The Terrifying Trip that is Internet Dating Sites

 

I'm willing to hold up my hand and say that I've registered with a few dating sites since my split with my husband.  I still don't understand the 'taboo' around them.  I'm not sure whether people think they will be ridiculed, or whether some think they are just for saddos and weirdos.  I was quite happy to stand up and say, "No they're not.  They're for genuine adults who have accepted that after a certain age you're less likely to find Mr. Right, or even Mr. Right Now, in a pub or club."

At least I would have done before my own experiences...and really, you cannot make this shit up.

First there was the 37 year old Welsh virgin, who wanted to drive for seven hours to sit at the end of my bed and watch me sleep.  When I said that I was vaguely disturbed by that, he couldn't understand why and then began to spout endless texts about how could I do that to him after everything we had been to each other - during the three hour period between him contacting me and me telling him to bugger off!

Then we have the Italian millionaire who lived in South London, had a house in Paris and worked in South Africa for a couple of months at a time.  He was looking to find his soulmate after his "wife" had died and he had a twelve year old daughter.  When he first asked me to help him buy his daughter an ipod and send it to her because they don't sell ipods in South Africa??? Alarm bells rang.  Not that I had believed a single word of his romantic bullshit about how I was the one...if you're going to scam some sad, lonely English woman, make sure she's not as cynical and self-deprecating as hell.

So when he said there'd been a huge explosion on his building site and he stood to lose millions and needed to get back to America to talk to his investors, but had no money...I had a good chuckle.  Until he said his daughter was in hospital, trauma from the non-existent explosion, and he needed money for her hospital bills and could I send him some...$7,000 should do the trick, just until he got to America of course, then he'd pay me back--I nearly wet myself.  How stupid did he think I was?  And how much money do scam artists think the average Joe Public has?

After I offered him a tenner and congratulated him on the creativity of his scam, which I appreciated as a writer, I surprisingly enough didn't hear from him again.  

Then, finally, we had the guy who actually seemed genuine.  Nice, sensitive, okay he told me he was falling in love with me after two days of texts which was a bit full on, but we could pass over that because otherwise he was normal--ish.  Until the subject of fantasies came up and he asked me if I had one and if I'd ever done it.  I'm quite happy to hold my hand up there as well - I've been lucky enough to experience my ultimate fantasy of being with two men at the same time and watching them do naughty things to each other as well as me...so I told him.

Which caused a spiral of questions about my sex life.  When I'd last had it...how big were the men I'd been with...what did they do to me...what did they do to each other...did I enjoy it...what positions...blah, blah, blah.  When I expressed my unwillingness to continue with this vein of questioning, he hung up on me and my interest rapidly waned.

Receiving an apologetic text the next day, two days before we were to physically meet, I told him that I really didn't think it was going to work.  I didn't want to be questioned constantly on every aspect of my life that was not spent with him and I hoped that he found someone new.  His response was "Good, I couldn't have trusted you anyway."????? WTF???? He didn't even know me and he was making a judgment based on something that had happened to me once, when I was single and was frankly none of his business.

So I patted myself on the back for going from "I love you" to "Good I couldn't have trusted you" in the space of an hour.  I thought it was pretty good going.

Anyhoo,  the moral of this story is that it is men like the three I have come across who give dating sites a bad name; and the reluctance for some to join them is understandable....not that I cancelled my subscription...I'm ever hopeful there is a NORMAL guy out there....but I'm beginning to wonder if I'm better off down the pub!