Relationship Woes and Advice 21: Time To Go Bar-Hopping

[absolmorph]

So, my girlfriend and I broke up today.
It was mutual, for the first time in my dating history.

She was being very passive aggressive, because she was stressed and focused on an essay and I was asking her about her life because she said we always talk about me, and not her. When I confronted her (as politely as I could), we talked and I came to the conclusion - which she confirmed when I asked her - that school would be keeping her stressed for the foreseeable future. So, I said I felt it would be best to end things now, when we have a decent chance of it being a clean break, rather than drag it out into all sorts of nasty. She agreed, and so it was done.
I'm just feeling a bit confused right now, because I'm feeling really happy about it. I did the smart thing, right? Or at least not something monumentally stupid?
I just... don't react well to passive aggression, and knowing that it would be pointed my way consistently if the relationship continued...

[Grinner]

Why are you confused?

You made an objective, empathic assessment of the state of the relationship and allowed yourself to come a logical conclusion. You then followed through and broke it off cleanly and effectively. You should be applauded.

-Your first message is sexual in nature
- upon receiving a phone number, you text and then continue to text until you get a response. After initial contact is made and you don't get an instantaneous result, you text "????" after about a half hour
- general harassment after being told "no thanks" or not getting a response on the site at all
-Meeting and instantly grabbing boob or attempting to stick your tongue in their mouth or any other intimate action within the initial meet up
-Asking to meet for the first time at your place of residence

Jeez. Speaking of tactlessness.

[dehro]

one fundamental truth about dating sites, be they adult ones or more vanilla/social ones, is that a large portion of the people on them (especially, but not exclusively, the male population I have to say) are on them in a bit of a "last resort" attempt.. and they are in such a situation because they lack the fundamentals. it's either empathy, education, basic social graces or some other such basic flaw in their approach to other people in general, the people they'd like to date in particular.

let me show you some of the most common situations:

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"it's not polite to send a picture of your genitals on your first approach"
"you'd do well to read the profile of the person you're contacting instead of sending a blanket approach to hundreds of people at one time"
"no, seriously, I didn't write hang out but secretly mean shag you silly"
"no, being on the website doesn't mean I'm desperate, nor does having paid a subscription means you are entitled to expect satisfaction/a date/sex"
"no, really..you're not charming enough to get away with being rude"
"no, I don't think I'll meet you or give you my phone number after we've barely introduced ourselves"
"no, I don't think meeting anywhere else but in a populated middle ground is appropriate and most importantly, safe for either of us. for all I know you could be an axe murderer. for all you know I could be one"
"no, really, I'm 15-25 and you're 70+.. you could be my gramps and I don't have a fetish that makes you charming because of it"
"no, seriously, if I've told you I'm not interested it was not because I like being bugged incessantly or insulted because I'm stuck up or something like that"
"seriously, you're wearing bell bottoms and leaning on the car my dad used to get his licence..I don't think these pictures are recent"
"seriously, a simple search on TinEye has revealed that your picture is part of a series that you lifted from a porn site. here, I can show you"
"really, you've come out of the shower and your towel just fell off? of course do I want to see that... and yeah, I have no problem in following that link you gave me to a site that asks for my credit card details..yes, of course, you need to be sure I'm an adult..and the fact I used said credit card to pay to get on THIS site doesn't count, of course"
"wait a second, isn't that woman in your picture Heidi Klum?"
"actually no, I don't fancy getting teabagged in an alley..as you can see my profile states I'm straight..also, I have some decency"
"no, I'm actually not secretly gay..if I were, I'd use the web to find secret hookups, not to perpetrate the lie"
"oh..I didn't know you could that with a toiletbrush"
"no, I'm perfectly cool with the fact you've waited 3 monts of frequent mailing to tell me you're on a register"
"it's true, for every 20-50 men on this site there is 1 woman..and out of every 100 women 80 of them are fake profiles set up by scammers and camgirls, 10 are from women in depressed areas of the world who want to marry to expatriate with their 3-7 kids.. of the remaining 10, some have serious issues, some are decent human beings, some are on the site just for a laugh, and some haven't been on the site in 3 years, despite their profile still being listed as active...
is it such a wonder that the few sane and real women on here get about a few hundred mails in their box every time they log in, and don't have the time or obligation to reply to every obnoxious one? they can be picky because it's a sellers market for them.. just accept it and do your best to stand out in a positive way."
"no, really...knowing that you have a foot long trouser serpent won't make me squirm in my seat.."
"trust me, if I wanted to find Jesus I wouldn't search for him here"
"oh, I'm ugly? and you're telling me this because....?"
"actually no, I don't want you to wank on a webcam for me"
"I'm 15, you pervert"

