Within the last roughly two years since I left off actively writing this blog I have had some very strange, unfortunate and/or unique dating experiences. This post will bring you all up to speed on what I’ve been up do.
The Pleasure Room…. 50 shades of “sorry that’s not for me“.
I met this guy online who on paper was perfect: self-made successful real estate investor and entrepreneur, educated, witty, family oriented, wanted commitment etc. And he was gorgeous on top of that. Muscular build, dark hair, green eyes, great smile. We talked on the phone before meeting up and hit it off great. First date was amazing – dinner and walk around Santa Monica beach path to watch the sunset. Second date I agreed to meet him and one of his houses in Palmdale, which was somewhat conveniently located on my way back home from Bakersfield where I was lucky enough to spend the day doing sales calls. I know… second date and I’m going to someone’s house… judge me all you want. But I had already spent the day in Bakersfield so the “keeping it classy” ship had sailed for the day. Sorry to those offended by that. We had agreed to take a walk around the lake when I got there and then hop in the pool. He gives me his address and as I drive by the house I think “there is no way in hell this is his house!”. I wish you all could have seen this “house”. It was not a house. It was a full on mansion with a courtyard and winding quarter mile long driveway. I park, we say our hellos and he gives me a tour of the house. Words could not do it justice but I’ll leave you all with this… there was a freaking pool…. inside the house! And it was covered with a dome shape, almost cathedral like glass ceiling. It was unreal to me that a guy in his early thirties would own this house. It ended up being a really fun evening with a walk, dip in the pool and then hot cocoa and cuddling on the balcony.
From there we had a series of other great dates. Most of which were after my work days which I would purposely schedule sales calls in the LA area and then I would meet him in the Hollywood or Larchmont area, where he had a few homes he owned that he was fixing up to flip. Again, mansions with gorgeous interiors and pools and jacuzzis we would relax in after hitting the gym or talking a walk around the area and getting dinner. It was sort of unreal. I found myself thinking, “I could not have gotten this lucky” and “hetre has to be something wrong with this guy who is successful, intelligent, wants commitment, likes working out, and actually likes me back”.
And then….. things got weird. In hindsight I had always thought there was something a little odd about him. Sort of secretive. Trust your gut ladies. After several weeks he starts to let me in on the fact that he is really into dominatrix stuff. Being dominated, belittled, bossed around and even humiliated by the woman he is with was big sexual fantasy of his. And he wanted me to partake in this and get satisfaction out of it because I was a “hard working successful woman and after a long day I deserved to be worshipped by my man”. His words guys, not mine. He would randomly send me erotic cartoons of a woman standing over a man kneeling on the floor with a collar and a leash on. Or of a man tied down and a woman with a whip. He would also send me little short erotic stories to he wanted me to read about men groveling at their woman’s feet and being her sexual servant. To say I was thrown off by this was an understatement. Those of you who know me personally know that I am a little alpha (okay, maybe more than a little) in my work life and overall personality, but being the alpha in the bedroom is not my thing. So being a dominatrix was not going to be happening. I resisted in participating or even suggesting that I would be okay with any of his little fantasies, but he kept persisting, insisting that I would like it. The final straw and when I knew I had to cut my loses on Mr. Rich & Good Looking was when he told me that one of the rooms in the Palmdale mansion was his “pleasure room”. For anyone who is familiar with the 50 Shades of Grey series, you know what I am talking about. Only this scenario would have been reversed where I would be the one in control of the whips, chains, and various torture devices and I was not up for that role. After some internal debate of whether I was crazy to let an otherwise perfect man go, I broke things off with him using the excuse that “we are just NOT (nor will ever be) on the same page sexually”. I never did see the pleasure room. Actually do kind of wonder what it looked like.
The Double Life? Still confused about this one.
I had met this guy John online (common name so I’ll name drop here, plus we do NOT talk anymore). There was a definite instant physical attraction and he was smart, witty and interesting. I knew it in the first conversations and definitely the first date I was going to get hooked. We talked everyday, saw each other several times a week for a few months and he even convinced me to get an Apple Watch since he had one so that we could compete daily on who killed their workout more and who took more steps. We had fun dates like hiking the Hollywood sign and going on motorcycle rides. There was something off about him though and he openly admitted it (or made the story up… who knows?). He said he had been in a horrible car accident that resulted in him being in a comma for 30 + days. When he woke up from it, he had to re-learn everything and apparently suffered to this day with memory loss of both past and more recent events. Our second date he warned me to be prepared that he would repeat things but not to call him out on it as he was sensitive about it. I did notice it a handful of times but didn’t say anything.
