It’s rare in this modern era of dating to be set up on an actual blind date. Typically there’s some exchange of photos, either through dating apps or social media. But in this particular experience I was set up on an actual blind date. Didn’t know his last name, couldn’t Google him, going in on blind faith. It happened at a birthday party for my cousin’s kids. This mutual friend of my cousins’, discovering I was single, launched into matchmaker mode. She wanted to sell me on “Peter”. And sell me she did. Before I knew it, I was texting with a stranger and arranging a dinner. From the pitch, he seemed really appealing. Handsome, never married, worked for the City of LA as an engineer, family-oriented, “nicest” guy, etc.
A blind setup, sort of a vintage throwback in the dating universe, can inspire so many retro “what ifs”. Beautiful fantasies about what could come together thanks to a casual setup arranged at a child’s birthday party. How quaint! I can fast forward and tell you that for awhile, it was pretty quaint. Leading up to our first date, Peter texted me a selection of restaurant options tailored to my neighborhood in LA. He drove over an hour each way from Orange County in order to take me out and continue to court me over a series of phone calls, texts and dates.
Every few days, like clockwork, he would call me to ask about my day, “check in”, and talk about our respective work and family updates. It was cute. And so was he. He was probably 6′ 3″, blond, with ocean blue green eyes. Really striking, and as mentioned, all around very polite and proper… perhaps that should have been the red flag…
As can happen in so much of today’s dating landscape, things can take a while to unfold with busy schedules and in this case a bit of a geographic distance. For us, it took several months to have a few in-person dates, probably four months to unfold. A couple dates on my turf, a couple on his turf. One one date he actually took me to see his childhood home (his parents weren’t around), showed by childhood photos and his Boy Scout pins. On another, he stopped by early ahead of dinner to take a walk with me and my dog. He’d text me photos of him playing with his nieces and nephews, all very wholesome. In the midst of dating one another, I had some family health stuff crop up, which he was awesome through. He’d call to check in, text… it was really nice. I appreciated it a lot and got a glimpse for how a supportive partner could be in uncomfortable, scary situations. On the plus side, I’ll never forget how kind to me he was during that experience.
Once family stuff calmed down, he and I made plans to get together for dinner and drinks. This would be the 5th in-person date. We hadn’t had sex yet, but had started to fool around and with the family stuff, I felt like we were for sure starting to advance into the “relationship” category. In preparation for that next date, I started thinking about what more I wanted to know about him, what I’d like to learn during this next dinner. We’d chatted on the phone a bunch, but it had been awhile since we’d actually seen each other in person.
In retrospect, it feels crazy that I hadn’t brought this up earlier, but politics and the recent presidential election hadn’t made it into our conversations at all. We’d been so focused on learning about each others families and “journey” (childhood, college, adulthood), we sort of skipped (perhaps subliminally trying to escape) the political mayhem of recent. So going into date #5, I knew this was the top of the list…I wanted to know his thoughts on politics and our newly elected president, Donald Trump.
We met at a restaurant downtown, near his office. Again, very quaint, him in his work clothes, me in a cute outfit, meeting for drinks at a trendy steakhouse before his commute back to Orange County. Looking back on the rest of it, I see it in sort of a gray haze because the conversation got so weird. In summary, he is conservative, very conservative. But let me lay out exactly what unfolded.
Me: Yeah so I realized we’ve never really talked about politics or the election… I wanted to ask your thoughts on everything.
Peter blushes and gets noticeably uncomfortable then stammers out:
Peter: Well, I voted for Trump if that’s what you’re asking.
Me: Oh wow, OK, cool. No, I, well I wondered, because you mentioned once that your parents were conservative. How do you feel about your choice in candidate?
This is when things get awkward
The conversation went on to reveal several things. Firstly, he was a conservative and came from a family of conservatives– cool for him, but could not be more different from me and my family’s beliefs. He was a proud Trump supporter and thought Trump was doing a great job. The worse part though were the specifics. He hated Hillary and spewed much rhetoric about her, some of which I took to be very sexist. He didn’t believe in Americans’ right to peaceful protest. I said I’d thought it was great that at least for folks who were disappointed in the outcome of the election, there was the option of peacefully protesting and that LA’s mayor was supportive of peaceful civil disobedience.
He completely disagreed and said on the contrary, he believed police and law enforcement should have “ultimate control”. The scarier part for me personally, was his stance on gun ownership. He not only believed in it, he was a happy gun owner, with a case of guns in his home in Orange County.
Me: You’re entitled to whatever political beliefs you want. But, I have to be honest with you, Peter. Guns freak me out… I wouldn’t want to sleep over at your home knowing you have a case of weapons– I would feel creeped out. I wouldn’t feel safe.
Him: Silence.
The really final clincher in this conversation was in talking about the environment. Knowing that he was an environmental engineer in charge of monitoring the water supply for all of LA County, I asked him how he felt about the appointment to the EPA who was a climate change denier. He went on to say he too wasn’t convinced that climate change was “man made”. And that was pretty much the end of the relationship right there.
He may be a great person. A great, family-oriented, gun-owning, climate-change denying person… for someone else.
The entire experience opened my eyes. Firstly, reminding me how much politics matter to me. It’s a hugely important component and also helped me realize that I want someone who shares the same values and beliefs as me. It also made me realize it should come up WAY sooner in the dating process. It may feel like you *know* someone when you’ve spent months chatting on the phone and texting and even making out. But until you ask the hard questions of one another, you can’t assume their beliefs.
This is perhaps not rocket science, but was an eye opener for me. And yes, I was very happy we hadn’t had sex yet. Shudders.
#SFAR