The Hamster In This One Is Strong

Occasionally, I do get messages from women on the three online dating websites where I have a profile. Most often, I am not particularly attracted to the women (weight and age too high). My OKCupid account yielded two emails over the weekend with one of the women intriguing and attractive enough to warrant a return message. Her profile was extremely well written and rather creative. The only photo showed a very cute and youthful face. First red flag – no further photos and the one photo was only of her face.

Regardless of that red flag, I returned her message on Tuesday with something brief and witty. We exchanged a couple of messages during the day. All the messages between us were quite short, not more than two or three sentences. Brevity is the soul of wit and the foundation of mystery.

Tuesday evening the messages between us increased to point of almost an online chat with short, staccato missives coming and going at a rapid rate. We’re still using the OKCupid system, no personal emails yet. I coaxed a name out of her, “Martha”. That was the only personal information outside of her profile.

According to that profile, Martha is 42, single, and has children. OK, first yellow flag. She has kids. At 42, they might already be out of the house. I can deal with that. She wrote of emerging from a 21 year marriage. Either she married young or she’s doing some aspirational lying regarding her age. At least she has the emotional capacity for a relationship.

Because she’s responding immediately to my messages, I know she’s online. Also, she’s likely new to online dating because she’s not playing the message waiting game. With this in mind, it’s time to escalate immediately.

I ask her if she wants to chat online via Yahoo. She responds with her own escalation. She’d like to do a voice chat via Gmail and she gives me her Gmail address. This presents a challenge. My usual Gmail address uses my blog ID and I can’t have my blog associated with the real me. Fortunately, I found an old Gmail account that was still accessible and gave that to her. I download GoogleTalk and with a bit of a technical issue (resolved with an external microphone) we connect.

Following some good Roissy advice, I bounce the conversation around, a lot. I even employed a successful running gag. She’s got a great voice and is quite well spoken. I don’t go for the interview thing, I sense she’s out to be entertained and I’ll do a little of the dance, monkey, dance routine for her.

Martha asks a lot of questions about online dating and how to improve her own profile. This serves to break the ice and get her to reveal more of her life, especially recently. After that long introduction, we now get to the fun stuff:

• She’s still married though separated.
• She has two sons, one 21 and the other 12. Yes, the youngest one lives in the house with her.
• She claimed to have had a loveless marriage and it took her years to convince her husband to get separated.
• Last year she had an affair with her online writing partner who conveniently lived in (drum roll, please) Australia! She actually went there for a month leaving her 11 year old son behind. She claimed that this man was the love of her life. Yet he couldn’t visit the US because of his own daughter and so the relationship ended. That end was only two months ago, by the way.
• She’s unemployed. In fact, she’s never really had a job. Martha spent almost all of her adult life raising kids and maintaining a home. She’s not even really looking for a job, just sort of hoping for a miracle phone call or opportunity. She really said that, I swear.
• She lives in a three bedroom, three bathroom townhouse. That’s not cheap. I wonder who is paying the rent/mortgage? Could it be that inconvenient loser of a husband?
• Looking at the math of her age – she claimed she really is 42 – and the ages of her kids, she had her first son when she was 21 and also got married at 21. Correlation or causality, I do not know. Nine years later, she gets pregnant. Hmmmm, loveless marriage? A hundred bucks says the second child isn’t the husband’s.
• She feels a sense of urgency of being in a relationship yet is “playing” with online dating. Perhaps another miracle phone call and she will find another love of her life? She’s only had one date from online dating and that resulted in a close friendship but no intimate relationship.

This woman is a train wreck of epic proportions but Martha seemed happy and almost carefree. During our voice chat, I told her that we would definitely be meeting. She seemed pleased by that yet I know the rule of a woman’s words versus a woman’s actions. They are not related.

This morning I sent her a nice follow up email with a statement that we would be meeting this upcoming Sunday afternoon for ice cream. I’m not pitching any kind of woo to this woman, I just want to interview her rationalization hamster. Just now I have received her response and she seems up for a date this upcoming Sunday. She suggested chai lattes instead of ice cream. This is going to be legendary. I may secretly record the conversation.

I also asked if she had read the book, Eat, Pray, Love. Her response? “I saw the movie and loved it.”

Oh, the humanity.

Oh, the rationalization hamster.

UPDATE, Thursday, Aug 4

My last email to Martha was yesterday at about noon. In that email I basically told her that we were having a Sunday date.

At 2:35PM today, she sends me an email. Note that the email was not a response to my email from yesterday but rather a new email. She doesn’t address the Sunday date thing at all. She provides some idle chit chat about errands and that we might catch up later today. I responded an hour later with this email:

There you are. I’d thought you might have flown the coop. There are a lot of flaky people out there.

I’ll be online at home ’round 7:30 or so. Find me, we’ll chat. You’ll laugh.

She’s already showing signs of flakiness so I thought I’d gently call her out on that. Also, I had to dangle some dance, monkey, dance hints so she has an incentive to connect. I really need to push for this Sunday date. It’ll be Manosphere anthropology on a rationalization hamster in the wild.

Should this date happen – and there is no guarantee because for sure Martha is a flake – I think I have found a way to record the conversation and provide an edited transcript.

Further bulletins as events warrant. Subscribe to this post.

UPDATE, Thursday, Aug 5, 7:45AM

I was online last night at about 9:30PM and GoogleTalk was open. There is a request for an audio chat. It’s Martha. We do chat, mostly inconsequential things but I’m being witty and a bit cocky. It’s working. We do set up a date for Sunday, at a place closer to her. This is likely because of her 12 year old son.

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UPDATE, Thursday, Aug 5, 9:36AM

In our audio chat last night, I remember her asking about my preference for someone who is height/weight proportional. Such a question and her lack of a full body photo in her profile leads me to believe that she’s fat.

UPDATE, Thursday, Aug 7, 11:11AM

SHE FLAKED!

Well, she did send me an email so it wasn’t a total flake. Here’s the email:

I’ve had a change of heart about meeting. I’m sorry for the short notice. I know our talks have been brief but a connection just isn’t there and I’m guessing that you’re not feeling one either.

You gave me a lot of good insight and the truth is that I really don’t know what I want in terms of a relationship. Do I want something serious or do I just want to enjoying my new found freedom for a while. I’m just not sure and I think until I am I should stay off dating sites and so I’ve deactivated my account for now.

I guess her hamster had a change of heart.

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