The New Geography of Dating

I guess I’ve decided to take my first stab at dating here in Austin. At some point during the past 6 months or so I must have re-upped my Match.com profile for 3 months and then forgot about it and let it re-up again for 3 more months. While I was still in Virginia I didn’t see much point in checking it as I knew I was going to be leaving, but since I’ve still got another month to run out on it, I figured I’d give it a whirl.

I’m no stranger to Match, I’ve used it previously with mixed results. I’m incredibly picky when it comes to these things though so the people I contact are few and far between. If someone happens to contact me, either through a message or a “wink” that tends to smooth things over though. Last weekend a cute Asian girl, a few years younger than me, winked at me. Last night I decided to reply to her wink with a message. We’ll see where things go from there.

If anything, I’ve become more pragmatic when it comes to dating over the last few years. I know what I do and don’t want in a person and in a relationship. My only problem tends to be that when I find someone who meets my criteria, I don’t meet theirs. I have to admit that I’ve often chalked my lack of success to geography, or rather the type of people I met in my previous geographic location. I’m hoping that a new latitude and a city like Austin will find me people more my own speed and ideally women who meets my standards while I meet theirs.

Getting Ahead of Myself

I stopped paying attention to my internet dating sites about a month and a half ago. I let my Match.com subscription run out and I stopped going to Okcupid. I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew that if I stopped looking for someone, someone would find me instead. So about3 weeks ago I get an email from someone. There’s a brief back and forth for about a week or so and then we made plans for last friday. I’ve been on a number of dates over the past year, none of them extraordinary, most of them generally confusing, or lacking a general spark. This date was not like that. With the other dates I had found reasons pretty early on as to why a relationship with that person wasn’t going to work out. This isn’t due to any sort of pessimism and I’m not the kind of person who looks for problems with others, but it was just obvious that things wouldn’t ultimately work out. One person ended up getting back with an ex just after our first date, another I dated for two months before it became apparent to both of us that while there was attraction, there was no real chemistry, and the third disappeared completely after our second date.

The date I had last friday was the kind of date I wish I could have all the time. It was text book all the way. Good food, good conversation, a good movie, obvious attraction, and a goodnight kiss. Now I’m traditionaly the worst person for first kisses, I never know when the right moment has come, with this date I knew, it was honestly the most perfect date I’ve ever had. We’ve got plans to get together again in another couple weeks (bad timing as usual) and we’re in touch in the meantime.  As usua, of course, I’m dreading all the possibilities that exist to derail things in the meantime. There’s the “getting back together with an ex” scenario, which I wouldn’t even bring up except it’s happened to me twice recently. There’s the scenario where I come on too strong, which I haven’t done in a while and I hope I’ve learned my lesson. There’s the scenario where she loses interest and disappears. And there’s the mystery scenario of something I haven’t experienced yet.

Am I viewing the glass as half empty…even when it’s actually 2/3 full? Probably, but I think I feel that if I call out my fears, they can’t actually materialize. I like this girl though, she’s right at the cross section of what I need, what I want, and what I can handle. I think my problem is ultimately the delay in dates. Now, this usually ends up happening to me, to the point where if this doesn’t work out I’m just going to plan a vacation sometime soon and just know that I’ll meet someone right before it. Having such a delay in dates though causes me to worry. It’s like I’m afraid that I’m going to screw up in email or on the phone where I wouldn’t in person, that and having an actual date as opposed to just talking to someone reinforces things a bit.

Ultimately this just comes down to me not being good at dating. I’m not equipped to make it work psychologically. I’m great at relationships though. It’s all about comfort level for me. I need to know where I stand with someone before I can relate to them properly. The problem I’m currently dealing with is that I’ve just had my first really good date in 8 years and my mind turns that into the potential for a good relationship, so ultimately I’m getting ahead of myself and I don’t want to get my hopes up too much or screw things up myself before I get the chance to get into a comfort zone…I think