In early December 2015, SwingBot went on an actual sex-might-happen date without me! The following is his description of what happened.
I travel for work, and recently I ended up in Austin, TX. While there, I went out on a date with a guy I know from the Internets (and when I say \”a guy I know,\” I mean \”a guy who has sent me pics of his ginormous 23 year old cock\”). It went… well, I didn\’t get any, but I DID get to experience the life of a hot twenty-something by proxy!
SwingBot and I have been busy with dating sites recently. This was part of a little gripe-fest we had about such sites.
I was a shy child who grew up to be a shy adult. More than once, my mother pushed me to take some initiative. She encouraged me to do things like invite my friends for sleepovers, rather than only going to ones they invited me to.
As an adult, I now appreciate that shyness is a selfish luxury. The shy person stands around quietly, waiting to be noticed and approached by the braver person who is willing to adopt all the burden of interaction. How many opportunities have we shy people discarded by not being willing to look foolish or face rejection? While I recognize this, I still struggle with it.
Another criticism my mother had of me was my lack of curiosity. For most of my life, I found this a ridiculous complaint; I was considerate… not prying!
No. Decades later, I finally understand. Along with sometimes taking the initiative to engage someone, it is good to express interest in the other person! Ask questions. Encourage the other to take the conversational spotlight for a bit. Fortunately, I figured out this skill long ago, but did not realize that this was what she meant back then.
What finally made me understand were recent experiences with a couple different very nice men.
SwingBot and I have been perusing FetLife and OKCupid recently. Our visits to these sites tend to yield more gripes than candidates for folks we want to meet. One common issue is the hit-on message from the person with the incomplete or unhelpful profile.
Some lazy dip (who could not be bothered to fully read my OKCupid profile) sent me a question about SwingBot and me. He asked about SwingBot\’s comfort level with polyamory, never bothering to visit SwingBot\’s profile and get the information there. Normally, I would have just deleted the message without replying, but I have been trying to answer my messages lately.
Hi there!
I saw your ad/profile and thought that we\’d make a great fit. We seem to share a lot of interests/experiences/preferences and I\’d love to chat sometime.
I see no irony at all…
When deciding to get into swinging, we signed up for multiple sites, some based on search results and some based on recommendations. One site that we did not try, despite having it recommended to us, was CraigsList.