Bad dates make good stories

Hello beautiful people! (I can't ever write an intro that doesn't manage to sound cheesy af.) I hope everyone is doing amazing on this three day holiday weekend. I managed to get my ass out of the apartment, and I'm currently writing this in a coffee shop (so safe to say I'm basically slaying life right now). When I first started this blog, my friends really wanted me to dedicate a blog post to all the ne'er-do-wells, weirdos, and flat out douche bags that I had been out with. And I've touched on a few.... if you've been with me since the beginning then you know about the guy with an 8ft tall statue of Anubis in his living room... or the guy whose house had an orange accent wall in every room. But honestly, it's so much worse, so much more unbelievable, so much funnier, scarier, and more shocking than y'all even know. It's been real. It's been weird. It's been real weird. But rather than use this solely as an opportunity to relive my comedically bad dates and encounters, I'd also like to use this as a window into dating culture and what I think is so wrong with the way we interact with each other these days. Because in the end, it feels like the humanity has been taken out of all of it.

Y'all really aren't going to believe some of the absolutely insane things that I have experienced during my over 18 months on these damn dating apps. I'm just going to get right into the example portion of the evening. So strap in and hold on tight, here we go in no particular order:

I once went on a date with a guy, we'll call him "M", to a Mexican place on a Sunday afternoon. "M" proceeded to do lines of coke in the bathroom and only admitted to it when he kissed me and my lips went numb. Another guy, we'll call him "H," had had me over to his apartment a couple of times, and after the second time when I called him out for clearly only wanting a physical relationship, he called me a c-u-next-Tuesday and accused me of stealing his eye cream. Yes, you read that right. Eye cream. "W" had a full on mental breakdown in my apartment and cried to me for three hours straight. "D" called me a bitch because I wanted to go on a real date instead of just Netflix and chill. "P" turned out to be married - luckily I hadn't met that POS yet. But his wife contacted me later to ask if I knew him as she was putting together her case for her divorce. Apparently, I was one in a long string of "P"'s extramarital affairs. So that was cool. There have actually been a very sizable number of married guys on the apps. You can tell when they aren't consistent communicators, only talk to you at weird ass times, and can't meet up during normal off-times - like weekends. Disgusting to think that I've been through that so many times that I can spot the signs now. Oh and we can't forget the guy who called me a bigot because I said I don't date conservative guys. He was triggered because I didn't want to date a bigot. I love the irony of that. When I finally opened up to "T" about the fact that I had lost my daughter, he completely ignored and glossed over what I had just told him. And when I told "T" that the way he reacted made me uncomfortable, he said "you're upset because I didn't say I'm sorry for your loss? Aren't you tired of hearing that?" and "I can tell you're a lot." "R" used me to fill some sort of void while he was in love with his best friend the entire time. And every time he tried to apologize, he'd make it seem like it was justified because she hurt his feelings. So obviously everything he did to me after that was okay. We refer to him as the fat bartender now (IYKYK). This isn't even half of it. There are so many more of these. I think I've blocked a good bit of them out as a form of self preservation.

These are the patterns that I'm seeing after all these months trying to date. And I'll preface this by saying, I'm not writing this for the purpose of men-bashing. I know a lot of great men, I was raised by the best man and growing up was surrounded by some of the kindest, most intelligent, and most patient men. But in the dating world, I keep running into guys who want women to be their emotional support and their physical release without making any sort of commitment to the woman. These guys disrespect boundaries and are the first people to have an emotional outburst when they don't get exact what they want. They don't match energy or effort. They don't even want to go on real dates, in case that gets read by the woman as some sort of commitment. I've also had so many guys pursue me hardcore, love bomb, and after about a month get tired and toss me aside. Because the chase is over and they aren't having fun anymore. I don't want a pen pal, a snapchat "buddy," a friend with benefits (cause lets face it pal, the benefits aren't really benefitting anybody), or anything in that weird amorphous realm. My absolute favorite of all of these though are the guys in their late twenties and even into their mid to late 30s who "don't know what they're looking for." Is it Legos to play with since you're clearly a child? Is it your mommy? It's definitely not the audacity because we know they've got that in spades.

I'll be real with y'all, I'm getting to the point where I'm over it. I would like to find someone who treats me like a real person. A human being. With the same respect that he would treat another man. And I know what all you happily coupled people are going to say - "you'll find someone when you stop looking." Yeah. Okay. Because the perfect man is just going to show up at my apartment door one day. You don't find the right job by not looking. You don't meet friends by not trying. So how would you end up in a relationship by doing nothing? I'll never understand that philosophy. All this being said, I don't really know what the answer is. I keep tweaking my standards and requirements to try and get out of this rut that I seem to be in. But I think that a good bit of it is trial and error. And that kinda sucks because disillusionment is so real. But if I've learned anything, it's how to make the best out of a shitty situation. So I guess I just keep going and turn every bad experience into a good story.

I like to think this pic is me "laughing it off" since that's all you can do: