Moving Swiftly On
A couple of summers ago, I decided to try online dating for the first time. The first guy I “met” happened to live right down the street from me. I took this as a good sign and proceeded. We had some good conversations on Gchat for about a week and since it seemed that we had at least some things in common, we decided to meet at a local bar for drinks.
His profile pictures were a little blurry so when I met him it really was the first time I got to get a good look at him. I wasn’t blown away but he wasn’t horrible (his gothic-rave kid outfit aside) so I decided to stick it out and give him a chance. The conversation started off with the usual ‘getting-to-know-you’ type stuff. He had a decent job and seemed to have some solid goals in life. He asked questions about me and appeared like he really wanted to get to know me. Soon, however, it all went downhill when he brought up his ex – and did not stop.
I tried to be polite but really all I could get out were a bunch of smiles and nods. He seemed so torn up over it that I thought he was going to start crying. He literally went on and on about her for a good 20 minutes. I felt like I knew her better than I was ever going to know him. After drifting off into my own thoughts for a bit, I snapped my attention back to him. He was still going. Fed up, I decided to break his monologue.
“When did you two break up?” I asked.
It turns out they were still married. She had just kicked him out and filed for divorce a mere two days before we became acquainted online. Sharing this bit of information is what did him in. He literally started sobbing over his beer. I had absolutely no response. I sat there, jaw on floor, for about 10 seconds before grabbing my things and high-tailing it out of there.
I never looked back over my shoulder. I felt a slight ping of guilt for not consoling him, but I was more floored by the fact that he would try to meet a new woman that soon after being served with divorce papers. And who knows, it could’ve been going on for longer. She was leaving him after all!
And yes, he did send me an email the next day asking me what he had done wrong. And the day after that too. And the day after that and the day after that until eventually he started emailing me just to say hi. That was literally all his emails said: hi. I finally emailed him back telling him to stop clogging up my inbox and I never heard from him again.
