Men Aren't Assholes, People Are Assholes

After my last meandering blog about not being cynical and dragging your emotional baggage around, I have come to the conclusion that I may indeed be guilty myself of cynicism.  I guess I realized this when I recently said to a good friend of mine "people never disappoint me with their ability to disappoint me". I guess I shouldn't be lecturing about cynicism.  While I am NOT dragging around a bunch of baggage about being wronged by the male gender in the past, I do view humanity with a raised eyebrow of suspicion. That is, if I could raise only one eyebrow, which I can't because I am very uncoordinated. But you get the picture. The thing is, I love guys. Almost all my closest friends are guys. So as a group, I simply adore them. I grew up with 4 brothers, joined the Navy, and have done radio for most of the rest of my adult life. It's been a very male dominated life for me and I LOVE it. They always cut through the crap and speak the truth, and I really value that. That is they speak the truth when they are just your friends, if they are trying to date you/sleep with you, all bets are off. In fairness, I realize that my gender is just as guilty. People in general are dealing in half truths, and very often they don't even realize it. So in general I believe about 25% of what people say. On the flip side I believe only about 25% of people are intentionally lying. Often they are deceiving themselves and inadvertently end up deceiving those who come into their circle.

Take John for example, when we last left off in this little saga it was after date one. Despite my management of expectations (see Getting Mean On The Way To Cougar-town for the back story), the first date still ended with him kind of irritated with me because I didn't sleep with him. I honestly didn't expect to hear from him again. Then came this:

I give the guy points for humor, text back that I think that is hilarious, and still I really don't expect to hear from him again. He indeed texts back the next day saying that he wants to go out with me. Me being me, I wrote back that I was shocked to hear from him again, as I assumed that he was just trying to get laid. He denies this fairly aggressively. I say it's okay if that is the case (no judgement here), but I am a waste of time for him in that department and he should move on to an easier "target". He then writes me a rather lengthy text about how he wants to date me but is reluctant because HE needs to protect himself from being hurt. This is when, metaphorically, my eyebrow begins to raise. Up until now, I am completely fine with his behavior. He's looking to get laid, it's a human thing, I have no problem with that. There are women looking for the same thing, we should have just seen that we had incompatible agendas and gone our separate ways. I had two choices, believe that this guy (11 years younger than me BTW) is for real and continue on in good faith. Or bail now, and never know for sure. I consult one of my male friends who is roughly the same age as John, and he very bluntly advises me to bail. His direct quote: "He is full of shit, keep his diseased wiener away from you". That's Blake, apparently even more distrusting than I am. Not only is the guy a liar, but he has an STD of some sort as well. Again, me being me, I ignore this advice and decide to go forward. We've been out two more times and to his credit, no pressure of any sort (even the time when we hung out until 4 in the morning).

This is when I realize that I haven't really thought this blog thing through. Now I'm dating this guy and I've completely violated his privacy, haven't I? Though on the plus side he claims not to be a very active Facebook user and doesn't even try to friend me (this is the only way he would eventually find this blog). The fact that he says he isn't much of a Facebook user despite mentioning using it in previous conversations actually makes me slightly suspicious. This is also another one of those times I miss Dawson (my former morning show partner) and having a morning show.  If I were still doing a morning show I would first ask Dawson for advice, then  because I have always been willing to over share, we'd put it out to the audience. Does 11 years younger than me + met on a dating site + grumpy because I didn't put out on the first date, but still wants to date me + not an active Facebook user = probably shouldn't be dating this guy?? Also a side note, what if John does turn out to be a total Douchemonga (yeah, I made that one up, it's a fave of mine)? What will I really have lost, other than a little bit more of my ability to believe in people? Thoughts? I would love to hear them. I can see from my blogger stats that around 125 people on average are reading these blogs via my Facebook links so any of you are free to comment (back on Facebook).