Pittsburgh Internet Dating Stories

Emily Gould writes about her obsession with blogging in last week’s New York Times Magazine. (“Exposed” published May 25, 2008) Given recent events in my life I could certainly relate. Here is an excerpt:

Once, I made fun of (live-in boyfriend) Henry for referring to “Project Runway” as “Project Gayway.” … He insisted that I take down the offending post and watched as I sat at my desk in our bedroom, slowly, grudgingly making the keystrokes necessary to delete what I’d written. As I sat there staring into the screen at the reflection of Henry standing behind me, I burst into tears. And then we were pacing, screaming at each other, through every room of our apartment, facing off with wild eyes and clenched jaws.

My blog post was ridiculous and petty and small — and, suddenly, incredibly important. At some point I’d grown accustomed to the idea that there was a public place where I would always be allowed to write, without supervision, about how I felt. Even having to take into account someone else’s feelings about being written about felt like being stifled in some essential way.

As Henry and I fought, I kept coming back to the idea that I had a right to say whatever I wanted. I don’t think I understood then that I could be right about being free to express myself but wrong about my right to make that self-expression public in a permanent way. I described my feelings in the language of empowerment: I was being creative, and Henry wanted to shut me up. His point of view was just as extreme: I wasn’t generously sharing my thoughts; I was compulsively seeking gratification from strangers at the expense of the feelings of someone I actually knew and loved. I told him that writing, especially writing about myself and my surroundings, was a fundamental part of my personality, and that if he wanted to remain in my life, he would need to reconcile himself to being part of the world I described.

After a standoff, he conceded that I should be allowed to put the post back up. As he sulked in the other room, I retyped what I’d written, feeling vindicated but slightly queasy for reasons I didn’t quite understand yet.

One of the strangest and most enthralling aspects of personal blogs is just how intensely personal they can be. I’m talking “specific details about someone’s S.T.D.’s” personal, “my infertility treatments” personal. There are nongynecological overshares, too: “My dog has cancer” overshares, “my abusive relationship” overshares.

It’s easy to draw parallels between what’s going on online and what’s going on in the rest of our media: the death of scripted TV, the endless parade of ordinary, heavily made-up faces that become vaguely familiar to us as they grin through their 15 minutes of reality-show fame. No wonder we’re ready to confess our innermost thoughts to everyone: we’re constantly being shown that the surest route to recognition is via humiliation in front of a panel of judges.

But is that really what’s making people blog? After all, online, you’re not even competing for 10 grand and a Kia. I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. Sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. In real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the Internet makes it seem O.K.

Of course, some people have always been more naturally inclined toward oversharing than others. Technology just enables us to overshare on a different scale. Long before I had a blog, I found ways to broadcast my thoughts — to gossip about myself, tell my own secrets, tell myself and others the ongoing story of my life. … The big difference between these youthful indiscretions and my more recent ones is that you can Google my more recent ones.

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Beth called me the other day. She was upset with her ex-husband, Fred. Fred had taken their teenagers (16 year old twins – a boy and a girl) out to dinner Tuesday night and had announced to them that he had gotten a vasectomy a week earlier. Beth had been trying to very circumspect in her dating, knowing she was setting an example to her teenagers, and was very upset.

“He might as well have announced to them that he was having sex” she fumed. “Teenage kids don’t want to think of their parents doing ‘it’. And now what about all my lectures about not having sex outside of marriage? They are hardly going to listen to them anymore knowing their father is sleeping around!”

I tried to calm Beth down, and gently reminded her that she was dating and was hardly celibate herself.

“But I’m not telling the world that.” she said, “and I am certainly not telling my children!”

Beth was actually glad Fred had had the medical procedure. He had been dating a lot of younger women, and her fear had been that he would remarry and start another family, and then forget about his older children. She had 4 years of double college tuition ahead, and had been counting on his help – if he remarried and had a baby and day care to pay for, he might have a harder time swinging it.

But what about the effects of this on her kids?

She went back and had a heart-to-heart with them, and found they were not nearly as upset as she had been. In fact, they were glad they would never be competing with younger siblings for his attention and resources. As for the fact that he was having intimate relations ouside of marriage, her daughter just rolled her eyes. “Mom, it’s not like we didn’t already know that! Dad hardly kept it a secret.”

Then she looked at Beth and said, “Now if I found out you were having sex, that would be so gross. I just can’t imagine it, and it would really bother me. But Dad? I would expect it.”

