This is the Ch in the Sh(Ch)antel(l). Welcome to the blog! Hopefully by us sharing some of our ridiculous experiences on here it can help lighten the mood for others who are dealing with dating in the modern world.
In my family we have so many bad date stories, we have to give them their own titles to keep them all straight. There's "Puke Boy", "I fail at failing", "Eye-patch guy"and "The Stalker", just to name a few. My mom once broke up with a guy in college and the next day he stole her car. Seriously. That happened. I have access to so many bad date stories, that I am sorely tempted to just make my contribution to this blog about that. Isn't that one of the bright spots about being single? You get to commiserate with others about the hilarious things that happen while you are trying to stop being single? But then I would have a blog that mostly made fun of people, and that would make me feel guilty. Dang.
Anyway, I guess I'll start by telling you where my dating life is right now. To put it bluntly, it's functioning but on life support.
I moved to Utah a couple of years ago. Since I'm LDS (Mormon), a lot of people told me once I moved to Utah I would start dating like crazy. Hurrah! Finally!
Unfortunately, most of those people lived in Utah 20 or 30 years ago, when people, well, dated. It's not that way anymore. At least not if you're over 25. There's one real problem in that the ratio of men to women is way off. There are way more women than there are men at most events. However, everyone's struggle is different. Since moving here, I've found I have two major personal hurtles when trying to get first dates.
The first issue I have trying to date in Utah, is that I love my bones just the way they are. I don't need them to change. Unfortunately, loving your bones in Utah is heretical. Skiing, mountain biking and rock climbing rule the day. There are more adrenaline junkies in Utah than probably most other places on the planet. It has gotten so ridiculous that after I told one guy about not really liking skiing he said, "before I ask you out, I want to know... are you boring?" I've lived in 6 different states, have a PhD, I've traveled, play an instrument, love to read, own a home, enjoy lots of outdoor activities... but sorry Utah guys, I find mountain biking terrifying. I'm boring. You should probably move on.
I'm not bitter.
The other issue I have is true anywhere I go, which is the plight of the nerdy girl. I'm a female scientist that studies infectious diseases. Last year, I went to a party where I had five independent conversations about Ebola. Yep. That's attractive. I make special efforts to keep topics like this from coming up, but as soon as someone mentions my job, people start asking the weirdest questions. It's like a default conversation setting, and it kills romantic interest faster than if I started picking my nose or something. I've found that guys have one of three reactions to finding out what my job is. They either think it's cool and are able to have a good conversation around it, they exit the conversation as quickly as possible, or they start really overcompensating because it makes them feel insecure. How many guys are in each group? It's probably in about equal thirds. Finding out would make an interesting experiment...
For the record, I love my nerdiness and wouldn't trade it.
Anyway, what's my point in telling you this? Well, I don't really have one, except to introduce myself to you and perhaps suggest we all cut each other a bit more slack in the dating world. We need to spend more time evaluating how good a partnership we can have with someone, instead of just trying to find out how much someone else is like us. I think I will write more on this later. But in the mean time, there's more to me than meets the eye, and there's probably more to you too!