I never thought the online dating world was for me, but ever since I broke my ankle almost two months ago, I found myself bored and unable to pick myself up (let alone pick up guys).

I hesitantly signed up for Plenty of Fish. Skeptical of the site, I didn’t upload a photo and my “about me” consisted of: “This is a story all about how my life got twist-turned upside-down… and I’d like to take a minute just sit right there…”

I’m sure you can fill in the rest.

After merely 15 minutes of exploring the site, I realized there were REALLY hot guys on there. Are they real? Who knows. But my interest was sparked.

I immediately spruced up my profile and started fishing.

And to be honest, I met a lot of nice guys.

Yes, there were still a few guys who made me cringe with inappropriate pictures or annoying messages . But I was expecting that. I definitely wasn’t expecting so many genuine guys. This, of course, led to me going on several dates.

Out of all the guys I met, I actually kinda liked one of them. For the sake of this column, let’s call him Jake.

Jake and I messaged back and forth for about two weeks before he asked for my number. He skipped the texting games, gave me a call and asked me out.

Now, I’m known for writing about dates done wrong but our first date was amazing. We laughed, we cried, we skipped through the rain. Not really, but you know what I mean. Two days later he called again and asked me on a second date. Things were looking good, despite me still having a broken ankle.

The second date was equally amazing… or so I thought. We went out for dinner but spent over four hours at the restaurant. I knew he was going to Cuba the next day but I was fairly confident that we’d be going out again upon his return.

A week passes and I hear nothing. Although I thought the ball was in his court, I decided to send him a text message two days after his supposed return.

“Hey, welcome back! How was your vaca?”

Nothing.

And then I felt SO STUPID. What went wrong? I thought our second date was solid. It couldn’t possibly be ME.

Did he lose his phone while on vacation? Or maybe he met the love of his life while he was away? Better yet, he may have just decided to stay there and sell sea shells on the beach…

Ya, we all like to tell ourselves these lies to make ourselves feel better. But we know they’re not true.

So what happened? We went out TWICE. If he thought I was ugly there would have been no date two. When there are no awkward moments and the guy seems really into you, it’s hard to accept the fact that the feelings actually aren’t mutual.

Even though I truly enjoy being single and I’m a pretty confident person, there’s always a moment where you think, “Hey, I might just end up being alone with some cats.” Or in my case, a bunny.

With my injury preventing me from hitting up an awesome club to take my mind off things, I was forced to conduct an in-depth analysis of all my past relationships. This, of course, was followed by an outline of all the standards I currently have in place for someone I’d be willing to date. THEN I started getting philosophical as I questioned – why did these two dates even happen?! (Followed by a fist shake in the face of fate).

Were my dates with Jake meant to remind me that there ARE guys out there who fulfill what I’m looking for? Or maybe he was meant to remind me that I shouldn’t get my hopes up when I feel a connection with someone. I still don’t really know.

You may think this column ends with me running into him and sorting this out and then living happily ever after. Maybe you secretly want to hear that because it will give you single gals a sense of hope that things will always work out.

Sadly, they don’t. I don’t know why. And I’m not going to feed you some cheesy line about there being plenty of fish in the sea (and apparently online).

All I know is that after situations like this you need to take a deep breath and move on. It may take some time, but I need to get back on my feet.

~ Amanda Cupido