So it turns out there is still a double standard (at least in Beth’s daughter’s eyes) about sex. I know men who would be secretly proud to find out that their sons were getting some, but really upset if their daughter were.

Is this your experience, or is this just among a few people in the Mt Lebanon Catholic School crowd?

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Here are more quotes from real online dating profiles of potential dates in the Pittsburgh area. Kind of makes you wonder….

Love the outdoors. Hafta learn to hunt cause my son wants to hunt. Mr. Right would be someone who is honest an carin an could handle me an my kids. Haven’t found anyone that could yet.

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Im looking for someone who i can carry on a intelegent conversation my strongest field is science. I like to spend time with my nieces and i love with ducks!

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I LOVE WORKING WITH THE DISABLED AND THE ELDERLY. IT IS NOT THEIR FAULT THAT THEY ARE LIKE THAT.

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I’ve found that the more I like and admire a man, the more I am attracted to him.

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well im a single mom my daughter is 11 she is malotta if you do not know what that means shes blk/wht im wht im 5’7 have blnd hair brwn eyes med build. i have a few tatoos yes i think they are very sexy but not every one thinks the same way either i like to try to make other people laugh all in fun meet for a drink go out for karoke night all night bolling perhaphs the movies or just a walk in the park if its raining out side perhaphs puddle stompin would it make you laugh

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An executive at a big company in Ohio emailed me. He traveled all over the world with his job and, unlike local Pittsburgh guys who didn’t think I was worth the gas money to cross a bridge, he was not fazed by a 2-hour drive to meet me. After just a few emails, he was very enthusiastic:

Hi Blue Eyes:

The more we email, the better I feel, and the more I like you. I really am glad we connected. I have been very fortunate that my gut feelings have been very true to me in my life. There was something in my gut that says you are very different than most people.

The distance between us doesn’t bother me. What is important is the time we would spend together, and the quality is not dependent on the quantity. It’s the little things, a call at night to wish the other a good night, an e-mail saying ” I miss you”, sneaking a hug, and a kiss, that is more fulfilling than sitting at opposite ends of the couch for 2 hours watching a movie.

I come home on November 24, have no plans on the 25th, Sunday, and then I am home until the 18th of January, no travel. I have 20+ days vacation and I have to burn it by the end of January, or I lose it. Hope we can meet and spend some time together.

I got a little scared off by this email, especially the 20+ days of vacation he needed to use up. He had said in a previous email that he was looking forward to spending week-ends in Pittsburgh. Since at the time I was juggling a few different men (I had been married for 20 years and wasn’t rushing onto anything) I was afraid having him camped out in Pittsburgh would cramp my style.

I emailed “Ohio Exec” that I was dating other men, and before he comes down we needed to talk on the phone. The tone of his next email was decidedly cooler. He told me he personally was too busy to date more than one woman at a time. The emails soon dried up.

I tried to reel him back in:

Are you still planning on coming down to Pittsburgh on Saturday December 1? If so I need to make plans to be free to spend some time with you.

I know you are traveling and its been hard to keep in touch lately. Please feel free to call me any time on Monday November 26. If I do not pick up, please leave a message – I will call you back.

Looking forward to your return to the USA and talking to you!

Blue Eyes
tel: 412-XXX-XXXX

But it was useless. He never emailed me back. I had lost him.

Why? We hadn’t met or even talked on the phone at that point so it wasn’t reasonable that I be exclusively dating him. Has this happened to you? Things appear to be moving right along and then the other person disappears?

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The day I was out buying new underwear and discovered that NYIF had been telling his other match dates to get breast enlargements, it was a Monday. Which meant that while I was shopping, Peggy was cleaning up after me and the kids.

When Gary still lived with us, we paid our teenagers to clean – which meant the house was usually filthy and the kids never had any money. But as soon as he moved out, I hired a cleaning lady. I really like Peggy – she is an astute business woman and has raised 3 girls on the proceeds of her business, and is now putting all 3 through college. I work out of my home, so often we’ll have a coffee together when one of us needs a break, and we’ve become good friends.

When I came home with my shopping bags, I had to show Peggy what I bought, and also how I found out from Gail Gross, the owner of the Pussycat in Squirrel Hill, that a local match “gentleman” had told other women besides me to get cosmetic surgery. Peggy asked if the guy’s real name was “Mike.” It wasn’t, but she told me her story.

