I got this message in my email today from OKCupid.

Greetings, fellow atheist. This is Chris from OkCupid. I know from hard experience that non-believers have few holiday entertainment options:

• Telling kids that Santa Claus is just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of things that don’t actually exist
• Asking Christians to explain why they don’t also believe in Zeus
• Messaging cute guys

Towards making that last one more likely for you, we’ve devised a special wintery match algorithm, and we’ll be sending you a seasonal special someone each day for 12 days.

sophtware is today’s match. He’s an atheist, too. You guys will have so much in common not to talk about.

I’d tap that.

Its called Tastebuds, and the concept is simple:

you list music you like, and the site shows you a bunch of people whose tastes match yours. The process of selecting your own choices is not so fraught as you may think, since you can have an unlimited number of picks. I promptly set a trusty good sport friend to the task of giving the site a Real-life whirl, but in the spirit of inquiry, also signed up myself (the work of two seconds) just to see how it worked. And here I encountered some problems. Because I realized, Did I want to date the guy who also liked “Hounds of Love” and Scott Walker? And so what if someone liked Pavement: everyone likes Pavement! Besides, why didn’t anyone else list the Pastels?

Read more: http://jezebel.com/5709407/new-dating-site-unites-music-geeks#ixzz17YBoLAmZ

1) No picture = no response

2) In my profile, I specifically wrote “DO NOT MESSAGE ME IF you describe yourself as ‘laid-back’ or ‘fun-loving’,” because that is seriously the lamest cop-out personality description there is. So you’re boring? You don’t have imagination? No thanks.

3) “Night on the town?”  Seriously? Ugh.

4) This reads like a copy-paste he sends out to everyone. Or this is a spambot. guh. 

Alright, I have to say, instant messaging complete strangers is not the best way to get asked out.  At least, not for me.

 Still being new to this website, I haven’t exactly figured out how to turn the IM system off, otherwise it would’ve been off a long time ago.  Today, I went on OKC to check a message from a guy who has potential (after declaring I’m ‘so over this whole thing’, I’ve decided I’ll give it another chance).  So, here I am, online for exactly one minute, and THREE people IM me.  Yes, three.. After one minute. 

Here’s a little fact about me: I hardly like to instant message my friends, so “talking” with complete strangers is even lower on my ‘things-I-want-to-do’ scale.  Hello, I was in high school when this whole IMing thing was new and cool!  Also, instant messaging by commenting about my “message me if…” essay and saying that you “meet that criteria- so let’s date”…? Yeaaaa, not the best way to get a girl’s attention. 

Of course, I just immediately closed the page. I guess I will have to resort to using OKC on my phone until someone shows me how to turn this thing off. -K

I went out on a great date. At least I thought so.

I met up with this guy on a Monday night for a casual, happy hour drink at a little corner bar in the neighborhood.  We had been exchanging emails and, while he’s almost 10 years older than I am, it seemed like we would get along pretty well.  I get to the bar and he’s already there (which I like because then I’m not sitting awkwardly awaiting someone’s arrival).  We chat, he buys the first round and we start talking about different beers.  Cool, he likes to drink decent beer, good sign.  We hit it off and have a great time.  In fact, as I went to the bathroom he sent me a text saying that he has a crush on me.  It’s funny and cute so I smile and invite him along to meet up with my friends and catch a band that I was planning on seeing that night.  He meets my friend, we’re all getting along and having a great time.  When my friend stepped away, we have our first little kiss.  Yep, we were those people.  (Ew, I hate it when people are kissing in bars, but I couldn’t help myself, we were just having a great time and having fun.)  All things point to that having been a great date.  We make plans to see each other for a lunch-date on Thursday or Friday.  He sends me a text the next day, mentioning our plans for later in the week and says he had a great time.  Me too. 

So when Wednesday night comes around, I send him a text asking if he wants to go for lunch soon. 

His reply:

“No, I want to see other people.  Seeing an ex-gfriend tonight.”

Uhh, what?  I’m kind of baffled by this. I mean, that’s fine if he doesn’t want to see me and I appreciate not dragging anything on, but what the fuck was everything else?  I keep trying to go through my head to see if I said something wrong or if I said something that made him think I wanted something super serious right away, but who knows.  He did say that he’s had a few long term relationships and the longest one I’ve had is about 11 months, so maybe that was it.  Maybe it was the age difference.  Who knows. 

After discussing with a few people, I decided not to respond to his shitty message and I’m fine with that.  I hope he falls off his stupid bike. -K.

(C’s idea of what this tool bag looked like)

Sex with you is a very Kafka-esque experience.

