Open Letter to Dr. Neil Clark Warren (eHarmony)

Dear Dr. Warren: (and really any guys I may or may not date in the future!!)

Perhaps I am just unlucky, but I think your site needs to do a little better job screening the potential matches. Somehow I have managed to be matched with people who, at first glance, appear highly compatible. The questions that don't get asked BEFORE matching are sometimes very important. I suppose short of a lie detector test, you'd never really know someone's motives in dating were pure. That said, here are my suggestions for making eHarmony a safer place.

Flakiness Factor- How about adding to the personality profile questions. I'd love to know how someone behaves before and after a first date. Do they subscribe to the 3 day rule? Will they set up a 2nd date immediately if they are interested??

A thumbs up/thumbs down feedback factor. I'd love a place to indicate how I think a date went. Chemistry.com has something similar. It gives you a nice way to let someone know if you are or are NOT intestested in getting to know them further. I'm not sure about other people, but the not knowing is sometimes the most painful part!!

Post First Date Behavior - I think I have already covered this one above. (see Flakiness Factor) A man's behavior after the first date can be a real indicator of how the relationship might take shape. Don't jerk me around...let me know if you aren't interested so I can cut my losses and move on. I have a pretty thick skin, but nobody recovers well from being strung along.

With that said, being honest does not mean it has to be hurtful. There is definitely a polite way to let someone down. If you aren't interested, why waste either of our time. Let's just make nice and move along. I am not opposed to making new friends along this bumpy dating road, but I feel the need to remind these guys that I didn't pay for eFriendomy...I paid for eHarmony....

Okay...ranting complete....for NOW. :-)

Ahhh....the holidays

It's that time of year...the leaves have fallen, the bells are a ringing in front of the grocery store, and family gatherings loom. Holidays can be one of the roughest times for a single person. Don't get me wrong. I love my family and I have great friends, but the thought of sitting across from my 16 yr old niece's boyfriend at the Thanksgiving table while I sit there alone is a little tough. It's all about quality time with the family...blah blah blah. I know that I have MUCH for which to be thankful. BUT...this is my place to rant, so rant I will!

It's all about the timing....

Thus began my foray into the world of online dating. I had some success, albeit short term. In February of 2003, I began dating a wonderful guy. We are still friends to this day, but weren't able to make the romantic relationship work after two years. It totally sucks to find someone with whom you have so much in common, yet the timing is just all wrong. We can both make each other laugh usually with just one word. I wish things could have ended differently for us, romantically, but I will never regret the time we had together. He is still one of my best friends, and I am still amazingly close to his family. They adopted me as their own when I moved away from home. As a small town girl in a big city, I was so happy to find pseudo-parents and pseudo siblings. Even though they never became official in-laws, they will always be a part of my family.

I have grown up so much since then. Some of it is just the natural progression of maturing with age, but I truly believe the experience taught me so much. I learned to trust again. With that, I gained back my ability to love with all my heart. Too many times, I think people break up and take their damaged selves right to the next relationship. It's all about healing, timing, and being emotionally available. If you don't take time to reflect on what went right and wrong in the past relationship, you are almost destined to make the same mistakes over and over.

After 3 long years, I finally broke back into the dating scene. Again, I turned to the online world. After a string of reallllllly bad first dates (which I will definitely write about in future posts) I finally met another good one. Ahhhh....the beginning of a relationship is so much fun. Learning about each other, not being able to get enough of each other...first kiss...sigh. We had a really fun courtship. Then, reality set in. I learned a lot in this relationship about being patient and being less selfish. For once, it wasn't all about me, and I was okay with that. This was also my first foray into dating someone with kids. Times went from bad to worse in the relationship. I was constantly feeling ignored, neglected, forgotten. Everytime I would confront him about it, things got better...for a while.

After over a year of ups and downs (more downs than ups, unfortunately) the relationship came to an end. The break up took 4, yes, 4 hours. I don't think I have ever before experienced the level of pain I felt that night. You know those scenes in the movies when someone closes a door and slides to the floor in tears? Yeah, that was me. I sat on the floor in my doorway for a good 20 minutes just sobbing. Once I finally got it together, I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep. It seems again, that timing was a problem. In retrospect, even though we had so much in common and shared an eerily similar sense of humor, we really weren't a good match. He was not healed, he was not emotionally available, and he couldn't give me the type of love and affection that I require (unashamed of that!!).

