It's Not a Match.com

“Hi! I’m nice!”

I’ve been wanting to write about nice guys for a while. I recently received, because I am an important and influential person, an interview request on the topic of nice guys, and why they’re so hard to date. (Just how important and influential am I? The requesting magazine was based in Canada, and according to the Internet, ceased existing two years ago. Yippee!) The question that I was asked to discuss was this: “Why are nice guys the worst?” And when I heard it I thought, “Wait, they are?” Because truthfully, I’m a nice guy, and I was surprised to learn that all along I have secretly been the worst.

I mean, I’m the worst for plenty of other reasons. I horde plastic silverware and rarely pay my cable bill on time, but niceness never seemed like my problem. However, I did some googling, and it seems that many people agree––nice guys can be a real pain in the ass. Maybe we’re too cloying, or our niceness sets expectations of niceness in return, and that can be burdensome, especially if the nice guy is a fatty or has b.o. or wants to murder you or something. Honestly, I didn’t really understand the female argument on this one, so I needed more info. Because in my mind, you have to be pretty friggin’ entitled to complain about excessively kind suitors. And then more info arrived in my inbox,  from a hilarious reader, Kristin Klauder. Here we go…

There are really some seriously nice and thoughtful guys out there and the girls who find their quirkiness cute and endearing will be very happy one day…unfortunately I’m not one of them. My latest gentleman caller was actually a blind date set up from a friend. As first dates go, it was pretty successful. Good conversation, some laughs yada yada yada. He even walked me to my car where I decided it was a good enough date to qualify for the straight on hug. However, he got a little greedy and went back in for another one so I settled on the one arm side hug which is no good because it leaves one arm just hanging there and I always feel it needs a place to land. That’s when I found myself patting his stomach. Ya know the way you do to grandfatherly type men. Awkward moment #1 goes to Me.

“I love you so hard.”

(I’m not sure what hurts more. That one has to earn a “straight-on hug,” which presumably is the thrilling moment of sexual embrace where two peoples’ genitals touch through at least four layers of clothing, or that going in for a second hug denotes greed. Really? When did hugs become such a prize? You can be greedy for kisses, or greedy for cash, or greedy for Baby Ruth candy bars, but greedy for hugs? I think that’s just a poor guy trying to fill some post-date awkwardness. But Kristin is self-effacing and made me laugh, so I remain on her side.)

It didn’t scare him away though, because after the standard three day wait period I get the second date phone call. As the phone call comes to an end, he says “I’ll pick you up at 7”. PICK ME UP!?!? I know what you’re thinking.. “Awww how sweet!” And I would typically agree with you because I’m an old fashioned gal, but now I have to handle the inevitable drop off. Will he walk me to the door so then I feel obligated to let him in? What if I don’t want to let him in, will he try his luck for a goodbye kiss??….Ahhhhh!! Then I hear myself say, “Sure, sounds good!” Ughhhh! Well it gets worse…I asked where we were going and I hear three fateful words that no man should ever say to a girl when you are planning the SECOND date…”It’s a surprise!!” Men: yes I’m talking to you…do you realize what simple words can do to a woman? We analyze everything, but when you say “surprise” we go into overdrive! “What do I wear, where are we going, do I need a getaway plan, is he kidnapping me and taking me across the border!?!?!?” In fact that last thought did come up in my freak out session the next morning with the girls at work…what can I say I have an active imagination, just ask my mother!

“Surprise!”

(I have only planned one surprise date in my life, and it was not on an internet date. Or blind date. Two words that should never be mixed are “internet” and “surprise.” Unless they are in the sentence, “Surprise! You’ve been elected King of Internet!” That would be worthwhile.)

After calming down and accepting the fact that I most likely wouldn’t be bound and gagged and end up in Mexico, I give this very brave guy my address. At 6:59 I get the knock on the door. I open it just enough to fit my body out sideways so he doesn’t get the impression he can walk in and give him my dazzling smile as I squeeze through and slam it shut. He very sweetly says how wonderful I look that night and I should tell you I just don’t take compliments well. I can’t just say “Thank you!” like a normal person, I feel I have to reciprocate. So I decide to say “Thanks, you’re looking pretty schnazzy yourself.” I said that…I really did. Awkward count: Me 2 Date 0.

(Isn’t Kristin growing on you, guys? She’s really growing on me.)