these are just a few examples of how many people fail to grasp the basic mechanics of these websites..and many others really don't have enough enough social graces to go grocery shopping, let alone hitting on someone, online or IRL.
no, I'm not exagerating things...most dating sites really do have regular occurrences of most of the above situations.

[DeadManSleeping]

Meeting and instantly grabbing boob

Wait, that's not allowed? And here I thought I had this "women" thing all figured out.

[dehro]

Wait, that's not allowed? And here I thought I had this "women" thing all figured out.

'tis a disgrace, right?

[RabbitHoleLost]

'tis a disgrace, right?

You guys are laughing, but its legit something that happened to me, for serious

[Serpentine]

On the subject of creeps, what criteria define them?

Stalking, obviously. I suspect subjective opinion factors into it, as well as social tactlessness. Appearance, probably?

Well, sticking with dating sites for now, I don't have anything as horrific as BunBun, but here's some first-contacts that I'd call creepy (names have been changed slightly to retain their own contribution to creepiness but make it trickier to track them down):

hello the most beautiful flower in okcupid garden and the most beautiful song on my tongue ;) how are you tonight? fancy a chat with one of ur admirer ?

Hello Sexy

How are you today???

lol, love your profile, wanna chat sometime, or meet up and have some fun?
i am in town most weekdays, if you want to chat, let me know...

ola!
howdy senorita how ya doin?! ;)

I loe the pics, you are stunning, can you add me to favourites please so we can chat.

Jonny
mwah!!

hi
pretty n sexy.....different

Hey, it's nice to meet u, i've gone through your profile and it's quite interesting and well digested, meanwhile my name is abbey I'm Nigerian and I'll like to know more About you co'z I really like what read in ur profile and I want to get intimate with u. and you are free to give me @ any time u want. I'll be waiting 4 your lovely reply so soon. Kiss +23######### and if u don't mind too I can give a call @ any u want it. Peace
u can contact me by this yahoo chatting ID ([email protected]) or ([email protected])

There's others that aren't creepy but which I didn't respond to, just because there wasn't much to respond to. Protip: your first message to someone should have something in it to start a conversation.

one fundamental truth about dating sites, be they adult ones or more vanilla/social ones, is that a large portion of the people on them (especially, but not exclusively, the male population I have to say) are on them in a bit of a "last resort" attempt.. and they are in such a situation because they lack the fundamentals. it's either empathy, education, basic social graces or some other such basic flaw in their approach to other people in general, the people they'd like to date in particular.

I think this is significantly less true now than it used to be.

[Supercrazy DM]

Hey guys, I came here to share my story and ask for some advice. It is rather long winded so if you read it all I really do appreciate it.

In December 2010 i broke up with my then girlfriend and started going out with a girl that liked me and I liked her. She was so much different from my ex and I realized that I was in an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship before.

This girl means everything to me and shortly I fell in love with her and she fell in love with me. Now to give some context at the time we were dating I was a high school senior and she was a sophomore. I got accepted into a few good colleges, but I wanted to stay closer for home mainly because of her. She told me to pick the college I wanted to be at the most not the one that would be closest to her. However, I decided to stay mainly so I could be with her as it was still a decent college and I would rather be happy and with her.

