Tag Archives: Apps

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Friendship

I have so many friends. I’m not sure how many…

I have four best friends.

One was mine from middle school. He and his girlfriend bought a house way north of the city, so I don’t see him often. He and I keep in touch on Instagram. I should carve out time this summer to take him and his girlfriend to dinner.

I have a best friend from my first round of graduate school. She is now practicing in Germany where she bought a house. She lived in Japan for a couple of years too. We’ve done a few Google Meets on weekends to get our time zones to cooperate. Otherwise, she and I email one another.

My local best friend is like my sister. If I didn’t have her, I’d have lost my house in 2009. I have contract work from her and have spent countless holidays with her. We also hiked with our kids all the time when they were young.

I have a best friend from work. I met her through contracting, and then LA and another colleague and I went to visit her in her state. She has been through a lot with me. Lately, she’s been my biggest supporter since my GF broke up with me and I’ve been dating.

Dating.

DM.

Sometimes realize someone is completely vacuous, and then stop DMs.

Move to a call.

Ask to take a walk.

Sometimes the latter is weeks away and you have to go back in the app, hope it’s not archived and look at the pictures of the woman.

It’s fairly strange.

On the 3rd, I matched with a girl who was using the app to make friends. I thought that was interesting, and she was super pretty and outdoorsy so I swiped right and then I got the dopamine hit “It’s a match!” complete with rainbows, confetti and a framed profile picture.

Anyway, she’s European and has lived in the US for years now. Her parents live here and she lives on the West Coast. We had a lively conversation and moved to Signal.

We talked on the phone briefly yesterday and will have a video call soon.

She wanted to go on a winter vacation with me for a month to get to know each other IRL.

I told her that I get one day off in January.

She asked if we could do a vacation in February.

I told her that I also get one day off that month.

She works in an industry in which you have assistants and you plan your vacations in advance. She won’t work in the company she owns in January or February, but she will have virtual things that she does for her other work which is much more passive and doesn’t require anything but electronic management and emails.

My months that are like that are June and July. I pop on Zoom for a total of 4-hours and answer one set of emails across the three positions that I have.

It’s an academic year; however, it also means that if I’m in the Northern Hemisphere, I can vacation when it’s really too hot.

I can’t take weeks away in January or February.

I am measured, calculated and cautious.

A month long vacation sounds intimidating.

It’s like a job interview that doesn’t end.

It’s like an arranged marriage based in no previous in person contact.

After our phone call, and her asking for a way in which we could vacation together via DM throughout the late afternoon and evening, she came to the understanding that her idea with me couldn’t come to fruition this academic year. She wants us to video soon and continue being pen pals.

Something that I really like about her that I didn’t get from Tesoro is that she talks about her past and the mundane of her day-to-day. She sent me a picture of her grocery cart the day before yesterday! I loved those things. She’s sweet, highly competent, kind and definitely incredibly attractive.

The long game.

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IRL

I think that I’m just better with in person meeting. Years ago, I met one woman on Chemistry.com and we just spent a couple of weekends together. A friend ran an OK Cupid for me and I had a couple of months of dates with a tall, blue-eyed flute player. However, online dating is pretty difficult.

I had a very cool thing happen on Tuesday. I was scrolling through Tinder before I went to a meeting and saw the girl who hugged me and rubbed her hands all over my body at Karaoke Thanksgiving week. I had her number anyway so I texted her about seeing her profile and we exchanged a few texts. I told her that I’d take her to dinner outside of the context of Tinder. I asked for a phone call.

Again, in real life stuff (IRL) is how I roll.

Yesterday, she asked me to go roller skating alongside the women who she and her best friend had met at karaoke in November. (One of my friends was dancing and making out with her best friend that night.) She texted only me and I asked her if she would like me to forward that text to these women. I haven’t roller skated since 7th grade and would be terrible now, and can’t anyway given my knee. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to see me or go out in a group. She didn’t answer that, and instead began a long text exchange with me. I even left work late!

