Dating Thread 233 - Being Our True Selves

[SortingItOut]

The Rules:

1.The first rule about the dating thread is don't talk about it with people you're dating.

1. Develop a thick skin.
2. Do not invest emotionally too soon.
3. It's all BS until it actually happens.
4. Trust your gut instinct.
5. People vanishing, lying & being generally weird is not your fault.
6. Know your worth.
7. If it's not fun, stop.
8. Loo update is mandatory.

10. No dating the thread. 11. Treat others as you'd like to be treated 12. Any relationship you have that could get ruined by having a conversation about your feelings, standards and/or expectations wasn't really stable enough to begin with 13. The things you choose to ignore/ tolerate now are the reasons you will break up in the future 14. OLD can get very time consuming. Keep doing other activities you enjoy.

Optional: Please give your irons (potential dates you are talking to) nicknames like Mr Scottish. Initials are allowed (Mr S) when you are an item.

WeWantTheFinestWines

you didn’t offend me at all . I needed to hear it . I’m sorry accountant didn’t work out . This is why dating is so hard as issues like this are a big deal

regarding the ex fling , at some stage she will see you are mutual friends . You could defriend him ? It’s a bit of a knarly one , and I assume you value her friendship more ?

Mila14
I don’t know if I can do FWB either . But I also can’t do a relationship either given my boys . So a pause and thinking time needed , but most critically healing . I’m taking October OFF

OnceRuralNowUrbanbliss
we have both been through the mill this weekend . I appreciate your honestly as so much of what you say resonates with me .
I have no easy answers . Being a single mum can Be hard and lonely . We have to see if the flings we have add spice and fun , or increase the stress burden .

35, wow, that seems so young for the most natural of activities to be going wrong.
I will have to read up on SSRI side effects, I didn’t know this

I missed this yesterday, I cannot imagine taking V with DE, that ridiculous, you would just have a permanent erection for a couple of hours

2nd the wow here, that’s amazing, how did the broach the subject or was it obvious

I confess I did get a feeling he was a bit of a player - turns out a player with a broken stick!

girls really are mean, .. but that’s really funny 😄

@Thisisworsethananticpated I am Signora Marella... buongiorno!

That’s what the thread is here for. It sounds very similar to an emotionally unavailable ex of mine ref the lack of questions about you and the slightly lacking contact post meet. In my case it was that he just wasn’t looking for a deepening connection which sustained its thread in between dates and was about gently getting to know each other more intimately - he wanted to be the perfect “pop up” boyfriend.. we had a great time when together but I definitely want more contact between meets.

So it could be that he’s very fond of you and enjoys your dates but that once he’s “ticked that box” he’s able to turn his attention to the other compartments in his life.

Agree with this - I’m a bit like you in that PIV is very important to me, but I’ve had the best sex of my life with those for whom this is just one component of many - for a start there’s only so much PIV (leading to male orgasm) you can have, so a several hours long session is going to have to have way more tricks up its sleeve!

A lot for me is about the man’s attitude/confidence/ability to just talk about it all.. but I like men with a bit of a feral streak so there we go.

Yes @ibelieveinmirrorballs quite possibly on this:

"So it could be that he’s very fond of you and enjoys your dates but that once he’s “ticked that box” he’s able to turn his attention to the other compartments in his life."

My best mate who is very alpha blokey despite being a woman couldn't believe that I was getting all stressed about a lack of text(s) or kisses at the end when just a couple of days before we'd been so excited to see one another and making plans. She reckoned she wasn't very texty and wouldn't have given it another thought.

Meanwhile I've drafted a terse breakup text and matched and started chatting with 5 new fellas... My heart's not in it though tbh.

I'll throw myself into work which won't be hard as it's totally mental at the mo.

Thanks again for thoughts.

I honestly think I'm going to have to say farewell to Mr Art for his lack of attention and missing 'xxx' as it's driving me bananas.

i have just realised from the above that the ‘xxx’ were meant to be kisses, I thought was a place holder for something, I can’t remember anyone sending me any or me sending that to anyone, I’m a bit with you friend, wouldn’t even cross my mind to worry about that

Yes @HowlongWillThisTakeNow a sudden lack of messages and the scant meh ones that did come through hours after a bland short 'hope you're staggering through your day despite no sleep' came ages later not immediately (a change) nil kisses (whereas all previous ones since our first irl meet in Aug had three kisses or a kissing emoji). And no gushing about how fantabulous I was or we were together.

It was an obvious change to me the recipient. No 'thanks for a wunnerful time', hours went by before the meh statements, they were kissless and left me feeling shit and/or dumped.

Throwing myself into work is helping. I'd forgotten about him.

I'll send my 'I'm chucking you not vice versa' text tomorrow if he continues to not be in touch. Maybe.

A sudden influx of messages on tinder and POF, not enough time to date them all 😬.

Is it bad of me to weed out anyone that doesn’t fit my criteria (which is a pretty big criteria)? Speaking to a lovely guy but he has 2 children and he spends every other weekend picking them up and dropping them off over 100 miles away. I don’t have much free time so he wouldn’t really fit into my lifestyle. I don’t really want to date anyone with kids under 16, my dc are 16+ and I have been in relationships with others with young kids and it’s been a nightmare.

