Welcome back...I know you are all just waiting with baited breath to see
what happened this week!
I had intended to write a totally different blog this week but after
what happened yesterday I thought it was really important to write this one. I want to warn you though that this post may
be long and it may be triggering to some and I wanted to give you notice and a
chance to skip over it or leave.
I will leave this happy picture of a unicorn and a kitten dancing on a
rainbow here to distract you….if you want to skip the bad and go to the good
then just go find the matching picture further down the page! You know the more I look at this picture I think
that unicorn farted that rainbow and the cat is trying to run away while
laughing uncomfortably.
Okay…so you want the real dirt huh…I considered naming this blog a
number of things such as:
- So I escaped an axe murderer
- Adventures in the fish bowl aka how I thwarted my own rape
Or maybe just:
- Holy Sweet Mary Mother of God WTF is Wrong with People???
As you know, I am on a number of online dating sites.
(OOOOOH blog idea…review
the sites for you!!)
Frequently I will run into the same people on multiple
platforms. Over the last few weeks I
have really come to understand why they call it plenty of fish. You really do have to cast your net over and
over until you find one worth eating uh….keeping.
I am rambling again aren’t I?
Okay so I was contacted by a man name Brent on POF way back at the
beginning and he seemed nice enough but I found him to have a bit of the
creep/desperate factor. I mean I get
that I am super cute and have these kissable lips but how can you possibly know
you want to spend the rest of your life kissing them after just 5
messages. I mean, I get 5 dates, I am
fairly awesome! (oh the humility…)
FOCUS Tara….
So he sort of fell off my radar and I had moved on; until the other day
when he messaged me on another platform and was totally normal. He said all the right things and seemed
funny and nice and he asked if he could text me and maybe we could go on a
date. I said sure and we started texting
and talking about doing something. I
suggested Coffee and a walk on Main Street or in the park and he suggested
watching a movie at my house and making out.
I tried to do the polite thing and laughed it off and said I would rather
do coffee and he said okay let’s do coffee near your house and then go to your
house. (I am condensing here a bit) I
started to get that feeling, you know the one?
WOOO OOOOOO WOOOO OOOOO WOOOO OOO WOOOO
The one with the giant flag wavers and flashing lights. Cheerleaders doing flips and screaming:
WTF this isn’t right!
You need to Run and Fight Fight
Fight!!!
So I did what any good legal researcher worth her salt would do…I
googled the guy. I only had his first
name, the city he lived in, what type of work he did, 3 pictures from both
sites and a phone number. Thank you Nev
from Catfish.
I google searched the first 2 pictures and nothing came up and then when
I did the next one it popped with 5 LinkedIn pages. The only person in common was this Brent R. whose
picture was not visible to me as we are not friends, but it had to be the
picture I had searched. The profile
matched the job he had told me and the company was in the city he said he was
in. Okay so at least he appears to be “honest”
about that.
Lastly I googled the phone number; this is a long shot as any researcher
knows. We all have cell phones which
are not listed and it’s not like the states where you can pay $1 and get
everyone’s info. I wasn’t expecting
much but you will always get 5 or 6 pages of spam/scam awareness lists, so I figured
maybe I would get a hit. What I wasn’t
expecting was what I received.
I have really wrestled with whether I should post the message I found
and I have decided not to because I haven’t heard anything from the police yet.
What I will tell you though is that the warning attached to this phone
number clearly laid out information he had already told me, and few things I didn’t
know. It described in vivid detail the
pictures he had on his profile and it also explained that this person had lured
a number of women under false pretenses using Facebook/LinkedIn and online
dating and then he would sexually assault them.
The most recent being just 3 weeks ago in which he arrived at the women’s
home to pick up something, forced his way into her home and assaulted her
leaving her on the floor for her landlord to find. The message was very graphic and detailed the
nature of the assault it was brutal and humiliating.
I was frozen in fear and all this time he is still texting me. I asked him a couple of random questions and
peppered in some to see if it would match what this message had said and he
confirmed it all. He was also starting
to get a bit insistent about us just getting together and how he wanted to make
me feel so special and he wanted to take me away for the weekend to Whistler….
blah blah. Once I had made sufficient screen
shots and copied pictures, I wanted to see what he would say so I messaged him (please note i nicknamed him Eager so i would remember who he is) and said:
Wouldn’t you know it…in between 4:25 and 4:35 he had gone online and
removed his pictures, blocked me from messaging and deleted all our messages.
