Online Dating Guide » internet dating

Because Everyone Needs a 2P

Brad — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:00:35 +0000

Just for fun, here’s a post over at GameSpy that supposes what things would look like if video game characters had dating profile. You’ll have to be familiar with video games to appreciate these but I found them pretty amusing. I particularly like Luigi’s response to “Do You Want Children”:

Apparently this idea is becoming popular as GamesRadar also has some video game dating profiles in the post If game characters used dating sites. They then opened the idea to their readers and here’s what some of them came up with.

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Online Dating Horror Stories…Or Just Dating Horror Stories?

Brad — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:00:55 +0000

You’ll see people complain about how bad their online dates have been. One great site for stories regarding this is Internet Dating Stories (I love the tag line: “The good, the bad, and the OH MY GOD, what were they thinking?!”). Obviously after browsing this site you’ll see there are plenty of bad dates out there originating from the internet. I’ve heard men and women describe bad dates and attribute the entirety of those bad dates to online dating itself. I have some bad news for the people out there who think online dating is the reason they are on bad dates: bad dates have existed long before the creation of online dating in the late 90s.

There have always been bad dates for those who actively date. And that’s the key: for those who actively date. Online dating hasn’t introduced the idea of bad dates. Online dating has simply allowed people who would never date actively to now have a tool that allows them to do so. Some of these same people turn around and claim that online dating is the reason they have bad dates. No, online dating is the reason you have any dates at all. Also, are those weird people you meet any less strange on more traditional dates? Of course not.

Complaining that online dating creates bad dates would be like someone complaining that their car creates a long work commute. The car empowered them to work far from their home…it didn’t create a problem, it solved one. Likewise, online dating often provides the dateless with dates. These people then turn around and claim that the tool solving their problem is the source of their bad dates. Well, technically it’s true! Online dating is the source of their bad dates but it’s really the source of all their dates. Try not to complain that Match.com or eHarmony or whatever only provides bad dates if it’s providing you with all of the dates you have.

Now one argument that may hold some water is the idea that online dating is allowing strange people, who would rarely or never find a date otherwise, to enter the dating scene. I suppose this is true but you have to be willing to accept the good with the bad. When someone has a long work commute, they are accepting the risks that are associated with doing so: traffic, high gas prices, bad drivers and so on.

If it’s true that online dating is responsible for the bad dates, then it must also be responsible for the great dates. If online dating is responsible for the date where that charming man turns out to be mildly insane, then it is also responsible for the date that led me to meeting my wife. You must be willing to accept the bad if you are to have any hope of finding the good (unless you’re lucky like my wife – I was the first man she met dating online!).

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Should I Reject or Ignore Unwanted Contact on Dating Sites?

Brad — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:33:10 +0000

Is it better to ignore unwanted contact or come right out and tell someone that you’re not interested? I’ve had this question asked a few times…always by women but I assume some men find themselves asking this question as well. On one hand, simply ignoring people is generally considered rude but on the other explicitly rejecting someone isn’t something most people like to do. For many of us, especially early on in our online dating, this creates something of a dilemma.

So first things first, I’ll explain how I think you should respond and then I’ll go into the details of why:

If this is the first time they have contacted you and you’re not interested I would recommend remaining silent. They may not be the right person for you but they’re probably great for someone out there. Rejection gets both old and depressing, especially when done carelessly (and you may not be as tactful as you think you are). If you explicitly reject someone the wrong way, you may not only be ruining their day but also the day of the person they would have met had they avoided a little too much honesty from you!
If this is the second (or third or more) time they’ve contacted you, go ahead and let them know you’re not interested but leave some mystery as to why. It’s not your job to fix their profile or attitude or anything else so you may see some major problems with the way they are presenting themselves but keep that to yourself.
If they persist, all bets are off and you can be as honest as you want to be. This repeated and unwanted contact begins to approach harassment (even though the person contacting may not see things this way).

Note: If at any point you begin to have conversations of any kind with someone and later decide you’re not interested, you need to let them know. I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t always follow this rule but I should have and you should too.

