Saturday’s Memoirs: Adventures in Bad Online Dates — The Courage to Continue
Last night I broke up with Benefit of the Doubt. It was ugly. We’ve been together for so long, it’s just so hard to let go. I mean we have so many memories together–like that time I found those girls’ numbers in his phone, and the time he forgot his credit card at dinner… and that time that he couldn’t come to my cousin’s wedding due to elbow pain.
But last night was just too much. Finally, after a week of emails, my OKCupid suitor and I decided to meet up at a new place in Wicker Park. I sent the final note: “I’ve really wanted to try bangers and lace –you up for it?” (What I forgot to do is actually link to it. So in retrospect, perhaps it wasn’t just me who was disappointed.)
Over the course of dinner I could feel a growing distance between me and Benefit of the Doubt. I began to realize that when a guys’ profile pictures include him going down a child’s slide at a water park, and the other one is him holding cotton candy, it’s not because he’s “carefree”– it’s because his mom still cooks him dinner. And I suddenly understood that if every email you exchange has to do with bacon, it doesn’t mean he’s a foodie–it means he’s bad at conversation. And that if he asks to meet you at a bar near his place, it’s not because he’s concerned about his environmental impact– it’s because too cheap to take a cab, and he will make you pay for dinner. These are all things I could have known, had I not been blinded by BOTD’s stunning good looks.
So today I erased Benefit of the Doubt from my phone, deleted his emails, blocked him from Facebook, and started over. No more second dates with guys who call me by their ex-girlfriend’s names. No more first dates with guys who went to circus camp. Nope. I’m done.
Anyway, I may be giving up on Benefit of the Doubt, but I’m not giving up. You get knocked down enough times, eventually you get knocked up. And with that, I leave you with this, my dating life in a video, and the ultimate inspiration:
youtube
- What do you think?
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