Can I make this funny?

I wish I was funnier and could make my dating saga always amusing. Some of it is; a lot of it is just plain hard. But this past year, my dating life exploded - at least in numbers - and I wanted to record some of that for posterity.

Most recent saga. I meet a guy from a popular online dating site - you may have heard of it? Match.com... 1 in 5 relationships start online and more of them start here? Sound familiar? Well, that is about the only place I meet eligible guys lately. So, that is where I met the latest.

I say latest because this year there have been a string of them.

Last fall I read a Christian dating book called How to Get a Date Worth Keeping (with the subtitle Be Dating in 6 months or your Money Back... or some crazy (not true) tag line like that.) Several friends had read it and were dating at the time (now married!), so I figured why not give it a try?! I followed some, though I will admit, not all of the principles proposed in this book. And since last December, I have been asked out by numerous guys (I'd say at least 10 serious inquiries; which by the way is a 1000% increase from my previous decade of life!) and have gone out with almost all of them, trying one of the principles in Mr Cloud's book. Go out with every guy who asks you, unless you have serious evidence that he's an axe murderer (or something like that). This is supposed to be so that you don't get stuck in the rut of who your "type" is. And to meet all kinds of guys and really just experience dating. Well, that actually did happen, and it was somewhat fun. I went out with guys that I never would have if I just based it on looks or spirituality or personality. I even went out on second dates with some that I didn't really enjoy the first date with, just to see if they had first date anxiety that would pass.

I have had mixed results. I dated 3 of them for at least a month. Never officially being in a relationship, but with several of them getting to the point where we acted like we were in a relationship. Which usually, ironically, is about where they ended.

So, that is a perfect segway back to this guy I just dated. I say dated, in the past tense. I'm not completely sure it is over, but am getting a good sense that it is, since he is no longer treating me as I deserve to be treated.

Anyway, said guy. We met a week before I came down to San Diego. And just 3 months before I am set to be going on deployment. Bad timing? Perhaps. That thought may have ventured into both of our heads a time or two. But we hit it off. Really hit it off, as we had a 7 hour second date the night before I left! We talked over the next week through texting, phone and skype. I teased that he should come to visit me. Guess what? He decided to come down. Now, granted, he has family in Los Angeles that he also wants to see. But we all know he was coming down to see me. :) And he did come... and we spent 2.5 fun days together, touring San Diego. Well, as much as we could since it was raining. I thought we had a great time. Unless he is a terrible faker, he had a great time as well. Even told me so at the end. Yet, there was something different about him from the 2nd date. I think he realized he had taken it too fast on the 2nd date and slowed it down some on the weekend he visited (we're talking mostly physically here). But I wasn't discouraged until he went back up to Seattle and I started to feel a disconnect. What was going on? In his mind, not much. He just wanted to be friends, take things nice and slow. Yea, that is not how he acted on the weekend down here. Well, we had the DTR (define the relationship for those not accustomed to that acronym) conversation a couple days ago and I heard what he hadn't put into words until then. "I hope we will always be friends." Well, that's the part that's sticking in my head. He said other things, including he still sees some potential, but the timing seems bad. And God must have a reason for everything, including our meeting. Well, hmm... Mostly the part I remember is we'll always be friends, which felt like a breakup to me.

I told him I didn't want to text anymore, since he didn't seem that interested in it. I wrote an email the next evening, explaining a little more my overreaction from the previous evening. It's two days later and he hasn't responded. Now I did say no rush in responding, but the content of the email should have prompted a quicker response. I know, it sounds like I'm expecting him to read my mind. Not actually, I just want him to care enough to ask me how I am, since I hung up bawling. Is that too much to ask from a friend?

Nope it's not too much. I'm tempted to just send another email saying never contact me again, but that's not the solution either. A friend will wait it out and give him a chance to think things through too. So that's where I am in this saga.

I do have some funny stories from the past year, which I will post on here soon. Stay tuned...