Online Dating

It is quite funny to me that there is still a stigma around online dating. It also seems like everyone and their mother has a profile on some dating website and yet, there is this embarrassment that surrounds it.

My logic is this: where are you going to meet people after you are done with school?
At your work? Of course not, there is sexual harassment laws for that.
At the grocery store? "Do you come here often?" Of course I do, I have to eat, don't I?
At the club? Yes, because you can find so many quality people drinking and wasting away there.
At church?  I suppose, however if you have been going to the same church for your whole life, chances are you have known everyone in that church their whole lives.

So for the young professional who finds themselves retreating online for the rest of their needs: social interaction, entertainment, shopping, etc, why not consult the internet for your potential mate?

Even if you aren't looking for a mate online, and are just looking for friends, when is the last time people met new people even though we see people that we have never seen before and will never see again everyday?

I have been seeing a guy I met online and I doubt I would have met his otherwise because even though we work ten minutes from one another, there isn't really a forum in which we could ever have encountered each other.

What about you? Are you embarrassed about having an online dating profile? If you have one, have you found success? 

"The Market"

This isn't meant to be a rant, but a question as to what we really think about the colloquialisms we use on the regular. To be "on the market" is to be out there, single, ready to mingle, but it really means the same thing as when a piece of produce or a slab of meat is on the market; we are to buy it, consume it, use it.

So do we see ourselves and our perspective mates as cattle or something equally as consumable and used? It would make sense in the age of the sayings, "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free"; if it must be explained: the "cow" in this instance would be the woman, and the "milk" would be the benefits of having a woman friend (I use euphemisms here because I do not wish to sound crude).

When we did that happen? When did we decide that it was okay to compare women to animals? I don't mean to make this a gender debate about equality, but just quickly while I'm on the topic, why the hell did anyone like the song "Blurred Lines", when it was clearly degrading to women?

Back to the topic at hand, I am not on "the market", nor will I ever be on "the market" for consumption.

So, do you actually think about what things mean or do you just say it?

5 Things You Shouldn't Post on Your Facebook Timeline

These are not in any particular order, though they do not annoy me equally. 

1. Cute couple things. 
I use the term "cute" but I don't mean it. I mean, Facebook is great and all for reconnecting with people from your past that were only meant to be a footnote in your future, but it is also a place where relationships go to die. 
On your timeline, everyone is judging you for the fact that you are proclaiming your undying love for someone you have only been dating for less than a month. And month-versary is NOT a thing. A year I understand but a month? Congratulations, you lasted a whole month without killing each other. 
When the relationship ends, you are forced to look back on those posts and see them for what they really are, permalinks of regret. 


2. Job complaints
Everyone has the occasional beef with their boss about something. They are your boss and you are their indentured servant five days a week. However, let me clear, you have a job. If you hate it so much, quit, so someone else who is a little more grateful for being able to pay his or her own bills can do so. 
Bear in mind, if you take your problems with the company to the web, they will find it. They will be pissed and they will find a way to sack you. 

3. Passive aggressive posts about exes or anyone 

You do realize that everyone knows who you are taking about, right? It's not hard to figure out. You've done everything but mention your name and you think you made some good points but for the love of goodness, you are better off buying a composition book from Staples, spilling your heart out in it and chucking it in a bonfire. 


4. What you will doing this weekend in painstaking detail. 

So on top of trying to make the whole world jealous that you actually have plans this weekend, you are going to use Facebook check-in (I don't think anyone even remembers what four square is) to make sure I know EXACTLY where you are at that moment. 
But you know what that also means, you are not at your apartment, house or industrial space. If I really wanted to rob you, I suppose I could. I mean have you seen that movie, you would be really a little more careful.  


5. Pictures from your vacation. 

Not only do I not care that you were in the Caribbean, I care even less to see you in a swimsuit that you are sucking you tummy in to be photographed in. You look great, however after the first 50 photos, everyone else who did care at one point, just stopped. I don’t mean that the profile picture can’t be updated and all that jazz, but taking pictures of inanimate objects that mean nothing and posting hundreds of them is just ridiculous. It’s almost cruel to inflict that on internet. 

So there you have it, the five things that you shouldn’t post on the internet, here’s to hoping that you think before you post. 

Why I Said No

It's a been a while since I have written anything at all. It's been two years, but hopefully not all of my fans have left me. I am picking up where I left off. I suppose what would be the simplest to do would be to tell you all about what I have been doing for the past two years. What I've gone, what I've lost, gained. I don't know what to tell you all, but I do have something I want to share.

Recently I've been seeing someone, we will not name names here. I find that it's better that way. I have been "dating" him and there is nothing quite as interesting as understanding what that exactly means nowadays. I know I sound old-fashioned but that's the way that I seem to be. Anyway, this morning, over brunch, he asked me to be his girlfriend. Now, to a lot of people that doesn't mean a lot, it's basically a word that we slap on in hopes that the person we give this title to will be exclusive to us. What people fail to realize is that it is training wheels. 

We all hope as women that someday there will be a man who loves you enough to go there. To call you his fiancee, his wife, the mother to his children, and those are all phases that we hope to go through. However, it is becoming more and more apparent to me that most of it is just a game. I know that I sound cynical, but we go through the motions of being someone's girlfriend, someone's property, someone's one and only, only to realize that person had no intention of helping you go through the phases. 

So why date? If marriage isn't the end goal, if we aren't going to talk about it until we have been together three years and we now realize that we are on completely different pages, why do it at all? Why invest the energy, time, effort, money into something that has no future? 

Sometimes things aren't broken, sometimes they were never fixed in the first place. 

So I said no, and that doesn't mean that I don't care about him; it means I care about him too much to jump into something that could work instead of waiting on that will work. 

What do you think? What does "girlfriend" mean to you? Leave a comment in the comment section below.