VENUS VS MARS

Before the "it's not you, it's me" text, Beardy McMatherson (Amy came up with that nickname) sent me a text that said "We are going to break each others hearts aren't we?". Now when I read that I immediately thought "he's looking for a way out", but when I talked this over with all of my girl friends, they completely disagreed with me. They all insisted that his text meant that he's really into me, that he's admitting that he cares. You could practically see the cartoon hearts popping out around their heads. Amy even got a little teary. When I talked to Chad about it he said "I don't know why he'd say something like that, maybe he is looking for an out". Actually, Chad was totally baffled by that line of text. When I asked one of the guys at work, he was with Chad. He had no idea why a guy would say that unless it was intended as a warning or a line to be used to get out of situations. I found this very interesting and an intriguing example of the female vs male brain and how we communicate with each other. I used to get so mad at Chris for leaving his dirty socks on the floor. He'd pull them off his stinky feet, wherever and just leave them; and that dirty sock represented so much to me. It was disrespectful of my feelings. It said that he expected me to clean up after him. It was the reason for wars and world hunger. That dirty sock was his way of "getting back" at me for something I have no idea what. The dirty sock issue boiled into a huge argument. He couldn't understand why I was so mad over a dirty sock and I couldn't understand why he was intentionally trying to hurt me by leaving his dirty socks on the floor. To Chris it was just a dirty sock and he'd pick it up eventually. I, on the other hand, had turned the dirty sock into this complex ball of horrible things. The dirty sock incident was our first lesson in communication because that's when it dawned on me how different our perceptions of things were. When I complained about dirty socks, Chris heard "nag, nag, nag", but I heard "you don't love me". This is just one example of how we say things to each other and what we say matters. Over time Chris and I got really good at airing grievances with each other in constructive ways. Well...except for that one time Chris got really mad at me for not listening to the things he says to me...in his head. Yeah. He got mad at me for not being able to read his mind. Sometimes I would say something to Chris and make him repeat back to me what he heard just so I could make sure we were on the same page because I realized that even though were using the same words, we were hearing different meanings.

So all of this has got me thinking about my dating profile and the questions I answered for that. Eventually I will re-activate my dating profile. I deactivated it when I started seeing Beardy McMatherson because I couldn't deal with the constant ding of messages and keep track of this person and that person while figuring out where this thing was going with Beardy. I'm not good at juggling and generally frown upon multitasking. It's just one little click and it's re-activated but I've been thinking about changes I should make to my profile. It should be no surprise for some of you to hear that I tend to attract quite a few odd characters on the dating site. The last message I received before disabling my account was from a man with a headless profile picture, just a picture of his hairy chest and an "about me" page talking about passion and 50 Shades of Gray. Obviously answering those questions honestly without explanation has brought on the attention of a certain type of man looking for a certain specific thing. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing if I thought I was that type of girl, but instead I've turned out to be the type of girl who gets turned on by the brain as much as by the body. I need to figure out a way to spin my profile to attract the "right" kind of guy. When I type that out loud I feel like there's something dishonest about it and this makes me cringe. I will still be honest in my answers. I just need to find a way to explain my answers in a constructive way and this may require a bit of scientific research to determine what that "constructive way" is exactly. I may be posting some questions and answers here to get some feedback. Also, I'm genuinely curious to know what other people are "hearing" when I put something out there. I've known for a long time that what you say matters, but what I just now realized is what you don't say also matters.