What Constitutes Dating?

Sunday June 17/18

So I received a response on my question "What is love?" that sort of baffled me.

Here is the message in it's entirety............

"Why do you care what love is since you are only interested in dating as many women as you can, maybe this is some lame attempt to make up for lost opportunities or to relive your university days once more.

Maybe you should focus less on dating and more on building a real relationship with one woman and not feeding your ego by dating multiple women at the same time.

It's men like you who give the good guys trying to find love a horrible reputation and make it hard for anything meaningful to develop"

Kind of harsh and not entirely warranted if I do say so myself.

I don't believe any of my blog entries have talked about dating as much as I can but were more then clear that my intent is to meet my one and see what can develop with equal effort by the two of us.

Does this mean I might have to meet more than one woman while I pursue this goal? Absolutely.

But I don't date multiple women at a time - never have and never will. I'm more respectful than that and it would set a piss poor example for my son, daughter is out of the equation now that she is married.

I think at my worst I've seen two women in the same week and both of those were first time get together for a drink to see if we even liked how the other person looked and acted in real life.

Maybe the sender has confused these first meetings as dates but I'm pretty sure that meeting someone for the first time doesn't bestow any form of exclusivity to things.

I've honestly only dated four (4) women since my marriage ended back in 2007, and by dating I mean we actually went out more than 3 times, visited one another's residence, and actually did some activities together other than meeting for a drink.

Monique, Liz, Karine, and Corinne constitute my entire dating portfolio under the definitions outlined below. One high energy woman, one taller than me, one Quebecois with the cutest accent, and one smarter than me and heart stoppingly beautiful.

That's it, just 4 women who I can honestly say I dated.

I've had far more first time meet ups that didn't pan out but that is the nature of trying to meet someone in this day and age. Some of these women made me smile and want a real date but I guess they didn't get the same vibe I got and passed on my offer, some of them generated nothing in me other than the thought that they were nice but not my cup of tea and I wished them well in finding love, and a rather limited number left me feeling so completely at a loss for words that I would not have considered another opportunity had they been the last woman on the planet, hell one left me feeling like I needed to go home and take a shower using bleach to get the residue off my skin. In fairness I'm sure there are s few who probably felt the same about me and that's life so no loss on either side.

No, my dating history is much thinner than you might think and I believe that goes a long way in showing that I don't take this process litely, but rather have been more than willing to put in my time in trying to find the one for me.

Dating isn't easy but before you even get to the stage where you want to date someone you've got to meet them and that is the crux of the matter. This may sound harsh and I don't mean for it to come out that way but I'll let you be the judge - finding someone you actually want to spend time with is almost a numbers game in the new dating world in which we reside. The majority of people join online dating websites and that just pushes endless opportunities at you in the form of new profiles, these profiles may or may not be real, they may or may not accurately reflect the individual and their intentions, but the only way one can know anything is if there is that first face to face meeting, and that my friend does not make for a date.

I ran my numbers a few years ago on the number of women I've met and I used to think they were high but after doing the analysis I came back thinking I'm probably on the low end of the spectrum, not really helping me in my desire to meet the one but leaving me feeling good about my actions and letting me continue taking one step forward at a time.

Sure there are men who look to date as many women as possible, just as there are women looking to do the same in the new world of equality, and I'm okay with that as long as there is full disclosure by both parties going in that the end result isn't to secure an exclusive relationship but rather to have some fun and kill some empty time in their lives.

For me, I'm not looking to pad my numbers but rather increase my opportunities to meet someone I think is special and maybe she feels the same towards me and we can see where things go.

So that is my take on dating, let me know what you think as I do value feedback, never said I'm an expert and every little bit can only help me in my search for love.

My name is Marcus and these are my adventures in trying to meet the one woman who is imperfectly perfect for me.

Today's musical suggestion is an oldie but goody....."Everlasting Love" by Carl Carlton.