Oldies...

One of the major reasons that dating sucks in this day and age is the internet. I know I am writing this blog based almost entirely on internet dating, but hear me out.

Remember back in the day when we would think about a past boyfriend or girlfriend and wonder whatever happened to him or her...and then that would be it? We'd think about it and then move on with our days?

Now if you wonder what happened to someone you used to date/love/sleep with, in a matter of minutes you can see how they look, if they are married, where they are living and/or how many dogs/cats/kids they have. Thanks to the likes of Google, Facebook, myspace, and countless other social networking sites, a moment of pondering the fate of an ex turns into hours of cyberstalking and obsessing. Technology ruins lives - yeah, I said it.

When I think of the countless men I have looked up on the internet, strictly out of curiosity, I am almost embarrassed. Some of them were random one-nighters, and I only remembered their last names because I keep a list of everyone I sleep with. (Do NOT judge.) Some of them were crushes in high school - guys I may never even have spoken to because they were too grungy, or too gorgeous, or too smart. But the bulk of them are, of course, ex-boyfriends. Ex-boyfriends who may not have deserved to have held my hand, let alone be my boyfriend, or ex-boyfriends who I wished I had kept around.

It's like sick self-punishment that leads us to type these peoples' names into our search engines of choice. We are hopeful that the person in question will still be single, even if we ourselves are currently attached, but more times than not they have a new significant other, who we will inevitably spend painful amounts of time scrutinizing and comparing to ourselves. The new girl might have bigger boobs, but her face isn't as pretty as ours is. Or she has terrible taste in clothes. Or maybe, the worst case scenario, she is better educated, better looking, and has a much better job. Nothing good can come out of this kind of masochistic web browsing.

I recently found out (via the magic of Facebook) that a cruel ex-something or other, who was engaged 8 months after we split up and married a year after that is expecting a baby in what appears to be 2 or 3 months. While I have been over this person for quite a long time, and happily so, it still caused a dull pain in the pit of my stomach. I would have been better off not knowing, but I still don't regret that I have the information - it's like I have this need to find out all that I can.

On the flip side of that, someone I dated for three months more than four years ago recently looked me up on Facebook and started sending me instant messages. This person is now married (to a girl he met maybe two months after we stopped seeing each other) with two kids - why is he bothering with me? I will never understand this - is it just because he had the capability to look me up at his fingertips? What did we share that he believed we still had a reason to connect four years later? I just don't get it - and probably never will. I talked to him for a little while, remembering that we did used to have a good time together, but then realized that there was just no point. If he had been a more "meaningful" relationship in my life, then that would be one thing. But the bottom line is that considering we weren't even together one full season of the year, it was completely unethical. I was spending time talking to a married man with whom my only real connection was sex (and also, he made me watch The Big Lebowski, for which I am grateful, if only because I hear people referencing it almost daily). Stupid - so I deleted him as a friend on Facebook, and blocked his screen name.

What gets me is that this should have been a crystal clear hint - but like a total guy, he needed to know what the issue was...because guys can't accept it if you don't want anything to do with them. So he created a new screen name, and IMed me from that one....and I promptly blocked it as well.

I love the internet - I use it to read the news, to read about my favorite celebrities, to get movie times, to look up things I've never heard of, to communicate with loved ones, and now, to date! But sometimes, just sometimes, I wish that it didn't exist so that I could wonder about whatever happened to someone and just leave it at that.