Is it me, or is it the city?

For years now, since my divorce, my mom has been telling me that the city is bad for me.  People here are just not committed to personal relationships.  The men are unreliable and uninterested in being devoted to anyone, and that essentially I was dooming myself to a certain measure of unhappiness by virtue of staying here.  For years, I argued the point.  I told her that I really didn't think the men here were much worse than the men anywhere else.  I could go back to the Midwest and probably encounter just as many toolbags, but probably more of them would be divorced because more people get married (and younger) out in the Midwest.  So theoretically, they could have MORE baggage than the gems I've found out here.  My experience has been that many men are serial proposers, and have been engaged at least once.  WTF?  I guess the silver lining is that they were clever enough to escape it one way or another before marriage.

Anyway, my point?  I'm beginning to wonder if mothers *ARE* always right.  I am BURNT OUT, BABY.  Burnt out.  Not only is my faith in the general male population swirling further down the tubes with each week that passes, but truly, my faith in everyone is dwindling.

Case in point for my assertion about the men:  A couple of nights ago I was on the online dating site I've been using for months now (with no success, thank you muchly), and I got a chat request.  The guy looked reasonably cute in his wee tiny picture, so I accepted.  The first message I got from him?  "Hey beautiful!  Ever had a man pee on you?"  I KID YOU NOT.  So I blocked him.  Logically.

Later on, I continue a message exchange with a guy who'd first contacted me the day before.  We've exchanged maybe 2 messages each at this point.  His third message describes a self help type book he is reading, and how the last chapter he read was about how sex was beneficial to relationships.  Um.  First of all, OBVIOUSLY.  He goes on to say that his roommate, who is young and naive, was asking him a bunch of sex questions as we were talking because of the book, and she is dating a new man, and he told her to be careful.

Confused?  Wondering what kind of weird ass conversation this is?  Join the club.  I demurred a bit in my response to him, feeling a bit weirded out.  He said "I gather you are not comfortable with this topic?"  OH PLEASE, act as if me not wanting to chat with you about your sex talks with your roommate makes me puritanical and uptight, OH PLEASE!  I told him esesentially that I didn't know him well enough for this to be on the table, and that in my experience when a guy brings up sex so early on, he is looking for something casual and physical only, and I'm not.

After that I got 2 messages full of self-important, egotistical, pretentious bullshit about how evolved he is, blah blah blah.  It made my eyes roll so far back in my head I had to log out.  He messaged me again the next day, I ignored it and then blocked him.  CREEPER.

Insofar as my second assertion...I'm either doing something wrong and attracting generally awful people, or there are just a disproportionate amount of awful people here to encounter.  I really don't know.  Never in my life have I felt so overwhelmed by the amount of flaky, unreliable, unapologetically rude people.  People who purport to be my friends routinely bail on me at the last minute, make plans with me only to ditch me for something better, or just don't contact me at all anymore.  I am over this nonsense.

For the record, it's not everyone.  I do have a few quality friends who I can count on to do something when they say they will, including people who read this very blog.  However, I have more unreliable people around me than reliable.  I had plans to go to a movie tomorrow night with my friend R.  It was his idea because he has been a god awful friend lately, self-absorbed, outright rude.  He'd apologized and suggested we get together friday night.  I agreed, but all week long when asked about my plans I said things like "I'm *supposed* to have plans friday with R."  Everything included might, maybe, should, supposed to.  So while I wasn't surprised when he bailed, I continue to be disappointed. 

Honestly, sometimes I think that if it weren't for my job, which I continue to love even when it stresses me out, I would sincerely consider moving.  I don't know where I would go.  I can't imagine returning to any city I've previously lived in, but as expected, the thought of somewhere brand new is terrifying, too.  Sometimes I just feel like I would like a fresh start, maybe somewhere where the pace isn't so frenetic, and the population so transient.  It's like watching a merry go round that is going too quickly...I want to get on, to belong, but I can't catch it.  Instead I just spend all my time watching it go by, with others I know boarding it easily, with people they know, while I am me, party of one.

Sigh.