Fast forward a few months. Her dad got a job offer that will take the family over 500 miles away. He decided to accept it in the summer and then I had to contend with my girlfriend moving away in a few months. It was hard. I mean really hard and my heart broke. I mean I had decided to stay to be with her and now she's moving?? It broke my heart.

So she left this past december. Since then I've flown out to see her twice for a total of about 14 days. That being said it feels rather one sided. She's graduating a year early and doesn't have a job. As such I'm the one paying for the ticket although her parents have offered to help some it's not nearly enough for me to keep flying and maintain anywhere close to a healthy bank account.

Now she will graduate next year and she's been talking about colleges. Right now she is talking about staying where she is for college and that would mean that the soonest I could be with her again all the time would be in three years. She has mentioned about going to a college only a few hours away from me, but she's not terribly interested in it.

My question is what should I do? I feel depressed most days and I miss her terribly and I love her more than anything. I don't want to force her to go to the college close to me but relationship wise it would help tremendously. I can't move out to the college near her for fiscal reasons, but her parents make plenty of money enough so they can send her to wherever she gets accepted.

I just want to know what to ask and tell her. I know if I bring it up she'll get upset naturally, I just don't want her to think I'm trying to break up with her. I just want to go out with her and be happy and right now it's so hard to even think straight. I'm a 19 year old guy and I'm ashamed to admit that a lot of nights I cry myself to sleep because it hurts so bad. I can't break up with her as she's a part of me even if she is far away and I love her? What should I do?

[dehro]

1) don't be ashamed
2) prepare yourself somehow for the eventuality that you might grow apart.
I didn't say to give up...just, consider it as a possibility...also, focus on the word "grow"

I'm not going to suggest anything, because we don't know how she's feeling about it..how strong her feelings and commitment are etc etc.
a suggestion to act either way could have disastrous or wonderful results..there's just no saying what might happen.
I'm afraid you'll have to make this decision for yourself.
one small criticism, if I may..is that you should have listened to her when she told you to pick the best uni for you. a better uni would have meant that you'd have had more to offer to her and your life together..in the long run.
this is hindsight of the highest order, of course. nobody could know that she'd move away, when you made the decision.

I think this is significantly less true now than it used to be.

then things have changed for the better, in the last 2 years (that much time has passed since I last ventured in that particular hunting ground.).. or you've just been lucky.

then again..I did say "a large portion" not "everybody"

[Aedilred]

Hey guys, I came here to share my story and ask for some advice. It is rather long winded so if you read it all I really do appreciate it.

OK, so I have heartfelt advice, and I have honest advice. I warn you this is based entirely on personal experience and anecdotal evidence and is coming from a slightly strange perspective, but I wouldn't deliberately direct you badly. The heartfelt advice is that if you love each other as much as you say you do, and as long as you're both clear about what you want from the relationship, then there's no reason that this can't be made to work; you'll just need to make a lot of sacrifices in terms of time and money (but those are secondary considerations if this is really the love of your life).

The honest advice is that I've never known a long-distance relationship to work for long unless (1) there was an imminent and realistic prospect of its becoming a short-distance relationship, or (2) the parties had been together for many years (>~7) before it started and there was nonetheless a realistic if not imminent prospect of its becoming a SDR, or (3) one party had spent so much time with the other during the LDR (around 50% or more) that it was only a LDR in name anyway. It's not so much because you miss each other terribly (although you often do) but because the relationship starts to get in the way of living your own life. People form social networks and put down roots largely on the basis of proximity and frequency of contact; if your partner is outside this network, then they become an active inconvenience. The worst situation is where one party neglects forming their own social life because they're hanging onto a LDR, while the other party does form their own and gets annoyed with their partner for dragging them out of it - that's a surefire recipe for heartbreak.

LDRs can work - I've seen some endure for a long time, and relationships through college often do at least in part because you have stretches of vacation where you can spend a lot more time together. Even so that's not necessarily enough. I've seen plenty of relationships start before college and endure throughout it only to end within months when real life kicks in and the parties realise that long periods of separation were, paradixocally, the only thing that was keeping them together, because they don't have anything in common any more.

