Archive for the ‘JBloggers’ Category

I do not know how many people read this blog.  When I started writing here, I was told that I would get thousands of readers.  Again, I don’t know how many people read this, but if it’s thousands, then I am not a good writer.  You would think that if thousands of people read this, then the last comment that this blog got wouldn’t have been years ago to a post someone wrote about Jennifer Aniston being hookup (which she is not).

If you read this blog, and you are not the parents of any of the bloggers, please let us know, because we are losing faith that anything we write is being read.  It’s almost as if I am writing to myself.  My mom said I should change my blogging picture, but I am pretty sure that I look similar in any picture of myself.  In fact, any picture taken of me over the past seven years looks strikingly similarly like myself.

If you are reading this, please go to my 100hookup profile and let me know.  You don’t even have to be a girl.  If I receive an anonymous flirt that is obviously from someone that doesn’t have a subscription and says something like “How is it that you haven’t been snatched up yet?” I will be perfectly happy.  I will let the other 100hookup Bloggers know of any encounters that I make with the rest of the world.

All of the bloggers on here are extremely talented and passionate about what they say.  From the dating experts, who actually do get readers, to the simple 100hookuprs® that are fortunate enough to write on this site, we are all just looking for some kind of contact.  We often spill our souls to strangers in the vain hope that somebody has had a shared or similar experience.  If I knew that one person read what I wrote, and it made them laugh or cry, or even feel angry, vengeful, or cynical, I would be extremely happy.  Shower in the sequence of sorrows that is my life.

I just had the most amazing idea.  What would happen if 100hookup, and social networks and singles websites in general, gave people the worst impression of each member?  For example, instead of posting four of the most flattering pictures of yourself, you would post the absolute worst four pictures of yourself that you can find.  This may be difficult for models, but then why would models be on dating sites in the first place?  I know that the discrepancy between your profile pics and your actual self can be frustrating.  You are nervous before meeting people because you feel that your pictures don’t accurately convey your physical qualities.  It can be equally frustrating when you go out with someone whom you thought looked completely different.  You don’t want to be rude, but it is somewhat aggravating.

This can all be eliminated.  Under the ‘Physical Info’, for example, say that you are at least five inches shorter than you really are.  Under “My perfect first date,’ say something like your “perfect first date involves fast food and movies at your parents’ house.”  Be sure to mention that you do not have a car.  Under ‘My past relationships,’ mention that all of your past relationships have involved imaginary dates with your fourth grade teacher and outings with your Cabbage Patch Kid/Teletubby (depending on your age group.)  Say that your ‘Ideal Match’ is a chain smoking drunk who is 20 to 25 years older than you with a degree from an unknown college.

Now, you have nothing to worry about.  First, you can be sure that your potential date is just as good looking or better in real life.  Second, you can be sure that your date will not be disappointed in any of your attributes.  Then you can build from there.  The sky is the limit when you are a 60 year old, fat chain smoker with little to no education or personal hygiene!

There’s a saying.  Here’s how this saying goes: Men will eventually want to sleep with any female they have.  I have found this to be true, with two exceptions.  So I guess I have found this to be untrue.  Either way, listen to me, or you’re going to lose friends.  Maybe you won’t.  What do I know; I’m writing this alone on a queen-sized bed.

I joined 100hookup and I was so good at being single that I was hired to write about being single.  Now I’m single, and I write about being single, and that subsequently makes me sadder about being single.  I am far from being one of the relationship experts on this site.  They probably get paid/laid.

The last paragraph was independent of anything that I said or will say in this post.  I don’t know why I’m leaving it there.  Anyway, if you are a man and are thinking of rooming with a female, don’t.  One of two things will happen. 1, you will end up sleeping with her and will eventually break up and it will become impossible to live together.  Or, 2, you will grow to hate each other because platonic friends of the opposite sex are not meant to cohabitate.  I have lived with a female twice and they both ended in disaster.

The first time, I was in college.  My four best friends and I decided to rent a duplex.  One of these friends was/is a girl.  Within a month, she was having panic attacks and stress-induced hallucinations involving clean living quarters that never materialized.  Guys are ne’er-do-wells and women are hygienic.  That’s what happens when I use the thesaurus function on Microsoft Word to look for better alternatives to ‘slobs’ and ‘clean.’  So my first experience living with a girl was a disaster.  It lasted only a year, which is good, because I might not have my best friend if it was any longer.

My second experience living with a girl is currently in its final stage.  She is a friend from high school and prominent member of Prom Disaster ’02.  I don’t think I have to explain that one.  We all remember what happened.  So we have lived together for about two years now and my flaws are crystallizing in her mind with time.  It’s just not working, so I’m moving out next week.

If you are female, and have successfully lived platonically with a male for an extended period of time, and it’s going well, it’s really not.  He wants to sleep with you.  My two platonic female roommates were very pretty, but we weren’t attracted to each other, so I was able to dodge the sex bullet.

