I've been doing online dating for years.  Reasons include being something of a recluse, living the stereotypical introverted lifestyle, and just generally disliking meeting strangers.  You'll never know, when meeting me face to face, that all I really want is to take a year long staycation in my tiny apartment so I can finally do all the things I'd planned to do in my overthinking brain.  Alas, I must make an effort for both my and my family's sake to find a life-long partner that I can fully accept into my tight bubble.

Online dating makes it easier to filter.  We're all human; we like attractive things.  Whether it's an attractive face, body, or written profile, it helps us weed out the people living lifestyles that don't jive with our own.  On the flip side, it makes us unavailable.  Through our filtering, we remove opportunities to meet people (whom might not have passed our "attraction scale") whom may have truly given us the life-long partnership that we were craving in the first place.

But that's just online dating.  Pros and cons.  Like anything in life.  Much like antique discovering in a flea market.

I've had my fair share of good dates.  Good here is defined as anything that wasn't bad or crazy... which I guess should really be coined as decent (accounts for about 70% of my dates).  I've had maybe a handful of truly good dates (10% I would say) where I'd left feeling giddy and hoping to see the guy again as soon as possible without being too clingy because God forbid if a woman were to show more than a little amount of intere-  ahem... I digress.

I've also had bad dates (we're looking at about 17% here) where I've left either too early, stunned, or just plain laughing.  These dates were harmless and make great stories to tell to friends/family whenever they ask why I'm still not married and having my second child.

And then.... there's the psychos (fortunately, this only makes up 3% of my dating experience).  The ones that leave you feeling like you should close the blinds, cancel your memberships to everything, and go into hiding for a while.  It's unfortunate that these exist; it really ruins the experience for all of us.  These single isolated dates/chats/texts become the source of anxiety, apprehension, and a lack of trust when meeting new people.  Unfortunately, this applies to women far more often then men (my assumption based on articles, my surrounding community, and the interwebs in general).

I recently had scheduled a first date and all was well... until I was suddenly facing his fury because I hadn't texted in a few hours on a workday.  When I called him out on his misplaced irritation, he decided to parade his ego in my face and bluffed on getting out of our date.  When I happily accepted his gracious offer to cancel our date, his bruised pride commanded him to blow up my phone for the next half hour with accusations, name calling (he's by no means 12 years old or even 22 years old... almost 32 really), and finger pointing.  Specifically, he wanted to tell me (through a string of texts that could have been published as a novella) that he was by no means at fault, that I was "that type of girl" and that I'm the reason onlind dating doesn't work.

Right.

Needless to say, I blocked blocked blocked, looked behind my shoulders in the parking lot and made sure all my social media was strictly under lockdown privacy.  It's ironic that I was told that I ruin online dating for men like him; his actions are definitely borderline narcissistic, violent, and threatening... enough to make me never want to put myself back out there again.  Every single news story of relationship related murders flashes through my mind when something like this happens.

All I can do is hope that I don't become as jaded or angry as he was when I do meet a good man.  That's really the worst way he can ruin me without ever having even met me in person.