Falsely advertising my bad self???
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| Sun, 01-01-2006 - 12:44pm |
Hi,
I seem to attract guys who have basic differences that preclude a serious relationship. Firstly let me state the crimes I am guilty of: I am politically conservative (registered Independent), Christian, 40 years old and I'm a PhD-level scientist who uses small animals for research.
So I seem to attract (50% of the time) younger (by 5-10 yrs) Jewish guys who want to start a family (I look younger than I am and I guess I have a Jewish look/way about me). So these guys are usually disappointed to find out my religion and/or age on the first or second date.
If neither of those two things are an issue, there are political differences (I voted for Bush and support his foreign policy and I live in NYC--you can fill in the blanks). I avoid talking politics LIKE THE PLAGUE but they always ask pointed questions and eventually they find out. And there is no way I'm going to lie. I leave out information all the time but they ask pointed questions, like, who did you vote for.
If none of those three things are an issue I get cross-examined on the small animal issue (again, an area I've learned to avoid talking about but they don't give up asking me). I tell them how much I like animals and how animal rights activists have actually helped researchers to do better experiments because now we have all these rules that force everyone to treat animals better and nonstressed animals yield better data...yadda yadda yadda...but it doesn't seem to matter.
All this is so heartbreaking to me because they never really get to know ME...I just get asked this battery of questions and that's it. Never get past a few dates. Meanwhile as you might imagine I'm quite tolerant of other people's views...most of my friends are extremely liberal for instance...
I date A LOT (I'm a fairly attractive, thin, blonde female, my mom was a model and I've been told countless times we look alike) and as a consequence I've become quite skilled at circumventing certain topics in the beginning but I tend to go out with highly intelligent analytical types (a lot of attorneys, writers and doctors) who basically perform an interview on me to decide whether or not they want to continue dating me. And I always end up feeling badly about who I am.
Mostly I meet guys through common interest groups (foreign language and singles clubs). I prefer meeting guys in person b/c these have been my most successful dates (ie I get past the first date).
Online dating has been a really bad experience for me as most men are looking for women under 35 and I'm not old enough for the senior dating websites which are usually for 50+. If you then narrow things down to compatible religion, politics, educational level, and geographical location (I can't move due to my job) there aren't so many guys to choose from. And then we still have the small animals issue to contend with...
When I do email these guys they stop responding after a few emails back and forth; not sure why. I keep the emails light and humorous and allude to getting together or calling within a week...maybe that's a bad thing? From all the coaching I've received that's SUPPOSED to be a good strategy...maybe I've gotten bad advice? I've even resorted to emailing guys who don't post their pictures online (and I always post mine--totally unfair). It seems like I'm really going out of my way to be accommodating and understanding and giving everyone a second chance and nothing works.
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Yeah, I'd like to have a family. My friends keep moving away, across the country and many just move the heck out of the country. The work I do is great when there's lots of funding...and sucky when there's not. To me a family represents something more stable than work and friends. So yeah I guess I'm looking for that stability. I'm very independent...so been there done that and bought the T-shirt already...now looking for someone to share it with.
Timetable to have a baby...no. I am totally into having a baby late in life...by in vitro (someone else's eggs, probably) or adoption. I'm in excellent health and I could handle having a kid late in life. But if it doesn't happen, it simply wasn't meant to be. I donated eggs once and a couple had a baby with my eggs and in a sense I find that very satisfying, like in some *small* way (Lord knows they're doing all the actual work!!) I've contributed.
But as I get older, my options for long-term companionship get fewer. Don't you agree? So before I get too "long in the tooth" (as my friends put it)...better shop around (as Captain and Tenelle once put it)!!! I don't want to end up like so many older couples I know...(who shall go unnamed)...pairing off with someone they're not really in love with so they don't have to spend their last years alone. *cringes*
Thanks for that. It's been a while since I embarked on the PhD track and got my degree, so I kind of forgot about that. I remember firstly my GIRLFRIENDS acting weird about it. I went to lunch with one friend soon after I got into the PhD program and she got all competitive on me and kept talking about how she could go for her PhD if she wanted to. I never saw her again after that. Weird!!
Then the mother of one of my oldest and dearest friends called me a know-it-all because someone had asked me why it was warm in Seattle even though it was so far north and I was doing my best to explain it (not being a meteorologist or anything, it was a pretty pathetic attempt). Like, bite my head off why don't ya? Go look it up then!!
Guys that don't have graduate degrees usually never ask me out on a second date so I guess that's my answer...since they never say anything outright about it. I usually try to match for education though, because college and grad school are kind of unique experiences that set you apart from other people. Like travelling or anything else. And here in the city, single/divorced guys with grad degrees are plentiful.
I think it's counterproductive to try to hide or minimize the fact that you're involved in animal research.
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Ah, the weirded out girlfriends! I can relate. I lost a lot of friends when I started my PhD program. The ones who stuck around were good friends, but they decided I was the most brilliant person in the world. It was very odd to deal with their semi-worship and then go into the lab the next day and practically get spat upon because a gel I was running didn't work. I felt schizophrenic, really smart and really dumb. I had to finally realize that my perception of my intelligence has to come from me and not those around me.
