Okay, I took a break from eDating after a not-so-great season last year, whereby I had lots of eligible bachelors throwing themselves at me from all angles, but they were all duds.  It really was flattering, though, in a way.  In fact I have to say that last year was the all-time best Valentine's Day I ever had.  I had two guys send me flowers at work, and another stopped by my office with Tim Horton's and Valentine candy.  It was AWESOME...I felt very special.  This year was a little different, as I had taken myself off the market and thus invited no such accolades of adoration.

 

I ended up having to cut those suitors loose for several reasons.

 

 

Bachelor #1 wanted to get busy with Bizzy ASAP.  We got along really well.  He liked to flirt, which I love, and I felt we hit it off.  He was a little uncultured for my taste, but I tried to keep an open mind.  He was always talking about how sexual he was, and how he still had 'lots of steam' left in him despite his age of fortysomething.  His kids loved me because I knew all the lingo that kids are using these days.  They all went shopping with me one day after work, and trotted along happily behind me while I went from store to store looking for just the right purse.  I was impressed at never having seen any man behave this way before when shopping with me.  We dated for about a month tops.  He even came over and helped me with Dad one day when he was sick.  Well he would keep hinting that we should get intimate, and I had only known him for a short time, and wasn't ready.  However it seemed the more I put him off the more he pressured me.  Eventually one night when we were on MSN, he said "It's deal time...let's go away for the weekend."  I said I'm not ready, and he lost it.  He freaked out saying that all the time he spent with me was a waste.  What a fool...I was out of his life before you could say BITE ME.

 

Bachelor #2 was a real sweetie, but we were only supposed to be friends, as I wasn't interested in pursuing a serious relationship with him.  He would have me over to his place and cook me dinner...clumsy dinners like burnt fishkebabs, but he got an A for his effort, and I was just happy to not have to cook.  We would watch DVDs afterwards.  One day after dinner he put on some music and just grabbed me and started slowdancing with me in the kitchen.  He would call me at work just to say Good Morning Sunshine.  He said I should bring my kids over and we could all have pizza and they could play with some of his old toys.  The problem, you ask?  Well aside from the fact that he dressed like a slob and looked disshevelled and unkempt 90% of the time, he had a whole room full of old junk that he didn't have any plans for, and his whole house was cluttered and chaotic.  I'll never forget the time he was showing me around his place and when we got to his bedroom I was mortified to see that he had an opened condom wrapper on the nightstand.  "Oops...leftover from my last fling."  He snickered.  Oy.  I had to say goodbye to him after he came up behind me on the couch one night when we were watching TV and spooned me.  Friends don't spoon.  I knew he wanted more than I was prepared to give, so I bid him 'adieu'.

 

Bachelor #3 worked for a leading diamond manufacturer.  That raised some eyebrows within my social circle, let me tell you.  The picture he posted on the website did not resemble him a WHIT.  And when I went to meet him at the coffee shop I couldn't tell who he was at first (the photo made him look buff and more attractive than he actually was).  I had to use the process of elimination to identify him by ruling out all the women and older guys.  He hadn't seen my photo yet, and when I approached him he started shaking...like I had a gun to his head shaking.  His coffee cup trembled as he raised it to his lips.  Oh brother..I thought...how's this gonna go?  Well we went out a few times and had some decent conversation.  No sparks flew, but he did charm me a bit one night when I was trying to coach him to be more romantic and spontaneous: I had excused myself to go to the ladies room, and when I emerged he had bought me a dessert with little heart sprinkles on it.  He scored a few brownie points that night, but cashed them all in when he called me one night drunk after having been in a barfight.  He said to me in a drunken stupor when I asked him why he has gotten into a tussle: "The first rule about fight club is...you don't talk about fight club."  This happened before Valentine's Day, and I think part of the reason he sent me flowers that day was because he wanted to win back my favour.  However, other things concerned me, like the fact that before he and his ex wife split up he got a vasectomy without consulting with her first.

 

Bachelor #4 was the one I ended up seeing for four months before our relationship ended on a very sour note.  It would take me all day to describe the hell I went through with him.  To sum it up in two words: head games.  Before we got intimate we got along famously.  Lots of funny, lighthearted emails going back and forth.  We enjoyed the same sarcastic sense of humour.  But then things got weird.  He started dissecting everything I was saying instead of taking things at face value, and finding reasons to get offended at comments I'd make.  If I was indecisive as to what we should do one night, he would take it as I didn't really want to spend time with him at all, and walk away from me shaking his head and go home.  The closer we got, the more he seemed to push me away.  It was all very strange and I never was able to fully understand his actions.  He stopped returning my calls before last Christmas, then came crawling back in January.  I told him no thanks...I can't go through that again.  Last I heard he had met someone else and gotten engaged and broke it off all in one year.  I don't know what his problems are, but he definitely had some baggage of some kind. 

Bachelor #5 was the last guy I met online last June.  He was the only one I was really excited about.  He had a really cool career as the host of a tech help show and had written a tech help book and was working on another.  He lived in High Park in the upper level of an older home in a neat studio.  He was well travelled, articulate, dashing, Monty Python-style witty, charming and confident, albeit somewhat aloof and self-absorbed.  He was very easy going and never pressured me for anything.  He introduced me to oysters and indian cooking.  Well I think we would have continued if he didn't care that I wasn't having any more children.  That was the dealbreaker for him, and he ended it after almost two months, via email.  He said he was going to follow up with a phone call, but the day he was supposed to call I never heard from him.  Another day goes by and I finally get a second email from him apologizing for not calling me, but his friend was really bugging him to go out, and then he had to have a six hour nap, so you see there wasn't time.  Geez, I'm glad he did me the favour of ending it before I had to!