As a blogger for 100hookup I certainly have no problems expressing my opinions on the virtues of online dating. During the time that I’ve been on the site I have benefitted greatly from how it provides a forum to meet people and get to know each other, as well as making dating easier for people who are very busy or don’t thrive in the bar scene. In addition to those reasons, and others I’ve talked about in past blogs, I can honestly say that I’ve had a very good experience with online dating. Even though I was already sold on the online dating experience, recently I discovered yet another reason why it is such a great option for me.

Last week our team embarked on a week and a half long road trip (for those of you who don’t know, I’m a college basketball coach) to play games in Utah, California and Texas. In past seasons I would have completely disregarded my social life and been forced to focus solely on my job since it’s difficult to meet women on the road. However, since I can meet women online no matter where I am, on this current road trip I have continued to be active online emailing and chatting with women I am interested in.

Furthermore I have continued to try to make plans for when we get back from our trip so, in actuality, because of online dating, I have continued to be able to try to meet women in spite on my being across the country for work. Just like when I talk to women while sitting on my couch at home in Chicago there’s no guarantee that I’ll go out with anyone I talk with while I’m on the road, but at least I am continuing to be social and trying to date. As someone who is constantly trying to achieve a balance between their personal and professional life, I am grateful for online dating since it has once again provided with me the opportunity to continue that pursuit where in the past I would have conceded all my focus and energy toward my job.

I really don’t like the term ‘pet peeve’.  That’s a big pet peeve of mine.  According to dictionary.com, another term for ‘pet peeve’ is ‘personal bugbear.’  Now that is awesome!  Seriously, how did pet peeve win over personal bugbear?  I guess it was a personal bugbear of someone when people refer to a pet peeve as a personal bugbear.

Anyway, I don’t have very many personal bugbears, but I do have a few.  And one is that I feel very uncomfortable around people whose pets are larger than they are.  This is just a smack in the face to the history and evolution of the human race.  Humans are the dominant species on this planet.  We are smarter, more evolved, and, let’s face it, larger than many other carbon-based life forms that we have trained as our docile pets.  Do you know why, for example, that elephants don’t make good pets?  It’s because they’re enormous.  Baby elephants could eat children if they wanted to.  Perhaps some do.

So by the time I finally found her apartment, her giant bulldog greeted me at the door before I could even see her.  She had to yell at the dog, make the dog go into the other room, and then close the door to that room before I could shake her hand.  Yeah, I feel weird about hugging someone that I meet for the first time because maybe that’s not their thing.  So I shook her tiny hand.  The date was nice, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the fact that her dog was bigger than she was out of my head.  I could not go out with her again.  Wait, why am I still single?

It is very common for women to dismiss all men as being afraid of commitment.  It seems they use this reasoning whenever they want to diagnose any problem they see in men.  If a guy doesn’t want to take a morning jog at seven a.m., he’s afraid of commitment. If a guy doesn’t want to go department store shopping for the better part of a weekend, he’s afraid of commitment.  If a guy has been dating a women for ten years, and still won’t propose, he’s afraid of commitment.  Okay, I concede on that one.

I may not speak for all men.  I may not be speaking for many men.  I may be speaking only for myself.  I don’t see anything wrong or scary with spending the rest of your life with the woman that you love.  I don’t even see anything wrong with spending the rest of your life with the woman that you tolerate.  Seriously, dating is hard.  The constant fear of rejection and the relentless pursuit of self-perfection gets tiring.  They can wear on you until you become irrationally afraid of weekends and of any restaurants that have valet parking.  Sometimes, we just want it to be over.  I am very much looking forward to becoming fat and apathetic about life.  Complacency is my ultimate life goal.

Though I don’t think I am afraid of commitment, I know for sure that I am scared of crazy women.  I think that if a woman becomes so sure that any man she dates is scared of settling down, she may work herself up so much that she can come off as insane.  If I’m on a date, for example, and the woman starts asking me how many kids I want before our bread arrives, I get scared.  This is not because I don’t eventually want kids.  This is because we have literally known each other for five minutes and I spent all week obsessively getting ready for this dinner.  Right now, I am completely committed to making this dinner as pleasurable as possible for the both of us.  You can’t just skip to us having kids.  Right now, I’m too focused on trying to figure out how to fill the next two hours with inane small talk to produce another life with you.

Anytime I’m supposed to go on a date that’s happening more than a day after I’ve planned it, I get irrationally nervous.  I know most people get nervous, and that’s normal.  I, as I said, however, get irrationally nervous, and this implies abnormality.  This exaggerated nervousness began around age thirteen, anytime I dreaded going to whoever’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah party was coming up that weekend.  I was not very popular, nor was I a good dancer.  If you’re not a good dancer within the company of thirteen year old kids, you are a terrible dancer.  That’s not why I got nervous, though.  In fact, I can’t really explain why.  I guess it was fear of being in an unknown social environment.  This is despite the fact that every party featured the exact same thirty kids.  To me, the environment was far from unknown.

