Dating Thread: Total Eclipse of the Heart edition

[mcbigski]

On 4/16/2023 at 8:38 PM, Chataya de Fleury said:

I think I may have been too candid with the Doctor during my recent travails of taxes and severe bonus cut. This had the effect of cutting my total cash pay by 1/3 while also owing a shit ton to the IRS, which I am going to intentionally underestimate as I file an extension, so I can get some more cash together for October.

Note that I never asked him for anything, and would never, but it was very psychologically disturbing for me to have to sell some stock in order to pay Uncle Sam even the underestimate, and also paying my credit card (I got into a bad habit of paying it in full with my bonus, so with no bonus, had to dip into my cash savings cushion) took my bank balance from a Decent Number to OMG I MIGHT ONLY HAVE 6 MONTHS OF SAVINGS. Aaaaaaugh. 

More of a finance thought than a dating thought, but being self employed I'm typically a lot more liquid in the second half of year compared to first.  4th quarter payments due Jan 15.  Full year payments due April 15.  1st quarter payments due April 15.  2nd quarter payments due June 15.  So 3/4 of self employed annual tax payments are due over a five month period.

Not identical, but similar if your bonus comp amount is volatile year to year.  Hopefully at least your withholding over the year assumed the higher bonus amount so you aren't getting double whipped now.  

[Madame deVenoge]

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

More of a finance thought than a dating thought, but being self employed I'm typically a lot more liquid in the second half of year compared to first.  4th quarter payments due Jan 15.  Full year payments due April 15.  1st quarter payments due April 15.  2nd quarter payments due June 15.  So 3/4 of self employed annual tax payments are due over a five month period.

Not identical, but similar if your bonus comp amount is volatile year to year.  Hopefully at least your withholding over the year assumed the higher bonus amount so you aren't getting double whipped now.  

Oh, I was f——cked in the ass with no lube. But removed deets in case it can be traced back to me; the world does not truly need to know all my beeswax

Edited April 19 by Chataya de Fleury

[Toth]

Well, I guess it's time for a little update on the Bumble front, given my current "Are you shitting me?!?" mindset, but... well, then again, it IS, online dating, so I really shouldn't be surprised that this is how it goes.

First of all, I did expect absolutely zero visibility, which... I must admit would have been fine to me, but right now I'm in a weird spot where I DO occasionally get a like every few weeks, which... makes it look like I'm... actually visible, just... extremely unable to make any hearts flutter, which... is not unexpected, but it is still somewhat annoying to get reminded of.

In any case, after the first match with that random Brazilian girl a couple of weeks ago I got two more likes that were not bots and who actually showed up in my feed. The first... okay, I suppose I'm again being judgemental even though I'm not in the position. But... next to the empty profile there were only pictures of a very obese woman whose face also didn't really endear her to me. I know I should absolutely not be picky, but I couldn't bring myself to swipe right even after looking over it half a dozen times. Then the other one was... weird. In that way that she put a bazillion filters over all her pictures, making it a nightmarishly fake face. I at first also just closed app, but eventually thought to swipe right even if only to be able to ask about that. Therefore we matched... aaaand she unmatched a couple of hours later without a word.

And finally there is today. Completely out of the blue it said I got a match this noon. I looked the app up and... it was a Japanese dancer whom I swiped right for no particular reason other than thinking an opportunity to have someone help me practice my Japanese could be neat (yes, yes...). I didn't think it would actually cause a match anyway. In a way, I suspect she also only swiped because I wrote in my profile I'm learning Japanese. So I responded to her "Hi" in Japanese, saying "Aaaaa! What should I write?"- but then because I was fiddling with Gboard refusing to properly show me the kanji I was trying to write, the message got sent right there, even though I wanted to write some more. So I frantically added in German that I'm probably just making a fool out of myself trying to write in Japanese, but still wish a good evening. After a while she replied "Thank you! Good evening to you as well!". Admittedly, I couldn't reply at that point because I was busy baking a cake and helping my mother with her TV that just at this moment decided to die, so it once again took a few precious minutes until I replied "So what brought you to this site?", mostly because in her profile she checked "I don't know" as her goal and thought it would be wise to ask for how she interprets that.

Aaaand got immediately unmatched.

Sigh... yes, that exchange is the online dating world in a nutshell. I'm useless at this.

As an aside, while it is something I have noticed before, I find it increasingly weird how I end up matching the majority of the time with foreigners. I suspect I really need some kind of exoticism bonus to get any attention whatsoever and without that am just below notice for any German women who know they can get better.

Edited April 26 by Toth

[Tywin et al.]

I may have stumbled into something. 

[Madame deVenoge]

16 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I may have stumbled into something. 