Well, as it turns out this very sweet guy listened to me on the first date and took me to the local minor league hockey game! See I told you he was nice! Now I’ll preface this next part by saying I pretty much knew I wasn’t interested in much more than friendship with this guy, but we did have fun the first time so I didn’t see how a second date could hurt. Well, my little friend didn’t exactly feel the same way. He kept trying to chat me up while I was trying to watch the fights and the ramming up against the walls and let’s be honest checking out the really cute hockey players. So as I’m leaning forward intensely scoping out these hot men…uhh watching the game…I feel a hand touch my back. Hmm that’s odd. Then that hand starts going up and down, up and down. I cringe and move further to my left to try and get out of the back rubbing zone. It stops. Alright! Five minutes later, that darn hand finds its landing area again. Now most women will understand my conundrum…if I move backwards to prevent my back from being an open target I’ve invited him to put his arm around my shoulder and I can’t move further away because those darn tight stadium seats are so tight the fat sweaty guy next to me will think it’s an invitation!

See how creepy the arm on the shoulder can be?

So I go for the enthusiastic fan move and jump to my feet to cheer!! GO TEAM! Well that was a temporary fix because eventually I had to sit back down and of course when I do that hand finds its home again. I then turn to mentally chanting “Please stop touching me, please stop touching me!” When that didn’t work, I caught a lucky break and was saved by predictable man behavior…he reaches for his beer. I shoot back so fast and ram my back right up against that chair I think I pulled a muscle. But that hand is so persistent that it finds my knee! The rubbing continues, up and down up and down. I move to the left, I move to the right it’s like we’re having our own hockey game but I’m the goaly and can’t stop that stupid puck from finding the inside of the net! Nothing I do throws this guy off, by the end of the game my whole back is to him and he’s still trying to find a way to touch me. If that isn’t a turned off sign I don’t know what is!

I had already agreed to getting a bite to eat after, so I couldn’t escape just yet. The game of cat and mouse starts again as we’re walking to the restaurant and I find myself running into bushes and lamp posts to avoid him trying to hold my hand! However, as we go into the restaurant I hear someone yell my name!  There sits my two bosses from work and a colleague. I’VE BEEN SAVED! But wait, I still have to get through dinner and, oh yeah, I have to find an alternative ride home because I got chivalrously picked up remember! Once dinner ends I say to him that I feel the need to put in some face time with the boss and will find another way home, but thank you for a wonderful evening. While I was expecting to see him depart, he just stood there silently. If I don’t like compliments, I really don’t like awkward silence. It has to be filled!! So I open my big fat mouth and say “You’re welcome to join us”. And sure enough, he accepts! So there we are my coworkers, bosses, my awkward date and me…one big happy family.

Actual photo

No need to go into the details of the rest of the evening as my behavior was not my finest. I simply remember diverting my attention to others in the group until my poor clueless date decides to leave on his own. I did hear from him again asking me out on a THIRD date, but I finally had to break it to the guy that while he has redeeming qualities they are just not for me and we should remain friends. He replies “Great, I feel the same way.” Huh????

So fellow single male friends out there, take this one piece of womanly advice from this experience. When a woman turns her back to you, she’s not asking for a massage in the middle of 7,000 other people…SHE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU!

(And that’s all I need to know about the nice guy argument. Kristin didn’t dislike this guy for being nice, she disliked him for being, well, him. She just wasn’t into him. So when he did the things that every man would do on a second date, that you really SHOULD do on a second date to express your interest, they creeped her out. Because she didn’t like him–which is totally fine and totally within her rights to do. But then why does she, and many other women, rope nice guys into it? Well, because nice guys implicitly make you feel guilty. They treat you well, then you feel like a jerk for not liking them, and then translate that into feeling annoyed at the nice guy for putting all his expectations of niceness on her. Well, that, and his sweaty hands. So really, it’s not about nice guys at all, it’s just about regular ol’ dating. And now I feel marginally better about humanity. Thanks, Kristin!)

Got your own feelings about nice guys, or stories of dating horror? Email me at itsnotamatch@gmail.com!

Tinder. Where everyone is hot, and looks kinda like they’re on heroin.

For It’s Not a Match’s second installment of Crowd Sourced Insanity, we have a piece from loyal reader Mikinzie Stuart, who runs her own blog about dating and general musings over at A Typical Redhead. Mikinzie is one of the proud and daring few who have tried to date via Tinder, the internet’s newest and creepiest romance phenomenon. I wrote about it a few months ago here, but because I am both not longer looking for my mate and no longer looking potential insanity, I have not tried the service. Mikinzie has, and these were her results. I’ll chime in here and there, because I can’t help myself…

Here’s Mikinzie…

“Why don’t you try Tinder?” asked my gay co-worker. “A few of my girlfriends are doing it. A couple of them have even met some decent guys!”

That’s the sort of thing that happens on a slow Friday at the office, especially after I‘ve just disabled my OkCupid account for the fifth time. We’d had both had our share of OkCupid dates, gay co-worker and I, and enjoyed swapping stories over the past year, but I had finally decided to give “The Cu” a rest after an attempt at a relationship ended in flames. Not actual flames, but really, that wouldn’t have made it any worse. But like the virus Online Dating is, once you get rid of one service, there’s another one waiting to infect your free time. So I threw caution to the wind, downloaded the Tinder app, connected my Facebook account and we were off to the races.

