The Ted Show

So Monday, October 18th, 2010 marked what would have been my one year wedding anniversary. For the most part, it was a pretty typical day- classes, studying for midterms, homework. In a frustrating parallel of last year, when my faithful old Prelude decided to throw her timing belt and trash her engine on what would have been my wedding day, the S decided to develop a flat right-rear tire- probably due to the alignment being thrown off from the shitty road quality here in San Diego. I was lucky enough to have a classmate give me a ride into school, and I took the trolley and bus home after class in the evening. Another interesting parallel- and this time, I didn't flinch or feel any rush of emotions as I rode past the County Admin building (where we'd purchased the marriage license) or saw the condo in Little Italy.

Am I better? I've asked myself this a lot over the past couple of weeks. I think I'm still getting there, and I'm sure it's continuing to be an ongoing process. As for the future, I'm not really in any hurry to find a serious relationship any time soon. While I WOULD like to find a playmate for the last few months I'm here, I don't know how healthy that could be for me. As I was describing to a friend of mine yesterday, I feel like a fox that got caught in a trap but managed to escape- the wounds are still there, and I know it's making me more wary, a bit more jaded, and much less likely to trust again so easily. Not necessarily bad things by any means, but things to remember and take into account regardless.

The biggest test of how I'm doing is yet to come. A classmate of mine invited me to go see Dead Man's Party when they play here Halloween weekend, and I know for a fact that The Ex is going to be there with her new boyfriend. I don't anticipate any problems, and we're not planning on trying and talking to each other or anything, but it's still going to be unusual. I always suspected this kind of situation would eventually arise, after all.

My good friend bkmichele has to stay at work all weekend as the on-duty manager or something like that, so I dropped in to have dinner with her last night at the hotel's restaurant. Hey, I'm never too good to pass up free food, and I still had to bring her up to date on the adventures in North Carolina (to be chronicled in the other blog), and my newest dating mishaps (to be chronicled...somewhere).

For the time being, we're both doing the OKCupid thing, since from our combined observation there seems to be a disturbing lack of worthwhile single people in our respective work/ life circles; Michele works with a bunch of older married guys in the hotel industry, and I'm going to school with a bunch of virginal 20 year olds and mid 20-somethings in long-term relationships. Not exactly the best place for either of us to meet people, and the folks typically encountered a the bar scenes in either one of our neighborhoods are about as appetizing as a peanut butter and Brussels Sprout sandwich.

I've also been doing the Plentyoffish thing (discovered that thanks to Amy several years ago, and encouraged by my friend Kat), and have been having pretty much the same results both places:

I'll message women that seem to be saying they're looking for exactly everything I have to offer, and who should typically find me interesting or intriguing, and while I'll get a glance or two at my profile, I won't get any responses. Or, the only girls that will initiate contact with me are the same kind that would typically come up and grab my ass at a bar out here- trashy, disgusting, and usually with a couple of kids already. Notice that I said "out here." Yes, I did notice a difference back east last week. Chalk another one up to why Southern California blows.

OK, I know I'm not the slimmest guy in San Diego (although I'm working hard at getting back to pornstar body status), and I realize that everybody in Southern California is obsessed with physical appearance, income level, etc but damn. Granted, I also wish there was a class available, like an "Online Dating for Dummies" type thing, because this shit is hard. I can ask five different girls that I'm friends with for advice on how to make my profile more likely to get hits, which pictures to upload, and what to say in first messages sent out, and I'll get five different opinions. But of course, isn't that how it works with women in general anyway?

So getting back to my original point- are girls in California really that deluded to think they're going to find some gorgeous multimillionaire artist/ architect/ self-employed guru that's 7' tall, deadlifts 300 pounds, and is going to whisk them all over the world at the drop of a hat? Maybe. But then I went and found the following study, and interview, that I think helps explain at least part of the reason why I've been having virtually no success with this whole online dating experiment.

The ugly truth

In addition, I also found this interview that one of the site's founders did with NPR last year. And yes, I thought the date of the interview was hilariously coincidental as well.

Why I'm screwed

So they pretty much speak for themselves, but I'll do the cliffnotes because I know some folks won't bother reading the full articles: basically as a guy, if you're not white, you're not going to get many responses, or messages from folks, unless you're sending messages to black females. And apparently white people are the least likely to want to date outside of their race.