Things were going well between he and I until one weekend. We had plans to get together than Saturday but then all of the sudden is his “sister was flying into town and he needed to spend time with her”. I thought this was extremely odd as I knew he had a strained relationship with his entire family. So we reschedule to Sunday night planning to get together for dinner. The entire damn day goes by and I don’t hear from him so around 6 pm I start text him to ask if we are still on for that night. Zero response. Crickets. So I call and have to leave a voicemail. Finally, around 7:45pm he texts me back. I wish I still had the conversation, but I deleted it. But it read something like “I have been out riding my motorcycle and I get home and have all these aggressive texts from you telling me what to do. You are trying to be the alpha and we can’t both be the alpha so this is not going to work out. I should have known that. We would never work out”. This was super out of left field and I was caught off guard. I know I can be a bit alpha but I was not connecting the dots here on why he got so upset. I attempted to explain that we had set up plans and that I was wondering why the hell he disappeared and was unresponsive but that seemed to make him more mad. But I don’t tolerate being mistreated and at this point I am thinking “this guy is off his rocker” so I responded with something like “okay I guess you are right and things are over”. My little Spring romance was over and couldn’t quite tell you why.
A few months later I am scrolling through Facebook on my phone, and as the app always seems to do when you don’t need that shit in your life, they send me a pop up of “People you might know” and I see his profile. We were never “friends” when we were seeing each other as he was apparently not an active user. So of course, being the glutton for punishment that I am, I poke around on his “About” page and it say he’s married to _______ (won’t name names) since May 2019. He and I cut things off April 2019. This dude was married 1 month later?!?!?! Of course I skim through her profile and there are not only recent couples photos of them, but there are also photos with two little girls. Children? His children? Who the heck knows! Super strange and I still don’t know what went on here. Was I the second woman on the side the whole time? Is that why he blew me off so suddenly with some lame ass “you’re too alpha” excuse? Or did he marry her literally 1 month after breaking things off with me? Maybe he really was that crazy. I still scratch my head about this one. Maybe due to the memory loss thing he didn’t realize he was dating two women at once? Yes! That must have been it. I was not played. Ha! This will serves as my lesson to not date men with “Cocky” tattooed across their stomach. That was a definite red flag I chose to ignore.
The competition with the 55 year old. Lost twice. Still bitter.
Yes, you read that correctly. This tale started when I met this cute guy on Bumble and turns out we were basically neighbors, living a one minute drive from one another in HB. We also had similar sleep schedules, waking up at 3:45am each morning, him for work and me for the gym before work. We’d text each other every morning to complain about being up at that awful time. We had an undeniable connection from the get go. It was the most effortless coupling I had experienced since my long term ex who I dated for 8+ years. I was 100% myself around this guy and he seemed to like every bit of sass and strong willed tendency of mine. I was drawn to his extremely laid back personality, the fact that he worked his ass off doing long hours at work, and he also went to gym with me which helped to win me over. He was also a really good communicator. Honest. In fact too honest. See a few weeks into our Spring-Summer romance he tells me that when he moved out here from Chicago he got involved with an older woman (55!!!) and that they were involved for quite some time. He was 32 please note. He wanted to be honest with me that was the last “relationship” he had been in, but that it was over. Did I think it was strange? For sure I did. I thought immediately of a WILF with fake boobs who had taken him in as her boy toy and that it could not possibly be a healthy, normal relationship. But, I tried not to be judgmental and plus I really liked this guy, so I did not think too much of it.
What I did not know is that he was still seeing her. The whole time he was seeing me. Although we never had the “we are official” conversation, I trusted him and I am not the jealous type (I don’t have time for that) so I did not think or question whether she might still be in the picture. He and I would have serious conversations about “what do you want in life?” and “do you want to be married/have kids etc” and when it got to that point he dropped the bomb on me one night that he was still seeing her and just couldn’t break from her “mentally”. I was heartbroken. I drove myself home that night crying and called my mom to vent about how men suck and about how this was the first guy I had intense feelings for in as long as I could remember and he’s all the while been seeing a 55 year woman behind the scenes and essentially picking her over me. I woke up the next morning, had a huge cup of coffee AND pre-workout and had a killer leg workout and was able to convince myself I was fine. I had picked myself up from worse before and while what he did hurt and pissed me off I wasn’t going to dwell. Cut him off pretty cold turkey with a few interactions via text here and there.
