Dating and all that…

After joining Match.com I corresponded for several weeks by email and phone with a woman who lives 3 hours away. We clicked right from the beginning, and being transparent and tender-hearted by nature, it didn’t take me long to open up to her. We shared very deeply about each others’ lives, hopes, dreams, and fears. I felt safe with her in a way I hadn’t in a very long time. She told me that I was the only man she was corresponding with. She even said she was irritated at the other overtures she was receiving from Match.com, which she saw as interruptions to our budding friendship. Eventually I came to believe that when we met in person I would fall in love.

However, there was one very big warning sign… one that my trusting, tender-hearted soul didn’t heed. She wouldn’t agree to meet me.

There were numerous opportunities… play dates for our daughters (who were about the same age and very similar… another compatibility point), opportunities for visits (3 hours’ drive is nothing for me if a promising relationship possibility is involved). Even 30 minutes at a Starbuck’s over coffee was off the table. She said that for now she was “comfortable” with email and phone. Her parents had recently died and she needed to close out their estate to finish the grieving process. She told me that as soon as that was done (a month or two) she’d be willing to meet.

Then one day, completely out of the blue… she announced that it wasn’t “working” for her anymore. Her reasons? Our phone conversations, she said, “weren’t what [she] was hoping for,” and she wanted someone who was “more interested in sports” (she was a hockey fan). She said that she had met another guy on Match, a random Daily 5 contact (so much for me being the only person she was corresponding with! ;) ). He clicked with her right away… apparently without any investment of time, prayer, and deep sharing of the sort she and I had built over several weeks. He was a great phone conversationalist, and a hockey fan, she said.

As if that weren’t enough… she then said that her fascination with me had been nothing more than “physical” (she thought I was good looking, and the romance in my writing got her going… writing that for me was entirely from my heart and hardly about mere lust).

And that was that…

What I had imagined to be a God-ordained connection of heart and soul, and the intimate sanctuary and tenderness that I long for… was not. And several weeks of writing, prayer, sharing our hopes, fears, and dreams with each other, investing the best my heart had to give… All of that was wiped away literally in a single afternoon… for no better reason than because another guy was, in her mind, a better phone conversationalist and a hockey fan.

Today I know better. You don’t really know anyone until you’ve spent time with them face-to-face. Anyone who isn’t willing to do this… to stand before you, hold your hand, and look into your eyes without blinking… has no right to the treasures your eyes would reveal.

Rejection isn’t what it seems

You see legions of people looking at your profile (most dating sites allow this to be tracked) but few if any people respond to you… You email others repeatedly and never hear back from them…