Posts Tagged ‘Relationships’

Online Dating: Forced or Fabulous?

Monday, March 23rd, 2015

An old friend of mine posted on Facebook noting that she felt online relationships were forced and not necessarily a way to meet the person you’re going to spend either a few good months with or even the rest of your life.  I went to comment my thoughts, both agreeing and disagreeing, but she removed the post before I could hit submit. :booo: … but thanks to good old copy and paste…and the thought being stuck in my head… I’ve moved it to here.

When it comes to online dating, I used to think it was the ‘meh… that’s not kosher’ way of life. I always felt there needed to be a person-to-person kind of connection in order to really find love or happiness. However, I never had that spark hit me and gave up. Now, I didn’t go looking for anyone.. life just kind of happened and maybe now I’m the exception to the rule. Sean and I have been together for 9 years, we’re engaged, we own a home together, and we’re at our happiest point of planning the rest of our lives. We met online. It wasn’t a dating site though, it was through my blog. We started going back and forth through comments and the rest kind of sparked from there.  We knew each other based on our words first, not necessarily our pictures.  Though, he is a cutie and he knows it.

For the most part though, we were pictureless people.  We only spoke through email and instant messenger but we both have similar personalities and sarcasm coming out the wahzoo. It went comments to chat to phone, and eventually we met in person.

So yes, it could really go both ways. I’m not saying her way of thinking is wrong, far from it because I also believed that the old fashion ‘love and first sight’ thing needed to be more than just a profile picture and random duckface selfies going back and forth.

Her and I both had the benefit of growing up in a time where computers were just getting started so social media had no bearing on our everyday life (unfortunately it does now, but that’s a different issue). AOL was one of my first instances of being online and it, nationwide, became the ‘norm’ but I don’t believe any single person knew things would take off and advance the ways that they have. The general population didn’t see the bigger picture. If you went back to my 13 year old self and told me about Facebook I probably would have said “Hm… that’s nice, let me get back to my book”. Now? I’m unfortunately on it every single day – and not just for seeing what’s going on with the rest of my corner of the world, I’m managing like 60 different pages for my job..but I digress.

We knew based on all of those horrible 70’s, 80’s and 90’s movies that you dated people within your town or you met them at a party that X Y or Z was throwing as they did every Friday night. Or in those flash forward instances of walking into a coffee shop with your 22 year old self and bumping into a person where the angelic “”Ahhhh”” kind of music came into play and the persons face had a fresh 100 watt bulb shining into it for a halo effect. This wasn’t freaking normal either, it’s what Hollywood wanted us to believe. Actually meeting someone for the first time (depending on personalities) is the most awkward experience in the world. Body language changes, side smiles, giggles, awkward silence. Alcohol curbs most of these, not necessarily for the better, but I don’t drink so I wouldn’t know.

In the world we live in now – you have the option to swipe them left or right, you can follow a celebrity on all of their social media accounts and maybe they’ll notice you so to fulfill some long running fantasy of what you’d actually do with them if you had the chance. Then people go the complete opposite way and find someone who’s confident and comfortable with their body and jump on the hater bandwagon because they’re too fat, skinny, tall or purple. Log into your accounts and have to remove/deny numerous ‘friend’ requests from people you’ve never met and have no interest in but they found your profile pic and started to fap all over it. Or you can spend $40 a month and have a computer generate a match for you based on algorithms that were literally built by a programmer in the middle east for 50 cents an hour.

There’s a big difference between living behind a screen name and living in the real world. I think that’s where the ‘online dating’ thing gets misconstrued. The fantasy world of having everything you could ever want in a significant other with just the click of a button takes the priority over making a real connection based more on words and less on pictures.

Everyone wants a hot boyfriend or hot girlfriend, but everyone also has a different description of ‘hot’. There are people who look like her (a downright gorgeous girl with a good heart and soul) who get swiped over for someone with bluer eyes or darker hair. Then there’s people like me who would get swiped over by just about everyone unless they want their BBW fix. It’s just a matter of preference, it’s just easier to swipe on the phone than it is to do in person.

It’s all based on preference and everyone is too busy spending the day looking at their phones and not the people around them. Friends are hanging out in the same living room, none are talking but they’re having a great conversation on Twitter and Instagram. Hell, Sean and I wind up on google hangouts for most of the day because we work in two completely different areas of the house. My office is up stairs, his is in the basement but we always meet in the middle. When it comes to meeting someone online the ‘forced’ aspect is having to look up from your phone long enough to speak to them in person. It’s easier to like a pic or a status and move on than it is to have a proper conversation with someone.