Mr Tattoo has flu and has vanished, he did say he would be back when feeling better and he hasn’t been online since. Not sure if I scared him off by asking if he has WhatsApp so we could share photos of a hobby.

So I've still been speaking to the 2 men who I've been speaking to over summer - just sent them pics of what I was up to last Friday (white water rafting).

Should I just now finally ask them both out and if there's no answer/swerving of this then just bin them both off? Bear in mind have asked them out before and for whatever reason one has avoided meeting up but said he'd like to. The other asked me out a couple of times but I was busy.

@Lovemusic33 - the man who spends every other weekend travelling a few hundred miles to pick up/see kids I'd definitely bin off, he won't have that much time to see you. I agree, men with young kids when dating can be a minefield as whenever they seem to see their kids, they can't see you or there are other issues.

Re Mr Tattoo - loads of people have flu/bad colds right now so I'd give him a bit of time to respond.

@GonnaGetGoingReturns Yes you need to suggest a meet up unless yoirehappy having them as pen pals.
Suggest the meet and mentally allow 2 weeks to physically meet and if they can't for any reason bin them off.

If they haven't met yet they're hardly going to now

Noted.

That's the thing, this one man, he definitely did want to meet and suggested two dates but I just couldn't do them (was busy). Maybe he thought I was game playing with him by not meeting up? One time we were supposed to meet he was too hungover (planned/unplanned drinking) and I gave him a pass with that because though he would've met up it's never nice to force that on someone.

The other one, I don't know what his game is, we chatted for what seemed like ages, then I said, much as I like being text buddies I'd prefer to meet up or not, do you want to meet? and he said yes.

@GonnaGetGoingReturns that is the opposite of how I work. I'd never text anyone for more than enough to assess the basics (intelligence, humour, asking Qs, ability to use and write words well, logistics of location/availability, music compatibility, mutual politics/religious status and so on.) then its straight into actual meets to test pheromones, two way convo, and mutual fancying.

There's in my humble opinion little value to have pen friends and not meet.

I made a special exception for Mr Art as he was leaving for two months the day we matched. I sat on my hands and didn't text him much until he was back and we could meet. We met the day he returned. As it was important.

Each to their own I guess but I learnt ages ago a person could be charming and funny via text but have awful shoes, aftershave, teeth and clammy hands with no conversation skills in real life. Dead awkward if you've formed a textual situationship (my new favourite word o the week).

I'm now up to 7 Bumble matches and chats. Not sure I can juggle this many convos. I'll thin them out a bit tonight

That's the thing - I did online dating too and was like you, kept text tennis to a minimum and dates arranged ASAP.

But in this case it was with a new site/app, Thursday, where basically either you or they match, then you swap numbers, text but it's usually in a day - so via site, then progress to whatsapp/text which I did and to be fair the first man wanted to meet quite quickly. There was even another man in the mix but wasn't really my type. I suggested to the second man to meet fairly quickly too, but he was still on the Thursday app (absolutely fine) but wasn't sure if he was keeping his options open.

This time round with these 2, the first one I fancy like mad but if no dates arranged I'll just bin them off.

I don’t understand why it would work any differently just because it’s a new app.

I absolutely could not be bothered to be long term pen pals - it’s likely to end up being a massive waste of your time if you meet and don’t fancy them but have spent hours each week for months texting/thinking/posting about them. They are total strangers until you’ve met.

Just to add to this, I have a stinking cold (man flu 🤒), and spend most of yesterday asleep on the sofa

For the guy who asked you out a couple of times, you will definitely have to ask as he probably won’t the other guy I wouldn’t bother

Thanks for this. I'm definitely going to ask him but make it clear that if he's not interested then tell me. I can't be arsed with playing games.

The other guy, honestly, I won't bother. Seems nice enough but I'm not going to be a text buddy.

@ibelieveinmirrorballs - usually I'd be exactly the same as you, can't be bothered being long term text pals with people but I think with these two men it just fell into that pattern. I think with both men I would have been attracted to both if I'd met but the first man more so than the second man. But you can never tell until you meet them in person!

So true, never can tell til you meet in person.
first ' date' with current OLD FWB was on my doorstep cos it was lockdown. I opened the door and thought.... woah,,, and then phwoar.

That was a week after meeting /texting initially.

Now thats my standard. if they cant dont want to meet after a week, its in the bin! No point wasting time texting strangers ( been there, done that)

I’ve just been looking at some of the messages between myself & NoShow and just realised the she put “xx” on the bottom of them, I didn’t realise that was kisses…
I feel really odd now

Well every day's a school day @HowlongWillThisTakeNow but the point is you didn't constantly use three kisses then abruptly stop using them and drastically reduce the text frequency to practically nil at the same time!

My best mate still thinks I'm being an overdramtique knee-jerk nightmare for even thinking anything of it but she's never OLD and doesn't have abandonment issues to deal with.