I keep holding my finger over the publish button on my match.com profile. To activate or keep de-activated, that is the question. On the one hand, I’m paying for it, you know? On the other hand, is it even worth the time?

Thus far from my adventures on Match, I’ve received one thoroughly broken (as in shattered, destroyed) heart, two really good friends, and a couple of acquaintances that I enjoy talking to from time to time. The friends and acquaintances? Good. Broken heart? Yeah, you can keep that.

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As I begin contemplating dating again, I’m arming myself with a small, but growing, list of things that are said on dating profiles - and what they really mean.  Based solely upon my own experience, natch.

So let’s take a look at Sabre’s List O’ Profile Warnings, shall we?

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With several million souls residing in the Metro DC area, one would think that after several years, a single woman would meet a decent guy in this joint.  Or, more appropriately, a guy I am sufficiently interested in that is sufficiently interested in me.

This is not to say I haven’t met decent guys, I have.  The problem that I’ve run into is that I always meet them at the wrong time.  Usually right about the time I’m escaping from one bad relationship or another.  Needless to say, that tends to be disastrous.  I’m still licking my wounds and they are wanting to go on long walks on the beach.  Hi, licking my wounds over here, lemme alone!  And the good ones, they go on their way, knowing you aren’t ready, while the bad ones pursue you, hoping your lack of clear sight will make their path into your bed easier.

I have had, for the most part of my adult life, a bad tendency to go from one relationship to another, with no time in between to truly heal from the pain and the loss of what I thought was love - hell, the blog archives will testify to that little factoid right there.  And as the new relationship begins to take on aspects of the old relationship, I chastise myself for having gotten involved again too soon.  Apparently, after chastising myself and beating myself soundly about the head and heart, I finally got the message.

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All right ladies, this one is for you.

Ever go out with that guy, you know the one, he is sure to tell you that he’s a “Nice Guy” and nothing at all like all the other guys you’ve dated? Only to find out later, that no, really, he’s pretty much an asshole?

Wouldn’t it be handy if you had a comparison chart, with all the telltale signs and red flags of the “Nice Guy”, the Douchebag, and the Asshole? A way, perhaps, to cross reference each category and find out where your guy falls on the scale?

Well, here we were, Cathy and I, chatting in AIM, laughing over some of the most notable signs and flags, and it came to me that this chart is almost desperately needed by today’s dating woman. Sure, you can go online and look at the top ten signs of a douchebag, or the definition of a Nice Guy, and certainly you know an asshole when you see one.

But wouldn’t it be nice if we put that together into one handy and easy to use chart? Sure it would.

So ladies, tell me, how do -you- define one of these creatures? What are your little red flags? I’m going to spend a little time compiling and making a chart for cross comparison. If for nothing else than to give us something to giggle over for hours on end.

Imagine, if you will, a trinket so simple, so common, as to be nothing more than an every day household object. Imagine, if you will, something as nondescript as a simple copper fitting, sitting on the bathroom sink.

Imagine that when you see it, you are reminded of a moment in your life where you dared to believe. A moment so pure in its sweetness and simplicity that every time you see that small object, your heart skips a beat and you feel a fluttering in your stomach.

Imagine, if you can, the moment in which that belief, that dream, is harshly stripped away from you, and the object that once brought you such joy can now bring you to your knees from the pain. When the seeing of it reminds you of the reality of the world, and the loss of something so precious that you find yourself reaching for it, wanting to throw it away, remove it from your sight.

Imagine being unable to do it, because the memory of that moment, that sweet simple moment, is still burning brightly somewhere behind the pain. It is still echoing through your heart, like a siren’s call behind the banshee’s wail.

Imagine.

Blatantly stealing this from Christopher, a short film called “Real Love”:

*sniffle* I’m going to go pretend I’m still real now, kthxbai.

Awesome!

A friend of mine sent me some great stuff via email this morning. I mean, seriously, great stuff. Interesting stuff. Educational stuff.

He tells me that there’s tons of this stuff out there, all of these guides for guys for dating. Except, see, they aren’t really guides for dating. More like guides for how to be a total douche bag and get laid a lot.

Awesome.

In short, the premise is that the more elusive you are, the more she’ll want you. The more you don’t call her, the more you pretend you don’t notice her, the more “busy” you make yourself, the more she’ll throw herself at you. It’s all just one big game. And who wins is he who gets laid the most.

