Guest Post From RayRay

In order to help keep things fresh in my humble corner of the internet, I sent a couple of requests to a small, select group of people, asking them to write a guest post on my blog. My friend RayRay has kindly accepted my challenge, and his words are below. I asked him to write about dating in small town Iowa, and his words are shown below in blue.

So, my good buddy Evan has asked me to provide some insight on dating in a small North Iowa town. Well, in a nutshell:it's not easy. You'd think that being a smaller community, being able to run into a lot of the same faces, you'd be able to get to know someone easier/faster. Well, one of the problems with that is that pretty much everyone has dated everyone at one time or another. And just with any other situation like that, there are going to be hard feelings, leading to constant drama.

The town I currently reside in has a population of maybe three thousand. The term "we've met" doesn't even begin to describe it.

I moved here from a town of more than thirty thousand. Easier to date someone if there's not much chance of running into an ex, mainly because that town had a few [other] towns close by, so someone from here could have dated someone from there, or there, or even there. My current town is more of a farm community, so even if someone dates someone from a nearby town, which would be almost 1/2 hour away, as opposed to like 10 minutes, you'd still have to deal with drama. I'm not much for going out anymore anyway, especially here. It seems the same old people, stressing "old" frequent the local bars. Not much fun there.

After my divorce about 9 years ago, I hadn't been going out much anyway, as my ex and I were together almost 8 years and hung out mostly with her family. Either way, I really didn't know anyone here, and didn't want to.

I turned to internet dating, which resulted in dating three women now:
The first I met in a chat room, who lived four hours away. We 'dated' for almost 2 years, where I did pretty much all of the driving to see her, that almost resulted in getting married and my moving to where she lived. I'd gotten her a ring, and was looking for a job when my ex and her husband decided they were moving back to 'our' town. That meant my kids would now be 5 minutes away instead of 11 hours away. Yea, not a hard decision. I stayed put, my fiancee couldn't move due to her divorce decree, so I moved on.

My next "internet love connection" also came from a chat room in the form of a woman that lived in Pennsylvania. Not much to tell there. She came here twice, i went there once. Good in bed, not much upstairs.

So as of late, I'd developed an affection for a girl 12 years younger than myself that started working where I work about 6 months ago. What can I say about that:no kids, no responsibilities, no clue. However, thanks to a completely free dating site, I've began a connection with a woman 3 years younger than myself, again lives 4 hours away, but she IS a mommy and has a clue.

So for me, internet dating is a better way to get to know someone because there's not that "automatic" feeling of being connected to someone. I've been to see her three times now, and each time it gets better and better.

Thanks for your insight, RayRay. As for my regular readers, stay tuned: I have another couple of guest bloggers in the wings, and you never know when it's going to be their turn to shine in my twisted universe. And if you're interested in being a guest blogger, feel free to leave me a comment.