That’s What She Said
Over the weekend I received an email from a friend telling me about his recent online dating experience.
“Just had the online date from hell. You need to talk me down on Monday. I should have had enough drinks by then…”
I can sympathize. While I’ve only dated men, I have heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that online dating in general is just plain annoying—for everyone. Women can be just as crazy, if not more so, than men.
For example, a few weekends ago I was out with a group of guy friends and one of them spied an attractive girl at the bar. She was tall, blond and cute. Being the lone female in the pack, I went to go start up a conversation and perhaps introduce her to my friend. I’m not a terribly good wingman, but I have helped others in the past.
We started chatting about the music that was playing, and within 15 minutes I learned:
- Where she was born
- Where she works
- That she has a boyfriend
- Where her boyfriend works
- How she feels about their relationship
- How long they’ve been together
- What she got him for his birthday
- What she thinks about their sex life
- Should she move to St. Lois with him
- What her dog thinks of him
- How long her boyfriend has been on a business trip
- That she misses him SO much that she might die
- And that she’s perpetually on a heavy-duty dose of Xanax (and how much she pays for that prescription)
She was into sharing apparently.
I think I managed to say three words during this conversation and then hedged away slowly, lest I wake the Xanax suppressed crazy that was underneath.
Is this what some women are like when they first meet someone? None of what she told me was particularly bad and would have been appropriate to tell me if we were friends, but she had just met me. What would she have said to my friend if she had been single and he hadn’t seen the look on my face and run in the other direction? Perhaps she would have been more reserved. Perhaps not.
(And as a side note: crazy pants here has a boyfriend? And I’m still single?)
It could be that as a culture, we’ve lost certain sensibilities that make us tolerable to each other in an initial introduction. I can’t see going on a first date in say . . . 1912 and hearing “U wanna go get some waaaangs? They only twenny fie cents tuh-day.” Likewise, I doubt any woman at that time would say “Oh my God, that girl over there, she like, totally needs to get her eyebrows waxed. Buy me a drink, something fruity, let’s get f*cked up.”
Lesson learned: We’re all a little bit insane. It’s just finding the tolerable insane that’s the hard part.
It’s a sliding scale… the longer you go without the crazier you are willing to accept.