As long as you are actually happy though, I don’t think it really matters how you meet someone. Now the Internet is the new ‘ladies night’ at the local bar. It’s unfortunately been added to the list of acceptable means of conversation. However, there is a level of ‘tradition’ that dating sites are trying to bring back in order to take some of the anonymity off of social media and put people face to face. Such as the theme night / bar nights that Match is hosting now. The flip side of that is the fact that people are actually paying monthly to utilize a service that’s telling them to go bowling. And that literally makes me laugh.

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It’s been…hectic…

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

This post brought to you by TwoOfUs. All opinions are 100% mine.

Things have been pretty hectic lately. I’m so overloaded with work that I’m close to losing my mind. The biggest goal for my leaving that horrible office job was for Sean and I to be able to spend more time together. This hasn’t really been working out for either of us considering we’re BOTH so bogged down with work we’ve resorted to chit-chat whenever we pass each other. We have a lot of goals and dreams that we’re working hard to meet, but I’m hoping it doesn’t put a permanent strain on things in the meantime.

I’ve been floating around TwoOfUs.org, it’s a site specifically for relationships. There are different columns for advise, and tips on keeping your relationship fresh. It starts in the Dating category, and works its way from Dating to Exclusive, Engagements, Married couples, and even parents. Obviously being with Sean for as long as I have (6 years in July) we’ve pretty much lost the ‘category’ in which we’re in. We’ve skipped the exclusive stage, we’ve spoken about marriage, life dreams and children and already know that we’ll be together forever, but even without the ring we’ve passed the ‘engaged’ stage. We’re more like an old married couple than anything else. So I found myself reading through multiple categories. Even though we’re not officially engaged/married – we still live our lives as though we are. All of our finances are joined, everything we do we consult the other person, both of our names are on my SUV – there’s no separations there. While I did enjoy the articles and found a few areas to be informative, I’m still having trouble locating that ‘grey’ area that my relationship is in (not that Grey is bad in this case, there’s just no special category name). Life isn’t black and white, the grey tone areas are where people LIVE, I wish there was more about the grey areas on Two of Us.org, but the information on the page itself is helpful.

I think the one thing that caught my eye was the article about over sharing. I find that I do over-share with certain people, but at the same time I know that Sean also knows everything I’m volunteering. There are more personal and private aspects to our life that I don’t blast out all over the internet, or even with close friends. There has to be some kind of separation to insure that you don’t leave your relationship vulnerable.

Another article that caught my eye was to Discuss Finances Before Marriage.  I’ve completely screwed the pooch on this one.  Our finances have pretty much been merged for the last 5 1/2 years.  The upside is we’re fully aware of how much money is needed to get our bills paid, and how much we have left for personal spending.  I’ll admit that I’m the big spender in the relationship, he’s more of the “I can’t justify this” kind of person.  It does take a lot of effort on both our parts to balance things out… but it works.

I’ve taken the time to look through a few of the videos, the one that stood out the most was an interview with Hill Harper, where he discusses the importance of The Conversation. He noted that the world is too involved with technology and no one talks anymore, except through Facebook email and twitter. What he does is he has a get together with friends/family, each of them bring a few cards with different questions on them, they’re pulled together and anonymously the questions are asked for members of the opposite sex to answer them. As an example, mine would probably be something along the lines of “Why do men hold onto underwear when it looks like a skirt and the elastic is holding on with a piece of string?”, this question would be answered truthfully by the men in the group. I’m sure it would bring up a heated discussion, but at the same time – you’re TALKING, it’s not a Facebook thread going back and forth, you’re actually looking at the person in which you’re talking to.

All in all it’s a pretty decent site, lots of tips and tricks, the video’s give you an “ah ha” kind of an effect after words as well, and after watching “The Conversation”, I think I’m going to have to put one of these parties together. I went ahead and marked like on their Facebook page as well.

What questions would you ask?