Flash forward to November, he had moved to Redondo and we really started talking again and we decided to meet up. I was so excited to see him again thinking that maybe we could make things work, however in the back of my mind I was thinking that he had not broken it off with her but I figured I would ask in person. We had a great night walking to the Redondo Beach fish market to get dinner. We went back to his place and while sitting on the couch I say “Well, you knew I was going to ask you this… have you been seeing her?”. And this guy, honest to a fucking fault, looks me in the eye and goes “Yeah, she’s been here a few times”. I’m like “Here, here? Like this same damn couch I am sitting on here?”. Fuck I was so mad and sad and let down at the same time. I expressed to him how bummed and pissed I was and left shortly after. I felt stupid I had opened myself up again to him and got burned. ****For the record for anyone thinking this: I did not sleep with this guy. So in my defense, he did not know what he was missing. I wanted to clear the air on that! Ha! Should I have just seduced him and made him realize what he was missing? Possibly. In fact, I think the fact that we had not slept together made this even more traumatic for me because took things really slow and it seemed to have made me fall harder for him. Little did I know he was having sex with the 55 year old the whole time and not me. Nice. Until very recently this guy and I were still talking and I am honestly still bitter and torn up over this one. However I’m a prideful woman and after much internal debating on giving this guy a third chance to make it right, I think that I just can’t. I don’t like that I was second choice. Twice. Against a 55 year old. Yikes, did I just openly share that with you all? Ugh.
The former boss.
I alway say “never burn those bridges” when it comes to my professional life. I did not know this rule of thumb would transcend into my personal life. Flashing back in time to get this story started… Back when I was 21 years old I had a paid internship, and my first real job in the food industry, at a tofu/ frozen vegetarian meal manufacturing company. It was founded and run by a fun group of late 20/early 30 year olds. The owner was married at the time and actually his wife was running the company alongside him. It was a fun place to work and they put a lot of faith in a 21 year old Food Science grad student, letting me do product development, reverse engineering of recipes, and sourcing of ingredients and more. The internship was only about 6 months, but I kept in touch every once in a while, seeing the owner and/or his wife at food expos here and there.
Now flash forward to this past year I get an Instagram DM from the from the former owner of the company. We get to talking and catching up turns out he is since divorced and living very nearby me in Sunset Beach area. We made a date to meet up for drinks and taco Tuesday in Sunset. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. The meet up was fun. Conversation was great and naturally flowing since there was a past and familiarity there. For me there was not necessarily a romantic vibe but it was nice to have a fun night out with a great guy and with someone I knew from my past and who knew me. So lesson here being: keep it cordial when you leave a job. It’s a small world and you never know if years later your former boss is going to side into your DM’s.
The “I’m moving for work” phenomena.
You will be hard pressed to find a woman who has had as many strokes of bad luck and tough breaks when it comes to dating. As if finding someone you are compatible with isn’t hard enough, I for whatever reason have also been hit with what I will call the “sorry I’m moving for work” phenomena twice within this past year. Fairly recently I started to hang out with this really sweet, cute, hardworking Italian guy who I had met online. This was right around the time that Covid-19 was getting worse and the quarantine and the closing of everything was starting. Yes, I kept up the dating game throughout this pandemic. I mean business people. I got rings to get and babies to make before I am 40! Time’s a wasting! We got together several times and were hitting it off quite nicely having a good time with one another. Not saying this was my soulmate (if that even exists anymore I am not so sure), but I was willing to see where things would go. He also seemed like a really nice, honest guy. After several weeks he mentioned a work opportunity in Iowa being offered to him and that it would be a good step to take in order to advance his career. By no means were we anything official and I felt no right to say anything except “ you should think about taking it! ” and wish him the best. I also felt in my gut that he would take it based on what he had told me so far about his work life and current situation. This pending move coupled with the weirdness of the Coronavirus prompted us to go our separate ways. Soon after I found out that he did in fact make the move.
My other experience with the moving phenomenon came with the same guy who was seeing the 55 year woman on the side. Around July, several months into us hanging out he shared with me that he was being relocated for work to Northern California in October and he did not have a choice. At the time I was not aware the 55 year was still in picture and I was heartbroken and very attached and seriously considering just trying to make something work with him. I was thinking I would come visit and maybe a little in denial that the move wouldn’t really happen. He used the significant likelihood that he would be moving as a reason that we should take it slow and not get too attached. Again, little did I know he was not taking it slow with the 55 year old at the same time. After several changes in plans caused by re-structing of departments at his job it was ultimately decided that he would not be moving in the fall. This then prompted him to come clean to me about the 55 year old and all went to shits and he ended up moving out of Huntington to Redondo, which many of you know with traffic might as well be Northern California.