Do tell!!! Don’t leave us hanging!! 

[Tywin et al.]

10 minutes ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Do tell!!! Don’t leave us hanging!! 

Hush you, off site. I'm not jinxing it here. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

17 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I may have stumbled into something. 

This week’s lottery numbers are…

To be continued!

[Toth]

On 5/13/2023 at 6:57 AM, Tywin et al. said:

I may have stumbled into something. 

So not all doom and gloom! Crossing fingers!

[Tywin et al.]

7 hours ago, Toth said:

So not all doom and gloom! Crossing fingers!

Indeed, fingers crossed. I was up all night with her on the phone. Hopefully I don't fuck this one up. 

[Tywin et al.]

Well three straight nights of us staying up way too late on the phone and trying to set up a first date isn't a bad start.

[3CityApache]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Well three straight nights of us staying up way too late on the phone and trying to set up a first date isn't a bad start.

But you did see what she looked like, right? 

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, 3CityApache said:

But you did see what she looked like, right? 

I'll let @Madame deVenoge answer that one for me.

[Madame deVenoge]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'll let @Madame deVenoge answer that one for me.

Indeed, I have seen a picture of the young lady and her best friend, the standard “young person we are going to go out!!!” type of picture. She is attractive. 

Many men have “a type” and it is my understanding that this young lady conforms to Tywin’s physical preferences and she is his “type”. Obviously, her mental capacity is acceptable, since they have had these marathon phone sessions.

I have asked to host the joint bachelor-bachelorette party in Vegas  

[Tywin et al.]

33 minutes ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Indeed, I have seen a picture of the young lady and her best friend, the standard “young person we are going to go out!!!” type of picture. She is attractive. 

Many men have “a type” and it is my understanding that this young lady conforms to Tywin’s physical preferences and she is his “type”. Obviously, her mental capacity is acceptable, since they have had these marathon phone sessions.

I have asked to host the joint bachelor-bachelorette party in Vegas  

Actually she is not my type, at least historically. But neither was the last woman I dated for Idk, 6-9 months. The thing that has me laughing is I feel like maybe two weeks ago I envisioned meeting someone who looked like her, specifically a pretty woman with dark hair and blue eyes. So like I said, stumbling into just that is hilarious. Doesn't hurt that our mutual friend has apparently talked about me a bunch in the past to her, so when I reached out to her to catch up last week her friend wanted to talk to me. Let's call her C exchanged our numbers and we've been talking nonstop since. Personality wise she is exactly what I'm looking for, which is most important. 

Last night we probably talked about music for two hours and she had me swooning when she said Queen is her favorite band. 

Edited May 16 by Tywin et al.

[Tywin et al.]

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. God I am an idiot sometimes. And I didn't even wreck things, but fuck, fuck, fuck again. How could I be so dumb?!? Oh wait, it's me. 

Edited May 18 by Tywin et al.

[Madame deVenoge]

Uh oh, this ain’t good.

[mcbigski]

Seemed to me the talk to do ratio was skewed.  Maybe with a side of over thinking.  

But I don't grok millennials in fullness.

[Madame deVenoge]

55 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Seemed to me the talk to do ratio was skewed.  Maybe with a side of over thinking.  

But I don't grok millennials in fullness.

They will work it out. Although I personally think that she is overthinking things and doing that whole millennial THING that I would always see in The Washington Post’s former Date Lab section.

This is why, when I matched with both CatMan (lovely gentleman, truly) and The Doctor, there were dates ASAP. And with CatMan, no second date, but that was because I felt zero chemistry, while there was seemingly good chemistry over text. ONE CANNOT ASSESS CHEMISTRY OVER TEXT OR CALLS. And handing someone your Instagram is like a fucking death sentence.

As I once told my kid, when he was appreciating the flirtation of another young person but was unsure of going out with them - “you know if you want to fuck someone within the first 30 seconds of meeting them. You are either attracted to them, or you aren’t.”

(Kiddo decided, apparently, that there was no attraction to them.)

Now, whether or not you want to spend a significant chunk of years with someone is another story, but IMO, one must feel the attraction.

[Tywin et al.]

It's not a millennial thing. I'm just honest to a fault and sometimes that blows up in my face. I'm sure you've all seen in on here time after time. 

She had a fight with her mom, but she didn't make it clear at first that they fight all the time, to the point she almost wants to cut her out of her life. I tried to tell her a similar story about my dad, but she felt like I was just trying to make things about me. Idk, I hope I can fix this, but I clearly pissed her off. 

[mcbigski]

That sort of trips my narcissist alarm.  You're trying to note a similarity and she's mad that you're making it too much about you.

Hard pass.