Putting Yourself Out There

Sometimes you must take a leap of faith (or maybe insanity) in life, especially in the search for love. So a few months ago I took it as a hopeful sign when I wandered onto a friend's facebook page and noticed a link to a new dating site. And I took that leap. The setup for the dating site is you meet someone from the company and they set you up on 12 blind dates selected for you specifically. They also host periodic singles mixers.

Let's call set-up number one, Dan Denver. He was a local down-to-earth man, little older than me, never married, good job and education. Sounds promising. We met for drinks and within minutes I learned about his undying love for football, especially Dallas Cowboy football. Living in Dallas for the last ten years this does not bother me in the least, I'm much more of a football fan now than ever before. What came out of his mouth next did shock me - he told me that "Jerry Jones is ruining the Cowboys by trying to attract all the Mexicans to be fans - they now outnumber the original Cowboy fans." Uh hello. How and why would someone say something like that, especially on a first date with a complete stranger?? I really didn't know what to say since our drinks had barely arrived. For all he knew, I'm Hispanic - which I wish I would have just told him that to see if he even realized he had been offensive. I have a feeling he wouldn't have picked up on it. He went on to insult the school district I work for because - you guessed it - the majority of our students are Hispanic. With the second remark, I definitely knew we were not making plans for another date.

Finally the kicker, the bill comes for our drinks and appetizer. We both get out our wallets and he politely offers to pay for it all. Then after getting out his card, he hands me the bill and says he is not very good at figuring the tip, how much should he do? Seriously, you really want me to see the tab on two glasses of wine and cheese that badly. Good Lord. I should have told him to tip 100% - I bet he would have been able to do his own math then. Sadly, he apparently thought the date went really well and wanted to do it again - I did not take him up on the offer.

Now back to the dating service, yes they interview everyone they set-up and based on that, they match people they see as a good potential match. After seeing they thought Dan Denver was a good match for me, I was disappointed but thought maybe the first mixer would be better. Yikes. I can't even really explain how many strange, random people there were. The very first man to approach me had to be in his sixties, long white beard, easily over 300 pounds and using a cane. He asked if I liked sci-fi and then went on to tell me about how only about 10% of women really like a unique man like himself. I've long been a believer that everyone has somebody out there but I do not fall in his 10%. I did talk to one pretty normal guy before leaving so all wasn't a loss, but I was ready to get on out of there. Wow.

Needless to say, I was feeling less than positive about the whole experience at this point. I talked to the company and gave them my feedback and was assured that there had been more potential matches when I signed up; but now all of those men were in relationships. I was actually told that they were "sorry that the men in this age range are so hard to keep single." So it is hard to find single men in their thirties, well that is big news to me - why do you think I'm doing this?? After recovering from the laughter of this insight on dating I decided to give it one more month to see what happened. Absolutely nothing happened. I never got one more set-up, mixer invite, nada. What I did eventually get was my money back after I finally formally requested it due to the company not fulfilling their part of the agreement.

Surprisingly, this entire thing gave me new confidence in a way. I know I'm not a bad catch, I just need to be a little more open to who is out there while remembering I deserve someone who is a good fit for me. When I received my refund check the letter attached said they were "terminating the agreement because they had trouble finding matches for me." At first I felt a sting and thought I might tear up a little and then I thought back to what they had showed me as good potential mates and it just made me laugh. On to the next dating adventure.