This isn't to say that it can't work, just that in my experience it often doesn't, and it might not be worth the long-term heartache. However, see "heartfelt advice" above. Logic and probability are a relatively small part of the picture; you have to decide what's right under the circumstances.

However, what I would recommend absolutely and without reservation is discussing this with her. I know it's awkward, but lack of communication is a major killer of relationships and you will regret it eternally if something ultimately goes wrong because you haven't made your feelings on this clear. Apart from anything else, you'll need to know what her plans are in the long-term (i.e. post-college, should she go) and vice versa. Where does she intend to live? Would she consider moving back closer to you? Would you consider moving closer to her? These are things you need to know about each other (and yourselves) if the relationship is really going to survive.

Good luck!

[Heliomance]

Went and had a look at OK Cupid, mostly out of curiosity. Why am I not surprised to see they have no option for non-binary gender?

[Coidzor]

Went and had a look at OK Cupid, mostly out of curiosity. Why am I not surprised to see they have no option for non-binary gender?

It's not exactly a common option yet, no.

If enough people actually brought it to their attention, well, they seem reasonable enough, at least from their public face.

[Heliomance]

As it is, I couldn't possibly sign up, because I really don't want to put "male", and putting "female" would be dishonest.

[Asta Kask]

That's actually one thing that puzzles me about biology. Given their nature, I assume the eggs are derived from embryonic stem cells, but why can't these gametes repopulate themselves like men's?

And what causes the washout of the several million other eggs anyway?

I assume they could, they just don't. The other several million eggs begin to mature at the wrong time. If they're not nurtured by the right cocktail of hormones they die and are resorbed by the body. As for what determines when they begin to mature - I have no idea. I don't think anyone does. As far as we know it's a giant crapshoot.

[Coidzor]

As it is, I couldn't possibly sign up, because I really don't want to put "male", and putting "female" would be dishonest.

I must admit, I had thought they didn't ask for gender at all and just asked for physical sex in the first place from what I remembered from the transmen and transwomen profiles I'd had come up in my feed.

[RabbitHoleLost]

I must admit, I had thought they didn't ask for gender at all and just asked for physical sex in the first place from what I remembered from the transmen and transwomen profiles I'd had come up in my feed.

OKCupid is really open and accepting (as a website, though the users may not be so), so I can only assume that this hasn't really come up for them before and that's why there's no option.
PlentyofFish, on the other hand, doesn't even have a option for bisexuals, so there you go.

[Coidzor]

OKCupid is really open and accepting (as a website, though the users may not be so), so I can only assume that this hasn't really come up for them before and that's why there's no option.
PlentyofFish, on the other hand, doesn't even have a option for bisexuals, so there you go.

I remember always being fairly impressed by the outfit that it was before they launched OKCupid... Though I can't actually remember what they were called back then.

[Serpentine]

I remember that. I did a stack of quizzes there back then. Can't remember what it was called, either.

[Coidzor]

After doing some thinking on it...the only things that come to mind are "The Spark," and the words "internet like burning," arranged in some way.

[Serpentine]

Wikipedia says it was, indeed, TheSpark. Well done.

[Grinner]

TheSpark was a website dedicated to quizzes. One quiz on it, the "Match Test", later developed into something resembling a dating service, called SparkMatch. After gaining popularity, it was renamed OKCupid.

Edit: Ninja'd.

[qbit]

As it is, I couldn't possibly sign up, because I really don't want to put "male", and putting "female" would be dishonest.

It's a dating site you are allowed to embellish, just put down female.

And then look for the question if you are the same gender now than the one you are born with. And answer "no" yourself, and put "no" as a mandatory answer.

[Starwulf]

Went and had a look at OK Cupid, mostly out of curiosity. Why am I not surprised to see they have no option for non-binary gender?

Hmm, I must admit, I have no idea what that means. What is "non-binary" gender? Does that mean you are transgendered?

