Blathering about myself

Well, I know that no one reads my blog to hear me blathering about myself, but since I don't care if people read my blog, here goes.  You can live with the occasional blather, right?

<blather>Asked a girl who I have known for the last couple years, and who I really like, out on a date and after some apparently positive feedback, the eventual answer was no for a variety of reasons that I agree were legitimate.  Took it harder than I thought I would so that then started me wondering why.  I had no expectations going in so why would it bother me so when my lack of expectations were confirmed.

Realized something interesting about how I date.  I become friends with someone, get to know them fairly well, and decide that I could spend the long term with this person.  That is when I ask them out. There is some serious emotional investment in that process which I had never really thought about.  When I started thinking about the serious girlfriends that I have had there were a total of four.  One in high school, two in college, and one after I got out of the Navy, who I married and then divorced fourteen years later.  Each of them was a friend before we ever dated.  I have, now that I think about it, never dated anyone with whom I wasn't already friends.  Not sure if that makes me different but it sure makes me different from most people I know.

My sister suggested that I join Cupid, a dating website, so I waited a day to let things settle down, then thought "Here goes".  Here's the part I don't get.  I filled out my profile.  I haven't really finished it, haven't added any pictures (cause I don't have any recent pictures), haven't really put up a serious and well thought out description of who I am and what I'm looking for (because I don't know yet how people do this online dating thing), and I already have a half dozen chats requests.  I don't know how to respond and I'm unsure as to why I am getting chat requests so quickly.  Do these people not have anything better to do or are they just not serious?  I had  a friend who joined some dating services and got in contact with all sorts of hookers, which wasn't at all what he was looking for.  I have an email that starts with "Hey baby, what u up to?"  Well, I can tell you what I am not up to, which is responding to people who start an email with "Hey baby" (although she does look pretty in her picture).  Am I missing something?

Turns out I can't actually read the emails or chats without upgrading my account (ie $$) so I guess I have a decision to make in the next few days. I am sort of nervous about this but given my propensity for dating friends, and given that I feel like I am running out of time to have a long term relationship, I don't know that I have the luxury of not joining a dating service.  Well, there you go. Hope you weren't too bored.</blather>