Sigh...onward and upward.....still looking for that perfect timing!!

Where it all began.....

Broken hearts will lead you to a lot of places. For me, it all started when I created a profile on Match.com. It was September, 2002. I received an email within 24 hours of creating the profile. Walt (name changed to protect the innocent-though I don't know if he was all that innocent) was a fantastic looking and absolutely hilarious personal trainer. He made me laugh from his very first email, and I could tell right away that he had a very similar sense of humor. We met for the first time on a Monday night. I was totally not prepared for how well it was going to go. He pretty much swept me off my feet. Anyway, we saw each other almost every day for the next few months. Then, after a week long trip to Disney World, he dropped me like a hot potato! The topper was that he sent me the pictures from the trip a couple weeks AFTER we broke up. Merry Christmas to ME! Forever he will be thought of by me as the man who ruined Disney World. I finally get a picture of Mickey & me, and BAM it has to include HIM!! Thank goodness for photo shop! To add insult to injury, this was also the first Thanksgiving I spent away from my family. I missed out on pumpkin pie and all my mom's tasty cooking. In any case I was scarred by the experience. I spent the next few months partying it up and trying to forget how sad I was. :-) Ahhh...the bittersweet...okay mostly bitter...memories of my first grown-up relationship. It was, however, with this relationship that I discovered how well I scored with parents, friends and family. IF only we lived in a land of arranged marriages...because it matters not what the rest of the world thinks...if he doesn't love you...you are SOL. :-)

34 and single....and so it begins....

Here I am, 34 years old, a cat owner, and I've never been married. Well, unless you count the weddings I had as a child, you know, where the ring was made out of a dandelion stem. I am pretty sure those weren't official, though. So now I stand before you a perplexed woman. I bring a lot to the table: I'm intelligent, independent, have a great job, am fun to be around, attractive (at least I like to think I am), and I have a very unique sense of humor.

Sure,I used to get impatient about wanting to meet "the one", but the urgency accelerated greatly this past June. Why, you ask? Well...I adopted a cat. Don't get me wrong. Mannie (that's his name) is a great cat and he's been a fantastic addition to my life and a DEFINITE enhancement to my emotional well-being. I guess my fear is growing older and turning into one of those ladies in the cardigan covered with pictures of cats and coated with cat hair. The next thing you know, I'll be carrying a tote bag covered with kitties instead of a purse. Worse yet, what if I start wearing holiday sweaters adorned with festive cats for all occasions?!?!

In the weeks and days leading up to Mannie's homecoming, I talked about him all the time with my coworkers. I showed them his pictures, let them read his profile on Petfinder.com, etc. The day before I picked him up, I received a call at my desk,(from the director of my department, no less)requesting my presence in a nearby conference room. I walked through the door and right into...you guessed it...(or perhaps you didn't)...a CAT SHOWER!!

Cake, ice cream, presents for the cat...you name it, they had it! I was actually pretty excited. Anyone who has known me for long knows that I love when people make a fuss over me. I even have a birthday shopping days countdown to remind people that the "big day" is coming. But I digress.... The more I thought about it, the more I thought about the motives behind such an event. Do my coworkers think I'll never get married and/or have children??? Was this (in their minds) their only shot at throwing me a shower of any kind?? Are they secretly excited to get off the hook and just buy kitty litter and cat toys? This stuff HAS to be a lot less costly than cool kitchen gadgets and china. :-)

In the end, I sort of saw it as my initiation into cat lady-hood. Chilling visions of wearing a cat cardigan with pockets filled with wadded up kleenex danced in my head. I was grateful, however; to have coworkers who cared enough that they would throw me a celebration of ANY kind. Mannie was also super excited about all of his gifts. It brought a smile to my face, and it has brought smiles to the faces of everyone with whom I have shared the tale. I just might have inspired pet showers amongst my friends.