Last time I had one was 2008.

And then a guy shows up who actually IS looking for a committed relationship, and he is resoundingly ignored.

So it doesn't pay to take any of it too seriously.

This would be a lot easier if "doesn't have kids" was a number; but when even the 19-year-olds are putting "I'm a single mother of three kids AND THEY ARE MY WORLD!!!!!" in their profiles, there isn't much to work with.

Same here. I'm no good at reading "signals" or flirting or whatever else it is they're doing these days. If she wants to play hard to get, somebody else is going to have to get her, I don't have the time or the attention span for that sort of thing.

I'm a reclusive hermit, more because of circumstance than choice.

But the uberextroverts do sometimes get on my nerves; it's as if they're trying too hard....

I get messages every day: "Hi, I read your profile and I loved it! Where are you and what do you do?"

There was a time when I would write them back and say "If you actually read my profile, you would know the answers to those questions," but I gave up when I realized they weren't reading my e-mails either. They'd reply with "Thanks for getting back to me! Where are you and what do you do?"

Lately, I'm getting nothing but "Hi!" and "Hello!" and "How are you?" messages. I don't bother responding to those either. If they can't give me more than three words, I'm not going to waste my time!

It took me a long time to come to that realization, but it's true. Other people are not me, they're not living my life, and it would be stupid to let them have any influence on anything I do. If they don't like the way I look, the way I dress, whatever, that's fine. I never signed a contract saying I had to adhere to someone else's arbitrary policies.



That's what I keep telling myself, anyway....

Yeah, I've had that happen numerous times. It's never anyone I'd actually be interested in.

There's good change and there's bad change. I assumed -- based on nothing more than stupidity, naivete, and wishful thinking -- that marriage would stabilize my life and allow me to build a permanent foundation with someone I cared for.

The reality was very different -- a chaotic, destructive, unnecessary mess. I felt like a character in a soap opera for a couple of years. And not even a good soap opera.

I don't really have the time or the inclination to go into a detailed analysis of it at the moment. Suffice it to say that's how I see it in retrospect, and that's more than enough for me to avoid doing it in the future.

I found it suffocating and stifling, extremely uncomfortable and unnecessary. I wouldn't do it again....

Is it any different from being in a long-term relationship? Well, yeah, it's messier and a lot harder to get out of....

Jesus would like you more if you said you were "laid back and easy going."

Thanks, it's nice to know that someone is actually reading what I wrote without trying to twist it into something entirely different....!

Well, that's a nice alternative!



But, in point of fact, I try to be very clear about what I'm looking for, from the very start. I don't want there to be any ambiguities or gray areas -- and when they (initially) agree with me, I think we have some common ground, some common goals, a way to build a sold foundation for a relationship.

But then they always pull the rug out from under me 90 days later.

Some of them have told me, after the fact, that they were sure they could get me to change once I got to know them well enough. I find this sort of deviousness reprehensible.

My "expectations" are that they would be honest with me about what they want out of the relationship.

Is this unreasonable?

I do make that assumption -- and that's exactly what it is, an assumption -- as that's all I have ever seen.

If 5 people come up to me and vehemently claim that the moon is not actually orbiting the earth, am I supposed to take them seriously just because they're telling me this?

I can accept that "everybody is not like this" might be true. But I have no way of proving it, and history testifies to the contrary. If you're going to ask me to deny all the accumulated evidence of my personal history, I would have to protest.

That's the whole point. But people read what they want to read, regardless of what's actually written. This sort of thing happens sometimes.

OK, let me try this again. I can't say everybody is a liar -- because I don't know everyone. I'm not going to live long enough to meet everyone in the world, so I can't take an all-inclusive survey.

But, I can say that everyone I've been involved with has lied to me about their intentions for the relationship. It's a large enough statistical sampling for me to feel that it's reasonable to assume I will never meet someone who isn't like that. Particularly since I haven't met anyone for several years and there is no reason for me to believe I will be meeting anyone anytime in the future.

So, to sum it up in a way that should circumvent any obtuseness or deliberate attempts at obfuscation, I simply don't KNOW whether or not there's anyone out there who wouldn't lie to me about their intentions for a relationship. My point is that I have no reason to believe there is, and there is no practical way for me to test this assumption. My conclusion is that, even if there are people out there who would not lie to me about this, the odds of my ever meeting them are so minuscule as to be entirely negligible.

I'm not saying everyone is a liar. I'm saying everyone who has told me "I don't want to change you" is a liar. Big difference.

I don't know everyone. I do (or did) know everyone who claimed they didn't want to change me.

Re: successfully screening potentials -- I have no frame of reference other than that "I don't want to change you" always turns out to be a lie. Successful screening relies on being able to spot differences, nuances, subtleties, and make distinctions based on them, and then act accordingly. When there are no discernible differences, it is extremely difficult to get a feel for who is being honest and who isn't. Especially when it inevitably turns out they never are!

I hear what you're saying, but I don't think you're seeing the depth of my experience here. This is not something that happened once or twice or five or ten times. This is dozens and dozens of times.

Yes, I may be very bad at choosing partners; but, on the other hand, if that's all that's out there, then my selection abilities are irrelevant. I have yet to see anything that would convince me there are any other kinds out there.

But there's a difference. I'm not starting out saying "I agree with your position and I want the same sort of things in life that you want" if it isn't absolutely true.

I don't know the history of other people, true enough; but I'm never going to get to know their histories once it comes out that everything they claimed during the first three months of the relationship was a lie, and an attempt to manipulate me into a false sense of security so they can have an easy go of it later on, when they decide it's time for me to "change"....

Yes, many people say "I'm not like that." You'll notice when I make a post about people who have bad profiles, and I explain why, people will jump in and say "I'm not like that." There's some sort of weird, defensive, knee-jerk reaction thing that seems to compel people to say "I'm not like that" even though no one ever said they were, or even suggested as much. (You'll notice that I never use names or give out any identifiers in my posts on this sort of thing.)

It's just this sort of rapid-fire blanket denial that tends to make me wonder why it's so important that they publicly proclaim "I'm not like that."

Does it even really matter? Do they think I'm going to say, "Oh, look, here are five people who make a completely unverifiable claim that they're not like that, so I must be mistaken"?

What's really happening here is that there are a group of people who are uncomfortable with anything that reaches beyond the warm-n-fuzzy, sweetness-n-light theory of what to write on internet dating sites. These are the ones whose posts are filled with drivel like "It'll happen when you're not looking" or "Looks don't matter, it's what's on the inside that counts." Some of us have moved past that now, and we'd like to deal with other people who are tired of the pointless mainstream blatherings that don't mean anything and don't go anywhere.

Is that too much to ask? There was a time when I would have said "No," but -- let me put it this way, I would love to meet someone who wouldn't try to change me. There have been dozens and dozens who have told me "I would never try to do that" -- but they always do. So "I'm not like that" doesn't carry any weight. It's just words.