So far so good

A quick update on eharmony. Of the many guys I sent questions to, four of them actually replied and sent questions of their own.

With two of them I responded to their questions straight away as I liked their answers. One of them I closed immediately as his answer to my question about the need for time for personal reflection in a relationship was the one which said he basically doesn't need any. I may have no relationship experience, but I know how I am in my friendships and in how I interact with people generally and I do need time to myself and I think I would feel suffocated if I spent every minute of every day outside work with one other person.

As for the 4th guy, I have just sent my answers to him after debating for a while over what to do. His personal reflection answer was also erring on the side of not needing much, but slightly less so that the first guy. I like his profile more so have carried on communicating. I couldn't give up completely on having personal time to myself, but I could compromise a little for someone who was right in other ways, and I hope the right person for me could do the same.

Of the first two matches who I have sent responses to, I have exchanged Must haves and can't stands with both of them, and one (I'll call him the Younger Man, because he is indeed younger than me) has sent open ended questions.

A few guys have sent me questions and ice breakers but I haven't found any of them particularly interesting or attractive. At least some of the ones I'm interested in seem to be interested back, which does give me some confidence that I come across as someone worth getting to know.

Is he for real?

I have just spent several minutes looking at someone's eHarmony profile trying to work out whether he is being serious or not. I am sure the look of puzzlement/disbelief/confusion/amusement on my face was an absolute picture.

This guy has sent me questions so I checked his profile. His "name one thing you are passionate about" lists numerous items (not a problem, most people give more than one), one of which was he is an unpublished writer with a fear of being ostracised by society if he writes his thoughts down. That sounded a little odd but we all have our quirks so I read on.

The most influential person in his life has been himself. Ok, so he's very self confident.

Next, the one thing he wishes people would notice about him. He does start by acknowledging that it will sound like he is boasting, then goes on to say that women always fail to see that he is far better than most men. He says that they don't see that they will have a much better family life with him and that they fail to see beyond his racial stereotype. And almost as an afterthought he states that he comes from a superior breed (naturally selected) and hence "our offspring will do very well".

I stopped reading at this point to have a bit of a "What??? Did he really write that???" moment. I then carried on and wasn't surprised to find the rest of his profile in the same vein.

The things he can't live without included food and sex and sharing his life with someone deserving. So should I feel privileged that he seems to think I might be deserving???

The first things people notice about him are his public school accent and his confidence and assertiveness. Well, yes, I can imagine his confidence would be noticeable to say the least.

His answer to some additional information he wants matches to know declares that she shouldn't make any assumptions about him until we have meet at least twice, and concludes with "Its an awful shame on all you good women out there that i am still single".

Oh, and he also spelt sharing as shearing and achieving as archiving. Which was obviously the dealbreaker for me and the only reason I just pressed archive this match despite him being so much better than most men ;)

I have concluded that he has either joined up to have a laugh, or there really are men out there who think like that. Luckily I am communicating with a couple of fairly normal sounding guys so it's not a complete disaster on the online dating front, but more of that once I've recovered from reading all about Mr Super Confident.

Giving myself a push

After G/W's gentle push at me (thank you G/W) to keep hoping and walking because good things are just around the corner, I have given myself a push and spent the last couple of hours ploughing through my eHarmony matches. I haven't made much of a dent in them and did at one point wish for an archive all function, or at least the chance to multi select a few matches and archive those. I was going to try to archive all matches older than a couple of months to give myself a manageable number to actually read properly, but I soon realised that would have taken me days so decided to just look through the newer matches and ignore the older ones.

I ended up archiving a fair few of the newer matches. Some sounded like interesting people but not interesting to me, some had such sparse profiles that there was no way to tell if I'd want to get to know them, one rattled on about "symbiotic relationships" which seemed a bit highbrow for an online dating profile and some were just plain odd. Once guy, in answer to the "list 3 things you are thankful for question" said this (and it was all in upper case):
FAIR RENUMARATION (his spelling error)
BEAUTY
HONESTY
Well I am thankful I am fairly paid but it seems an odd thing to put on a list like that. It is good that people are honest, but does he mean he is thankful that honesty exists, that he is honest, that others are honest?? And beauty - his? Women's? Another guy put "handsome" as one of his. One assumes he is thankful that he is handsome. He went straight onto the archived list...

I did send questions to a few guys who seemed interesting and appealed to me so we shall wait and see what happens. I will attempt to keep up with my matches this time and try not to get too disheartened when people don't reply. I will also attempt to post about progress or lack of so if I start sounding like giving up again please give me another push. There is nobody in real life who seems interested in me or who I have a spark with, so online dating seems to be the way to go at the moment.

Little to report

Long time, no post. There's been no particular reason for the lack of blogging, I just haven't really felt in the mood to write. I have been keeping up with me favourite blogs, though haven't managed to do much commenting either.

So, a few updates. T hasn't really moved on much. On the surface she mostly appears okay, is functioning normally, and has cut back a lot on alcohol (she was drinking daily). But she says she is still in love with the idiot guy and described him at one point as an addiction.

A couple of times I have felt our friendship has been threatened by how she feels. Once, she said I sounded disapproving in a phone conversation with her of her wish to stay friends with him, and said if I couldn't support her we might have to talk about whether we could remain friends. We got past that, and on another occasion after she had said she didn't think she could cope with how she felt much longer, I suggested she see her doctor and get referred to a psychologist (which she was referred to a year or two ago for self esteem issues, but because of an admin error never had an appointment). She texted "Goodbye" to me, saying that a doctor can't fix everything and can't stop you loving someone. She went AWOL on me for a week or two then sent a text which said simply "sorry". She occasionally mentions how awful she still feels but I haven't had to play counsellor too much since then, so I think maybe she is aware of how draining I was finding it. She did send me a lovely note at Christmas thanking me for keeping her going and it was nice to know she appreciates me. Despite everything we have had some really fun times over the past few months, when hopefully she has managed to forget him briefly and enjoy herself.