[Heliomance]

Means I don't fit neatly into the categories "male" and "female".

[bhtooefr]

That (edit: the "are you the gender you were born with" question) doesn't cover hermaphrodites, though, that are born with both genders... not to mention, there'd be multiple stages of being transgendered, no?

[Astrella]

I think you mean sex. And people with intersex conditions are just born as a different sex (not male or female); sex isn't a binary thing and far more complicated on itself than just genitals or XX vs XY. (Also hermaphrodite is an inaccurate and not very polite term, use intersex instead.)

There's a distinction between gender identity (how someone feels gender-wise; male, female, genderqueer, ...) and their sex. Someone who is trans* would be someone who's gender identity doesn't match the sex they were assigned at birth.

-----

A tad more on topic: I don't know if you can change gender on OKCupid after having made your account; if you can, maybe just go with the gender option that matches the way you are presenting at the moment the most? (and explain in more detail in your description should you want to?)

[Reluctance]

Supercrazy: Remember how your ex seemed all ice cream and happiness, until you moved on and realized just how off things were? Yourself plus a couple of years will look back on this girl's indifference the same way. Go to school, boink some randos, get back into relationships when you're good and cynical enough not to think that a crush means love everlasting.

Heliomance et al: It's not the most intuitive thing on the site, but mouse over your ASL info. You'll see a green pencil. That's how you adjust your profile info, and can be done at any time. Just a minute ago, to test, I was an 80 year old lesbian.

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If you want to go into a place where gender is irrelevant, meetup.com or some of the subforums on Craigslist might be handier. The thing is that for most people, gender is indeed relevant. Text boxes are far more annoying for search algorithms than radio buttons are. (Partially due to typos. Partially due to the fact that the number of self-descriptions - and thus the number of searches that needs to be done to catch them all - has already gotten ridiculous.) Even a "male/female/other" split is going to have "other" used as a joke answer more often than not, thus confusing searches for everybody.

My advice is to simply list as what you present as most of the time in public. You then have essays to explain yourself in detail through. Although I'll repeat something I said earlier, and I hope the ladies here will back me up; sell yourself a little. A pure description, while it may be accurate, also reads like tax code. No matter how interesting and exciting your interests sound on paper, it all goes to **** if you don't come across as interesting and exciting yourself.

[Serpentine]

It's a dating site you are allowed to embellish, just put down female.

And then look for the question if you are the same gender now than the one you are born with. And answer "no" yourself, and put "no" as a mandatory answer.

Well... I wouldn't recomment you put down "no" as mandatory, not unles you have absolutely no interest in talking to anyone whose gender is the same...

There's a distinction between gender identity (how someone feels gender-wise; male, female, genderqueer, ...) and their sex.
...
A tad more on topic: I don't know if you can change gender on OKCupid after having made your account; if you can, maybe just go with the gender option that matches the way you are presenting at the moment the most? (and explain in more detail in your description should you want to?)

The OKCupid question refers to sex, not gender... I'd consider a transexual person fully able to select their preferred sex, still, because it doesn't specify *birth* sex and that's not really the important bit. I'm surprised it doesn't have an option for intersexed and/or prefer not to say, but I expect that reflects far more on its status as a dating site and the practical matter of its algorithms than its attitude to sex and gender.

[qbit]

Well... I wouldn't recomment you put down "no" as mandatory, not unles you have absolutely no interest in talking to anyone whose gender is the same...

You are right of course, I was misremembering how it works. You'd have to look for or make a question a la "Are you okay with dating someone whom is not their original gender" And make the answer of that "yes" "mandatory".

[Cobra_Ikari]

I'm surprised it doesn't have an option for intersexed and/or prefer not to say, but I expect that reflects far more on its status as a dating site and the practical matter of its algorithms than its attitude to sex and gender.

...this is why I assumed non-binary gender options were left out. The only way I could see to implement it would be using a long list with "check all that apply" for the "interested in" section, and even then, I could see a few problems coming up...