My friend A. came for lunch. She’s an absolute pistol of a woman, wicked smart, independent, attractive, and she had been failing miserably at dating. She recently shacked up with her guy and with the zealotry of the newly paired, she set herself to telling me it would get better, I would find someone.
But.
She likes the data puzzles that tell you what kind of person you are. When I said I was an INFJ, she said, “Well, there’s your problem. Less than 10% of humans are a suitable match for you. Do not give up, just know most people are wrong for you.”
I used to bounce back and forth between INTJ and INFP pretty regularly, but the last few times I’ve done the test, it’s INTJ all the way. I wish this made me feel special, but it just exasperates me. It’s one more “This is why I’m single” data point.
Tinder has this roulette game where you answer a few questions and it matches you with some rando who gave the same answers. I tried it out one evening while I was listlessly browsing profiles, wondering which of these humans was qualified to tend to my delicate sensibilities. I matched with a guy who told me he was having a Ferroro Rocher milkshake delivered for dinner. Hello.
He turned out to be an interesting guy, if geographically unsuitable. He’s Canadian, north of the border. He had been a working artist for many years, had gallery representation, and taught art classes to help pay the bills. He’d been teaching himself to mix ambient music and was fairly successful at it. The pandemic shuttered his gallery so he’d been interviewing for jobs and had a solid lead in tech.
We chatted for a few days and on day three or four he said, “You seem really cool, it’s a shame we can’t meet.”
“Drive south,” I replied, mentioning a city halfway between us. “I’ll meet you there.”
“You’d do that?”
“Drive 75 miles to eat lunch? Yeah, actually, I would.”
“Fuck it, we should just get married.”
I laughed. “Okay, sure, what could go wrong?”
At about day seven, I wanted to send him a photo, it was a visual arts joke I thought he would enjoy. Tinder doesn’t allow you to send photos and fair, totally fair. We traded numbers and texted some more, I sent him the photo, and again he said, “You seem great, it’s a shame we can’t meet.”
“I *am* pretty great,” I cracked. “Who knows what might happen?” I asked about his job interview and again suggested a halfway location. He told me he doesn’t have a car, but there’s great transit where he lives.
“I don’t make a lot of money,” he said. “There’s some stuff between me and the job I have to navigate. My work history is complicated. I’ve had mental health and addiction issues.”
“That’ll do it,” I said. I wasn’t prepared for this kind of revelation, but I also didn’t want to make a big thing out of it. It’s texting with a random guy north of the border, we’re not buying furniture for our new condo.
“I don’t think I’m in the right place for this kind of exchange,” he continued. “You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know my story.”
This shift in tone made so uncomfortable. Everything had been good-natured and light, then whomp, guy goes all “I have a dark past,” on me.
“You’re the other side of the border,” I said. “This is not a big deal, we were just chatting.”
“You don’t understand. I’m not a nice person.”
I pushed my keyboard away and took a deep breath. “That is creepy as fuck,” I thought, and blocked him.
It took a few days for the feeling to pass. I was rattled by the exchange. I wondered if it was a tactic, if I was supposed to say “Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” or “We all have a past at this age,” or I don’t know. I wondered if it’s a thrill for him to have these conversations, if he’s some sort of mental flasher, a guy who gets off on sharing whatever darkness he has with unsuspecting strangers. I wonder if there are women who want to reassure a guy he just needs some love and laundry, he’s being too hard on himself.
It doesn’t matter. A guy says he’s not a nice person, you believe him and shut it down. The inverse is also true. A guy tells you he’s a nice person, you shut it down. No one should tell you they’re a nice person, you should see it.
I was quite disappointed with the way things ended with Ten; that’s nearly two years ago now and I have had zero second dates since. But it was a good crash course in what happens if I don’t pay attention to what a guy is telling me, what he’s showing me, what my gut says. The unfortunate side effect is it has raised the bar, narrowing down the number of potential suitors even further.
Okay, maybe that’s not an unfortunate side effect.