I am dating online and I am over 35. At any age, the pool of men on online dating is already filled with LVM but after 35.....well the pool is the same except they are also fatter, shorter, angrier, uglier, balder, no excuse for being broke and have lots of baggage.

Anyway, I was really excited yesterday to have matched on Hinge with a guy whose message I read and just...you know, felt that feeling like hmmm! He has my attention! Then I saw his profile and he felt familiar and good and impressive to me on many levels.

We started chatting and wow! Finally someone who knows how to carry a conversation with great spelling and grammar, have natural curiosity, have a sense of humor and provide thoughtful answers!

At one point he stopped to comment that he didn't want to lead with looks but he was blown away by my beauty AND he couldn't believe how fun this conversation was and how smart I was.

Around six oclock, he said he was "going out for wings with a friend" but he wanted to pick up this awesome conversation later this evening? I agreed.

Eleven pm rolls around, still haven't heard from this dude who was giving me hope again (big mistake, I know this, I know not to get too excited about any man, especially ones online, especially ones I have not known for at least 72 hours, let alone 3 months). I was going to unmatch him at that point but figured, you know what, let me give him until midnight (when you find yourself rationalizing anything or pushing your limits on minor things, this is a bad sign already).

So I left it, got distracted and forgot.

12:16 I get a message back from him that sorry, his evening ended up going on longer than he thought! He then carried on the convo like nothing happened.

I have to be honest. I can't, can't start any kind of relationship on a basis of "sorry". Nope, I did not feel I could respond to that message and still maintain my dignity.

Keep in mind a lot of these dudes feel lesser than when you're a beautiful woman and they do subtle things to try and take you down a peg and then chime in with "oops! sorry".

I was first wary of the subtle triangulation of "a friend". Some people literally do this on purpose. Myself if I am going to meet a friend or going on a date, I would just tell someone I am chatting with that I've got to run.

I had to think about this one. Has there been a time when I met "a friend" for food at 6:30 and then had no access to my phone until after midnight? Nope. Not since my twenties when we'd go hit the town after.

I had a bad feeling about it. I unmatched him.

I really shouldn't have had to think about it so much but ruthlessness improves over time and this is good practice.

Don't ever start a relationship on some man's oops sorry.

If he can't keep a simple promise, or pushes the limits of them (probably to test you), axe his ass.