Game Time.

Every man you will ever see with an online dating profile says the same thing: "No games! No drama! If you like that kind of thing, keep moving because I'm not the guy for you!"

I haven't seen any profiles for women, but I imagine they all say they aren't into the games and drama either. No one ever says, "I love mind games and emotional roller coasters! Pick me!"

Wait, I take that back. Once, I put that on my profile just to shake things up and be different. But that was tongue-in-cheek. No one would ever put that and mean to be taken seriously.

This is why it's unsettling that there are so many men who are all about the games and drama.

Take Tim, for example. Tim checked on me for days when I was sick. He offered me soup, asked how I was feeling; he told me what movies he was watching, and I told him what books I was reading. At various points over the course of the last several weeks, we even talked about why a serious relationship ended and how mental illness had affected people we knew.

Then the weekend arrived and BOOM! Nothing. No texts. No emails. No phone calls or check-ins. I even texted him to invite him to Cigar & Scotch Night, but he had completely vanished.

Dick. Move.

Why do I keep getting my hopes up?

Trying to bounce back, I grudgingly allowed my married co-workers to take control of my dating life. Over drinks, four of them decided that I possess many qualities that do not translate well to a computer screen, and that they will take things over from here. This could end terribly, but it can't be any worse than staying a perpetual back-burner girl for the Tims of the world, right?

So my co-worker Stratski decided I would go out on a date with a guy, we'll call him Cal. He is from California and travels a lot internationally. And as Stratski pointed out, he is also cute. But more importantly, he spells all his words right, which is the single criteria I have reduced all my online dating interactions to. I have zero patience with men who have a high school GED sending me emails that say, "Hi gorgis im a farmmer lol lets get a drink if u want too"

ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW!?!?!?! Did you not even read my profile and see that I am an English teacher?! IDIOT!!!!

Anyway, Cal spells all his words right and has a degree and likes to travel and doesn't look like a troll, so I acquiesced to Stratski's demands that I get back on the horse. At the beginning of the week, Cal asked if I could go out on Friday, and I said yes, anytime after about 3 or 4.

Enter the games and drama.

Cal was apparently too busy to bother making plans or confirming for the rest of the week. He texted me at 5:35 on Friday night, at which point I decided 'BYE, FELICIA!!!

I don't have time for this nonsense. I'm not sitting around all week and then all night waiting for you to decide what you feel like doing. When he finally texted me, I told him (truthfully) that I'd gotten tired of waiting and made other plans. (Bye Felicia was merely the subtext of my text, a gift from Gigi, who now wishes she had never taught me this phrase).

Speaking of Gigi, her dates aren't going well either, which just goes to show you that games and drama are no respecter of age --- Yeah, that's right, it turns out that Gigi is only 23 freaking years old! How this escaped my attention for the first 4 years we lived in the same apartment complex is a complete mystery, but it has severely hampered my ability to take her dating complaints seriously. Get back to me in a decade!

Nevertheless, Gigi takes her own complaints very seriously, and her most recent one was about Jake, a guy she met online and talked to for several weeks before agreeing to go out with. But Jake, too, pulled out the man-drama and vanished on the night of their would-be date. She never heard from him again.

Gigi wrote to eharmony insisting that she had been catfished by a woman named Ruth. She even found a random woman named Ruth on Facebook and sent the eharmony people Ruth's profile page, asking them to investigate her. I looked on in wonder and horror, but Gigi refused to believe me that no, some guys are just dicks. Some guys just flirt or act interested or say "let's go out!" but don't follow through because a better opportunity presents itself, and in the end, it's not really anything you did or didn't do... it just is what it is.

Tim. Cal. Jake... you're missing out. (See how I used the right kind of "your" there?)