Zombieing

This is when someone who previously ghosted you suddenly reappears after a period of silence. The connection was dead and yet here it is again, coming back to life.  The evidence of life can be through direct messages, liking your social media posts, or other forms of communication, as if nothing ever happened.   Like there wasn’t a death to the connection, however brief, you may have had.  It's a situation that can be confusing and emotionally taxing, as it can be unclear if the person is genuinely trying to reconnect or just keeping their options open.

My experience?

At least in the dating world, it is almost always everyone trying to keep their options open...

I am sure I have zombied and I have been zombied.  And it isn’t that I am pathological.  It is just really hard for me with the level of ADD I have to maintain 32 connections at the same time. So I have to focus on a couple and let the others sit idle.  I tend to the few that seem most promising and then when those don’t work out, I tend to circle back to see if maybe there was something I might have missed or overlooked.  I know, it is awful.  Which is why online dating isn’t good for me.   And yet, I still succumb.

I think it is hard for anyone, ADD or not, to tend to the number of connections you can make in just one evening on an online dating platform.  If you are discerning, you can make 40, if you aren’t, you can make 300.  How are we supposed to know which ones warrant further exploration and which ones should just die in your message inbox?

Here is what I have learned:

The sex stalkers...

There is a whole genre of men out there who are dangling intimacy and connection in order to get sex.  And I am sure there are women who behave the same way but likely about money, using sex to get money. But I date men, so that is my experience and I will just try to stick to that.

These guys tend to come on strong.  They are easy to engage with because they are usually good looking and quick and easy with the compliments.  They tend to make you feel like you have known them way longer than you have or make you forget that you don’t really know them at all.  They will be quick to be consistent with the messages, the "good morning beautiful" texts and the "thinking about you" texts at days’ end.  But they are hard to pin down on an actual date because they have so many prospects lined up, they don’t have a lot of time. They will tell you that it is because of work but it isn’t.  They are dating machines and they are grinding on lots, but work is not one of them.

They are in it for the numbers.  Their egos needing to hit it and quit it as many times as they can.  They will quickly turn the talk to sex and sexual things because they don’t want to waste their time.  The biggest green flag you can give them is to engage, the more quickly you engage the faster they will up the ante.

After a bit, if you do actually meet them, sex will come quickly. They will make all kinds of promises about their intentions, what they want, they become human mirrors to your life, desires and wishes, only to become cold and indifferent as soon as they have gotten what they wanted.

These guys are great for a hook up and often zombie.  I mean, they can come back from the dead a million times because their connections are endless...and flattery works.

The distant ones...

They are sporadic in their communication from the start.  They are there and engaged and then they are not.  It is hard to pin them down.  They request to make plans but then do not follow through likely because they have another relationship going or are so engaged with their lives, work, dating that they just can’t offer up much.

These are the guys that hold their cards close to their chest but are consistent and then they are just gone.  Only to return weeks or months later with no explanation other than perhaps, “I have been busy.”

I am sure there are other reasons people zombie and get zombied but these are the two main ones I see guys engage in.

As for me, the times I think I could be accused accurately for this behavior it is because I was not sure I liked you to begin with and then I got busy and forgot all about you, then when life calmed down, I am like, “oh, what is Jake up to...”  And so I am back in the game. It isn’t good.  I am not capable of sustaining 30 connections at the same time.  I think I can, but I can’t.  I can barely keep up with the texts in my regular life.  The older I get, the more I miss, the more life overtakes me and subsumes me underneath a pile of texts messages that are barely attached to humans I know and want to engage with.

My repeated lesson in anything online dating related is that it just doesn’t work for me.  I suck at it and I don’t enjoy it.  Oh I like the initial dopamine hits but then I just get diffused to a point where I am just responding with short text messages because that is all I have the bandwidth for.

I am blessed with a busy, abundant life...and, for me, at least in terms of dating, I have to trust that this busy active life will provide me a forum to connect and meet people to date when and if it is time.  One guy at a time.  One and only one.   I can’t handle the internet online dating que, I just can’t.  I know I like to pretend I can but I just can’t.

I do not want to rise up from the dead in your life.  And I don’t want to date a zombie.  I think, at least for me, I have to practice the intention and interest I bring to the rest of my life in my dating life, otherwise, it is just a bunch of half dead people wandering in and out of each other’s lives, which makes for a good TV show but not life plan.

Again...still.