The Crazy Magnet.

Remember that tv show that tried to rip off the Brady Bunch and put a new spin on it with Suzanne Somers (sadly not doing any Thighmaster vignettes) and that dude from Dallas?

This one.

The divorced dad of three impulsively re-marries, a widowed mother with three kids of her own. Insta-Bunch?

For me, after my divorce (around two years and counting) I was brutal at dating. It took almost two years to figure out what was wrong with me. For a long while, I was refusing to admit there was something fundamentally wrong with my approach. Now I admit it: there is a big problem.

The steps of courtship, several dates followed by sex, sex followed by commitment, commitment followed by taking trips together…and so on? I’ve never had it.

My ex-wife and I met through the internet. She had met my best friend from high school in real life, and we spent months talking on the internet, and on the phone before meeting in person. We were in love before even meeting, it seemed like a fairytale. We met and there were no steps. We didn’t court. We went from talking, to a sexual, exclusive, intense relationship from that day forward.

I know that it wasn’t normal for things to happen that way, but the experience changed me. We had several happy years together before things stopped being as happy, but I might be forever conditioned by the experience.

I’ll always be thankful for those years, but to go forward I needed to break the addiction to fairytales. I needed to understand that those intense feelings of love don’t happen overnight.

It was easier said than done. Over the last two years I’ve learned a lot about myself, as cliched as that might sound.

My biggest flaw is that I want that love right away: but usually it needs to build up to love. It can’t be instantaneous. After having been married, it’s almost like I want to be married right away, and let’s be honest, it doesn’t work like that. Maybe in Victorian England, but in the US, in 2012, it doesn’t.*

Sure, maybe most women say they’d love to be married. But not this exact second! Slow your roll, self. Even with the women looking for a serious relationship, they’re not turned on by a guy already picturing them married with children, living in the suburbs with that white picket fence.**

I finally realized, I can’t be looking for a replacement for my ex-wife. The things we shared, an intense love, shared interests, and most importantly that familiarity that can’t be found without years together…they can’t be created so quickly.

I have to take things, step by step. And even though I want to be married again, unless I’m getting an arranged marriage (stop dreaming parental units) I can’t just pour water on a plant and “Cha-cha-chia” a relationship.

It has to happen naturally, slowly and patiently. While I want what I had before and crave monogamy (which makes me rare for a manimal) I have to do it at a normal pace. Ignore and suppress the impatience. Ignore the pacing of other relationships (either those of mine from the past or those of others.) And realize, things will happen in their own time, if I let them. I miss being married, but unless I hide that fact, I’m probably never getting married again!

Step by step, day by day.

*Failed pick-up lines that seemed sure to work 100 years ago: “Hey, want to get married and have babies.”

**Or they haven’t been turned on YET.

Social media is so pervasive these days that sometimes you get questions asked of you that give you pause.

About a year ago, a girl with beautiful pictures and I began to exchange messages on okcupid. Right from the get-go, her priorities were a little off- one of the first questions I got asked was what kind of car I drove. So she’s a little materialistic, but that’s no big deal, tell me more about yourself.

Things got a little weirder after that, since I wanted to meet up and she wanted to talk on AIM. What, is this 1995? Age? Under 30 Sex? Yes please. Location. Wherever you’ll let it happen.

Fine, let me pull out an old screen name from college, an ode to my one and only college band. (I played lead triangle-we made t-shirts.)

We start chatting on aim, and then she wanted my facebook. Wait. Hold up. My facebook? Why do you need my facebook?

I began to think, what was the big deal with letting a stranger look at my facebook. I’d have been willing to give her my phone number and isn’t that a bigger deal? Couldn’t I simply unfriend her later? But there was this nagging feel in the back of my mind. Facebook, especially for me, has so much of my life. I didn’t want her overwhelmed by getting so much of my life at the very beginning of a potential relationship.

Sometimes you need to build to that level of trust, and information. Otherwise what is the fun? I told her no way, and said I’d have to meet her in person before getting facebook friendly.

Why see every picture of me? Why see my status updates? Why can’t you wait until we’ve actually met?

With apologies, I give you this song to listen to while reading a significantly less brilliant post about my dating life or rather, how it came to be a healthy one. When I first split with my ex-wife, I didn’t know what exactly was wrong with me. I knew what was going on in my previous relationship and my failings (of which there were many.) But what I didn’t know, and what I wouldn’t know for a long period of time, was how to date.

I was completely lost. As a disclaimer, I rarely dated before I met my wife so it made sense to be more lost than the average bear. (Yes, I just dropped some Yogi Bear on you.) I didn’t know what I wanted, just how I knew how I wanted to feel. I wanted to feel loved, and needed and trusted and respected. I needed more than I had received in my previous relationship. But where to get it and from whom to get it?

At first, I had a naive and optimistic thought that it didn’t matter who it came from, to be appreciated by anyone would be enough. But that was a lie, that I was telling myself-I had standards. To ignore them was to waste my time and those of the women I was going after.

I went out with just about any woman on okcupid/eHarmony/match. What I should have done is reflect. My greatest flaw is that I lack an ability to be introspective. Hell, I still lack a developed ability to be introspective. I’m perpetually looking outward, and needed to improve in that regard before I was ready to date, regardless of my loneliness or desire to prove that I was wanted. Until you know what’s wrong with you, there’s no reason to date. You’ll just be repeating the same mistakes again in your next relationship. That’s just my opinion..want to know some of my other flaws? Well you’ll just have to date me to find out.

