Dating and Relating

I have been on a handful of dates with people that I’ve met through dating websites. Some have resulted in me meeting some great people.  In fact, two people in particular that I met through those websites are now good friends of mine.  Then there are those that fail miserably.  You know what I’m talking about: the dates where no matter what you say, conversation fizzles out into awkward silence, where you wonder what on earth made you think that you were compatible with the other person.

I thought I’d share two dating misadventures with you today.

I’ve been told that guys don’t read profiles the same way that women do.  When I peruse profiles, I go through everything that they have written, look for common interests, see if they have pictures of themselves smiling, et cetera. Apparently guys are not like that.  The other thing that I’ve noticed is that even the guys who do seem to at least skim my profile may or may not have actually believed anything that I wrote.

This was one of those times. 

We started with Mexican food.  I love Mexican and thought this might be promising since he also suggested we check out Total Recall afterwards.  One of the first things he suggested was talking about comics.  I was thrilled and asked if he preferred Marvel or DC.  He suggested Batman, and I proceeded to wax passionately about Batman and Superman (two of my favorite super heroes).  Unfortunately, his eyes began to glaze over and I knew I had lost him. 

I changed the subject quickly to college football.  I remembered he was a huge fan of his alma mater, so I asked how he felt about the new defensive coach.  He had been hired fairly recently and had not had much time to recruit. Most of the new defensive players had been recruited by the other coaches or by the former defensive coach. As I paused to await his response, I saw the eyes once again glaze over.

Third time is the charm, right?  Thankfully, the dinner was over so we could go to the movie theatre. Now, there aren’t many surprises in the movie.  Just in case any of you are cranky about spoilers, I won’t say too much about it other than that the characters in the movie have a transport going through the center of the earth each day, but haven’t been able to make the land surrounding London habitable (chemical warfare rendered most of the earth uninhabitable). I mused that it seemed absurd that mankind would not be able to create more habitable land.  My date majored in biology in undergrad, so I thought he might find such a conversation interesting.  Nada.  All he said was, “Can’t you just enjoy the movie?”

My only reaction to this was to picture a mushroom cloud.  No joke, I actually saw a mushroom could superimposed over my dates face for an instant. 

Okay, date two.

Guy seemed promising.  PhD in computer science, made interesting conversation, loves travel, has a great job at a big tech company doing what he loves.  Over the course of the evening we covered topics from academics (statistics, economics, politics) to the more abstract concepts behind certain philosophical beliefs.  Before you pass judgment, I actually really enjoyed the conversation.

At some point in the evening, he mentioned that he got a $50,000 signing bonus when he took this most recent job. Blew. My. Mind.  Now, it’s not that I’m impoverished or anything (despite currently living off of student loan money), but this guys signing bonus was more than I’ve made in the past two years.  Later he mentioned that he makes $350,000 a year.  That tidbit of information, of course, floored me.  It also meant that I felt less bad about ordering dessert.

As the evening continued, we eventually began discussing trajectories.  In particular, what directions we would want our own lives to head in.  He seems quite satisfied with his life and where he’s headed (as well he should be).  Then things started going terribly wrong.

My life plan includes working in higher ed with underrepresented populations.  In particular, I want to work with Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, foster youth, first-generation and students from low-income households.  I also want to work for a public college or university where geographic diversity is also celebrated.  To most people, my goals and ambitions are perfectly acceptable.  In fact, my friends are very supportive of my plans.  Sometimes they look at me as if I’m crazy (don’t worry, I’m not trying to convince you that I’m not insane), but they still think that it’s great that I at least have a direction.

This guy, however, asked why I would want to bother working with the bottom 25% of humanity when the resources I had could be better utilized by people in the 50^th percentile.  The more that I talked about it, the more he pushed for me to change my mind.  The more that I tried to explain my passion, the more he seemed to try to convince me that I was wrong to want to work with the people that I want to work with instead of focusing on the students who have the capacity to be the best of the best.  In my opinion, the students who are already ridiculously high-achieving really don’t need any extra help. 

Anyhow, that’s when I realized that this was really not going to work out.  I was on a date with a real-life Sheldon Cooper.

I believe that this might be a sign for me to stop the whole online dating thing for a while.  Maybe just wait to see what else comes my way.  We’ll see.