Committed Relationship? Or Just Plain Committed?

So I’ve reached the conclusion that one of two things is going to result from all of this “dating”.  I’m either going to end up meeting the man of my dreams, marry him, have beautiful children and live happily ever after, OR…  I will slowly lose my mind and end up in a straight jacket in a little white room with padded walls reciting Shakespearean poems to myself and professing my love to non-existent birds who I think are flying above me.  Dating is maddening!!!  I had only been exposed to this kind of frustration in small doses before, as I’ve honestly never dated more than one person at a time.  Essentially, I’d be single for awhile, then meet someone, then end up in a 2 year relationship with them.  I think I can remember all of 2 first dates EVER that didn’t turn into a second date, and in turn, a long term thing.  This whole eHarmony situation has essentially turned everything I knew on its side.  God bless all of my friends (you all know who you are!) who are forced to sit and listen to my rants and attempt to talk me off the ledge.  I have no problem admitting I am completely ridiculous when it comes to this dating stuff.  How can you not be?  But I do know people in real life who are able to accomplish this task without sacrificing sanity.  Of this, I’m extremely jealous.
  
I think the hardest pill for me to swallow is all of the waiting.  I am a naturally impatient person.  The waiting begins with the whole eHarmony process.  I’m waiting to see if the next communication has come though, waiting to see what they said.  Waiting for Guffman, Waiting for Godot, and most poignantly, Waiting to Exhale.  Then comes the part where phone numbers are actually exchanged.  Oooooh!!!  But as good of a sign as that may be, it just results in MORE waiting.  Waiting for him to call or text for the first time, then once he does, waiting for idle chit chat to turn into “So would you like to have dinner?”  And of course there’s the waiting between texts…  The texting is a conundrum in and of itself.  I suppose it’s just the way my generation communicates, but it’s like men are allergic to talking on the phone.  They will text and text and text, about everything under the sun, but can’t hold a phone conversation for longer than about 4 minutes 45 seconds.  It’s not like they can’t hold a conversation at all.  The ones I’ve had face to face time with are perfectly conversational in person.  But the whole act of holding a phone up to one’s ear and speaking into it seems to be terribly problematic.  Now, in all honesty, I’m all about texting.  It allows me to multi-task.  I can watch TV, check emails, shop, put on makeup, use the bathroom, and complete various household chores and all the while hold a witty, fascinating conversation via text.  But every once in a while, it does get old.  Especially after a text conversation that’s been going on for close to 3 hours.  I will give some credit to Alan, 34, Lake Mary.  At least he sent a text that said “I’ll give you a call in a few so I can ask you to dinner.  I wouldn’t want to ask you out over text, that would be a douche move for sure!”  I wonder if I’m going to end up needing a new cell phone earlier than I normally would because I’m likely to wear this one from the constant “checking”.  And how much time am I wasting with all of this phone checking?  If I were to add up the minutes spent refreshing email, checking for texts, watching the phone for a blinking light notification of some sort, would it be hours? I probably could have spent those hours being productive.  I’d probably be 15 lbs thinner if I spent those hours on the treadmill.  I tell myself, “Megan, the light isn’t blinking.  If there were a new text, a missed call, or an email, the light would blink.”  Yet I have to pick it up, press the tiny button at the top to wake it up, then slide the ‘screen locked’ message down so it opens to the home screen.  The unlocking of the screen is actually even excessive.  By waking the phone up I can see the notification icons in the upper left hand corner.  If there isn’t a little chat bubble, or an envelope, or a red phone I’m not missing anything.  But no!  I can’t trust the phone!  The phone may be trying to deceive me.  Because it obviously has a mind of its own, intelligent thought and free will, and the ability to be just as conniving as a human.  I’m sure it’s in cahoots with the DVR, working out an evil plot for my eventual demise.  See what I mean?  Nurse Ratched, is it time for group yet?