As for me, there have been no more dates. I am still a member of eHarmony but rather inactive. I have hundreds of matches I haven't even looked at. I got really fed up with sending men questions and not hearing back from any of them. Surely one of them at some point has to find me interesting? And I don't think I have been attracted to a single man who has sent me questions. Some are much older than me, others have been really overweight, which I really don't find attractive, others just sound plain boring.

I feel as if I have reached the point where I just can't be bothered. I haven't cried about being single for a long time. I'm not sure I've even felt particularly sad. But I'm not really happy and content with it either. I just don't really seem to feel anything. Have I become really hard? Have I lost the ability to feel sadness about something that I have been sad about for years? I still fantasise about what it would be like to be in a relationship which I think means I still want to be in one, so why am I am not pushing myself to do something about it?

Where to begin

Don't worry, I haven't done anything exciting like find a boyfriend or lose my virginity. The recent drama has all been in my friend T's life. Now I'm all for living vicariously through the lives of others but in this case I wish her life had been boring since my last post.

Last time I posted I was worried about going away for the weekend with her in case she gushed about the guy she was seeing. Well the weekend was fine, there was a little gushing, and a bit of worry, as there was misunderstanding the two of them needed to sort out while she was away, but all was ok. Since then however it's all been downhill.

Not long after that weekend he told her he had to clear the air with his ex girlfriend and that until that was done he and T couldn't be together properly as it would be unfair on both women. Fair enough, it seemed he was doing the right thing. Not long after that he told her he only wanted to be friends with her, only to sleep with her again a week or two later. And a couple of days after that he again told her he could only be friends. The possibility of him getting back together with his ex was also mentioned.

Various other things have happened before and after these two "just friends" chats. He has invited her to his house for the evening then changed his mind at the last minute. She has gone to his house for an evening and he has tried to make her go home just before midnight after the last train has left. Other plans have been made and broken by him. All in all he has been a pretty unreliable guy.

However she says she is in love with him and really wanted to try to be friends with him so she didn't lose him from her life completely. She thinks it was going ok but from the numerous emails she sent me daily, over analysing every last action and word of his for a sign he might want more than friendship, I don't think it was.

Almost the last straw came a couple of weeks ago when he posted on a social networking site that he was in a relationship. He hadn't told T. She assumed it was the ex but was really upset that he hadn't told her in person. She was feeling so bad that she almost pulled out of the holiday we were due to go on.

Then this week it got worse. He cam out for drinks to celebrate her birthday. She had invited him long ago and he had said he would come. She kept saying that if he didn't she wouldn't bother going out at all (which sort of made me feel a little unwanted - aren't I good enough to celebrate with?).

Anyway, he did some out, and the evening started okay, but then in bar number 2, he made some comments relating to drug dealing friends which really disturbed me. She told me not to worry and we carried on to bar number 3. For the first half hour or so the three of us drank and chatted and took photos, then the two of them moved away a little and started their own conversation, leaving me standing alone, for pretty much the rest of the evening. She came over to me a couple of times to say they were sorting out the whole friendship thing and please could I let them sort it then we could have fun. The fun did not happen as not long after she came to me and said he had just said something which suggested he himself deals in drugs. He also made some nasty comments to her which made her feel awful about herself. She ended up crying her eyes out on me when we got home, though she never showed him how upset she was.

I am really not good at dealing with this sort of thing, as much as I might say "it will get better, you won't always feel like this" how do I know it will get better having never experienced it? Part of me also wants to shake her and say "you've only known him for 5 months, how can you be in love with him?" but again I have no personal experience to base that on. And when she says she hates herself and that shit keeps happening to her, I feel like saying "what about me? You think you're awful because this happened, I am so loathsome that nobody even wants to try to be with me, so I've never got as far as being dumped."

I'm not really sure where this post is going, but I am just tired of being an amateur counsellor for her (she has said a few times she wants to die and has self esteem problems) and needed to write this all down. I will keep doing the counsellor thing as much as I can, but it is exhausting me and I'm not qualified for it. I am trying with not much luck to get her to see her doctor and get a referral to someone who is qualified. I am grateful all this crap is not happening to me, but at the same time it makes me sad that I have no idea what it feels like to love someone.

This could go one of two ways

I am going away for the weekend with T tomorrow. I was really looking forward to it. We're going to a city we've been to once before and want to see more of, and have a concert to go to.

Part of me still is excited. However, another part of me is a little apprehensive. T has a new boyfriend and is, by her own admission, very loved-up. She said the other day that she was likely to be unbearable this weekend. I don't mind hearing some things about her new man and how happy she is, but I'm not sure I can cope with an whole weekend of being told how wonderful he is. It's only likely to make me feel even more single and unwanted and I suspect I may be fed up of it by Friday evening.

The fact that she has acknowledged that she might be very annoying does give me some hope though, as when I've had enough I can probably tell her, in the nicest possible way, that it's time to change the subject.

How do I say no?

Now I have a text message from eHarmony guy to reply to. He texted Tuesday to ask how a sponsored swim I did at the weekend went. I was busy Tuesday evening and didn't get around to replying. I thought that might give him a signal that I wasn't really interested but then yesterday evening while I was out with friends he texted to ask how I was and whether I wanted to meet up again.

I am struggling to know how to respond. I don't want to meet him again, but am not sure how to put that politely. I also don't know whether I need to, or should, explain why not. I suppost I could just say I didn't feel there was any chemistry between us, but it sounds a bit like a scripted answer, the sort that eHarmony uses (or used to, they don't seem to want a reason anymore when closing matches).