Since that time, I have gradually developed a rather severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Its manifestations are complicated, and it would be incredibly boring if I tried to explain them here. But, basically, I obsess.  I obsess over the fact that I left my cell phone at home.  I obsess over the fact that I didn’t swipe deodorant under each arm exactly four times.  I obsess over the fact that I woke up at exactly 9:21 a.m., which is an extremely unlucky number.  See how those examples get progressively crazier, and therefore seem to correlates to how the disorder has regressed over the last thirteen years.

When I have an upcoming date in, say, four days I go nuts.  The first day, which we’ll call Monday, I completely forget how to talk to people.  I practice on my friends.  I call a female friend and go through the ‘hi…bye’ routine.  That is exactly how it sounds.  Seriously, I have to remind myself to say ‘hi’ when greeting somebody.  On Monday, I’m a blank slate.  And so, by Wednesday, I have worked myself into a frenzy.  My heart paces fast, and I can’t focus at work.  I go to the bathroom every five minutes and just pace around in the stall (which is logistically difficult).  By the time the actual date rolls around, I’ve already assumed the absolute worst.  This often works, as the absolute worst never happens.

After learning many (two) important lessons from my apocalyptic-soul-crushing-equivalent-of-a-first date, I assured myself that, by definition, the next date could not be any worse.  This time I would not blindingly dive into a pit of uncertainty.  I had to arm myself.

First, I decided to read information posted about people before deciding to meet them in person.  Last time, my criteria for a date consisted of the other party being a girl.  This time, maybe, I would check to see if we had some, or any, shared interests. The first girl’s profile I looked at said that she liked food.  I like food, too!  Bingo!  Let’s look at more things!  We both like attending events!  This is unreal.  Her “About Me” section was pleasant and she seemed like a really nice person.

Second, I decided that I would chat online with someone before I rush and ask a stranger out to dinner.  I wasn’t yet aware of the feature where you could immediately chat with anyone else that is online at the same time.  I sent the same girl an email, which began a nice back-and-forth conversation.  Once I felt comfortable, I asked her to dinner.  She said yes!

We went to a quasi-fancy Italian restaurant, and it was quasi-expensive.  We both ordered spaghetti, and it was quasi-tasty.  The entire night had an awkward tinge to it.  I don’t think there’s any way to meet a person for the first time after talking online for so long and not feel a little uncomfortable.  If there is, maybe that is love.

Though there was never a second date, I left the first date feeling just fine.  The one date fulfilled all the social and food requirements I needed for the night.  Though I did want to see her again, she apparently did not.  Since I had nothing to lose, I asked her why she didn’t want to see me.  She responded by saying that though I was a nice guy, I mentioned bodily functions too much.  Who knew?

It is really popular for people, in general, to say that going to the movies is an awful way to spend a first date. But I think that going to the movies can be part of a great date. Please note that I am often wrong, and have been on many terrible first dates.  This being said, however, I stand by my ridiculous claim.

Of course, just going to a movie can’t be a whole date.  I do believe, though, that it can supplement dinner, or another imaginative, phony, impromptu activity.  You can go out to dinner first, which everyone agrees is a satisfying shared activity. If the dinner goes well, you can offer to take your date to the movies.  If he/she says no, that’s okay.  But if he/she says yes, then it is on.

Even if dinner proves to both parties that the date was a mistake, a movie is a nice way to not have to talk to the other person for the rest of the night.  You can live vicariously, for about two hours, through the lives of the more attractive characters on the screen.  Go pretend that it’s you extracting information from another man’s dream, or get mistaken for a criminal while on a nice dinner date with your wife. Ahem, Tina Fey.

However, if dinner goes well, then the movie experience will prove even better.  Once you’re at the theatre sitting in your comfy, reclining chairs with optional armrests, it feels great.  The air conditioning is usually on high.  You’ve already (hopefully) shared fulfilling conversations, so now you can relax.  It’s okay to sit back and unwind.  You don’t have to talk for the entire date; sitting while not talking will probably comprise a good portion of your marriage in the future, anyway.  Might as well sit back and enjoy yourself.

Over the last year I have blogged for 100hookup, which has been a great experience me.  I’ve been able to self-reflect and memorialize some of my zany dating experiences…and there have been a few.  What have I learned?  I’ve learned to expect the unexpected and that you cannot control people or relationships.  You can only control your role, character and actions/reactions. But most of all, I’ve learned that life is precious and fleeting, and all the success in the world means nothing without great friends, family and that special someone who  makes your smile a little bigger to share.  In light of the recent Julia Robert’s movie, Eat, Pray, Love, I guess the most important lesson learned is to take a gamble because you just never know.  When all is said and done, you can feel comforted by having had a SWEETADVENTURE and no regrets.