Why can’t dating be like it is on TV?  I know, I know… the last blog was all about how I want my life to be like a movie, and now I’m wishing it were like TV.  But the TV is on right now and Sanders just went on a date on CSI.  It’s like they are just handing me this material!  So he met a chick in the lab, got her number, called her that night and took her out for drinks.  Minus the time spent between dirty martinis one and two, no waiting!  How awesome is that??  And the next day he tells Stokes all about how beautiful and smart she is.  Do you think that Ryan, 36, Orlando went back to the office after we met for lunch at Brio and told all of his coworkers how beautiful and smart I was?  Maybe not, seeing as a piece of farfalle sort of fell off of my fork right as I was trying to put it in my mouth and maybe landed on my boob.  Sexy, right?  Oh yeah, that’s just how I roll. I can tell you what I know did happen though.  His psycho ex-girlfriend managed to access his cell phone records and started questioning who this new number belonged to and why there were so many calls and texts associated with it.  So I get a text from him explaining this, telling me not to answer any phone calls from a specific number (he typed out her number), and to call him when I could so he could give me the whole rundown.  Yeah… I had to catch a plane that afternoon and conveniently just couldn’t find a spare moment to call.  There just wasn’t enough time between waiting in the 30 minute security line, sitting by the gate for 20 minutes before boarding, waiting for my luggage in Cincinnati...  Wait a sec, I had tons of time!  There was just a snowball’s chance in hell of me calling him again!  Like I need EXTRA crazy!  I’ve got enough of that on my own, thank you very much!  And the icing on the cake…  are you ready for this?  That wasn’t the last of the whole situation.  I’m having a lovely day at my friends’ house the Saturday after this ridiculous debacle, sipping mimosas poolside, when I get a text from a number I don’t recognize.  Don’t recognize until I read the text, anyway.  Oh yes, you guessed it!  The ex-girlfriend!  I erased the dumb thing, but it was something along the lines of “Ryan told me that you’d be calling me, but I wanted to tell you there’s really no need.”  Uh, excuse me?  I had no intentions of ever calling HIM again, let alone YOU.  “He can’t tell the truth to either one of us.  He’s a liar and will destroy your life.  Turn and run now, as fast as you can.”  Insert crazy ‘Ree! Ree! Ree! Ree!’ music from the shower scene in Psycho here.  Who knows, maybe she was actually his current girlfriend and he was running around on her using eHarmony.  He did end up having a really annoying, high pitched, almost chipmunk-esque voice.  Maybe meeting mistresses in person just wasn’t working out for him.  So really, can you blame me for going a little nuts?  It’s pretty much a guaranteed side effect of dating!   

I probably shouldn’t blame my psychosis just on the men… or the diabolical cell phone.  I will always give credit where credit’s due, and I have to give myself some here.  I do a fantastic job of driving myself crazy.  Let’s take the whole John, 31, Oviedo situation for example.  John sends me one of those Icebreaker thingies.  I think he’s pretty cute, and his profile is well written (Grammar, people!!  It’s BIG!), and he happens to like Workaholics­ – which is one of the funniest shows on TV right now.  So I respond and we start the whole process of ‘Guided Communication’.  After a few days, we reach Stage 4 – the email phase.  He’s seemingly perfect over email!  He states that he thinks I’m (and I quote) “extremely attractive”, and talks about how he was raised by his mom and sister so he has essentially been bred to be respectful of women and very chivalrous.  This guy even offered to iron for me, as I stated I despise ironing, and detail my car.  Really?  Let’s just skip the dating and get married now!  So in classic Megan fashion, I’m hooked before we even meet.  After about a week of more emails wherein he tells me he enjoys the theatre and just saw the touring Cirque Du Soleil show, is generally the clean cut and well kept guy in his group of friends, and loves dogs, we exchange numbers.  He tells me in an email that he’ll definitely give me a call soon and that he’s very excited to hear the sound of my voice.  “I have to say, I kinda like you already and we haven’t even met!”   he writes.  Now I can’t hear (or read, in this case) something like that and not go a little loony with excitement.  So let the phone checking commence!  The weekend passes, no call.  So I write a quick little email on Monday that says “Hey, hope you had a good weekend!  Sorry it was so rainy and you didn’t get to golf, that stinks!  Just wanted to drop you a quick line, as I’m sure we’ll chat soon enough.  I’ll forego the lengthy email. :-)”  So I get a response stating work has been absolutely nuts, but would I like to grab a bite over the weekend?  Then something vague about calling as soon as he gets a break from the madness at the office.  Yeah, madness at the office…  how about the madness I’m experiencing on my couch because you’re keeping me in limbo, dude!  Well I finally get a break from my personal mental break-down (or should I say, Erin finally gets a break from me calling her and whining, re-reading her every bit of written correspondence asking her to analyze each email for spots where I may have gone wrong) when he calls and makes plans for the upcoming Saturday.  PHEW!  So let’s fast forward to ‘The Date’…  Suffice it to say, it was weird.  Um, excuse me, what happened to the guy that wanted to iron for me?  Couldn’t wait to hear the sound of my voice?  The guy I was having dinner with was tough, sarcastic.  I’m cool with sarcastic, believe me.  Even though I’m NEVER sarcastic myself.  Nope, never.  But it’s like this person was completely different than the one I was exchanging sweet, sensitive emails with.  Half the conversation that evening consisted of “Well yeah, but all you women are crazy.”  Granted, I’m writing an entire blog about how I’m not quite right, but he didn’t know that!  And even if we are all crazy, you’re not supposed to tell us to our face on a first date!  That might just guarantee that the first date is your last date!  So one would think that after dinner I’d be pretty much done and ready to write this one off…  but nooooooo!  Give me more of your confusing, not-very-chivalrous behavior, John!  Pretty please!  And then, of course, I spent the next three days reliving the evening to anyone who would listen to get their thoughts on whether or not he’d call again.  I’d like to go ahead and take this opportunity to publicly apologize to the poor woman at the MAC counter at Macy’s who had the unfortunate luck of working the day I needed new mascara.  I know you were just doing your job, asking me how I was doing.  You didn’t expect to unwittingly get sucked into my world of delusional dating distress.  I really did appreciate your considerate nods and smiles!

