Today’s installment of this series is compliments of the social networking site, Tagged.  I’ve been on Tagged for a few years now and I deal with all kinds of interesting people there. As a result, I recently updated my “About Me” section on my profile to read as follows:

I’m not LOOKING for anything. I’m here to meet people and chat. If a friendship comes of it, great. If I meet someone LOCAL and we end up romantically involved, that’s fine too. But I am not on any quest to find love or anything else. So don’t ask me what I’m looking for. Don’t ask me for my Yahoo ID, my Skype or anything else. I’m not interesting in camming. And I swear, if you ask me my age, my sexual orientation, or anything else that is already listed in my profile, I will BLOCK you for failing to take the time to go through the information I’ve already provided to everyone

I suspect that today’s entitled asshole didn’t bother to read that, otherwise I would think he might have a clue that the following first message would not be well received:

hi handsomer baby, can we hook up? am single and searching. how are you today? am seriously looking for a man to be my wife your response would be an honor. regards

First of all, I’m not sure why he both asks if we can hook up and indicates that he’s looking to find a man who will be his wife.  In my experience, those tend to be two different activities.  Furthermore, while I’m sure there are exceptions, the kind of guys interested in the former aren’t generally interested in the latter and vice versa.

As for bringing up marriage in the first email:  Seriously?!  All he seems to know about me is that he finds me handsome — or possibly that he suspects I’m easily seduced by guys who compliment my looks.  He has a long ways to go with me before I’ll be ready to talk about marriage.  Unfortunately for him, the trip just got permanently canceled as far as I’m concerned.

Plus there’s the whole fact that he specifically said that he wants me for a wife.  If you’re going to use gender-specific terms like “husband” or “wife” rather than something gender neutral like “partner,” then you’d better use the term that’s appropriate for my gender.  This is particularly important because I get the strong guy that this guy is intentionally using the term “wife” to indicate that he’s looking for a guy to be the subordinate, weaker, and/or more submissive partner in the relationship.  That just pisses me off.  No person should be expected to be the “lesser” partner[1] in any relationship.

This also suggests to me that I don’t matter.  As the potential “lesser partner,” I seem to merely exist in this guy’s mind to possibly meet his needs and desires.  My feelings, my needs, my expectations do not seem to matter at all.

I noted that Tagged indicates that the guy is in Kenya (hey, I told you my profile information would come in handy), so I decide to go with a curt and pointed response that says the distance is an issue for me rather than climb the “you’re being an entitle ass” mountain that looms before me.

Try someone on the same continent as you.

He came back with the following response:

am in pensacola Jarred, why you scolding me away from your heart ?

Okay, so now he claims to be in Florida.  Given that I’m practically dipping my toes in Lake Ontario, the distance is still an issue.  But I have bigger issues than that, so let me go through them.

First of all, he corrects me and claims we’re on the same continent.  But he doesn’t say, “Wait a minute, why do you think we’re on different continents?”  That’s one big misconception for me to have.  If I were in his shoes, I’d want to know how someone got such an allegedly wrong idea.  (Frankly, I think he’s lying and he really is in Kenya.)

Instead, this EA starts asking me why I’m “scolding him away from my heart.”  Again, this is why I think he’s ultimately lying.  Rather than trying to clear up the misconception, he’s attempting a guilt trip here by suggesting that he’s just a nice guy and I’m trying to keep him at arm’s length.

Except here’s the thing:  I have every right to keep him at an arms length.  By asking me why I’m “scolding him away from my heart,” he’s implicitly assuming that he’s entitled to have my heart.  No way.  I decide who gets near my heart since, you know, it’s my heart.  And this dude has already given me plenty of reasons to put a full army battalion between it and him.

So given his total sense of entitlement and the fact that he has presented me with conflicting information and has made no effort to explain it, I decided to call him on it.

According to Tagged, you are in Kenya.  Liar.

Finally he decided to offer an explanation:

am not in kenya i went there on a contract business am i have completed my contract

I’ll be honest, given the rest of his behavior, I’m considering the other experiences on the site.  I’ve heard a lot of people talk about being from the United States, yet in Africa “on contract.”  While I’ll grant that this is the first EA that’s claimed to be back stateside, I also recognize this is a common ruse of scammers.  I’ve heard the whole “I’m on contract and there’s an issue with money, please help me out” bit before.  And given this guy’s total sense of entitlement and the fact that his story reeks like last week’s roadkill already, I’m thinking it’s not much of a stretch to imagine he’s a conman as well.

Before I could respond to that message, he sent me a follow-up:

how could you just make conclusion on something so irrelevant?

I’m simply amazed that someone could consider the question of where they actually are and the fact that their profile and what they are telling me don’t even match up is irrelevant.  Again, this is a sure sign that what’s really irrelevant is me.  As far as he’s concerned, I should just STFU and be delighted that he wants me to be his “little woman.”

Like that’s going to happen.  So I made my feelings clear:

Still not interested.

The fun thing about EA’s is that they’re often masters of butthurt.  I got two final replies from him before he blocked me:

then bounce
who cares

Yeah, because he contacted me looking to get something out of me, yet I’m the one who should get lost.

As for who cares, I don’t know.  Which guy spent a lot of time trying to get the other one to just trust him and give him a chance despite other guy’s stated lack of interest?

Notes:
[1]  I actually think that this is a reason that gendered terms are best avoided when talking about people in relationships.  No one should be a “wife” if by “wife” we mean “lesser partner.”  I think it’s much better to go with gender-neutral terms[2], suggesting a more mutual and egalitarian relationship.

[2]  Though I’ll admit I have a different problem with the term “partner,” especially when it comes to same sex relationships.  It can be somewhat vague and allows some people to pretend that the partnership is something other than the romantic and sexual relationship it is.