why are you here?

it seems like it has come up in conversation between katie and i a lot recently; messages or interactions with prospective fellows that are completely perplexing.  it has started to make me question the motives guys have when they decide to join an online dating community.  do they even want to actually date someone?

obviously everyone has their reasons for jumping on okc, but i found myself utterly baffled when i was reading this message i received today.  the guy was responding to a message i sent him (10 days after the fact, mind you) and just casually through a massively important parenthetical statement into a sentence.

"I was just in Oakland (I'm moving there in just a couple weeks, BTW!)..."

oh!  that's good to know.  you basically said "don't bother responding to this message" because i certainly don't need any more pen-pals, dude.

i just don't see the point of writing back such a lovely message, in which you talk about meeting up, when you're gonna be an out-of-towner in two weeks. 

any insight into this mysterious male mind would be greatly appreciated.

Wait, Wait : KK here. We always ask one another to edit our posts before they go live. It just so happened that this particular post came at the perfect time as I was just having this conversation OH ALL DAY. 

I was "broken up" with by the writer via an email this morning. I use " " because we'd only gone on two dates so there wasn't really any breaking up to do. We'd had one happy hour and one (amazing and yes, marathon) picnic.

Here's the catch - when we were out, there was a lot of "we'ing" getting thrown around - we should do this, we should go here, we are going to fall in love (ok, I made that last part up but you get it that when the word WE is thrown around enough, that's where a girl's head starts to go....). And I was smitten kitten. And yes, nervous because it did feel slightly familiar - all so easy, all so quickly. And it can be scary but that's why we're here, right? Even with dating Suzy and seeing boys on the side - the ultimate goal is to meet someone that we (gasp) like!

Apparently though, this was not the case with the writer. You see the whole problem is that we liked each other too much. Too fast.

But if you're going to run from that - then yes, I have to ask - why are you here?

We should have been able to step back, and when I say we - I mean him - to realize that we're dating. Just dating. There is no need to talk about kids, a ring, a house - any of that. We've gone on two dates. We're two people who enjoy spending time together. He likes to ride bikes. I like to ride bikes. And he makes a killer PB&J. Beyond that, let's just see where it goes.

And this is why it's worked so well with 12 all along. We see each other once a week, sometimes even stretching to two. We've never had a deep talk about where we're headed (besides the whole let's stay open and honest with one another convo). We are in touch throughout the week, through a text or quick phone call - then we get on his bike, usually eat and drink, let the dogs play and keep it simple.

When things came to an end with Jeff Goldblum a few weeks back, there were no hard feelings for a similar reason. Both of us were incredibly upfront with one another about the fact that we were "short-term dating" so when that term ended, we said our farewells and wished each other well.

The point is : We don't always have to complicate things to the point of driving ourselves crazy. We also don't have to date people that we don't like because it's too scary to date the ones we do.

If you're not ready to date or you're moving...get off OKC. Because even those of us that may not be looking for anything serious, can still get wrapped up and get our feelings hurt. And that's just not necessary this summer.