So if any of you are gamblers, I’d get an over/under started on whether or not I find ‘him’ before they cart me away.  Right now, I’d say the odds are pretty even!  But then again, I did just extend the eHarmony membership for another 6 months…  At the very least I figure I’ll provide some entertainment on my quest for true love!  So even if I turn into ‘Girl, Interrupted’, I’ll leave behind some smiles and laughter.  As I’m sure you’ve gathered thus far, no luck in this quest as of yet.  But in all seriousness, I’ve met some decent guys too.  Apparently we just weren’t meant to be, and that’s fine.  I had some great dinners, and great conversation! They just aren’t as fun to write about. :-)

Why Can't My Life Be Like a Romantic Comedy???

So apparently I’m in this weird “phase” right now where I continually decide on torturing myself by watching ridiculous romantic comedies.  I woke up a little too early for my liking on a Sunday morning and started flipping channels.  I stopped on “The Back Up Plan”.  Seriously???  “The Back Up Plan”?  Oh yeah.  I just sat on my couch for two hours and watched a fairly poorly written Jennifer Lopez movie, wherein her character decides to get artificially inseminated and then meets the man of her dreams on the same day.  Oh and he makes cheese for a living.  I actually even paused it so I could get up and make myself a cup of coffee, that’s how captivated I was.  And here’s the worst part…  (if you’re dying to see this flick and haven’t – Spolier Alert) so at the very end, the cheese maker proposes to her and presents her with a beautiful diamond ring, the test-tube twins in tow in their custom made stroller.  And what did I do upon seeing this adorable display of his dedication to her and the children that weren’t genetically his?  Oh you guessed it!  I bawled like a baby who just had their favorite paci taken away.  And when that passed, I’m pretty sure I cried some more, because I just cried at “The Back Up Plan”.  Now generally, I follow patterns when I’m single.  Right after a break-up, I live it up and go out all the time, enjoying my newfound single-dom.  After that gets old (and expensive) I spend more time at the gym, and at home watching my Sex and the City DVDs.  I start at Season 1 and usually make it through Season 4 before some guy enters my life and perks my interest.  However this bout has taken a new and unexpected path with this whole romantic comedy thing.  I think the weirdest thing about it is that I’m subconsciously wishing my life my would turn into one of these movies.  Now I don’t necessarily want to shop sperm banks and get pregnant in hopes of finding my ideal mate.  But then again, I don’t live in New York City either and all of these movies seem to have something to do with NYC cabs, Central Park, 3 story walkups.  So maybe geography is keeping me from my version of Alex O’Laughlin or Jason Bateman?