Why Should I Respond with Silence?
At one time, I was very annoyed by women who never wrote back after I contacted them. My dating habits at the time were that I didn’t want to date more than one woman at a time so I would wait a few days before contacting another woman. I was trying to give the first woman time to contact me back. Over the next few months I learned a few things:

Trying to only talk to one woman at a time is a good way to have very few dates. This is a bad way to approach dating and the opposite approach works far better.
Explicit rejection is no fun

With explicit rejection…well, this turned out to be one of those cases where I thought I wanted it until I actually started to get it. When I started receiving the “you’re not my type” emails, I realized it was much easier and less depressing to assume that she had:

Stopped using the online dating service
Met someone else and hadn’t had time to remove her profile
Left the country to volunteer in a third-world country
Or any other excuse to convince myself that she would love to meet me but other circumstances prevented it

I had women who just wrote back “no”, that one word and nothing more. I had women who wrote back and were more than happy to explain why they weren’t interested, in great detail. I once had a woman write me back a month after I had contacted her to let me know that she had been away but now that she was back she just wanted me to know she didn’t want to talk to me (this one stung in particular since I had forgotten by this point that I had contacted her). I suspect most of these women saw contacting me just to say “no” as “doing the right thing” but I think their attempt to do the honorable thing was a little misplaced.

Finally, if you’re finding yourself on the other side of this question and are getting beat up by a few too honest men or women, don’t take it to heart. You’re going to have to remain persistent to find success whether you’re find rejection in emails or in silence. Don’t let it get you down, it happens to us all!

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Crass Men Hurt Everyone in Online Dating

Brad — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:53:36 +0000

crass /kras/ – without refinement, delicacy, or sensitivity; gross; obtuse; stupid

I read an article today that got me worked up regarding what some men see as reasonable communication with women. The author, Barbara/Layla, describes a bad online date which isn’t really the problem (we all have those). The problem begins when the man emailed her after the date to let her know he was not interested, in as rude a fashion as his small brain could devise. I’m not even going to repeat his garbage but do recommend you check out her post here. To me, this sounds like a man who sees the world as his stage and the rest of us, in his mind, are just lucky to be there to see him perform. I cannot ever imagine writing something like that to a woman after a date…probably because I always saw them as another person, not some object whose sole purpose was to meet my current demands.

Guys who act like this infuriate me. You might find yourself say, “But why should you care?! As a man, you didn’t have to deal with these jerks!” No, I didn’t have to deal with these men but they do shape the dating environment other men have to work within. Case in point: I believe there is a man out there looking for exactly what Barbara has to offer. And while he struggles with failure in his search, constantly changing who he is to meet what the psychological mumbo-jumbo says he should be, it is actually some other man who is ruining his chances.

I almost missed out on meeting my wife because of another man. She was stood up on her first online date and given some weak line on how “something came up”. If Kate had not already scheduled a date with me, there is a chance she would have given up on online dating all together. It demands the question to be asked: how often does some jerk scare off another man’s perfect match? Based on Barbara’s article, at least once and that’s one time too many.

Guys: It is a good thing to have some class. Treat the ladies you meet with respect. Yes, even if they aren’t exactly what you are looking for. Ladies: try not to hate men in general. Yes, men like Barbara’s date are well deserving of your scorn but they are not the whole of what the sex has to offer!

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Online Dating and MySpace

Brad — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 18:27:09 +0000

Are people really having success finding love with MySpace? I’m not talking about a purely physical relationships. Based photos I’ve seen, the site is obviously a self-advertising platform for some people. What I am talking about is actual success finding good relationships. I find myself asking this because many sites I have found in my search for good dating articles seem to suggest MySpace as a valid online dating service contender.

This reminds me of the McDonald’s from high school. All the teenagers would hang out in the McDonald’s parking lot because, honestly, there was nothing better to do. A few dating relationships were even formed there. But to suggest that the McDonald’s parking lot is a great place to meet singles just because some teenagers have nothing better to do seems insane. If my home town had created a dance club for teenagers, the McDonald’s parking lot would have been empty! That is why the online dating advice given by some baffles me: even though there are thousands of virtual “dance clubs” some people still insist on hanging out in the parking lot.

Also, have you seen some of the profiles there? I have some good friends who I would be frightened of if their profile was all I had to go off of! Don’t get me wrong. I love MySpace for its functionality. I am in contact with friends who I would not be otherwise and I check my account often. Still, when sites dedicated to online dating advice have in-depth articles for your MySpace profile, I find myself shaking my head.

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Online Dating: What Your Emails Should NOT Look Like

Brad — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:58:16 +0000

I briefly described what I thought a good email looks like in my online dating guide. Basically, my opinion is keep things short and simple while proving you actually read the profile. Today, I found a site called I Liked Your Profile that is a collection of weird, scary or just out-right funny emails people have received at their online dating accounts. There are many opinions to be found across the internet stating what your message should look like. While their may not be any perfect formula for what your messages should contain, this site gives examples on what your emails should not look like! Be sure to the Best of ILYP on the right – these ones are great/hilarious (or perhaps horrible if you are the one receiving them).

