Saturday, February 1, 2014

Post-Online Dating

I met my lovely and very private boyfriend online in late 2012.  Knowing how adverse he is to any internet presence, I'm a bit shocked he signed up for an online dating site.  I, on the other hand, use multiple social networks so I suppose it isn't much of a surprise.

I communicated with several different people before I met He-Who-Desires-Privacy.  Most of whom I did not meet.  At some point during email exchanges or while texting before setting up a date, I would feel uncomfortable and decide not to meet some of these gentlemen.  All of this was more than a year ago.  I had not given any of it a second thought, until this January.

Not long after New Year's I received a text message from a number I didn't recognize.  It addressed me by name, apologized for not contacting me in so long, and asked how I had been.  I apologized and said I didn't recognize the number and asked who I was speaking to.  It turned out that this was one of the gentlemen that I had decided not to meet over a year earlier.  I politely told him that I had met someone and wished him well.

I find this dumbfounding.  I wasn't interested in meeting this person months earlier.  I was no longer on the dating website.  What made him think that things would have changed?  Why would he have kept my phone number?

But then it happened again.  In the last month, a grand total of four people that I decided not to meet (for various reasons) have attempted to contact me.  It's starting to feel a bit like a conspiracy.  I simply cannot understand this mindset.  These are people I did not even meet.  They are people I barely talked to.  And yet, here they are, more than a year later.

I can understand contacting someone you actually met and had a relationship with.  Perhaps we want closure or want to try to reconnect.  But someone you don't know?  More than a year after a pretty basic conversation?  All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't decide to meet these men.  I'm really glad I met the one that I did.

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