You Can't Make This Stuff Up: Chapter 49: Too Soon To Jump Back In The Saddle?

The Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

My first foray into the Social Networking world was some years ago, in 2005 I believe, with Yahoo. They had a site called Yahoo 360° that was their own attempt at MySpace, which, at the time, was all the rage. I hadn't been bitten by the MySpace bug yet, but I was already an active member of Yahoo, so to get my feet wet, I set up a Yahoo 360° profile.

Blogging was an extremely attractive prospect to me. I love to write, I love to give myself that type of "outlet" to my problems, fears, joys, and experiences. I've kept diaries and journals off and on over the years and they've always been therapeutic when I took the time to keep them up. But this... a public diary? How do I approach such a thing? How much do I divulge? And what, praytel, do I write about that would actually entice people to read it?

Browsing thru existing blogs, one thing was an absolute MUST: I could not, would not, write about mundane things that no one but myself would care about. I needed an angle-- Something that I could write passionately about. Something that people, in general, have an interest in. Something that would grab the attention of the public. And something that had a "theme." I found that, to me personally, a blog that jumped around all over the place was difficult to read. A theme would keep me in check, and allow me to focus, rather than a stream of conscious that I was sure would bore to death anyone who came across my page.

The idea came to me fairly quickly. I was newly divorced and discovering the delights and annoyances of being single and dating in my 30's. It was perfect! Love, sex, relationships, dating... The overall general interaction between men and women has always been a fascination and a sure-fire hit to our society, if not our entire species! I had my topic, I was ready to roll...

Yahoo has since shut down their 360° forum, and the experience I had there was both rewarding and therapeutic. So I am going to retell my adventures in a retro-active tale here, and see if I can gather the same, if not bigger, audience I did there. Maybe I can even get inspired enough to bring the whole thing up to date and wrap it all up into a happy ending? We shall see...

So, here we go! Hello, my name is Jennifer. I am 37 years old and I've been divorced just over 6 years now. Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls, it's gonna be one hell of a ride!

Monday, October 17, 2011

Chapter 49: Too Soon To Jump Back In The Saddle?

The day after "Tarzan" and I broke up, I reactivated my profile on Match. I also signed on to eHarmony. A few weeks back, eHarmony had sent me a match that had sounded quite intriguing, but since I was unavailable I had put "Thumper" on hold. I knew I was probably acting out of rebound-anger, but I reactivated the connection with "Thumper". To my surprise, he responded immediately. By the end of the day we had already gone through the five-step guided communication process, and by Monday morning, we were already talking via email and Yahoo Messenger.

"Thumper" was completely taken with me, and he let me know this in no uncertain terms in every communication. I don't really know exactly what it was that I said that made him so smitten, but I was willing to go with it. I needed a little "awe" in my life.

He wanted to meet me immediately, but he had, unfortunately, made a date that night with another girl he'd met on eHarmony at the same time he met me. He made it obvious that he really didn't want to go on this date anymore, and wanted to meet me instead. While this was very flattering, it wasn't exactly a great character-trait to me, to cancel on a date on such short notice and for such a manipulative reason. I encouraged him to go on the date. But he was meeting her early for dinner. So I suggested a compromise: IF and only IF the dinner date ended early, like 10-ish, maybe he could call me and we could meet for late night drinks?

He loved the idea. I didn't really expect to hear from him that night, but he called at 9:30, claiming that she had needed to leave early anyway, and very much wanted to see me. We met at Applebee's for drinks, and the first words out of his mouth were, "You are BEAUTIFUL!" We talked and had a lot of things in common. I asked him how his dinner date was, and he said that it was better than he had expected it to be, and he would probably see her again, but admitted that, all evening, he couldn't wait to see me. He held my hand across the table the whole time and gazed at me with an amazing look on his face. I really couldn't believe that he could possibly be THIS taken with me so quickly!

We eventually had to agree that it was getting late and walked out to my car. Not wanting to say good night just yet, we sat in my car to have a cigarette, and kept talking. He leaned over and kissed me, and it was a passionate, longing, very sensual kiss. When he pulled away, he sighed and said, "I just knew that you would be a good kisser." When I looked into his face, there were tears on his cheeks.

Tears??? Are you serious? He didn't try to hide them. He said he felt this amazing connection to me, that I had touched his emotions and his heart so fervently that this one kiss just allowed it all to bubble up. This was all very sweet, but just a tad over the top. Or was I so jaded at this point that I didn't believe you could connect to someone so deeply that quick? Maybe he believed in love at first sight, and I was too cynical to allow the possibility? It was a pleasant distraction from "Tarzan", though, I had to admit.