Soooo hello everyone! A little bit about me, I have pretty much been in long term relationships since 2004. I was engaged to a guy who I split from because his OCD and cheating habits. I then married a guy who was another cheat but to be fair we had a very bad thing tear our relatonship to pieces before he resorted to this. I then had a few months off and dated a little and met my current partner of 3 and a half years who I live with and hope to settle with.
So I am 31 (32 next week, ouch!) and I have done all sorts of dating. There was the teenage dating scene of 1997 - 2002.
The sort that you are on the phone to for 3 hours a time, you see each other once a week at a weekend if you lived my busy schedule (I was a bit of a track star and so dating was pretty difficult in the summer and was easier in Winter when meets were scarce however most of the guys I dated I met down the track or lived a bit of a distance away). So we spent a couple of nights talking on the phone for a couple of hours. Back then mobiles/ cells had just come out and were not in every teenagers hand until around 1999. Come then though, text messages on our PAYG phones were a must, it was a new fangled tech of back and fourth messages until your credit ran out and then you had to wait for pocket money pay day to top it up again! We would go on dates and kiss and cuddle and sneak off in our corners to make out... This was ok, the L word was common.
Then came the tweenage dating scene which changed a lot for me. Between the ages of 19-21 I count myself as a tweenager at 19 because I lost my virginity at 18 and felt that at 19 when I started dating as an adult it started a whole new age of dating.
This age was the womanizer discovery time for me.... I struggled to find a guy who wanted a relationship and not just sex, I was tricked and played and naive. These guys still texted like the teenagers, threw the L word around and tricked me on more times than I would like to admit. This is where the text games started with the odd guy, couldn;t text too much with some but could with others... Was a very confusing time!!
I actually gave up meeting guys in person and moved on to the internet...
Before the wonderful lands of dating sites and facebook was Hot Or Not... I think this concept is still going although has come a long way since the days above... On here at 20 years old I met by first serious boyfriend. He wasn't from my country and was instead military and also on deployment. He sent me flowers and called me every night and declared love before we ever met. 3 months after our HoN meeting he flew to the UK and we got together and started a long back and fourth relationship which cost $800 a flight. This was the good stuff, the good guy you meet, who wants to speak to you constantly.
He ended up treating me poorly and on my last 3 month trip over there I told him halfway through that I wanted to leave. I had actually got talking to someone on MySpace and had more in common with him after 10 minutes than the 2 years of our relationship which had started to come away at the seams about 6 months earlier. This was hard for me, I broke my heart time and time again. I flew home and within 3 hours of landing after an 18 hour journey, I was on my first date with my now ex husband.
This is the Soulmate stage. When you meet THE ONE. Now my ex was the one and unfortunately even though we had been through some terrible things together and did well we didn't last. In all honesty my immaturity tore us apart. We married at 24 and separated at 28. We didn't need to talk to know what the other was thinking we knew each other so well so we just fit together. We used jigsaw references every day but to feel complete there was a piece missing, kids. I unfortunately had a health problem that would affect my fertility for a long time (thankfully it looks like things are now fine and dandy) he was depserate for children and loving him beyond myself I pushed him away until after almost 2 years he cheated on me with another girl and left me. If I had told him my problem he would never have left but I knew he would remain incomplete. I couldn't do this to him. So this is where things got tough... I was back on the dating scene after 8 years and it had changed big time.
The rules were crazy... if you texted too much you were needy (back 8 years ago it was nice to be thought about and texting was ok). You had to wait a certain amount of times before getting intimate which made all the rules of your relatonship clear (eh?!). There was this new thing called "The Friendzone" which guys felt they could use as an excuse when I just wasn't interested to make me feel guilty like I had done something wrong?! (when did men stop acting like men and start crying in the corner like little girls?!). "I'll call you" meant "See ya round" oh and then there was the dreaded "Spark" either he felt it or he didn't but he knew after 10 seconds if it was there or not yet conveniently waited long enough to not tell you until you had put out. THEN there was the "let's see how it goes, i dont really want to be in a relationship but friends with benefits is cool" WTF!?
What happened to boyfriend and GF?!
So now the new age is that guys and girls have so many different levels they kill the romance. A guy sends a girl flowers to get her interested and woo her, he becomes too full on....
I miss the days where people said what they meant and meant what they said! Bring back the pre 2000 age of dating PLEASE!!!
I should mention my partner and I had a tough time with dating, he is 4 years younger so knew the game while I didn't like the game. Luckily he was shy so not playing the game was attractive to him. He still plays the game a little now, like questioning the seriousness of our relationship (today is our 1 year aniversary of living together). I let him play them in his own mind, I don't want to be involved :)
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