{"id":7954,"date":"2012-07-15T19:55:14","date_gmt":"2012-07-15T18:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=7954"},"modified":"2012-07-16T02:59:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-16T01:59:37","slug":"the-online-dating-scene-this-guys-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=7954","title":{"rendered":"The online dating scene; a view from here"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0This post is inspired by this blogpost from Chloe<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

When my marriage suddenly ended, as they tend to end very suddenly under the same circumstances, my friend Brummie Dave bought six months at Match.com for me.<\/p>\n

I don’t know whether he was trying to get me back on track or scare me away from girls. It was almost the latter.<\/p>\n

I had been warned, before dipping my toe in to the Match.com dating pool, that I should be careful, and that all might not be what it seemed.<\/p>\n

Those words of advice came from a female equestrian friend who had tried the internet dating scene, and who, after a few unpleasant experiences, had given it up for occasional dips in to the shallow (heterosexual) end of the equestrian pool.<\/p>\n

I girded my loins.<\/p>\n

Fresh from (and refreshed by) my visit to Texas, I entered the login details that accessed the Match.com account that Brummie Dave had set up for me.<\/p>\n

I spent a little while completing the\u00a0various\u00a0profiling questionnaires, then went to bed.<\/p>\n

When I woke up, five hours later, I had received 25 views, 14 ‘winks’ (what the actual?) and five responses. I went to work, but on the commute I mulled over the responses.<\/p>\n

That evening, after reading the profiles of the respondees I discarded four; wrote four polite emails that said I didn’t think we were very compatible.<\/p>\n

To be fair to three of them, there wasn’t anything specific; my decision was based more on a general feeling that all might not be quite as advertised, and that compatibility\u00a0might be less than ideal.\u00a0\u00a0For example, no matter how well a respondee phrased their profile, ill-capitalised, text-speak response emails, littered with spelling mistakes; poorly punctuated and containing many rogue apostrophes, indicate that you’re not the person for me.<\/p>\n

The fourth was easy to discard, the distance between the two of us was several thousand miles and although I do know there is a lot of evidence that long-distance relationships can work, and they can lead to greater things, I wasn’t looking for that kind of relationship.<\/p>\n

That left response number five, which I liked the look of.<\/p>\n

The respondee was an academic, working in a field of research I have an understanding. Her profile was witty, interesting, and covered a range of topics I am keen on.<\/p>\n

Accompanying her profile was a photograph; an attractive face, open-mouthed smile, entertained by something very amusing.<\/p>\n

I contacted the respondee and, for a week or so, we exchanged emails on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

We were diverse, funny, and ‘spoke’ about a lot of things; discovered that we had, unsurprisingly, quite a lot of common ground.<\/p>\n

We agreed to meet.<\/p>\n

She doesn’t drive, so I pointed my car in her direction and pootled the mere 15 miles to her town.<\/p>\n

Feeling very nervous, but trying to look cool, I walked in to the restaurant.<\/p>\n

Despite being 10 minutes early, she was already seated at the table.<\/p>\n

My first reaction, as we exchanged cheek-kisses, was puzzlement; I noticed a pair of walking sticks propped up against the wall behind her chair.<\/p>\n

Our conversation started with the mundane, but as we talked about each other in more detail, she revealed that she was suffering from a bone condition that meant she had mobility issues; couldn’t get around without the aid of her sticks. And her condition was deterioriating.<\/p>\n

I felt torn.<\/p>\n

Would I have made the decision to see this girl, would I have travelled to see her, had I known these things beforehand?<\/p>\n

I don’t know.<\/p>\n

I tried to put these thoughts out of my head as we continued chatting over our meal.<\/p>\n

We quizzed each other on what we were looking for.<\/p>\n

I said I was looking for someone I could establish a friendship with, before things took a more serious line.<\/p>\n

I also said that the person I was looking for didn’t need to be a precise match; didn’t need to be, for example, an equestrian-type.<\/p>\n

I explained that, in my world, a little difference here and there was a good thing, and that finding a person I could be a friend with was more important than anything else.<\/p>\n

‘Friends with benefits?’ she asked.<\/p>\n

The immediate thought that crossed my mind was that if we attempted to engage in any ‘benefits’, I’d be too frightened to touch her, for fear of causing serious injury.<\/p>\n

Later in the conversation, she again hinted that she would be interested in a sexual aspect to a more serious relationship.<\/p>\n

Two and a half hours later, it was time to head home. I offered my companion a lift to her house; she accepted.<\/p>\n

When we walked to the car, the full scale of her severe mobility issues became apparent.<\/p>\n

I took her home, we cheek-kissed and, on the drive back to my house I tried to come up with the least offensive way of saying ‘I don’t think you’re right for me’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0This post is inspired by this blogpost from Chloe. When my marriage suddenly ended, as they tend to end very suddenly under the same circumstances,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}