UrNextMan69, probably.

What makes Tinder different from other online dating services is its simplicity. There’s no website to sign into, no long-winded profile where you have to charm the opposite sex with your wit and good taste in movies, no emails saying you got a five-star rating from UrNextMan69. Could this finally be a no-hassle way to meet a potential match online?

As I hung out at my apartment before my plans that evening, I decided to kill time flipping through the male faces in my area. That’s when I got a notification that Bill*, 26, matched with me and was free to “seduce away…” via Tinder’s version of IM (*name has been changed for obvious reasons). Not one to be shy about sending the first message (ain’t nobody got time for that!), I saw Bill had “liked” LCD Soundsystem and asked him if he had seen their documentary last summer. As most of my potential love interests begin, we got to talking about music and before you know it he was asking me when I was free that week.

“Wow, that was so much easier than weeks and weeks of messages!” I thought. Isn’t Tinder the best?!

He suggested a trendy europub in Chicago with dim lighting and shared plates. We were already off to a good start. (B Here: Chicks love shared plates. Why is that? Why can’t you just order what you want to be on your plate, I’ll order what I want to be on mine, and then our plates can remain autonomous? Sound good? I want my own plate, regardless of how big it is!)

D-day arrived and I was more nervous than usual. I even considered cancelling. Was it because I virtually knew nothing about this person? Or because the Google search I ran on him revealed little? Or was it because he was so quick to ask me out and I didn’t get much of a chance to feel out whether I actually, you know, liked him? I ignored my gut and reassured myself that it would be fine. This wasn’t my first Online Dating rodeo. Isn’t Tinder the best?!

Bill, probably

When we met, Bill was shorter than I had hoped. And I had made the mistake of wearing boots with a chunky heel (one of the ways the ‘no profile’ aspect falls short. No pun intended.) (Fuck that Mikinzie! On It’s Not a Match all our puns are intended!), but I didn’t let my picky preferences put me off. “Love comes in many heights,” I reminded myself. (I’m not so sure about that. As my tall lady readers often tell me, love is pretty rarely under 5’4″.)

We ordered a few overpriced cocktails and stood by the bar while we waited for our table. There wasn’t instant chemistry, but he seemed nice enough despite an air of pretension:

Me: I heard the burger here is really good! (Very accurate exclamation point. I feel like every sentence I say on a first internet date involves an exclamation point, just to make sure everyone’s having a good time. “Hi!” “Did you run into any traffic on the way here?!” “My name’s Brian!” “Cats!” “I have herpes!”)

Him: Yeah, it was named #1 in the nation by Bon Appetite, but I’ve had better…

Me: Yeah, I really love LCD Soundsystem. I’m sad I never got to see them live.

Him: I mean, I high-fived James Murphy at Pitchfork, but yeah, that sucks for you.

However, I chalked it up to nerves and gave him the benefit of the doubt. Who knows? Maybe he could be ‘The One.’ Or perhaps ‘The One For Now,’ which in all honesty, isn’t that bad of a gig either at this point.

After the first date routine of ordering, eating, and check signing, we headed outside.

“So, what’s the plan now?” I asked.

“Welllllllll, we could bar hop around here… or we go back to my place and have a drink on my balcony,” he said.

I had been on enough online dates to know what that meant. He may as well have ended the sentence with ‘…so we can listen to Drake and play naked Twister.’ (Is Drake what people listen to hook up to now? God, I’m so old. I just learned who Taylor Swift was. How about Roxette? Anyone like making out to Roxette nowadays?)

Good for one free ass.

Granted, he did just pay for my $15 gourmet burger. But I wasn’t even three drinks in yet and he thinks he can GET DAT ASS? Call me old-fashioned, but that was the only “meat” I was interested in sharing with him that night. So…maybe Tinder isn’t great.

We grabbed a drink at an overpriced rooftop bar and then I bailed claiming I had yoga class the next morning while covertly texting an old OkCupid flame when he wasn’t looking.

As I lay in bed alone that night, I picked up my phone and deleted the Tinder app.

Here’s the three main reasons it didn’t work for me:

1) There’s not enough information to establish common ground. As tedious and verbose as profiles and messages can be, they give you the advantage of learning something about that person before you go on a date with them. Or at the very least, something you can remember to bring up in conversation later so you’re not stuck answering questions about which celebrity would play you in a movie about your life.

