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NOTE: Thank you for everyone's comments; they were each helpful and gave me a lot to think about.

NOTE: Inspired by Hope.

It's approaching 5 months since I've been on a date, and a part of me wonders if I am ready. (Honestly? Most days the answer is "no.") My experience with guys the last several years has been so bad that I feel shy about trying to open that part of myself to someone else only for it to be destroyed again. (Twice bitten, four times shy.)

I've tried to overcome it by talking about it to my friends. Acknowledge my serial dating in a self-deprecating and joking manner. (See: 500,000 men on Facebook.) But Government Mule (recently made guy-friend and owner of the Facebook profile I wrote on) and I were sitting topless in a hot tub drinking gin and tonnies at 3 a.m. one night when the subject of dating comes up again. He tells me I talk about it too much.(Hey, buddy, you just joined the group... last November.) So I went from not talking about it at all, to talking about it too much.

To be fair though, Harvey is married and therefore never talks about dating. Katie and her sister have no interest in dating and therefore never talk about dating. (Both did stints on eHarmoney with no results.) Government Mule and Swayze (the boys) don't date for whatever reason and therefore never talk about dating. (GM did all of his dating before joining the group and Swayze is delightfully and endearingly awkward around girls.) In the four years we've been hanging out, I am the only person to bring along a date. And in my group, that makes me the weird one. (But I don't feel weird. Why can't they be the weird ones?)

We also never talk about sex (which I have to say has been really bugging me lately). I miss the days in college where Harvey and I did some pretty wild things and then swap stories the next day. Harvey and I will still talk when we're alone (reminiscing on those stories from college), but it's like the group is asexual and my attempts to not make it asexual lately have not gone unnoticed. (Bah. The whole thing is making me feel little dirty.)

So we were sitting in the hot tub topless (once again, my attempt to spice things up and remind everyone that we just share the love of beer and college football, we also have girl parts and boy parts) and he tells me that I'm brazen. (Well yes, we're both topless and I'm the only one where it counts.) He tells me I ask the questions that no one else does. (I'd like to thank my years spent as a journalist.) And he says it's because of this that I'm not going to do well on Plenty of Fish or even eHarmony. (Humpf.) He said I needed to be friends with someone first and then build a relationship off of that. (I think that was a really long-winded way of saying I have diarrhea of the mouth and need someone who already knows this and can get past it.)

To which I have called the whole experiment a fail and have abandoned talking about dating to my friends. (Munch, munch, munch and eat more of my feelings.)