Logged into OkCupid this morning to reply to an email from a fairly cute little 23 year old rocker boy. He’s asked me out for coffee, but my schedule is nuts lately. We’ll see how that pans out. Honestly, I think Im’ getting too old to date those younger men — I mean, that’s almost a five year difference. Seems a bit young.

Anyway, I got an IM while I was on OkCupid. Guess who it was from? [Read more...]

I met him in the middle of March. The anticipation of the floral boom of springtime in Atlanta makes it my absolute most favorite time of year.

His profile on OkCupid was enticing – slightly cocky, but still a bit humble. Clearly not looking for anything too serious, but also not looking for just a one night stand.

He was a good man from a good family, had been married for eight years and had two beautiful children to show for it. Divorce had been hard on him – his exwife’s family had come from money, so he pretty much took it up the ass regarding child support and custody. But he made it work. He was a wedding photographer and also, a pothead.

My stomach still flutters when I think about how hot he was though. [Read more...]

So, we’ve already covered that I’m divorced. I don’t even think we can count the marriage because it only lasted ten months and, ultimately, he only married me because we had a baby. Also? I was never in love with that man. That doesn’t mean that the divorce wasn’t hard on me… It was. And it took us over a year and a half to work out the details of the divorce.

After he and I split up, I dated the “Big Time Republican.” Why am I calling him that? Because that’s what he called himself. He would lean down, elbows on his knees and using his hands for air quotes, he’d explain his deep dedication to the Republican party.

What? C’mon. Don’t judge me. I was on the rebound from a failed marriage.

He was very good to me, but I noticed things about his parenting style (he had a son about a year older than mine) that I knew wouldn’t mesh with mine. We dated for about eight months before I called it quits.

This is when I started online dating. My first attempt at online dating was brief — enough so, that I don’t really remember many dates. That’s either because I only did it for a short while or the dates were so categorically average that I just didn’t use up any brain space to store their memories.

This is when I met the filmmaker. He was a few years older than me and just… enticing. Had that whole bad boy thing on lock down — full sleeves, foul mouth. Yum. He and I dated for three years. When I look back on it, it was terrible. I can’t quite believe some of the things that he did that I just… dealt with. The lying, the cheating, the verbal abuse. He had a silver tongue and was a master manipulator — he convinced me that I was unreasonably emotional and that I used that to manipulate the people around me. It wasn’t until after I broke up with him that I realized he was the one that had done the manipulating.

Why did we break up? Well… the short version is this: he was living a triple life. His life with me was healthy and moving in a positive direction (that’s almost comical until you read about his other lives). He compartmentalized all of his good traits here. His second life was with a woman that was his mother’s age. He had been dating her for about three months when he met me. He physically abused her, so much so, that she filed a restraining order against him. His third life? This one is… troubling. He was *supposed* to go to therapy on Wednesday afternoons to deal with some of his deeply ingrained anger issues. Instead, he was meeting men and transsexuals via Craigslist for casual sexual encounters.

Yea. That was a real quick and easy decision, breaking up with him. I found out both of these secrets in one day when, following my gut, I hacked into his email account. Pages upon pages detailing encounters with all of these ancillary people.

It was a mess. I was a mess. Thankfully, all of my test results came up clear. I still can’t quite wrap my  brain around how lucky I am for that fact.

We broke up in August of 2008 and I started back online dating around October of that year. A bit soon? Probably. We’ll discuss why I felt the need to dive back in so early in a later post, I’m sure.

Since then, I have dated <counting>…. Um, shit. A lot of men. Some for just one or two dates… Some for one or two months. None of them panning out. I think I’m realizing *why*, but the jury is still out on that one. I write a blog about online dating and used to include some of my personal experiences there. There were several reasons why I stopped writing about my love life on the blog, but the biggest reason was that the person that I am when I make fun of men who email you pictures of their cocks before they ask you out is very (read: VERY) different than who I am when it comes to my heart. Oh, I’m still a bitch. For sure… But I am a hopeful bitch. And my hopeful heart didn’t really FIT into that blog in a non-clunky way.

So. I suppose we’re up to speed.

All the posts in this category will be about my dating life, past or present. I will likely expand on some of the dates that I have glazed over at the other blog and I will share things here that I never shared on the other blog. I will probably go back in time and revisit old lovers and boyfriends and I will probably fast forward and discuss the kind of man that I am hoping to find. Yes, there will be discussions about sex. No, I will not name names. I would also appreciate it if you wouldn’t, in the comments, be all, “ZOMG is this (fill int he blank)?!”

I’m doing this blog anonymously… As much as I can… Until, perhaps, sometime in the future, I want to break down that wall.

So… Um. I guess, here we go!