But I didn’t know what I now now, then

I’m turning 23 this year, and it should be no surprise that I’ve racked up a few ex-boyfriends over the past few years. I wish I could say that I’m still friends with some of them, but I’m not, and I don’t entirely feel like that is my fault. They were either assholes, drop outs, failures, in large amounts of debt, or just your standard, everyday, jerk. They weren’t winners, to say the least. They were extreme losers.

My taste in men, and my ability to judge them, has improved greatly since I was 15 - and thank god. I didn’t think I could handle yet another dysfunctional relationship at this point in my life. It was either a healthy, happy, and functional relationship, or celibacy. And seeing as how the latter never worked for me before, it had to be the former. I happen to think I made an excellent choice in my current boyfriend, and I’m hope I’ll still be thinking that in a year’s time.

But the point is, really, that behind every good woman lies a trail of men. For the most part, those men were behind me: I didn’t see any of them (ever) and I never ran across them. I think it has helped considerably that I never actually dated anyone in the town I currently live in, except for my current boyfriend. But that didn’t protect me.

One found me on the internet, and subsequently emailed me a 5 page update on his life.

I’m not on MySpace, and except for Facebook and Ravelry, I’m not on other social networking sites. The profiles are either deleted, or have privacy settings so high that you can’t even find me. The few social networking sites that I am on have an extremely limited amount of information: I protect my information, and I read the privacy policies. But, I do have websites, and that’s how they found me. And I really really don’t want that kind of negative attention in my life, but I can’t exactly get rid of them.

So here I sit, bare and exposed on the internet. It’s like Cate said: the internet is starting to feel more than a little claustrophobic.