How Not To Date an Introvert
And why this introvert is giving up on dating forever
Back in December, in a fit of loneliness, I reactivated my Facebook dating account. I’m still dealing with the repercussions.
I’ll admit, sometimes I am naïve. So when I saw Facebook had a new matching feature called “Friendship,” I assumed people were using it to look for friends. As far as I can tell, however, men use that feature for a broader search. You see, I set some “strong preferences” to narrow my field, and the Friendship feature allows people to work around the search parameters.
One of my strong preferences is No Children. I don’t like children. I don’t want children. I certainly don’t want someone else’s children. I enjoy peace and quiet.
One of the fellas I matched with — for “Friendship” — is still hanging around. Not physically, thank God. He lives in another state. We have not met in person. I would have considered meeting in person, even though he has kids, but he has already managed to make me feel smothered from far away and through texts.
I can’t even imagine how needy he must be in real life.
A couple of nights ago, I left my phone in my bedroom for a few hours while I spent quality time with my sister (and by “quality time,” I mean “watching Survivor”). When I got back to my phone, I discovered the fella had sent me 13 of the most annoying text messages I have ever received. One of them was “I’ll keep bugging you until you acknowledge my existence.” When I finally responded that I had been busy and hadn’t had my phone, I got no reply.
Any time I date anyone, or even get close to it, I remember that I actually prefer loneliness to having someone demand all of my attention, all of the time. If I wanted something clingy and needy in my life, I’d get a dog. Instead, I’m a cat person. I love that my cats ignore me for several hours every day.
I only reply to about a third of this fella’s texts, and often my replies are short, yet he hasn’t seemed to notice.
Could I block him? Of course I could. Could I say, “Hey, you’re annoying. Leave me alone?” Sure. And, eventually, I will probably do both of those things. Right now, I’m still just hoping he’ll go away on his own, like a rash that’s ugly and annoying, but you don’t want to go to the doctor for it just yet.
And I will never reactivate my Facebook dating account again. In fact, I am going to delete it. No more dating for me. All I need are cats — even if they could text, they wouldn’t.