Turns out Peggy had a similar experience after only a month of dating Mike. He started pressuring her, and offered to pay for half the cost of implants, and she liked him and wanted to please him so she went ahead with it. They moved in together for a few years, but it didn’t work out; he was very controlling and she couldn’t do enough to keep him happy.

Peggy is a very pretty lady in her early 40′s and has a beautiful figure, and she didn’t regret her decision to have the work done. She started telling me all the benefits, and encouraged me to do it while I was still separated and the money was coming out of joint funds. I was skeptical – didn’t fake boobs feel funny? She said she couldn’t sleep on her stomach anymore, and it hurt in the beginning but it felt just fine now. But I persisted, I meant didn’t they feel funny to your partner? She said no and took of her shirt so I could feel for myself.

I tried a little squeeze. It felt a bit like a water balloon. But I really had nothing to compare it to, having limited experience with other women’s breasts.

Peggy said she hadn’t had any complaints. But she was still a little ticked off with Mike. When they split up and divided their joint assets, he had deducted the entire cost of her operation from what he owed her. I thought that was rude – he had agreed to pay half.

But Peggy is a practical woman, and she said it didn’t really bother her, “Frankly, I didn’t want him still owning one of my breasts anyway. And I certainly didn’t want him coming back, demanding the right to see it. At least now I know they are all mine.”

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My friend Sue’s ex-in-laws from Queens NY are in Pittsburgh for the holidays, visiting their grandchildren and their son, and they are sleeping in her bed. Her Ex has the spare room. She’s got the cot in her home office for the next 10 days. But she’s happy – She’s got a house full of family again this Christmas, even if the family is a little unconventional.

Sue really likes her in-laws. When she was a young mother, struggling with 3 children under the age of 4 and a difficult marriage, she looked to her mother-in-law, Mary, for help. She and Stan’s father, Patrick, seemed to really love each other still, after almost 40 years of marriage, and she asked her what their secret was. Sue was having difficulty after only 6 years. Mary told me she was happy now, but that the first 30 years had been “pure hell.”

What had kept Mary in her marriage was her Catholic faith and time: eventually the children grew up, the money was less tight, there was less stress, and she and Patrick had time for each other. They finally worked on their relationship and sorted their differences out. They were now very happy, but it had not been an easy path.

Sue thought of Mary many times over the next 14 years, as she worked hard to make my marriage work, but it was like beating her head against a brick wall, and eventually she got tired of it. She decided she didn’t have the patience for 30 years of “pure hell” – 20 years had been enough. Stan agreed to a separation last fall, and they decided he would move out after the holidays. They didn’t want to ruins the kids’ Christmas.

As they have every year since Sue and Stan moved to Pittsburgh, last Christmas the in-laws came for 10 days to spend the holidays with them. They didn’t want to ruin the grandparent’s Christmas either, so they hadn’t told them about the upcoming divorce. But Mary noticed a difference in the mood of the house, and pulled Sue aside to ask me how things were going.

“You and Stan both seem so much happier and more relaxed,” she said. “I think things are really going better for you.” She had her theories why this might be – Stan’s new job, Sue’s new business, the kids getting older, etc., and Sue wasn’t about to tell her the truth – she left that to Stan.

Stan told them in the airport just before they disappeared behind security.

When Sue talked to them on the phone a week later, they reassured her that she would always be family – she was the mother of their grandchildren and would always be their daughter too. Mary was especially supportive, telling Sue that Stan would be lost without her, and that it was too bad he so so “thick” and couldn’t see what he had. (For the record, Stan seems to be doing just fine and is not lost at all – in fact he starting dating within weeks of moving out. It took Sue over a year and me almost 9 months to even think about dating)

Unlike a lot of divorcing couples, Stan and Sue kept most of their family traditions. They spent 2 weeks on the Jersey shore at a big family reunion this June with Stan’s brothers and sister, the grandparents and cousins. So when Sue thought about their Christmas traditions, she decided to invite Mary and Patrick back this year – to stay in her house with Sue and the kids. The children live with Sue full-time – Stan moved into a small bachelor pad at the WaterWorks which isn’t big enough for more than one child at a time.

This is Sue’s first Christmas as a single mom and she tells me that somehow it’s not feeling that much different from last year. She’s spending nights drinking wine talking to her in-laws, making them coffee in the morning, and making sure they feel comfortable. The kids are running in and out with their friends and they’ve had a lot of parties and sleep overs. So it feels like old times.