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No Contact After the First Date

Brad — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:30:13 +0000

This article is based off of a third incoming search “after first date didn’t call cancelled a meeting”. I had originally intended to included this with my previous post on phone calls but soon realized the discussion went well beyond that topic.

If you date online long enough chances are you are going to run into a situation where the person you were speaking to “drops off the face of the earth”. This scenario exists in all types of dating but seems to be the preferred method of ending relationships online.

Things normally go something like this: two people meet and one believes they had a nice time while the other thinks otherwise. The dater who enjoyed the date then attempts to contact the other person only to be met by silence. This situation is not limited to meeting on a date. I’ve had cases where I had thought I was having an excellent email conversation with a potential date only to have her go silent on me. I had this happen to me more than a few times when dating online.

In the beginning, I often made excuses for why they were no longer talking to me. I would think to myself, “They must have had to leave town, I’ll contact her again in a week”. Then I would follow through: I would contact her again in a week only to be met with the same silence. Now I know I was just drawing out a situation a week longer than necessary.

Later, when I had my act together with online dating, one lack of a response ended things immediately. I stopped trying to make excuses and started respecting my own time. That is not to say it didn’t bother me any longer (it never stopped bothering me) but I had learned to move on – it was one of the best decisions I made. Occasionally I was even surprised by someone who would contact me after a week or so with some excuse why she hadn’t responded. Interestingly, at this point my attitude had changed from one of excitement to one of annoyance that she hadn’t respected me enough to let me know she would be out of contact. It was my turn to be silent in these cases.

I suspect many people act as I initially did for a few reasons. First, rejection hurts even if it comes in a round-about way. Second, I feel that people are inclined to respect themselves less than they respect their dates. I would have never stopped talking to someone I was interested yet would convince myself it was acceptable for someone else to do exactly that to me. In reality, barring some personal tragedy, either they were not interested in me or they didn’t respect my time. In both cases, they were not worth my time (and aren’t worth yours).

Regardless of how often it happens, admitting that someone is not interested in you can be painful. Here are a few thoughts on reducing the pain of this situation:

Give this article on hurt feelings from dating a read. It is not specifically related to online dating rejection but I feel it is a good article to read. If you are basing all your hopes on some fantasy you are building about the guy or girl you haven’t even met yet, the pain will only be greater if/when things don’t work out.
As I covered in the guide, dating multiple people is some of the best advice I have to offer. When I had three or four first dates planned over a two week time period, a woman going silent, or rejecting me out-right for that matter, hurt a lot less. It also encouraged me to respect myself as I was no longer inclined to keep some fantasy about any one woman alive at any cost.

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Social Acceptance of Online Dating

Brad — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:48:16 +0000

When my wife and I first started dating, we had joked about making up a story on how we met since we were unsure how acceptable online dating would be. We actually tried it out a few times: my favorite was telling friends we met while she was operating a lemonade stand (she had been out of work when we first met). This was not much more than a game between the two of us to see who could be more creative. Months went by and we were now in the habit of telling the truth and, occassionally, dealing with the blank stares. Most people were kind enough to try to recover and act as if “we met online” was exactly what they expected us to say.

Six months into our relationship, Kate and I went to my company Christmas party. The idea of hiding how we had met had long left my mind. So when asked how we had met while we were socializing with a group of six co-workers, I quickly replied, “We met online” without thinking twice about it. What occurred at this point baffles me to this day: every person in the group became instantly silent and there was an obvious air of discomfort. I think someone even tried to change the subject! Eventually Kate and I excused ourselves and, once alone, immediately started a “did that just really happen” conversation.

What really blew my mind was the fact that I had shared my online dating experience with anyone at work who would listen! They had plenty to say during the times that I was struggling – is online dating only acceptable when it is failing?! As Kate and I talked about it, the idea that kept coming back was: if we were comfortable with it, why shouldn’t others be? Why would it have been more acceptable to have met at a bar or a grocery store? I don’t know the answers to these questions except to suggest that it is because online dating is so new. Perhaps in previous generations meeting at the bar was met with a similiar response of shock and only over the last few decades has it become so acceptable as to be the norm.

Recently, my wife and I went to a birthday party. There were four couples there and after a little conversation we found that three of the four couples had met online. Each had used a different dating service but we all agreed that it was the way to go. Sure, we all had a few “horror” stories, but we all found the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with, too. A small price to pay in my opinion! If this is an example of the trend that is occurring, it is good news because soon online dating will likely be accepted as the new norm.

For the life of me I will never understand how meeting a stranger in a dark, strange place while inebriated is valued as greater than being a little selective, regardless of how “new” your method of selection is.

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