I wish I could say the same for single guys with grad degrees in the midwest, but it just isn't true. I'm on eHarmony and they fix me up with wonderful men, but they don't take intelligence into account at all. I've found myself suppressing many a yawn on dates as my match talks about his rabid basketball addiction or eating grapefruit to "thin the blood" (who the heck wants thin blood? I sometimes want to launch into the osmotic pressure discussion....)
Oh well, just be your bad azz self. Sherry (our dating doyenne) is right. Dating is a numbers game and you only have to find one.
Oh, and about the most brilliant guy on Long Island. Does he know that the globe isn't actually warming, that global temperatures were higher in the first half of last century than the second????? Global warming is not a fact, just popular with the non-scientific community.
Chick
I totally agree with your stance on telling people about political and ethical viewpoints, or my age or religion, for that matter. Not on the first few dates, but it shouldn't be swept under the rug and avoided either. Actually, I'm honest to a fault; everything on this board has suggested that I continue being open about these things and I agree. I'm beginning to think that this is actually a very good mechanism for weeding out the following types of people:
THE FOLLOWERS
I see people all around me coupling up with people that have opposing political, ethical and religious viewpoints, and differences in age. It's just that these aren't dealbreakers...there are other things more important to them in a long-term relationship. But now that I think of it, usually both are not extremely religious (although they might be spiritual) and are quite gifted intellectually. Not 'followers'.
THE COMMITMENTPHOBIC
I have a feeling that although some guys are totally against my viewpoints/age, they don't say anything. They're just in it for sex, and they have built in dealbreakers that make it easy to drop the relationship. So I think that we are on the same wavelength and then poof they're gone. This describes the last relationship I had. I'm still not sure what it was exactly, but it could have been any one of the four, actually!! So I need to ask more questions before the relationship gets serious, if there are opposing viewpoints to discuss. Assuming they will be honest, that is...
THE SUPERFICIAL
There's something else they don't like about me, like the way I look or act, but they don't want to admit that they're this shallow/intimidated. My political/ethical viewpoints are an easy out. Well, whatever. What are you going to do. If I didn't have any friends, I would worry more, but I have lots of friends and they are really amazing people, so I can't be doing that badly.
>>a few of your responses to posters here seemed a bit defensive and bordering on hostile.
THAT kind of presentation could be the problem... over and above your political views.
I'm not going to act the same way on a date as on an annonymous message board. That's the whole point of coming here...to air stuff out, not to make nice nice. Also, don't you find it a little incredible some of the assertions people are making here...with little or no knowledge about me? Guys would not make these assertions on a date, esp if they were interested in me. I mean, at least they never have. But people on message boards feel comfortable judging me without knowing me because guess what...they're annonymous too! Power to them!!
>>Ask some of your friends and relatives to observe you while you're on a date and then critique you.
With them sitting in close enough proximity to overhear the conversation? As if dating itself wasn't unnerving enough...I don't know if I could carry this off. Have you yourself ever done this before? How did you set it up so that you would get tables in close proximity to one another? Or are you talking about a double date? I think I would definitely ask a guy to do this...to get a guy's perspective. It's a good idea, just how do you work out the logistics?
>>You don't have to accept an invitation to date someone when you already know you have drastically different views, or you suspect he wouldn't "approve" of what you do or what you believe or how you live your life.
There are enough people who can tolerate opposition (see THE FOLLOWERS, above) that I always hold out hope that there are open-minded people like some of my married friends.
>>Oh, and about the most brilliant guy on Long Island. Does he know that the globe isn't actually warming, that global temperatures were higher in the first half of last century than the second?????
LOL!!! You may be surprised at this reponse.
Let me emphasize...that was his SISTER'S party. I'm not totally sure about his viewpoint on this. But I actually tend to agree with the global warming faction. We are definitely impacting the environment.
The atmosphere changes significantly on weekends...did you know this? There have been several studies. Also, don't forget about the three-legged frogs they keep finding. So while it's true global warming as a scientific phenomenon may be a farse, at least it's garnering some attention for protecting our environment from our bad selves.
I myself have never owned a car because of the environmental impact/oil dependence. I've always lived in cities to accommodate this lifestyle. Public transit and walking. Recycling. Eating food high on the food chain sparingly. It was Seattle that really did this to me.
But my feeling has always been this...if we don't protect our country by maintaining a strong military, we aren't going to have a United States environment to worry about. So military trumps environment, and certainly abortion issues, gay issues, etc and so forth. To me, these are all luxury things to be concerned about, while protecting our country and exercising our military strength is a necessity.
Oh believe me, I'm NOT saying we aren't impacting our Earth, not at all. All I'm saying is that while we are torturing our planet, the actual median temperatures around the globe are not going up. However, we are burning holes in the ozone layer and creating landfills and all sorts of other garbage (did you ever hear the great regae song about how the white people are all gonna die of skin cancer due to their excessive lifestyles?). I shutter at all of the new "convenient" cleaning tools that we can buy and just toss after using. And don't get me started on Pampers. Where the heck do we think they are going to go?
No, I'm just saying that contrary to popular belief, the globe isn't warming.
However, I'm a biochemist/pathologist and not an Earth scientist, so take me with a grain of salt.
I do think though, that we will never destroy the Earth, we will instead destroy current life and the Earth will heal and support a new form of life. We are very short sighted.
Chick
Hi,
Sorry I'm so long in answering you.
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