Car towing incident. The perfect way to end a date.
While visiting the Long Beach apartment of the aforementioned cute Italian guy one night there was no parking on the street. He told me that I could park in an open lot outside a closed down restaurant near his house and that he parked there all the time. Recall this was around COVID-19 time and all restaurants are closed. I figured it would be fine as there were a few other cars in the lot as well. We hung out, talked about our workdays, watched a movie, etc…. trying to keep this semi P.G. as I know mom is reading. Hi mom! When it was time to leave for me to get home to bed he walks to me my car. Or rather…. Where my car WAS. The feeling of walking over to parking lot in the dark and seeing nothing where your car had previously been parked is a total out of body experience. Instantly I was thinking “shit did my car get stolen?” “did I not lock it?” “OMG Toyotas get stolen all the time”. I really did panic for a minute. Then took a breath and we both looked up to a light pole that had a towing sign on it warning that non-patrons of the restaurant would be towed. In my defense: recall he had told me he had parked here many times before and other cars had been parked there. I called the number on the sign and confirmed that yes, they did in fact have my dark silver Corolla and that I could come and pick it up. Honestly, I was relieved that I still had a car. Fucking pissed it got towed, but happy that it was not stolen. He drove me the towing place where I paid the $380 to get my car back and gave the guy at the garage a nasty look. In writing this I realized this was the last time I saw this cute Italian guy before he moved. This night reminded me of the 405 flat tire incident driving home from a bad date in LA back in 2015 but even more fun (sarcasm). And more expensive. Again, best luck in dating ever.
The time I was a promo model for a cannabis/vape company.
This is a bonus, non dating related “you can’t make this shit up”. Last summer I was laying on the beach in Sunset Beach, in a skimpy bikini just minding my own business and this late 40 -something surfer dude looking guy comes up to me and goes, “Excuse me, please don’t think I am a creep or anything, but have you ever thought about modeling?”. The exact words out of my mouth were “Honey, I am 34 years old and 5’1”. So no”. I said this with a smile and it got a laugh out of him. His name was Charlie, and he then went on to further explain that he was the Director of Sales for Pure Vape, a cannabis vape and THC lozenges company, and he was looking for promo models, or “brand ambassadors” rather, and that I looked the part. Ha! Mind you, I have smoked week the grand sum of I believe 10 times in my life, all of which were years ago, along with one very scary and strange with edibles. We chatted for a bit about the gig, he gave me is card and then left me alone.
I thought about it that night and I figured “what the hell, might as well give it a try and learn about something new!” It would entail that I work the Pure Vape pop up booth at various dispensaries across Southern California promoting whatever promo of the week they were having on their Pure Vape products and “Wally Drops” THC lozenges line. And it was more than just standing there and trying to look good. There was a heavy sales component to it too because you had to get people to engage with you, come to the booth, and allow you to talk to them about the promos and try to make the sale. So my experience in sales and willingness to strike up a conversation with anyone helped a lot. We did our first event together but 1 hour in Charlie just lets me go and do my thing. So there I am at the MMD Dispensary in Long Beach with little actual firsthand experience with cannabis/weed (whatever you choose to call it!) and having never used a vape pen, selling vape cartridges named Green Crack, Gorilla Glue, and Wiz OG, and advising people on whether they need an Indica, Sativa, or Hybrid strain. Cracks me up even thinking about it right now. I really can BS my way through anything! The whole experience was intriguing for the science nerd in me because I got to learn about cannabis processing and how each shipment to the dispensary comes with paperwork “COA’s” for those of you familiar with the term. But the more I thought about it, the experience was also a little depressing as there were people coming into the dispensary blowing their last $20 on vape cartridges or weed. It was something that I could not see myself doing long term, or even short term for that matter, even if it was extra cash on the side. So I had to tell my buddy Charlie that this “modeling” gig just wasn’t for me. He was bummed, thinking that he was eventually going to turn me into one of their top sales people. But I’ve learned my lesson trying sales now twice before that it is not for me. Now I have this fun little story to tell to my future kids I have with my sperm donor about how I was once a model. Might leave out the fact that it was for a cannabis company.