I know there are a many of you out there that wish this “story” would get a little juicer. Well, this installment is all about that time Jamie decided to try online dating.
It was the month of April in 2012 that I signed up for “Match”. I had been single for a couple of years, my previous romance left me for another city, and I was feeling like I was ready to, perhaps, find someone to settle down with. I chatted with several men over the course of my six-month membership but only met up with/dated three of them. The first guy, we will call him “Match#1”, was an attractive man who somewhat resembled Christian Slater. The first time we met in person we agreed to meet, in the afternoon, at a local restaurant for a drink, just to see how it would go (and I highly recommend that approach for your first meeting, it’s not a good idea to commit to a 2-3 hour-long dinner date with someone you’ve never met). Our afternoon drink turned into a trip to the pharmacy, a road trip to nowhere, and ended with dinner. It was a really awesome day and I went home feeling like I might have just hit the online dating jackpot. He had a 12-13-year-old son and although I was really preferring someone with no children, I figured a teenager was better than a toddler (after scanning through the eligible bachelors in my age group I realized that finding someone with no children was going to be hard to come by). Match#1 was a nice, kind, and caring man, and I enjoyed our conversations and time spent together. After a few dates he shared with me that he was on dialysis; it scared me, and I felt a lump form in my throat. I appreciated his being open and honest with me about it, but I struggled with whether or not this defining aspect was something I could really live with. Part of me said “no, this isn’t for you” and the other part of me felt guilty for thinking that way. However, after multiple trips to WebMD, I quickly found myself wanting to be a caregiver; researching and cooking up meals that were “kidney friendly” and learning the do’s and don’ts of a dialysis patient. And so, two-three times per week we would get together, go out, hang out, and continue to get to know each other. I learned that his disease was most likely due to some poor choices he made in his younger years with drugs; and then I learned, after a few of weeks of dating, that he got booted off the transplant waitlist for sniffing bath salts. I got angry and really upset, and he decided he didn’t want to be with someone that was going to judge him. And that was the end of my time with Match#1. Lessons: Listen to your gut in the very beginning, it will not steer you wrong. You cannot take care of someone who doesn’t want to take care of themselves. People with addictive behaviors are not a match for me.
Stay tuned for next week’s lessons learned from Match#2.
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