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!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Chapter 26: Wandering Eyes

"Shrek" was obviously not giving me all I needed or wanted in a relationship. Sure, he was being a gentleman, but it all goes back to my complaint about how men go to extremes. Either they want to get busy on the first date, or they want to wait until we're all "serious and in love"... Blah, blah, gag, gag, barf, barf. :-P For me, there are shades of grey in almost every situation. Always going to extremes takes too much work.

My point is that I wasn't getting my needs met, emotionally or physically, from "Shrek," so when I was contacted by "Mowgli" on Match, I was intrigued. He didn't have a picture up, but he sent me one via email. He was pretty cute. We'd just been talking by Instant Messenger and emails for a few days, and he was really charming. He had just the right amount of flirty, humorous, and intelligence that really charmed me.

He told me one night that he had to pick his brother up at the airport later that evening, and he'd love to have a quick drink with me before he had to drive down there. I didn't have plans, so I agreed. I knew it would devastate "Shrek" if he knew I was meeting another man, considering how adamant he was about only seeing one person at a time, but it seemed innocent enough. "Mowgli" made it very clear that he just wanted to meet. A quick drink before he had to go to the airport. It wasn't really a date, just a "Happy Hour" kind of thing.

We met, and "Mowgli" was great! He was charming, funny, successful, really had his act together, and, above all, he seemed really taken with me. He told me how beautiful I was many times, but didn't overdo it. He liked listening to me talk, and laughed at my jokes. He was good looking, too. He was tall, which totally turns me on, well groomed, and built. He wasn't a hard body, but he had bulk in all the right places. I was quickly realizing that this guy not only would be able to give me what I wanted in a relationship, but he was more than ready and willing to do so.

So in our conversations, he mentioned his kids. He had three. Hmmm... Three kids is a lot of kids, but I get along with kids pretty okay. So I asked him how long he'd been divorced. (Considering the rebound disaster I'd had with "Tramp", I was cautious.) His answer was the last thing I expected:

"Oh... Uhhh... didn't you notice on my Match profile that it said 'Separated'?"
"Ummmm... no... actually I didn't."

DAMMIT! DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT! All the weirdos and whackjobs that I'd met, and the first guy I meet who is good-looking, funny, charming, intelligent, successful, and VERY into me... But, oh, wait... He's still MARRIED!?!?! I just can't win...

Lesson Number Fourteen: Pay attention to detail!

Status: Still learning