Or something.

Some guys tell me this shit works, I’ve heard more from my guy friends about “power structure” and “keeping them guessing” than I care to admit. And I guess it must or there wouldn’t be so much information online devoted to treating women like toys.

Here’s the catch though. The women who have self-esteem and a sense of worth? The ones who are solid and moving somewhere in their life? They aren’t going to like your little game, gentlemen. And eventually they’ll get tired of playing and they’ll wander off and find someone else to play with.

Someone who treats them with respect and courtesy. Someone who knows how to show a woman that he truly cares for her and wants to be with her.

Just a thought.

Hi, my name is Sabre and I’m addicted to craigslist. Well, only part of craigslist really. The Missed Connections section.

I read it almost religiously, scanning through other people’s anonymous tales of having seen someone that caught their eye, or missing someone they lost a connection with. Sometimes it is entertaining, someone sees someone else, thinks maybe there was eye contact, and instructs the reader to write back telling him or her what they were wearing, to prove, of course, that it’s the same person. Vague descriptions that could be anyone, simply reaching out to try and meet a person they think they might like.

Other times it’s heartbreaking. The girl who hasn’t slept in weeks and won’t change her sheets because they still smell like him. The guy who is wondering where the perfect girl he fell for went and why she won’t return his calls. The stories are sometimes sad and pitiful, and other times filled with a dry humor I recognize and empathize with.

Over six billion people on this planet, and still so many missed connections. Lost dreams and broken hearts. A thousand ways to reach out and meet people in our technology driven world. Free services, message boards, pay services, match maker services, speed dating. It’s all out there. And still, so many lonely broken hearted romantics. Looking to technology to solve their problems and heal their spirits.

Although, I’m pretty sure it is the overwhelming presence of technology in our daily lives that killed romance in the first place.

And I mourn its passing.

Having recently found myself in a situation I had tried to avoid being in, it occurred to me that the reason I was in the situation in the first place was because I had chosen to overlook more things than I should have.

It started out innocently enough. A little glassing over of the eyes here, a turning a deaf ear there. A simple way of avoiding things that I felt were, while not trivial, certainly not life shattering. But it all started to get to the point where I was feeling a bit of a gnawing at my insides as things progressed. Having overlooked a thing or two in one place in my life made it far too easy to overlook a thing or twenty in a few critical places in my life.

Things I should have never overlooked in the first place.

In more places than is even remotely acceptable.

Of course, the question becomes, “Why do that to begin with?” A thousand reasons. You see a piece of lint on your jacket during a meeting and you are at a cross-roads. Do you flick it off your breast right then, drawing attention to said breast, or do you wait until later, knowing that you’ll get busy and forget and that when you do finally get to it that one piece of lint has mutated into a small army that even duct tape isn’t lifting off?

I’m guessing a lot of people would flick it off right then. A lot of people aren’t me with a keen awareness of the fact that half the people in that meeting are already staring at said breasts. So I wait, demurely, and get pulled into something else. By the time I get around to it… well, yeah. Mess.

*sigh*

This is one of the reasons I stopped wearing black jackets! Srsly!

There are a lot of you who’ve known me for a great many years… and I’ve had more than a few people ask me when the hell I became so nice. And I always answer that I don’t want to keep carrying around pieces of the past that had me seven shades of pissed off for so many years. In dealing with my fair share of nut jobs and whack cases, I’ve become increasingly more easy going, laid back, and maintain a “whatever” state of mind.

Until I get painted into a corner - as someone else would say to me.

And then I remember why I was always such a bitch in the first place. Nice guys never win and nobody likes the nice girl. Blah blah blah. You can all roll your eyes, but you know it’s true.

I had me back for a little while last winter, but I was so overwhelmed by what it took to get me back that I froze and eventually reverted to the nice girl who doesn’t deal well with conflict.

Yeah, fuck that noise. And so I’ll turn my naval gazing (I’d say mental masturbation - that’s all this type of blogging ever really is - but I know how you perverts are!) inward and make a lovely list. You could say it’s my deal breaker list. And you could say that it applies to several aspects of my life. You could also say that I expect to begin employing it immediately. In fact, I’m pretty sure some of it has already been set into motion.

You could also say I’ve had it with bullshit from several corners of my life - and that shit ends now.

This has been a Sabreland Public Service Announcement. Thank you, drive through!