Except maybe a few hours Sue spent this afternoon in the company of “Jimmy” – under the guise of getting groceries for the big holiday dinners coming up. Sue tells me it’s hard enough to juggle dating with the kids – now she have the ex and the ex-in-laws to worry about as well. But she’d rather have a house full of family and ex-relatives than be alone for the holidays, and somehow Sue is lucky enough to be getting the best of both worlds right now.

Don’t know if I could do this!

Merry Christmas!

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One thing that’s fun about dating again after 20 years of marriage is that I get to feel like a teenager again – except that instead of sneaking around behind my parents, I am hiding from my kids. Only now I have the added complication of being always connected via cell phone, something I didn’t have to deal with the first time around.

I went to a Christmas party last night, and invited a date, CURIOUS. Before I left, Billy — my son who’s a freshman in college, home for Christmas break — asked me when I would be back, and I said probably around 11:00.

After the party, C and I went to his place for drinks. C made a little show of turning off his cell phone when we got there, and gave me a “now it’s your turn” kind of look, but I like to be available in case my kids really need me, so I left my phone on. Sure enough, ten minutes later it rang. It was my youngest, Zack. I answered “Is this an emergency?” and and he said, “Yes, Mom. I can’t find the TV remote. Where is it?” It seems that Zack’s idea of an emergency differs from mine. I told him to ask his brother, hung up, and buried the phone in the bottom of my purse to muffle it. Meanwhile, C fixed us another couple Black Russians.

“C” and I stayed up late talking, etc. I thought I heard the phone ring once or twice, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Around midnight, my parental conscience kicked in, and I decided it was time to head home. I checked my phone. There were 6 missed messages! All from Billy. He had called every ten minutes starting at 11:04 PM.

I called him back immediately, wondering if something was wrong.

“Mom, where are you?” he asked. “You said you would be home at 11:00, and that was an hour ago. Why didn’t you pick you your phone? Are you okay?”

I told him I was fine, that I went out with some friends after the party, and we had gone to one of their houses for drinks. The music was loud, the phone was on low, and I hadn’t heard it ring.

“Mom, if you are drinking, are you sure you should drive home?” he asked. “Maybe you should just stay where you are and drive back in the morning.”

I assured him I was fine but had to laugh. I’m not sure C would have complained if I had proposed a sleepover.

When I got home, Billy was up waiting for me. He didn’t ask to smell my breath, but he did remind me that I had work the next day and I had better get some sleep. He left for college 4 months ago a child, but he’s apparently come back grown up, and I’m the one acting like a teenager.

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I joke I live in Pleasantville, but it’s only Mt. Lebanon. Everyone seems to know everyone, they all go to the Friday night football games, the moms all stay home and bake cookies and work in the PTA , or seem to. Like in Lake Wobegon, all the kids are above average. This last point is an indisputable, proven by the fact that 80% of the high school student body is on the honor roll, the high honor roll, or the highest honor roll, and the senior class medium QPA is hovering close to 4.0. (I am making this up, but I think it’s true)

One tradition we have on our street is the Ladies’ Neighborhood Happy Hour, recently changed to Ladies’ Neighborhood Respite Hour for reasons unknown to me. We rotate homes and get together every Friday at 5:00 for an hour of socializing.I can’t make them all, but I get to as many as possible.

The ladies on our street range form young mothers in their mid 30′s to grandmas in their 70′s. Most are married, but we have 2 divorced and dating ladies in our group, Shelly and I, and we both like to talk. Luckily the married ladies tolerate our stories and are quick to give us their advice.

A few weeks ago, we were at Shelly’s house. She had a dilemma and wanted advice. Shelly is sharp and intellectual woman in her early 50′s and much more picky about her dates than I am. I’ll have a coffee with anybody – I just don’t see the harm. I have yet to lose control because of a double espresso and allow a man to take advantage of me. But Shelly prefers to vet her dates through long email exchanges (she’s a writer) and will only then move to the telephone, and then, if they are lucky, they get a face-to-face meeting.

A good looking 38-year pediatric oncologist (I’ll call him PEDON) had emailed her, and despite the 17-year age difference, she had decided to email back. He was witty, articulate, and interesting, but made it clear in his emails that he didn’t want an internet pen-pal – he wanted to meet her.

Shelly was torn. She passed around copies of the emails and asked the neighborhood girls what to do.

It’s so much easier to make decisions for others – every single lady, including the very proper wife of a local politician, told Shelly to go for it. They all had dating advice, despite the fact that some hadn’t dated in 50 years or more.