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Closing the book…

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

I really don’t want to say it but higher powers have somehow worked their devious magic and Sean and I are no longer together.  Four and a half years of a relationship has now turned to “When are you coming to get your stuff, I can’t look at it anymore”.  Needless to say I’ll be doing some major packing over the course of the next couple of days, and none of it will be mine.  I’m worried about the financial aspect of everything because I’d basically given him AGn Solutions but everything is still being forwarded to my paypal account.  I don’t know if I should just give up the account or what.  My issue with that is that I fully intend to get back into working online, be it through blogging or designing – whichever I can figure out how to accomplish now that I no longer have my Mac or any programs, fonts, ANYTHING.  I’m starting from scratch completely across the board and for someone who’s been out of the loop for so long – this is just going to be one major obstacle after another.  On top of that we have a joint bank account, the cell phones are in my name.  There’s just a lot more shit involved and Sean has decided he’s “done” so now I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to make that as smooth of a transition as possible, but I highly doubt it’s going to be.  There’s no possible way to walk away from every aspect of your life and start fresh.  Especially when you’re in the same place and while he’s not, but all of his stuff is still here.

I don’t know where I’m going from here.  I’ve realized over the course of the past few days that there are a lot of aspects of my life that were never dealt with due to my jumping into things so quickly.  I realize now that the reason I have gone drastically down hill over the course of the past few months was due to the fact that my brain was telling me to ‘hold up, wait a minute, deal with your shit right now’.   I’m not over the major mistake made when I was a teenager, I’m not over Joe or Lucy for that matter either.  I never actually went through a grieving period for anything, I just kept jumping from one thing to the next to keep my mind off of things.  Now is the chance for me to 100% focus on everything without having any outside influence.  The next couple of weeks are going to be an extremely wild ride for me physically and emotionally.  And to top it all off, I have to deal with the fact that for the first time in 10 years, I’m alone for Christmas. 

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Ok…

Friday, November 19th, 2010

So things between Sean and I have gone down hill and we’ve decided to take a break to figure things out. I don’t know what the next couple of weeks are going to bring. Its either going to be a situation of both of us wanting to move on with our lives individually or move ahead with eachother. Its really up in the air right now but its equally painful for both of us. Im hopeful that things will work out but who knows what the universe has in store for us.

There’s alot that I’ve needed to work on for quite some time now and I believe this is the opportunity I need to begin getting myself in order. I need to get everything figured out with finances and school. I also need to figure out what path im even on in my life and which obstacles are in my way so I conquer them.  I would have liked to do everything with Sean by my side but I also need to be on my own for a while as this is something I haven’t done for the last ten years of my life. Im 26, working a dead end job and trying my hardest to accomplish my goals interally even though I have no physical or emotional strength to deal with it all at this moment in time. I can day dream all I want but the act of accomplishing is more rewarding. So I guess its time to truly see what I’m capable of.

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The LONG Weekly Breakdown

Friday, April 18th, 2008

It’s been quite a week, if I had the energy I probably would have updated sooner but when daily life gets in the way – a blog really isn’t a priority. I’ll break it down into categories so you can skip the areas you probably won’t care about. I also had to throw a break in it because I’m certain it’s going to be a 2500 word entry. Sue me, it’s been a week.

Health & Wellness – Back Problems SUCK!
I threw out my back last weekend, it took me a few days to nurse myself back to health but me being the stubborn person that I am – I still insisted on cleaning whenever I could and getting some shopping done. I had trouble lifting the heavier items (soda, and even a gallon of milk for that matter) but we needed it and I know that Sean has been really busy working on a few different sites. He’s chugging along getting the social networking site up for one client, Jackie and her father have taken him under their wings with some programming work and he was approved to write plug-ins and hacks for Social Engine, the only out-of-the-box social networking site on the market right now. So it’s safe to say that while I’m not feeling well, he’s still very busy with other things. He did really help me out though, as far as the heavy lifting and laundry is concerned. I had to spend Sunday in bed, which is something I absolutely hated, because I don’t like being unproductive but when you can’t stand up it’s very difficult to accomplish just about anything.
(more…)

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OOh! It works!

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

I’m finally back in the office, my back is feeling up to sitting in this god awful chair. I’m playing around with Leopard, and Parallels Desktop because Sean was lucky enough to figure out what was going wrong with the routes we were taking. It required a lot of Linux editing and that’s not really in my field of expertise. He figured it out, the whole computer acted up for a little while and then he figured out how to fix that. Now everything seems to be running pretty smoothly. The major draw-back was my lack of ability to access my external hard drive. It turns on and the red light informs me that it’s “running” but then when it changes back to blue it doesn’t show the drive on either Leopard or XP and then if it does begin to view it on XP it says that I don’t have the proper permissions to get into the drive. With a major thanks to Jackie (my Mac guru) I was able to fix everything and now everything is up and running just fine.

