Communication: An Essential for Online Dating

On Friday night, about 3 am, I received a message on Facebook from a man not of my acquaintance, which in itself is not completely unusual. I am rather attractive, and I have a quite common "look" that I'm often mistaken for someone else, but thats another story for another time. I also, a long long time ago, joined an application on Facebook (FB) for dating called "Are You Interested?" and have occasionally received friend requests or messages from men finding me through that application. So the mere contact of a strange man was not foreign to me.

What was strange to me was his method of approach. He merely said in his FB email..

"are you there?"

Rather ominous from a strange man. I clicked his profile, and found nothing of any interest except that his network was Ontario, Canada which I live no where near. I jogged my brain to figure out who this was. Surely with such a brief question, I must know him from somewhere, so I replied.

"maybe? who are you?"

He then replied with a much larger email.

"Hi Beautiful,

Let me start with I'm so happy and glad to hear back from you, and I should also thank you for taking your convenience time to write me, it's really a pleasure for that.

I am Divorced and a father of 1 boy he is 14years old. Her mum died when she was 3yrs old. I Have been dealing with the loneliness while taking good care of my son all together, though it has not been easy for me to take 3 scheduled steps at a time, but I really have to. it's my own duty, and I should also count my son as my #1 priority in life. I hope you know what kids means to parents.can we chat on yahoo messenger id?(his yahoo id),i will be waiting for reply."

Whoa dawgies. Ok, let me read this again. Sentence 1, he has a boy. Sentence 2, her mum? Wtf? What 3 steps? What in the hell is he talking about?

In an attempt to clarify, I wrote back.

"ok.. umm.. you didn't really say who you were. Or maybe I should ask, why you're msging me? or how you found me?

You also seem a little confused on the sex of your own child."

He replied,

"I was looking for a woman to spend the rest of my life with,and when i saw you i decided to mail you and the sex of my child is boy.."

Well why in the hell didn't you just say so in the first place!! Sheesh. Still no clarification of how he found me, but I decided to let it go.

"ah.. ok.. I assume then you found me though "Are you interested?"

So you're divorced? How long divorced? And what did you mean by 3 scheduled steps?"

I wanted to see just how fresh his divorce was, and hoping that I could get some relatively straight answers from him.

He replied, "i lost my wife 10yrs ago and i need some else now because of my boy,i will appreciate if we can work thing out."

Boggle. Either the man has horrid luck by getting a divorce from his wife and the mother of his child dying at the same time.. or its one person and he got a divorce and then she died.. or she died, and he recently got a divorce from someone else which he's not mentioning. Or maybe in Whackoville, Ontario, Canada, widower and divorcee are the same thing?

He still hadn't answered what in the hell the 3 steps were, but it didn't really matter. "i need someone now because of my boy" was entirely enough to stop all contact. I'm not sure what his boy has to do with him needing to find a wife now, and I'm not sure I want to know. I assume he wanted a "mother" for his child, or a live-in nanny he could screw.

I want a man who wants me for me, for him.