Jebus.

So I went on a date on Thursday night.  He was a tiny little guy.  5'7 1/2", and I'm 5'6".  But he was just this really in shape, compact person, so he seemed smaller.  Anyway, he was nice enough and we chatted for 3 hours until Panera closed.  He was attractive, even if not my normal size I'm attracted to, and he was funny.  My various hesitations about him came from the fact that he has two kids, he lives about 40 minutes from me in no traffic, and because he implied that having been on a lot of online dates was weird in some way.

I've been doing this off and on for 2 years now.  I meet people in real life because talking to them forever online gets me nowhere.  I told him I didn't have a number, but that I'd been on many.  He claImed that he must just "pick well" and all I could think was that clearly he's not picking THAT well, as he's still single.  Right?

So I've been thinking about that since.  For the record, this guy put the nail in his own precarious coffin Saturday night when he offered to send me a shower picture.  PASS, thanks.  Anyway, I decided to try to get an approximate count of the number of dates I've been on, in terms of how many separate people I've met.  I went through my gmail calendar and my dating account emails, and I cobbled together a list.  I'm sure I've forgotten a couple, but I feel like it's probably fairly accurate.

Now, I had guessed it was about 30-40.  I was right.  I came up with 32, and given that I'm pretty sure I've missed a few, I'm going to guess that 35-40 is probably an accurate number. Two years, 35-40 people.

Now, for clarification, I didn't sleep with all of these people.  OBVIOUSLY.  Not even close! I didn't even kiss most of them.  Out of all of those people, 10 past a first date.  Of those 10, 7 made it past two dates.  Four made it past three dates.  Only two got to a point where I lost count of the dates, Artboy and Baltimore. 

But still.  Ballpark 35 dates in two years.  Some months there were none, others there were 3 or 4 different ones.  I went on another one on Sunday (sigh).  We met at a weird little pub setup in Whole Foods for coffee.  He was wearing a Trix (like the breakfast cereal) shirt.  Beautiful eyes, told me I was "pretty as a peach", but was too quirky for me.  It was actually really awkward for me conversationally, and I can rock the small talk generally.  He still asked me out again after!  :-/

35-40 dates.  Two years.  I've been legimately hurt by two of them.  Artboy and E.  I've probably legitimately hurt a couple myself.  And here I stand, another date on the books for this week with someone new, talking to another new guy online, wondering when it will ever end.

This is a merry go round I would like to get off, please!