Sunday, November 15, 2009

Canceled date—My choice

Two weeks ago, I received an IM from a guy on the dating site that was different from the usual: it was something to the effect of, "I'm playing a game. I'm trying to guess what else people are doing while they're on [the dating site]." Then, without any comment from me, he made some guesses that were silly, but intriguing. Since I was bored and he got my attention by writing more than just "hi" like many do, I wrote back. We chatted about mostly benign things, and, after almost an hour, he gave me his phone number and asked if we could continue chatting in person sometime. I told him it might be a week or so, since I was really busy that week, but gave him my number anyway.

When he texted me this week, I agreed to meet him this weekend. However, I started having second thoughts: he's 36 (I'm 25), he lives about as far away from me as possible while still being in the same city, and he's 36. I guess I'm just not comfortable with such a large age difference.

Then, when he asked me to send him the info about the gallery opening I'd suggested, I found that he'd deleted his profile from the dating site. WEIRD. That's just not OK with me. Therefore, I did something I've never done before: I canceled on him. If the same thing had happened to me before Henry, I might have still gone on the date, albeit with a bit of worry. I was really desperate—and I'm not afraid to admit that now—to go on dates. I was happy to find, as I sent the cancellation text, that I felt relief and no regret.

3 comments:

Superquail said...

I am not deeply familiar with on-line dating, why is the fact that he deleted his profile so weird?

Katie said...

It's weird because it's like he's disappeared from the world. With online dating, one has a sense that one knows a certain amount of things about potential dates, and it's nice to be able to reference those before going on a date. Also, I like to leave some sort of note in my apartment or with a friend about any online date I go on, just in case anything strange happens. To not have that reference of the online profile would make it even harder for someone to figure out who the date was in real life.

Superquail said...

I see your point. It would be as though if you had met the person in real life and suddenly the house they lived in vanished from the block.

You were wise to follow your instincts on this one. If a guy invites you on a date but then doesn't want anyone else to know that he exists, that is very strange. Did he say anything after you canceled the date or was that your last communication with him?