So why can’t my life be like a romantic comedy?  I’m sure you’re saying, ‘Well duh.  Because nobody’s life is like a movie.”  But you know what?  I do know people who ended up with that “romantic comedy” plot-in real life!  Let’s take a very close friend of mine, we’ll call her Jane.  Now Jane had never quite had the luckiest of love lives.  She’d get down, and lonely, and depressed, waiting for her Prince Charming to come and sweep her off her feet.  And the comedic part of it all would come from the situations we’d get ourselves into after one too many cocktails.  Bless her heart, but Jane would lose it and cry her eyes out walking drunk down Church St.  It sounds bad, but believe me, had you been there you probably would have found it comedic too.  Although that could have been the point of view of another drunk person… Hmmmm…  Anyways, Jane’s Prince Charming did eventually show up!  Or show back up, I should say.  Jane reconnected with a long lost friend from middle school after 22 years.  Way to GO, Google searches! (This was before the dawn of Facebook)  They met up and saw each other for the first time in all those years here in Orlando one night, and the rest is history!  I witnessed it all first hand…  okay so I maybe not first hand, but I did go over to Jane’s house before she left to meet him so I could hook her up with my 5-minute makeover.  That included - free of charge - hair, makeup, wardrobe advice, and me throwing condoms at her screaming “Just put them in your purse!!!  There’s no harm in having them!  It’s not like you HAVE to use them!  But I’m pretty sure you will!”  I mean c’mon, this was like 22 years of foreplay coming to a head.  I won’t splash all of Jane’s secrets all over the internet, but let’s just say ‘If ya see an SUV a-rockin next to a Chick-Fil-A dumpster down on Sand Lake Rd., don’t come a-knockin’!  After that night it just took a couple of months before he moved 2000 miles away from his home, basically uprooted life as he knew it, all to sweep Jane off her feet.  True story!  I’m telling you, it really happened here.  Not just to a friend of a friend, or this woman that my one friend knew through another woman she had met at work.  I witnessed the whole thing happen before my eyes (well, after the whole Chick-Fil-A part anyway).  They’re getting married now, I’m a bridesmaid, for Christ’s sake!  Everything has worked out beautifully – just like the movies!

So if I’m living a good life, generally being a good person, and contributing positive things to society, where’s my Prince Charming?  Where’s my romantic comedy plot?  I don’t think I’m asking for much.  Just a tall, handsome, successful man.  He can be tall and dark, or tall and blonde, I’m not picky.  Do I need to go run a flower shop, where I can meet him in the hotel lobby where he’s staying on a business trip and I’m the contracted florist who handles the hotel’s floral arrangements?  Or should I start an email relationship with a man who is, unbeknownst to me, actually my nemesis, but he charms me with his words to the point that I end up being able to look past the fact that his company ruined my quaint and unique bookstore, and we live happily ever after?  Or maybe I have to wait until I’ve been a bridesmaid 16 more times, then an adorable man will swoop in and finally make me a bride.  I have an extremely active imagination, that should get me something, right?  Every crush I’ve ever had has been my future husband and father of my children in my fantasies before we’ve ever even gone on a date.  In fact, in most real life scenarios, the date never actually happens!  But I have to think that for all of the fantastic situations I’ve put these men in, fate would have to grant me ONE in the real world, right?  It doesn’t even have to be as fantastic as the movies are.  Shit, at this point, I’d take “Hey, would you like to have coffee sometime?” But of course, it would need to blossom into 3 hours on the patio of Starbucks while we gaze longingly into each other’s eyes, sipping our macchiatos and discussing our deepest fears and desires, all contributing to the mutual conclusion that we were meant to be together.  Now that can’t be all that hard to bring to reality, can it?  Oh, and he also needs to be that guy that I saw and immediately felt butterflies in my stomach over.  Not the ‘Eh, he’s okay.  I’ll give it a shot so I at least feel like I’m putting myself out there’ guy.  That wouldn’t make a very good movie.

I suppose until “he” knocks on my door with a bouquet of flowers, after I’ve been crying over being lonely, while Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream plays in the background, I’ll just have to be content with the life I have now.  We’ll see how long this little phase lasts.  I’m well on my way to building up a serious list of such fantastic films as “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”, “Failure to Launch”, “Sweet Home Alabama”, and “Life as We Know It” (Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of it either.  Katherine Heigl and Fergie’s husband Josh something or other are forced to become mutual guardians of their friends’ baby.  Must not have done very well at the box office).  But don’t think for a minute that I’ll stop planning my dream wedding with the most recent man of interest.  The way I imagine it, he’s going to fall for me any day now and plan a creative, extravagant way to show me.  It’ll probably involve a scavenger hunt, or a jumbotron at a major sporting event…  At least I’m getting a ton of bridal gown ideas watching all these movies!  The one George Clooney’s sister had in “Up in the Air” was pretty lame, definitely not going to go with a shrug of any kind.