The Bitter Bitch Blog: It's Me Again. A follow-up to The Perfect Date. A single rose sit in a bottle as a centerpiece at a restaurant.

It’s been a weird fucking week for me. I just spent a whole day crafting a very clever, very funny post about how I’m trying to date again. I redownloaded Hinge and put up a new profile and am getting nothing but cretins and 25 year olds. The standouts for this week were a handicapped guy who wanted to bend me over his chair and spank me and a 50 year old who wouldn’t shut up about Netflix and chillin’. Either of these encounters would have made a great story, but then I received some light hate mail this morning that’s really been on my mind, and I had to step back and do a little self evaluation.

This chick “Sarah” wrote, on two separate blogs, that there’s something clearly wrong with me. Well, I wouldn’t disagree Sarah. In fact, there’s tons of shit wrong with me, I just don’t think the disinterest in available suitors is it. In response to The Perfect Date, she called me out for dissing the place he took me to eat, and my judgement regarding his new car. She said I didn’t attempt to engage. Then she really put me in my place by saying the sexual innuendo at the end of the date was simply a man trying to “take care of my needs”. She toasted the post by saying my expectations are too high and “what happened to good old fashioned dating.”

God damn it Sarah, I’m so glad you asked!

If you’ve been a long time reader (rather than someone who read the two most recent posts on my homepage and then jumped to conclusions), then you know I am all about traditional dating. That is to say a man making a legitimate effort to court you. My date was anything but a legitimate attempt to get to know me. He was simply using it as a tool for sex, which is also fine. The only problem there was that he did a bad job. But my real concern here is that this woman, and many like her, can’t seem to differentiate between the two. It is one thing to go on a thoughtful date and discover there’s a connection. It’s something else entirely to qualify a man as a worthy suitor simply because he did these things. Most importantly, the sole purpose of “traditional dating” is to get to know someone in an attempt at a long term commitment, say marriage. This should be achieved through communication and sincerity not obligatory acts of service. Was he being a gentleman or was he ticking off the boxes because it’s a technique that’s always worked in the past? The real question is, if Sarah and I switched places, would she have let that cheeseball go down on her over a $30 plate of pasta?

Let’s be real here. I’ve had great dates, and I’ve had terrible dates. I know when there’s is interest and there is not. I am not in a place in my life anymore where I need a man to be interested in me simply for validation. I don’t sit there wondering if I look pretty, if I’m making a good impression, if I’m making him comfortable. I don’t care if he likes me. I use these interactions to decide if I like him (which is exactly what you should be doing). Do I want to spend two hours with this person again? Do I want to see this person naked? Am I genuinely invested in getting to know more about this person? If there is ever the hint of no, I’m done. I don’t need a basket full of reasons before I cut the cord. Everyone doesn’t need twenty chances. This isn’t Family Feud. Life is too short and too precious to waste another fake orgasm on some dipshit in a shiny coupe just because no man might ever love you. Get your shit together Sarah because THAT is what dating is all about.