I still feel kind of sick about the whole thing. For many years, I have not followed my gut
instincts. I have not run when I
should, I have not confronted when I should, I have not just left when I
should. I didn’t want to be rude…I didn’t
want to be frigid….I didn’t want to be alone.
This has led to many sad, hurtful and even some tragic consequences in my
life.
I have been assaulted by a date before….in fact more than once. It was many years ago and I have worked
through it and come out the other side much stronger. I used to be ashamed of that but I am not any
more. I am who I am because of my
experiences and maybe talking will help one other person. I did not ask for it, I did not cause it and
I did not deserve it. I was not in the
wrong!
This year when I decided to be healthy inside and out and to shake off
all my demons and tell them to take a flying leap off a short pier, I also
decided I would follow my gut.
When I have that inkling I would acknowledge
it and act accordingly.
To be honest my gut has hardly ever been wrong and on the rare occasion
it was the worst that happened was some embarrassment and an apology. But it ALWAYS started a good conversation
about what got me thinking that way.
If you take only one thing away today, please let it be this….LISTEN!! Listen to the still small voice, the spidey
sense, the creepy feeling, the gut instinct; whatever you call it…just listen
to it.
YAY….welcome to the more happy clappy part of my blog today! So…this week in online dating:
As many of you will remember from facebook, we ran into the whackadoo uh person
who wanted a sterile stepford incubator to help him spawn his perfect
offspring.
Moving on....
This week on Bumble, my settings randomly
changed on their own so I have people from Seattle, Hawaii and Boston clicking
on me even though it’s supposed to be restricted to Vancouver/lower mainland.
It has also changed my profile to "Everyone" which meant I had
to swipe through about 80 women for every 3 men LOL. It was a weird
glitch that mostly sorted itself out, but it does routinely change my settings
for location!
I know you want to hear the juicy gossip!
So far, this week no nasty comments just lots of guys who want to talk
to me on my phone. But like.... right away. Maybe I am being too
weird but it seems odd to give my number to someone I don't even know. I
am trying to trust my gut on this one.
I have decided I am not going to give it to the guy who keeps asking if he can call me
so i can listen to him rub one out! Just saying….
Oh yeah...GUESS WHAT??
Mr. Rude-pants actually wrote me back two days later and said, "I
really just wanted to say sorry for what i wrote". I was shocked and
said Thank you. Don't worry, I know I am a softy but he is obviously a
bit of a psycho and I am not up for random verbal abuse.
Now...the update you have all been waiting for....Mr. Unique....He’s one
of those weird telephone guys. I have talked to him on the phone and we
had an awesome conversation but...if I am not available to talk on the phone,
he stops messaging; weird right? No date
planned with this one at the moment.
I also talked to Mr. Politico on the phone….uh yeah that turned out to
be a one hour lecture on politics, cancer, meat, conspiracy theories etc. Thank God it was on the phone so I could say I
was going to bed instead of in person.
It was pretty insufferable. I
mean I am smart but he made me feel stupid and annoyed. Also not all his science was correct though
he insisted it was despite the proof I offered to the contrary.
I went on a date with Mr. Engineer... he wanted to meet me after work
for a coffee and i said why the heck not. We met at Starbucks and when i
arrived he was shorter and older than advertised! sigh....I wanted to be polite
so we had a coffee and you know what he was actually really nice. We were
having such a good conversation that when Starbucks closed we went to another
place to keep talking. He was a total gentleman and at the end of the
night he gave me a hug and walked me to the train. He has messaged a few
times since and we are going to go for a walk around the park sometime soon.
I also went on a date with Mr. Poly. He seems pretty awesome (if
not sort of horny teenager like, LOL). He was not quite as advertised
but we had a FANTASTIC time and I am looking forward to hanging out again. He is in a poly relationship so he is not a
good candidate for anything long term but he is super fun to hang out with and
we are going to be great friends.
Last but not least… I got sweet talked into talking to someone from
Seattle. I know I swore no more Americans
but I am really enjoying talking with him and he is super handsome LOL
So what did we learn today boys and girls….
- Listen to your gut
- Don't judge a book by its cover
- Never say never
- Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear (or bigger...or older....or weirder)
Till next time dear readers....Much Love,
T
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