”). Or with a group of women (“player!”). A mixed group of sexes is generally fine (“okay, he knows how to make friends”).
- Mixed group photo = okay. Photo of you with a bunch of your best guy friends all dressed in identical Booze Cruise t-shirts = not okay. First, if we can’t pick you out from the crowd right away, all we’ve learned is that you have a Zelig-like ability to disappear into photos (and consequently from our memories). Second, some of your best guy friends are going to be hotter than you, and we’re going to be wondering how to reach them, not you.
- Do not make the primary photo one where you look thinner than the average woman. We do not want to date men who weigh less than we do.
- Shirtless photos or nearly naked photos of you are less attractive than you think. Yes, we can see you work out. We would have preferred that you just tell us in the profile, though, and save the bedroom pics for when/if you actually make it into the bedroom with one of us.
Usernames
- Choose a simple username: something with just initials and numbers, or an innocuous description about a TV show, non-sexual object, or your career. “HotandHumble”* and “footfetishfreak”* are not eyecatching in the way you want.
Description
- Let’s face it — everyone on dating sites is laid-back, easygoing, and has a great sense of humor. And what are they all looking for? An emotional connection with someone confident, outgoing, and adventurous. Everyone is lying. Except “footfetishfreak.”
- You can either stay safely generic (“passionate guy searching for true romantic connection with fun, caring woman”) or try tossing some honesty we’ll remember into your description (“as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”). Just be sure not to go overboard with your honesty (“blahblahblah cant believe i have to fill 2000 characters”).
- Also, it’s okay to use some punctuation.
Your Ideal Match
- No need to be extremely thorough in this section, but you should have some preferences selected. Once we see that you’re looking for a woman “3′ to 8′ tall,” we know you were too lazy to think about what you want. Not thinking about what you want = not knowing what you want = not serious. Unless you’re really open to dating midgets or dwarfs, at least have the courtesy to specify the height/age/race you really want.
First Electronic Contact
- Winks are okay if you’re legitimately uncertain whether the woman is interested in your height/age/race. Otherwise, winks just say you looked at our photo, thought we weren’t ugly, and hit a button. Wow. Thanks for that effort.
- Email people who sound interesting. Ask them a question about something they wrote in their profile, to show you actually read it. Keep the first email short — 3 or 4 sentences is plenty.
- Don’t make that first email too short (“dinner?”), and don’t immediately ask to meet (“dinner?”). Then you just come off like a pervert, and even worse, an indiscriminating pervert.
- Don’t send the same person multiple emails a few weeks apart (“dinner?”). Now we know you’re stupid.
- Advice specific to footfetishfreak: People like different things, and I’m not judging (ok, I am), but if you have a fetish so strong that you need to mention it in your profile and in your very first email to a complete stranger…let me introduce you to something called Google. Go out there and find a group that caters to like-minded people. Otherwise, keep your fetish to yourself until you’ve actually met the other person, and more than once. Excuse me, I must vomit now.
First Person-to-Person Contact
- Coffee/tea. Daytime meeting. Public location. This is the only thing Starbucks is good for.
*Not a real username.**
**But very close to it.
One of the perks of joining the gym (actually, the only perk; everything else you pay for, including the towel) is that you get a free personal training session. This is obviously meant to seduce you into paying for future training sessions, and I myself was seduced, to the point that although I am currently hunched over my keyboard because my arms are in so much pain, I am eager to sign up for another session some day so that I can learn how to work on my legs and eventually make them just as painful as my arms and then realize my goal of being just a torso flopping from place to place.
Normally one would try to evenly work both the top and bottom of one’s body, and as I started my training session, I was upfront about my wish to do so.
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