Day 2: Back in the Saddle

It's been several months since Rachel and I broke up. (I'm sure I will talk about her at some point.) Now's about the time to get back into the game. Plus, I've been feeling very lonely lately. I'm trying not to sound like a whiney bitch. It's tough being the only single guy in a crowd of married people. Your loneliness factor rises exponentially. Jen is the only single friend I have, but she's my ex-girlfriend, and whenever we get together all she wants to do is go letterboxing. Stephen is one of my best friends, but he's in the process of getting married and will have five kids when it's over. I always feel bad about bothering him about my life and seeing if he wants to hang out. He's got enough on his plate. I'm not complaining at all. I'm extremely happy for him and glad that he found a quality woman in Deidre. I'm honored that he asked me to be his Best Man. But couples need other couples and I'm not a couple.

Nashua Baptist is great. I get a lot out the services and the sermons. The people there are super-friendly. If they were any nicer I'd worry that they were some sort of cult. But they are very nuclear-family-oriented. And a single person is not as interesting as a family. Granted, Nashua Baptist is a small church and doesn't have a lot of resources for every possible ministry. Plus, I can count the single attendees on one hand. That's why lately I've entertained the thought of going to other churches and seeing what they have to offer.

I'm just tired of feeling so alone all the time.

Anyway, back to what this original post was going to be about. I recently joined eHarmony. I had tried on-line dating before, and that's how I met Rachel. I met her through ChristianMingle. I reactivated that account, as well, but I'm focusing mainly on eHarmony. I seem to be having more results that way.

I had tried eHarmony years ago and it ended badly. I paid for a full subscription. Well, you pay in three monthly installments. I started interacting with this girl that seemed nice. The way it happens is you fill out a long questionnaire when you first set up your account. Then they start sending you matches. If you want to start talking to them, then you have to pay. After that it's a series of steps in which you send each other questions. When all that's done, then you can finally start talking freely.

Well, I had started interacting with this girl who seemed nice, but at that point I wasn't being picky. We went through the steps and questions, but the moment she saw my photo, she closed the communication. That hurt a lot, so I stopped paying for my subscription and closed my account.

Now I'm back at eHarmony and it's going better than before. I have a better profile pic, and the matches can see it right away. I'm also a bit more mature about it now. If a match rejects me, it doesn't bother me hardly at all. What's painful is when I have to do the rejecting. There was this one girl who was awesome. She was pretty, she was intelligent, we had a lot of the same interests. But she lived in Ohio. I'm not that rich, and I can't support a long-distance relationship of that magnitude. I hated to close that match, but it had to be done. There was no way it would have even started.

There was another girl I had started communicating with via regular email. I had to break off our interaction because of distance. And she was divorced which was a strike against her. Not a deal-breaker. Just something I'd rather not deal with.

The thing about on-line dating is it's a huge waiting game. You send a message to the other person and then wait for her response which can take days. And the trouble is that you don't know that person. You don't know if the reason you haven't heard from her is because she's too busy to log on or if she isn't interested or if she found someone else or some other reason. It's tough to know at what point you should just move on. At one point last week I was talking to four different matches. Now I'm down to one; and I haven't heard from her in a few days.

I'm gonna wrap this up with a weird anecdote. Last night I was checking my account on ChristianMingle when I looked at the profile of a recent match. The girl said in her introduction that if you don't pray in tongues, then talking to her will be a waste of both your and her time. Seriously? She can't date someone who doesn't pray in tongues? I swear, some of these deal-breakers that I encounter are just bizarre!