Lookin' for love in virtual places....
While Slut-urday is always a good time, today we have invited our friend Lauren, a seasoned pro, to impart some of her own dating wisdom...
Actually, the song goes "I was lookin' for love in all the wrong places, Lookin' for love in too many places...". As a single 31 yr old woman who’s been in many serious and long term relationships, none of which have resulted in even an engagement, I am adopting this as my theme song. Thanks, Johnny Lee.
I’m not supposed to date people I work with, blind dates are drying up because my friends and all their friends are spoken for, and, after age 25, people tend to go to bars to hang out with the people they they came with, not to meet new people. Therefore I’m left with [drumroll please]…online dating.
Now I know you all have that friend who has a friend who met his or her soul mate on Match.com, but in all reality, online dating is a messy, scary, hairy (or more likely lack there of) situation. As a rather experienced online dater I would like to bestow upon you my experience and advice for how to handle some unpleasant situations that every online dater will eventually encounter, share some of my more harrowing and hilarious stories, and of course, my minor successes because I really do have a love/hate relationship with online dating. It has some lows, but it also has some highs. You just gotta know when to get off the roller coaster for a little break. ;-)
First things first, choosing the online dating site that’s right for you. There are pretty much three main options:
1) Match.com, the marketing geniuses behind this one fill our screens with pictures of good looking, interesting, single people that are just waiting for you to pay your $30 and logon so you all can meet, fall in love and live out the aforementioned tale. The reality is you will pay your $30, many freaky people will “wink” at you, you will “wink” back at a few and eventually email even fewer and then go out on a date to find out if there is any chemistry. We’ll get to chemistry in a second.
2) eHarmony, which fills our screens with normal to (let’s be honest) below average looking people madly in love who met due to eHarmony’s scientific and extensive matching algorithm and were therefore able to see past the short balding exterior to the heart of gold underneath because they were just so gosh, darn compatible. Well, last I checked, eHarmony is no Google and, if algorithms could find you your match, then every computer geek would be married to a hotty. I only had 1 date ever come out of the very extensive survey and fee I gave them to find the most compatible man in the world for me. That’s just fraud in my book.
3) Lastly there are the free sites… ahhh, now here is where I flourish. My personal fave is Plenty of Fish..No one is freaked out that they’ve invested money, nor thatthey’ve spilled their heart and soul to some database that will locate their one true love with a few keywords. It’s just a bunch of people “giving this online thing a shot” (Yes. you will see that exact quote in many profiles). For me, this is the online dating Mecca.
Now, not to burst any bubbles, but even if you get to an actual physical date, there will most likely not be chemistry and your date will only vaguely look like one of their pictures if they stand in really good light and you squint. When the inevitable happens, be prepared for your date to respond in one of three ways:
1) He will be horribly rude. I had a date with a guy who appeared to be an upstanding fireman until he left me standing on a corner, after dark, in a not so nice area of downtown because he couldn’t be bothered to walk me all the way to my car. This after he dragged me to the mall to get the battery fixed on his watch for our date!! Not joking!
2) He will be aware of the lack of chemistry, and because he has paid $30 for his Match.com membership (or more for other sites) and has bought you one measly drink, he will feel that you owe it to him to give it another shot. He will then go from shocked to rude when you tell him you really don’t want to and wish him best of luck in his search, etc. etc.
3) And this is the worst…he will be completely smitten and not understand any of the standard social signs of non-interest that you will wave at him like a big red flag in front of a bull. He will continue to call, text, email and basically stalk you…I had one guy that I went on a one chemistry-less date with proceed to call and email me even when I actually told him “No thank you, I’m not interested.” He must have taken it as I was not interested in the specific date activity he had proposed, because his response would be just to offer another activity and time. Unfortunately, this guy lived in the neighborhood that I had just moved to, and one day as I was returning from walking my dog, I received a text that said “Nice pink vest, wow Lilo is HUGE!” Yes, it was my one-time date turned stalker who had seen me out walking and sent me a text to let me know. [Insert a little “Every breath you take” by the Police] FREAKY!!
So there you go, social butterflies. But don’t lose heart. I am actually off to a date with one of my online suitors as we speak. Stay tuned to hear about the “Bat Phone” as well as how weed out the fakes and how to keep track of online names versus real names. I have a spreadsheet template I can give you!