Why spoil the surprise?

This is a short entry but I wanted to put something out there for all of you loyal fans-all four of you. So the story goes about a month ago I tried something different and asked out a girl through less conventional means. No okcupid dates, but another site that has nothing to do with dating. Well, after @TheSassyFiles got asked out by a linkedin guy, I figured it couldn’t be that weird. I keyed in on something she was into, and made some small talk and an opening to do that activity together. Kept it short and sweet (hat-tip to @DatingRev.) So I saw a cute girl that I had met in person, but then used the site and asked her out and we went out together.

Turns out she was married. Whoops. At least it’s a story for you guys. I’m pretty sure she didn’t think it was a date. I will also admit I had no idea what it was, but I was hoping maybe it was a date.

Now the question for my female friends, if a guy asked you, a married or taken woman to do something, and you were not friends before hand, how would you react to the question? Would you politely decline, because it’s odd for a married woman to go out and do something with a stranger? Or that he (or maybe your husband/boyfriend) would get the wrong idea?

As I write this, now 14 months…two weeks since we last saw each other (yes I am counting) I still have tears welling in my eyes. You came back after a two month separation to get your things and to sign the divorce papers.

We were together over 5 years, and you were the most important person in my life for that time period. You’re still important to me even now, and I know that our relationship has a huge hold over me going forward because you were my first real relationship.

There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about you. Everything reminds me of you-it doesn’t help that you left me with most of our shared possessions. I really should have sold everything and started over but I thought that was stupid and irrational. Well a year later I want to go back and punch that version of myself in the face. I should have sold everything when I had the chance.

Right after you told me you wanted a divorce (on the phone-classy) I moved out of our place. I went home and slept in my old bedroom at my parents, the only room I had no memories of you in. I cried a lot. I don’t care if it’s unmanly to say, I cried like a 12 year old girl who found out unicorns weren’t real.

I thought I might need to leave this city, because we spent so much time here together. I feel like it’s tainted with you. Maybe that’s cruel but so are the things you did to me.

Part of the problem is I’m not busy so all I have to occupy my thoughts is you, us, us not being together anymore.

The worst part of everyday is when I wake up and for a split-second, I wonder why the bed is half empty and then realize you’re not in it. How did I combat the thoughts? I moved to the other side of the bed. To your side. Now when I wake up-instead of looking at your side and instinctively reaching for you, I avoid it.
More than anything I am deathly afraid that you will forget me. We had so many inside jokes, things only we shared.

All the pet names you had for me. The pet names I had for you. That I lost my virginity to you, all the promises we made to each other. How many promises we broke.

How we would make dinner together…and how you loved to eat my food. How you would put your hair down and call it weird beard. How you would make up songs and sing to me-I never appreciated them but I miss them so much now.

We have so many spectacular memories, elefante and Lafawnduh, BU winning the national championship in 2009, our wedding, the moment I proposed to you in your parents’ living room. How you would cry every time we separated when we dated, including sobbing three months before our wedding and sobbing the time you knew you would see me a week later.

Our cross country move, our trips to the zoo, watching Amazing Race. So many memories we’ve had over the years. I’m so afraid you’re forgetting me, that you’ll be able to delete them from your life. That it will be like I never existed, that we never existed.

You don’t speak to me, we have 0 contact, and I wish we could just talk. Then I could get some closure. I opened a bag of old hand towels and they absolutely smelled like you. When will I escape this?

I decided at the insistence of @Melysa_S on Twitter that I would join HowAboutWe.com, a new dating site where people decide to throw out a date idea and have people respond in kind. It gets the whole talking thing out of the way (usually where a guy or girl can bungle things before people meet up for a date) and gets right to the date.

And let’s be honest, if a potential first date candidate can’t come up with one half decent date idea, what can you imagine your life together will be like? You planning her/his entire social life? That gets boring after awhile, trust me-I’ve done it before.

I love a woman who has good ideas for dates: she’ll have good ideas once you’re in a relationship too.

When one woman posts: “How about we… Go out with a nice, smart and funny guy! Eat dinner and wine, have a good time” , well I get a little sad when I see the bar lowered to the point where you can’t do the limbo under it. I can’t even feign excitement for this woman. And if you know me, if there was one thing I am magical at(besides falling asleep), it’s feigning excitement.

I don’t want to go out with a nice, smart, funny guy, and I’m confused…is this a three-way date? Are we picking up the third wheel? Also how does one eat wine?

I think the greatest flaw with HowAboutWe, is the site is limited by the number of people who can respond to you, and you can’t read messages unless you’re a paid member. So the majority of messages could easily be the equivalent of well to pardon the phrase, “messages in a bottle.” The person will get notification that you had messaged them, but no ability to read the message. It gives me the feeling that there will be a good deal of ships passing in the night. And that’s not what a site should be imparting upon me, impression-wise.

What would I fix with howaboutwe? I think everyone should be able to read their messages from subscribers. You’ve already gotten payment from someone, why limit the value for the people that those people get from their subscription. One thing they do that is better than match is they will give you a list of people who ARE subscribed. But everyone should be listed as a member or a non-member. I don’t want to waste my time.

My one howaboutwe experience? It turned into “how about we” go ice skating, never get a thank you, and spring the fact that you had adult kids at the end of our date.

I’m willing to try again, but the site needs massive improvements for me to pay for it.

What’s your big pet peeve about online dating? A lot of my female friends say it’s about the quality of the ideas the man postulates. Maybe this site helps them.