On another bright note, Sean and I are going on vacation at the end of the month. We set a few financial goals for ourselves and if we can accomplish them by the 23rd then we’re going to keep our reservations for Harrah’s at the end of the month. If we’re unable to reach the goal then we’ll cancel the reservation and hang on until next month. The actual drive up there is the only thing that’s really going to cost us any money, it’s the cost of gas and a few tolls to pay. It’s still cheaper than taking the Ferry because even with the $37 Ferry ride we’re going to have to drive North for about an hour or so. It’s easier just to put gas in the car and get the hell out of here. The room itself is complimentary, and we’re lucky enough to have the new luxury suite available for two nights – absolutely free. Brand new hardwood floors, jacuzzi tubs and plasma TV’s – it’ll be a nice little get-away. After that there’s the pool to hang out in, no children permitted (they have to go to the teen pool) so I figure since we’re going mid-week there’s really going to be no one there so it’ll be possible to lay down and relax without dealing with screaming children or unruly drunks for that matter. I also have about $300 in cash that I can print out at the Kiosk and then of course there’s the food comps so we’re really not spending any of our personal money at all. Of course we’re going to want to Gamble but with all of the amenities that are available – I doubt I’ll be on the Casino floor very often. We need to get away to clear our heads, no dogs, no parents, just us. It’ll be pretty nice.

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Weekly Wrap-up.

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

The carpet cleaning turned out very well.¬† At first we were a little apprehensive about having every carpeted room done in the same day but it worked out OK.¬† The bedroom is squeaky clean and the office couldn’t get much better than it currently is.¬† I was very surprised with the way the living room worked out.¬† All pet stains and most odors (thanks to their deodorizing treatment) are gone.¬† Of course we left the dogs out of the room for a while until things dried up.¬† Unfortunately Princess is still pooping on the floor but when you’re 10 years old and trained to do everything in-house, you just don’t know any better.¬† At least there hasn’t been any urine on the floor, that acid in urine really is what kills the carpet to begin with.¬† So either way it worked out well and it was nice to see what this carpet looked like in a “brand new” state.

Sean and I have done pretty good this week,¬† something has sparked in us that has brought us out of the fighting slump and closer together to the point that we’re constantly joking around with each other and there’s no major frustration between us.¬† It’s not that we were having “trouble”, it’s just that current situations have been taking their toll on us. Luckily we’re over it now and things are great.

I’ve been hitting the bricks for a job in the area, I believe I came across an absolutely perfect one today that I found while surfing the web.¬† Maybe something good will come from it.¬† My main concern is reaching my goals by the end of the year and I’m confident that’ll happen if I’m hired by this employer.¬† The loan will be paid off, a car will be purchased and maybe a shiny new apartment is in the mix as well.

While I’m itching to get back to school, I’m thinking of holding off until the end of the year.¬† Since I’m under 24 and not living at home, even though my father is no longer responsible for me financially, I’d have to include him on the financial aid forms, unless I go towards a bachelors degree.¬† Up until recently I’ve decided upon DeVry and since that’s an associates my financial aid would be based on his income and since he makes like $65,000 a year, I doubt I’d really get anything covered by FAFSA.¬† So I’ll look into other routes and hopefully something will spring up.¬† I do know that I can hold off for a while, getting bills in order is more important to me right now anyway.

With my downtime I’ve been floating around the different dealerships in the general area.¬† I’m giving myself a $10,000 max budget on a car because spending anything more than that just to get me back and forth from work would be completely absurd.¬† Naturally this means I’m looking into a used car but I also find no point in owning a brand new one either.¬† Anything I can get from a dealership down here will be covered under whatever Warranty they happen to have, and that’s all that’s important to me at this point in time.¬† I’m sticking to Chevy though, it’s kind of a family tradition.¬† My father has owned them for years (even though he currently has a Jeep), my sister has a Chevy, my mother, step-father and lord knows who else, even Sean has one.¬† So to stay with it I’ve been looking into the Malibu or the Cobalt.¬† I have to say that the 2008 Malibu is absolutely gorgeous, but the price tag isn’t that attractive to me at this point in time – heh.

Anyhoo, it’s about 1:30 and I need to get myself ready for bed.¬† Time to take a quick shower, brush my teeth and curl up in bed with any random book I pull off the shelves until I fall asleep.

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