I’m so looking forward to our phone call. She wants to go to karaoke in a group before our date, but I think that I’m just too busy this weekend.

I am unsure what’s going to happen with my girlfriend. She had texted me fairly late yesterday a laughing emoji with the words “How is active dating going?” I just called her.

I had the tough conversation with her on Saturday, and I think that my position isn’t understood. I don’t understand hers either, so because she thinks that I’m being aggressive, I told her that I’ll just talk to her on Friday. She has a friend here from Chicago anyway.

I would rather, and this isn’t shocking being that I’m Solo Poly, just continue to date her when she makes plans with me. We have some really wonderful things in our relationship and she’s the nicest woman whom I have dated. Saturday was no exception. It was a nice date.

I’ll see Friday if she wants to be friends. I have named that directly and kicked it around frequently since March, so I’m fine with that. I don’t want to fight about a lack of sex anymore. That’s just weird and goes nowhere.

I’m very excited for my phone call with the woman whose Tinder profile I saw after having met her in person in November. She is about 5’10”, has a fantastic body, hazel eyes and sandy brown hair that she highlights. I have called out that I am ten-years older and she texted that she’s always drawn to older people. She has a ten-year-old, which means that she had him at the exact same age that I had my son. She’s also a Taurus, which is easy for me given that I’m in my element. She knows about my GF and that I’m Solo Poly. After we go to dinner, I’ll write an update.

I may write another one on Sunday after Mother’s Day stuff with my GF and our kids depending on how the weekend goes.

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Oops

I think that I write all the time about how I’m really good with computers–I don’t really like them–due to having strange software all the time at all of my jobs. I’m not good at apps.

I had to ask my son why my profile wasn’t completed. Turns out that within a submenu there was a scroll down that wasn’t marked. 🤦 So, my profile is 90% going and I pay for Tinder Platinum. The sad thing is that being Gen X, I only loosely understood swiping left makes a woman disappear! Hahahaha. Goodbye forever, Beautiful Woman.

I’m a tool. I should write that on my profile.

I’m going to use it marked where I live for a month, and then move my location to Chicago for a week in June, as I’m going to Lake Michigan. I’m going to Rhode Island (never been there) for a lesbian event at the end of July and will move my location again.

So far, it’s mildly reinforcing. However, when I talked to my girlfriend at the end of our date on Saturday she said, “Wait, you want a girl with no STIs, who can sleep with as many girls as she wants, but only one man, and you want to slowly get to know her?”

Hopefully, for paying $7 a week, it won’t just sit. If it does, I’m going to have to try to get really creative.

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Tinder

I thought it was for elicit sex and hookup culture. It’s not if you pay for it.

Ballet Dancer and I are going to a brewery on St. Patty’s Day and then we’re going to a Lesbian Tiki Bar the following Saturday. She’s a professional dater. For real.

She told me about a paid Tinder account wherein you change your location at intervals. Let’s say for example that you want to meet some women in Balboa Park (San Diego) and in Beacon Hill (Boston). Well, you pay for an account which only other paid members see and then toggle your locations off and on.

I could get down with that approach.

Years ago a colleague told me that I was single only because I’m me. She ran an OK Cupid profile for me and I had a hot thing with a 6′ flute player with dark brown hair and blue eyes who was from Manhattan and moved here to get out West. The only problem was that she wasn’t someone who I would’ve organically ever run into and she had weird communication skills.

I had my own Chemistry account and saw a Cowgirl for a month who would drive 4-hours. We had two nice weekends together, but not enough to do anything like a relationship.

So, I had written off swiping.

I had a weak moment last spring and almost made a FEELD account, but I’m terrified of swingers in my city and surrounding area seeing my profile.

Now, I’m thinking about a paid Tinder account…

Let’s talk about dating apps… What’s your opinion of them generally?

It’s the way that you operate that matters