Jezebel does a great round up of readers’ horrible Online dating stories. I love it! Some are worse than others, this one below is one of my favourites:

Let me start by saying that I was really only looking to hook up. I had just been dumped by my boyfriend and am not the bar type and so I figured that online dating would be a reasonable option. I used a local personals service (“_city_dating.com”) and had been talking to a guy for about two days before agreeing to meet him.

Mike had told me that he used online dating because he was suffering from depression and was on medication that made it hard for him to perform. He decided that it was easier to meet girls this way than to meet up in person and then have to explain when they started getting physical. He went on to tell me though that he “had a good feeling” about me and that I was “exciting” to him despite his medication. Okay. I was cool with this and decided to go over to his place to see if we really did have chemistry since we both seemed to be looking for the same thing (a hook-up).

When I got there, he was waiting for me in the living room and we started making out. I could tell that he was getting a little aroused but was having some issues and so when he said that he knew what would “help” and that it was in his bedroom…I willingly followed. Walking in I couldn’t help but notice his bed…surrounded by cat condos. Lots of cat condos. (Some structured to be as tall as I was). I knew he had cats but I assumed he meant one or two and that they were just hiding when I came over. Nope. He had nine (or ten?). Which all came out from under the bed when we sat on it. And all went to their perches on the cat condos to watch us (after rubbing against him and being petted quickly). He then proceeded to start making out with me again and was…well…massively aroused at this point. I was massively creeped out. I like cats (I have two myself)…but having them watch me pee freaks me out much less watching me have sex.

I excused myself openly admitting that this was too weird for me and left. He followed me and begged me to give him another chance and “help” him. I left. For the next few days he messaged me asking me to come over and saying that he had “made progress” with me. I blocked him after receiving a photo of him nude, on the bed, surrounded by the cats.

Read more at Jezebel.com

No one else can do for you like you.

The Breakup of an Open Relationship.

So I was seeing Christian Peyton, a nice software developer in his late 20s for the past few months. It was nice, we saw each other every other week or so and got along very well. It was an open relationship and other than our first date, it wasn’t super exciting.  We’d get together and have a nice time, but it wasn’t serious and I definitely kept my distance emotionally from him.  After our last date a few Sundays ago, I kind of left feeling like I could  have an okay friend, but I was no longer really attracted to him or the relationship we had. So I didn’t contact him again. I just kind of felt like even tho our last date was awesome: an afternoon at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, delicious dinner in the Gold Coast, and a Jazz Seminar in Lincoln Park, it was also the litmus test to see if we really liked each other.  I found myself texting an ex-boyfriend (a prominent jazz musician) while I was with Christian, losing myself in memories of dating him, and then thinking about the other guys I had been going on dates with that week. Usually I was able to keep my thoughts separate: when I was physically with Christian then I was with Christian, and the others would wait until I was free the next day. He asked me if I was sleeping over, and I said I would if he’d like, and then when we got to his apartment, for the first time ever, he put on his TV.  I realized at that moment that it was over for both of us. After some less-than-spectacular sex, I went to sleep all the way on the far side of his king-sized bed, with a little bit of the melancholy of falling out-of-like with someone.

Three weeks later after no contact from me, I get an message.

Christian Peyton:

As much as we are similar, it seems we are just as different. I don’t believe that continuing our intimate relationship would be best for either of us. I truly enjoyed the time we spent together. I do hope you find what you are looking for.

Me:

Thats cool. I was feeling the same way. Glad you said something. I don’t know what I’m looking for, and I hate when people wish for me to find it.Good luck.

I am glad he said something. I would have never said anything, and I would have never contacted him again. I would have liked to the be breakuper and not the breakupee but I didn’t have the guts. It is obviously mutual. I don’t even care that he sent me a message to breakup over OKCupid.  That’s how out of this thing I already was. He wanted different things than me. He was the quiet introvert and I was the bawdy extrovert. He didn’t like crowds of people and parties, and I love going to the bars and being with my friends.  He didn’t drink alcohol, and I’m in the service industry. He was 9-5, I work nights. He was deep into the Chicago kink community (a by-product I’m sure of his crippling introversion) and there was a lot of things that he liked to do in the bedroom that I wasn’t really into (luckily he didn’t ever pressure me to do anything I didn’t want to).  He was Polyamorous, I just enjoy seeing a lot of people. We didn’t really fit. It was bound to happen. I am still seeing other people, so there’s nothing really lost…

The only thing I take issue with is the line “I do hope you find what you’re looking for”. There is nothing more insulting to me. And although I know he said it with no ill-will, its always been a phrase that has bothered me. This is the third boyfriend now that has said that to me at the end, and I want to shout to the rooftops “I DONT KNOW WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR!!!”  I am certainly not looking for anything too serious, a Relationship-with-a-captial-R, a husband or life partner. Not even new friends, particularly. I am just floating around, experiencing, living.

No man could ever give me what I truly would want.