AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Sigh.
I wish I shat gold bricks. I'd be back in Germany in a heart beat. But on the plus side, its back to saving some of my future paychecks to get my honey back to me. All things aside and the distance, I think things with Dave are freakin' beautiful

So, now that I'm not in school or college, I really have no idea where adults go to even hang out around here in general, let alone find dates.

I'd try online dating again but last time I did I got matches for people I was really not compatible with at all based entirely around one entry field. As in I'd put in I like to go on walks occasionally in nice weather and would get matched with women that ran 50 miles a day and walked backwards to work on their hands for exercise, or something.

Negative on the first, positive on the second!

Boyfriend is still in Australia for, at most, two years before he comes back permanently. I moved to Centralia because 1) it was the best opportunity I had to get out of the bad living situation I was in while in North Carolina (primary reason), and 2) assuming Morgan and I are still together by the time he moves back, I'll be in the area to make things a lot easier (coincidentally convenient reason). When he moves back he would not be living in Centralia, he'll be living with his dad up north in Everett until he got a job, and once we're both in a fairly comfortable position we'd find a place and move in together. So we'd still be roughly 3 hours away from one another, but it's very workable.

Until that point, he is still living in Sydney and we have to rely on him visiting once a year or so to see one another. When he does come back to visit, I'll be taking a week off from life and going up to Everett to spend time with him. c:

Distance hard, but doable. It'll been a little over a year and a half already, so I guess I could look at this as a halfway point.

go places that interest you. If you meet people there, chances are they share a few of your interests

meetup.com also has a pretty good amount of events to attend, depending on the size of your community, and a lot of them are free

alternatively, check out bulletin boards. You'd be surprised at the kinds of interesting things you can find on them

Friended my crush on Facebook. Look out everybody, there's a new Casanova in town.

As a side note, I'm actually feeling a bit anxious about rejection this time around, which as far as I recall is a first. Any tips?

The best I can say, YCobb, is to just try to let that feeling go. I know it's tough, but you'll be way more attractive if you have confidence. Girls are good at picking up on it if you're insecure, for the most part.

Well, on my end, I've been talking more with the girl I thought liked me, and it turns out she....probably doesn't. I'm not all torn up about it or anything, but it's a little disappointing, I suppose. It was nice feeling like someone liked me beyond friendship, even if it was just for a little while. But at the same time, after talking to her more, I came to find out that she's SUPER cynical. I don't think I got that girl to smile once during our conversations, which is an impressive feat, considering that I can usually make people smile at least a little(you'll have to trust me on this one). I know that she's going through some tough times with school and personal stuff, but it's seriously a major turnoff. Take notes, ladies: You'll be much more desirable to the gents if you give him a smile every so often.

I don't know what it is, but any time I start to approach the dating world, I see stuff like that and it shuts me off to the whole thing. I'll be interested in a girl, but then a month in I see something that just completely turns me off about her. Sometimes it's just some personality quirk that makes me want to remove myself from the situation, or the other way around. The later is a bit more disappointing, though I suppose makes it easier. The most recent was a girl who just up and completely cut contact with me. Stopped replying to my attempts to contact her, and barely acknowledged my existence when in person. Then I noticed she was already "going steady" with some other dude.

That was one of the worst ones though, pretty much every other situation I realize is completely on me.

Like for your situation I'd probably pick up on the idea that she has the sense of humor of a sack of peeled potatoes and find that to be a huge turn off. I realize people have horrible situations to go through in their lives, but learning to live with it and appear to be a sane human being is extremely attractive.

And just to check on the expiration date of this can of worms: Much like it's super attractive when a woman's able to go through her time of the month without turning into a Yahg.

I've been playing a lot of mass effect.

Oh nah, it's not that. This is just the first time I've been worried about what happens if she rejects me.
I do feel she's a bit out of my league, but I know how to handle those sorts of feelings.

I guess I don't really understand what you mean, then.

Could you elaborate a bit?

You've gotta lay on the sex appeal, YCobb. Slut it up!

Previously I've always gone out with people with whom I was very good friends, but here we're not quite so thoroughly acquainted. I'm just a bit more concerned about how to handle things afterwards, because "stay friends" doesn't quite work as my default fallback.

This may be a weird place to post this but I've sort of made this observation on how my parents react to their children's girlfriends/wives/partners.

I've noticed that they get very loud about their judgments if my brother or sisters potential other doesn't live up to holding a conversation with them, if they're to shy or dont hold really big opinions on things my parents possibly care about. To them (my parents) if this person cannot talk to them like they are already family, then this person is weird and why the hell are they a possible match.

And I on the other hand completely relent against this for my dating pool. I am a quiet person to my parents, and the person I share with is defiantly the same. So noticing this it makes me realize how really different I am from my brothers and sisters, and how I don't want to date someone that can hold up a totally bullshit conversation with a fake smile as my dad becomes a rude egomaniac.

So I am the odd one out, because I don't pressure someone to try to impress my parents when all that really matters to me is my relationship with that person, and not the persons relationship with my parents being the smoothest thing ever.

Distressing discovery: now that I've spent more time with my crush's ex, it occurs to me that during the height of my bicuriosity (circa this time last year) he's exactly the type of guy I'd have been interested in.

Oh no.

Go out with him for a bit and then dump him so that you can have common ground to stand on with your crush. Alternatively, two at once, two at once, two at once