Somehow dating can seem like so much more fun when someone else is doing it.

Shelly took the advice and got together with PEDON. At the next Happy Hour we found out how it had worked out. They had met at Mitchell’s Fish Market at the Galleria for a drink, and had gotten along well. He was genuinely attracted to older women.

But 2 weeks later it was all over. He had ended it because he felt she wasn’t serious enough – he was looking for a long term partner, some one he would settle down with and spend the rest of his life with. Shelly, recently divorced after 30 years of marriage, wasn’t ready for that yet, and he was moving on.

It does make you question conventional wisdom. I always ignored the winks and emails from much younger men because I assumed they were looking for something superficial. Maybe next time I’ll wink back.

That would be the advice of FRIEND who earlier commented on an earlier post:

"I guess I am too old and too tied down for the almost 50 year old playboy set, hmmm, maybe there’s a reason my boyfriend is 35. What do they say about not teaching old dogs new tricks? Always wanted a puppy when I was little…… dreams do come true."

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I got this response from Treefrog from my last post (From Russia to Pittsburgh) – It was too good to be a comment – I am making it a post:

—————

I’ve talked to her! That’s Evgenia. But that’s silly, she’s not from Snezhinsk!

She contacted me like this:

From: violet2187ly7

Your ad caught my eye and I would like to get to know you better
….
34-year-old Woman
Barnegat Light, New Jersey, United States
seeking Men 35 – 50

So I asked her for a picture. She responded:

First of all I’d like to thank you for responding me back and I should be honest with you, I live in Russia. I live in a small town with the population 17000 people which is called Baikalsk. It is located not far from big city Irkutsk. It is in Siberia.
Everybody wants to be happy and me too. I am not after money or sugar daddies or better life.
I guess you are interested in my likes and dislikes:

• I am an orphan
• I work as a surgeon in a city hospital
• I like almost all kinds of music but I prefer Classical music and I hate rap.
• My favourite flowers are white lilies
• don’t have tattoos or piercings exept for my ears
• I don’t like winter but winters are usually cold in Russia

I guess that is all for today. Please write me back today or tomorrow.
Your new friend from Russia,Evgenia

She’s a babe! And I was relieved to learn that she disliked rap. I figured she might be asking me for money soon, so I replied like so:

To: Evgenia

Thanks. I’ve always wanted to visit Russia. I first heard of Irkutsk from playing the board game Risk (do you know it?) and of course I know of Lake Baikal from geography class. I see that Baikalsk is right on the lake and has good skiing!

I would like to visit and meet you in Baikalsk! Maybe we could go skiing together?

Unfortunately, I am in debt and I need money if I am going to travel. Do you think you could send me $2000 for my travel expenses to get to Irkutsk? I understand that it’s only $200 or so to Irkutsk from Moscow, on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

I suppose that’s the economical way to come.

I look forward to finally meeting you!

I never heard back from her.

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When I told my friend Sue that I was starting a blog about internet dating in Pittsburgh, she suggested I hook up with her ex-husband Stan’s ex-girlfriend’s best friend, Jane, who she referred to as “the Queen of Internet Dating.” Jane agreed to talk to me, and we met to Uptown Coffee in Mt. Lebanon.

It’s a small and tangled world – it turns out her ex-husband’s new wife was a friend of mine from St. Bernard. Our kids had gone to school together, and when I met her (I’ll call her “Liz”) at South Hills Villiage 6 months ago, I had asked her how she was dealing with her oldest going off the college soon. Liz said that since she now had 6 kids at home, having recently acquired 3 more through marriage, she thought she could handle it.

She told me how she had met her new husband through Match.com, even though he lived right in the neighborhood, and said, “When you are ready to date again, you need to be on Match. Everyone’s on it.”

It’s because of Liz that I went on Match, and here I was sitting across the table from her new husband’s ex-wife. She was very smart, very pretty, and very insightful – especially about divorced men in their 40′s and 50′s. She told me she had dated a lot of men and that they all complained about their ex-wives, that the complaints could be boiled down to the same one big complaint and it was that their ex-wives were women, acted like women and wanted what all women want.

We had to get back to our kids so we couldn’t talk as long as I would have liked, but she promised to talk again. I’m not sure how many stories she will tell me, because she is writing a book about dating herself. But I am looking for any wisdom I can find, and she seems like a good source, even if I found her through my friend’s ex’s ex.

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