Lately

This is a picture of what I've been doing a lot of lately; spending time with my new, and best ever, girl friend. Here name is Claudia and I met her online. A website called faithbase.com to be exact. In years past I had tried the whole online dating thing with little success. I even became a bit cynical about it. After going out with 15 different women over a two year period, 2003-2004, and never making it to a third date, I decided to call that game over. But, time has a way of softening our feelings about things sometimes.

In November of 2007 I noticed an advertisement on myspace for a site called faithbase.com. It advertised being able to meet people of similar faith without paying a membership fee. A big part of what I didn't like about online dating was the membership fee that dating sites charged. I also noticed that the site didn't use sex to market itself, and it made a point to display photos of groups instead of only couples. After creating a profile, which is set up much like myspace, I was ready to go. I also noticed that it provided me with two profiles. One was for dating and the other was for other uses, much like a myspace page.

I contacted a few women and few women contacted me, some of them where from other states, like Ohio. I conversed with four or five locally and three from other states for a short period of time. The ones in other states were just being friendly and seemed to simply want someone to talk to. Two of the local women seemed interested in continuing our conversations outside of email, but one responded much faster and more often than the other and our relations quickly moved from email to telephone and then from telephone to in person. After two good dates but no chemistry she took the initiative and joined the witness protection program. So I moved my focus to woman number two, Claudia. After several emails, and a few of which involved me asking her to have coffee/tea or ice cream with me, she told me that she was a cautious person when it came to meeting people from the internet and she would give me a call if I gave her my number. After talking to her a couple of times on the phone she shared her phone number with me, which she had blocked the first few times she called me.

After nearly a month of telephone conversations she told me she was comfortable with meeting me in person, and during that same telephone conversation we set up a date for later that evening. We chose to meet each other at a Red Lobster. This slightly goes against the internet dating rules. Normally for the first date you meet over drinks or coffee, something that you can easily be excused from if things are going nowhere fast. I was okay with having dinner since we had been emailing and talking on the telephone for nearly two months already.

Our first date went really well. To this point it was the best first date I've ever had. After a 2 hour dinner we left and went to the Flying Saucer in downtown Fort Worth and closed the place down. Since that weekend, the weekend of January 19th, we have spent every weekend together, four in all. We both agree that we feel oddly comfortable around one another and have moved our relationship faster than either of us would normally allow. We have a lot of chemistry and have developed quite a bit of intimacy while getting to know each other over the past three months. I'm even going to meet her mom when she comes to visit this coming weekend. So far I've past every "test" she has given me, and I'm pretty confident I can pass this one too. With that said this story will have to be continued at a later, undetermined, time.