Up till now I had been rather lucky with my dating experiences. I had been ghosted once (by 29-year-old ADHD-guy, who didn’t ghost me on purpose, but because he ran into a depression), and I had only experienced rejection once.

Oh, I totally forgot about that one. Yes, I had tried to receive “you are not my type” letters, after revealing my photo’s, which stings, but that’s okay. I also have a type and have rejected men because they were not my type. Normally, I would wait a couple of messages before doing so, so that they wouldn’t think it was because of their looks, even if it was.

I was on a first date with a truck driver, who had sent me some pictures of him. But the pictures were old, and I would guess that he had gained about 30 kg (60 pounds) since the pictures. He was a big man, both in height and weight, and after a short walk, I knew we wouldn’t continue. Not because of his weight, because he was mindblowingly stupid.

But he was faster than me and had dumped me by text before I got back to my car. That hurt my pride. 😉

Ghosting … it’s a funny concept actually. Off course I have had men disappear from the correspondance, but I don’t really see that as ghosting if we haven’t gotten to the point, where a date was agreed upon. When on a dating app/site, conversations come and go, and it’s not like potential dates are lining perfectly op in need order and let you investigate the possibilities one after another. In my experience they come in waves. Sometimes there are no interesting people at all, you are just surrounded by idiots. Other times you suddenly have 3-4 potentially persons who you would like to meet, and some of them then just fade away. That is not necessarily ghosting in my point of view.

Anyway, I began to chat with the Caretaker. He was a bit to the short and plumb side, dark haired and brown-eyed, just as I like them. And he was really fun and sweet.

Here I have to mention that I had to run his picture by my sister. She is 7 years younger than me, and she was also single at the time. She tends to be turned on by older guys, and with me liking the younger men, we potentially were dipping in the same pool, so sometimes we had to confer before going on a date.

Apparently, she DID know the Caretaker, but I don’t remember if she did have a first date with him, or just had talked to him, so I was good to go, and I went.

Caretaker said he didn’t have a car, and he lived about an hour away from me, so we decided to go for a walk in a forest near his home. It was during some corona-lock-down and nothing was open, and at a point I really needed a bathroom, so I had to ask him if I could use his.

We went to his home, I used his bathroom and got something to drink, and we sat in his couch and talked. He was fun and we had a similar kind of humor, which is great. I need a person I can laugh with.

He had gone through some difficult stuff, but I was fascinated by the fact that he was so in tune with his own development. It started with an accident, then he got fired, then he started to drink too much, and finally he got divorced. He was in ugly feud with his ex-wife about the kids, and the ex didn’t want to let him see the kids, because of his drinking, even as he voluntarily was admitted to a rehab center and could show clean toxic tests to the lawyers.

When I met him, he was totally sober, but he had lost his drivers license because of driving under the influence of alcohol and he was getting back on his feet. He had gotten a job as a caretaker in the area he lived in and was happy with it. Babysteps towards a normal life, where he would get his children back. At least some of the time.

As we were sitting in his couch, I found him more and more attractive and when I noticed the way he was looking at me, I just asked him to kiss me.

Like I have mentioned before, when you want something, you must go for it.

The sex was amazing. We instantly had the perfect rhythm together and, on my way home, I was thinking that maybe he could be the new Doom that I had been looking for.

Next date I again drove up to his home, and we had okay sex, it wasn’t as amazing as the first time, but still very good. He excused him self with a migraine and that was of course okay.

In between we chatted on a daily basis, the exchanges getting more and more rosy, and I was wondering if this was beginning to go somewhere and even if I would go there, if that was where we were heading. He was a fun and nice guy, and I liked him, but was he potentially boyfriend-material?

I didn’t believe so. He lived too far away and had no car, so it was totally one-sided, with me travelling to his house. Besides, his life was still rather messy, and I’m not really dedicated to drama.

We had a weekend in my house, where I drove up to get him, drove back again, and back again on Sunday. It was really nice, and as we sat there in the couch and watched a movie, I realized that this was actually really great, and how much I had missed the more subtle parts of a relationship.

Sex was (and is) still important to me. It has to be between great and amazing, and I was not going to settle for a relationship with mediocre sex again. I wanted somebody who liked to play with it as much as I did (and do).

When he spent the weekend here, the sex was okay. Just okay. What ever magic happened between us the first time, seemed to be vanishing step by step, it just became more and more boring.

I couldn’t figure him out, because the messages that I got between the dates became rosier, and I had no feeling of him loosing interest, but the sex said otherwise. It really confused me.

This was new to me. I was getting good and confident at the sex-dating, that is actually the easiest thing in the world. It’s just looking at each other and asking yourself if that is a person you would like to shag. But more serious dating with potential feelings … Now, where I was beginning to head in another direction, I felt a bit insecure.
Especially because we had met through the sex-dating site.

I liked the guy. He was fun and charming. Nice looking and pleasant to be around. But I was not falling in love with him.

But still it hurt when he started making up stories.

It started with excuses for cancelling dates. Some disaster in one of the appartements he took care of, then there was something with his kids or similar. One time I had come so far as half the distance up to his house, when he cancelled.

It began to sit strange with me, and I knew that this was not going anywhere. Then there came the day, where the stories didn’t even add up. He cancelled, saying he was ill. Three days after he suddenly got hit by a car instead of just being sick. And then I dumped him.

I wrote with him again some months ago, when he suddenly appeared again. He apologized and said that he had been in a very difficult place at the time, but what use is that for me? I wrote as much to him, saying that he just could have been honest. I would have understood. Everybody prefers the truth instead of some lame stories.

Anyway … that was the story about the caretaker, and my first lessons in people lying to me. Maybe that was good, because he prepared me a bit for what was coming not long after. Or not ... The Caretaker was no match for the Bodyguard, but I will come back to that soon.

The second thing I realized while dating him was that I was beginning to be ready to have a more serious relationship if there was somebody out there who could love me.

Thumbnail – Roland Schwerdhöfer from Pixabay