2) The minimal amount of required effort makes the other person’s intentions unclear. The more time and energy you put into something, the more likely you are to take it seriously. While I can’t say there aren’t guys just looking for a hookup on OkCupid (there are, I’ve dated them), my Tinder date made it very obvious what kind of fun he was looking to have that night. While I’m thankful to have dodged that bullet, I think the simplicity of the app makes it easy to forget that these are real people with real feelings. Oh, and to have a little more tact if you’re trying to get someone to sleep with you on the first date.

3) I have yet to hear of someone who’s been in a monogamous, long-term relationship with someone they met on Tinder. Just sayin’.

For more from Mikinzie, follow her @Mikinzie. To submit your own story, send it hither: itsnotamatch@gmail.com

NSFW

The following is the first reader submission we’re running on Not a Match. Hmmm, “reader submission” sounds kinda stuffy. Like the sort of thing you’d hear during an NPR pledge drive. Crowd Sourcing is popular nowadays. How about this? Crowd Sourced Insanity. This story, from reader Lori Sebulski, is the first edition of INaM’s Campaign of Crowd Sourced Insanity. And with a title like ‘The Man Who Licked His Pickle,’ believe me, the description is well earned.

Now here’s Lori…

I had a great first date with Chad. He actually read my online dating profile (yeah, people really READ those), noticed that I liked hockey and invited me to a minor league game downtown. We met at the entrance to the arena and the night was perfect. We had a lot to talk about and the silences weren’t awkward. We shared a soft drink, had some popcorn and waited for a fight since that is clearly the best part of hockey. At the end of the date, he walked me to my car, gave me a hug goodbye and asked when he could see me again. We set up a second date right then and there for the following Friday night. I was feeling really good about Chad.

Fred Fuddrucker

The following Friday, we decided that I would meet him at a restaurant named Houlihan’s for dinner. (OK, B stepping in here, because I have no self control. First rule of dinner dates: If the name of the restaurant sounds like the last name of an alcoholic, don’t go there on a date. If you met a dude named Billy Houlihan, you’d assume he was a boozehound. Same with Fred Fuddrucker, Oliver Applebee and Tommy Bennigan. Also, Greg Burger King. Especially Greg Burger King. So don’t go to their restaurants.) We ordered our dinners and talked while we waited for our food to arrive. The conversation wasn’t as easy as it had been on our first date but I chalked it up to higher than usual expectations and nerves. I had ordered a chicken sandwich and french fries and he ordered a hamburger and french fries. Within a few minutes, our dinners arrived and that is when the date took a turn for the worst. (Love the cliffhanger. Couldn’t have written it better myself…)

We began to eat our dinners and Chad picked up his hamburger and licked it around the edges of the entire bun. I thought it was a little odd but maybe he just didn’t like when the ketchup was running off? (Yeah, ketchup running off. That was the problem.) But then he picked up a french fry and proceeded to stick his tongue all the way out and lick it from top to bottom. And moan. Yeah, moan. Like a low purr. His eyes were closed, he was licking his food, and he was moaning. Chad never actually looked directly at me unless he was between bites (licks), but would try to carry on a conversation with me like it was a super normal date. With someone who was having mouth sex with his food. At this point, I started to look around at the surrounding tables to see if anyone else was noticing the nightmare that was happening. They didn’t. He continued to do this with every bite of his sandwich and every single fry he ate.

Registered sex offender.

To be honest, I was starting to feel a little nauseous. And then it got worse. (Not possible.) He picked up the pickle spear that was on his plate, stuck his tongue out and proceeded to lick the pickle from top to bottom. With more moaning.  He then moved it in and out of his mouth like he was giving it a blow job. (I was wrong. That’s totally worse.) Again, I looked around the restaurant and nobody else seemed to be witnessing the spectacle that was my date.

At this moment, I began to analyze. Was this an attempt to show me what he could do to me with his tongue? Why was he moaning? Did he think that it was turning me on? If he was exhibiting this type of behavior on a second date, what was ahead? Does he eat like this on all of his dates or just with friends and family? Whatever his reason was, it was definitely NOT hot.

He asked me if I wanted to get a drink after dinner and I feigned sickness for the first and only time ever on a date. As soon as I arrived at my car, I called my sister and told her what had happened. We laughed so hard we cried and from that moment on, he has been known as the Pickle Licker. This date occurred 10 years ago, the story has been told a hundred times and yet, it is still hilarious every single time I tell it.

The Pickle Licker is a legend.

And let his legend live on. Thanks, Lori, you’ve gotten us off to a great start. I have several other amazing Crowd Sourced Disasters from you guys in the works, but can definitely use more. Been out with a Pickle Licker (or Anything Licker) of your own? Have a perspective on internet dating that I haven’t covered or a topic I can’t touch? Email me at ItsNotaMatch@gmail.com. For more from Lori, follow her on Twitter:  @lasebulski.