~Lauren
Actually, the song goes "I was lookin' for love in all the wrong places, Lookin' for love in too many places...". As a single 31 yr old woman who’s been in many serious and long term relationships, none of which have resulted in even an engagement, I am adopting this as my theme song. Thanks, Johnny Lee.
I’m not supposed to date people I work with, blind dates are drying up because my friends and all their friends are spoken for, and, after age 25, people tend to go to bars to hang out with the people they they came with, not to meet new people. Therefore I’m left with [drumroll please]…online dating.
Now I know you all have that friend who has a friend who met his or her soul mate on Match.com, but in all reality, online dating is a messy, scary, hairy (or more likely lack there of) situation. As a rather experienced online dater I would like to bestow upon you my experience and advice for how to handle some unpleasant situations that every online dater will eventually encounter, share some of my more harrowing and hilarious stories, and of course, my minor successes because I really do have a love/hate relationship with online dating. It has some lows, but it also has some highs. You just gotta know when to get off the roller coaster for a little break. ;-)
First things first, choosing the online dating site that’s right for you. There are pretty much three main options:
1) Match.com, the marketing geniuses behind this one fill our screens with pictures of good looking, interesting, single people that are just waiting for you to pay your $30 and logon so you all can meet, fall in love and live out the aforementioned tale. The reality is you will pay your $30, many freaky people will “wink” at you, you will “wink” back at a few and eventually email even fewer and then go out on a date to find out if there is any chemistry. We’ll get to chemistry in a second.
2) eHarmony, which fills our screens with normal to (let’s be honest) below average looking people madly in love who met due to eHarmony’s scientific and extensive matching algorithm and were therefore able to see past the short balding exterior to the heart of gold underneath because they were just so gosh, darn compatible. Well, last I checked, eHarmony is no Google and, if algorithms could find you your match, then every computer geek would be married to a hotty. I only had 1 date ever come out of the very extensive survey and fee I gave them to find the most compatible man in the world for me. That’s just fraud in my book.
3) Lastly there are the free sites… ahhh, now here is where I flourish. My personal fave is Plenty of Fish..No one is freaked out that they’ve invested money, nor thatthey’ve spilled their heart and soul to some database that will locate their one true love with a few keywords. It’s just a bunch of people “giving this online thing a shot” (Yes. you will see that exact quote in many profiles). For me, this is the online dating Mecca.
Now, not to burst any bubbles, but even if you get to an actual physical date, there will most likely not be chemistry and your date will only vaguely look like one of their pictures if they stand in really good light and you squint. When the inevitable happens, be prepared for your date to respond in one of three ways:
1) He will be horribly rude. I had a date with a guy who appeared to be an upstanding fireman until he left me standing on a corner, after dark, in a not so nice area of downtown because he couldn’t be bothered to walk me all the way to my car. This after he dragged me to the mall to get the battery fixed on his watch for our date!! Not joking!
2) He will be aware of the lack of chemistry, and because he has paid $30 for his Match.com membership (or more for other sites) and has bought you one measly drink, he will feel that you owe it to him to give it another shot. He will then go from shocked to rude when you tell him you really don’t want to and wish him best of luck in his search, etc. etc.
3) And this is the worst…he will be completely smitten and not understand any of the standard social signs of non-interest that you will wave at him like a big red flag in front of a bull. He will continue to call, text, email and basically stalk you…I had one guy that I went on a one chemistry-less date with proceed to call and email me even when I actually told him “No thank you, I’m not interested.” He must have taken it as I was not interested in the specific date activity he had proposed, because his response would be just to offer another activity and time. Unfortunately, this guy lived in the neighborhood that I had just moved to, and one day as I was returning from walking my dog, I received a text that said “Nice pink vest, wow Lilo is HUGE!” Yes, it was my one-time date turned stalker who had seen me out walking and sent me a text to let me know. [Insert a little “Every breath you take” by the Police] FREAKY!!
So there you go, social butterflies. But don’t lose heart. I am actually off to a date with one of my online suitors as we speak. Stay tuned to hear about the “Bat Phone” as well as how weed out the fakes and how to keep track of online names versus real names. I have a spreadsheet template I can give you!
~Lauren
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