It is not at all false to say that men will date much younger but not much older. Sure there are exceptions to everything, but in general terms that is spot on.
Here’s that blog - it’s fascinating.
Look at some personals. You’ll see.
It can also be said that: “The harsh truth is women will date men much older than themselves, but not much younger.”
I think you guys are reading too much in to this. I do know how to have a conversation, and IRL I’m pretty good socially, if a bit on the quiet side. Most of my peers are in the business, and I usually fit right in. I’m pretty different than my board persona. On the boards I veer towards too much, because I know people can skip or ignore me. But IRL my biggest fear is that I’m “that girl,” so I tend to keep quiet until I have something solid to add to the conversation.
I got side-tracked with my personal reintegration issues. It’s a process, everyone goes through it, and it’s normal to take some time to figure out how to bring the parts of your life together and present them in a way people appreciate. I’m mostly through the process, but it’ll take time and distance to fully set.
But the dating question is that I keep saying “I like to travel” and “I’ve been living abroad,” and leaving it at that. But in my experience, people end up off put when they learn that I didn’t mean a semester in Italy. What is a better way to present this, that lets them know what’s up but doesn’t overplay things?
This is probably how 95% of the planet operates. Even when you do talk about those things that fall outside common ground, it shouldn’t take a whole heap of an imagination to make those things relevant or interesting to someone else.
“I like to travel, a lot” and “I’ve lived abroad in a bunch of different, interesting places.”
In my experience, anything you want bad enough requires practice. Sounds like you need to practice with different approaches to presenting your interests and see which work…
…I don’t have experience with online dating, but isn’t that a key part of anyone’s “online dating journey”? Getting comfortable with that world and knowing how to get your point across is part of the learning curve?
How about, “I spent four years in the Peace Corps;” most people know what that means, and if they don’t, they can ask.
One more piece of advice (for now 
) - when I start to get all wound up and confused and overthinking things, I just leave it alone for a while and come back to it later. Sometimes you can’t figure things out and just need some time to let things fall into place (or to get a better grasp on them, or get some perspective). It sounds like that’s where you are with dating - all confused and going off in a hundred different directions.
“So what do you do, even sven?”
“I’m in grad school, majoring in International Development.”
“Cool! How did you get interested in that?”
“I’ve always been interested in travel and learning new cultures. It’s just something that fits me.”
“Really? That’s interesting.”
“Yeah, I actually just got of the Peace Corps. Worked in China and Cameroon for four years. Really good experience for me.”
“Wow, that’s pretty impressive. I’m sure you have a bunch of interesting stories to tell.”
“Yup! I could keep you up all night with stories. Like for instance, you’re never believe how they celebrate Christmas in China!” laughs sven sven. She leans forward and then smiles pleasantly. “So what do you do, Tim?”
It took me all of two minutes to whip up this mock conversation. Still not getting your dilemma here. Sorry.
even sven, I think you may be underplaying by saying “I like to travel,” and that sets you up for it being a big deal when the Reveal happens – you can be just a bit more specific when you’re doing the life-rundown – “I grew up in X, I went to college at Y and studied internatonal relations, and then I kicked around in various countries for Z years, most recently South Africa,” should be fine, and tells your listener the basic facts without making them a big deal.
(I do the same thing, too, so I know of what I speak! I tend to put off or demur or try to gloss over the fact that I went to a Big-Name College, with the result that when people find out it’s a much bigger deal than if I’d simply just dropped the name up front… so it’s something I’m working on as well.)
My name’s actually not Tim, but I’d really like to talk to you some more! Coffee?
Yeah I’m not getting it either. And don’t say the phrase “reintegration issues” to a date.
Again - I think the key is her assertion in the post up-thread that she is quiet in conversations IRL. We get the **even sven **who thinks/posts freely but (seemingly) hasn’t figured out how to smoothly translate that to IRL conversations that don’t feel awkward - or, at least, translate to IRL conversations that support broader dating activity.
Sounds like a combo of “modify your mindset” and “practice your conversation skills.” Both totally normal within the context of trying to approach dating different, but perhaps a new insight for even sven?
::wipes hands, gets up::
Is our work done here? Has coaching occurred? 
ooor, she needs to hook up with a Doper, cuz we already know about her.*
- = Not me, I’m happily married, but there are guys upthread that are interested, and it’s not like you’re breaking new ground with Doper Hookups.
<– 25/m/va
i think daters in DC suffers from a bit of peter pan syndrome and mr. burns’s 3 stooges syndrome.
peter pan syndrome = i want to be a kid forever and i don’t really have to look for a significant other as long as i’m having un.
3 stooges syndrome = too many candidates busting down the door that they all get wedged into the doorjam.
there are literally too many eligible singles in the area, all of whom are reasonable educated, fun, and attractive. then the loss aversion outweighs the risk aversion and we keep looking for the bigger/better deal instead of worrying about “what if i don’t find a next guy/girl”.
on a lighter note… i’m going to be at Rumors (http://www.rumorsrestaurant.com/) saturday night dancing the night away. come find me and maybe we’ll have a love connection. if not, i’ve got friends that are older that’ll be there - worldly friends at that. one guy taught in russia for 2 years, another from Taiwan, etc.
take a chance take a chance take a chance take a chance take a chance
He’ll be the one with the whistle and clipboard.
I seriously considered the Peace Corps after undergrad but decided on grad school instead. As part of my research, I talked to a lot of recently returned volunteers. All of them were really cool and very open and honest about their experience. All of them also went on and on about the “reintegration” process and bemoaned the “fact” that dating is simply impossible now after what they had been through and who could possibly understand. :rolleyes: Even though my international travel experience at the time didn’t go beyond Tijuana, I thought that that was ridiculous. I can only guess that they make a huge deal out of this during the training.
Lots of people have traveled and seen weird things. It’s interesting but it’s really and truly not that big of a deal. If anything, it’s a plus because most people like interesting anecdotes.
Wow. That is the coolest thing I’ve read in ages. Also, screw dating sites, I’d like to hang out with the person that writes that blog. If he or she is not a doper we should actively recruit them.
That is a blog for a dating site called okcupid. The data is culled from the dating site itself. I am pretty sure that the blog is written by a staff and not just one person.
This os how it usually goes (except usually it’s “Four years in Peace Corps? Who the hell serrces twice?” But maybe 20% of the time, the details get skipped. Then when they come out later, it’s awkward.
This isn’t a huge problem, just a little thing I know I could be doing better. It’s not like Peace Corps is ruining my love life. It really does rarely come up. I just need to find a good intro.
As for the process of coming back, I don’t really care how easy you think it should be. It’s tough, and it’s harder exactly because nobody can see why you are so weird about things and if you explain, nobody thinks it’s a valid problem. You can see the contradictions in this thread…people say “It’s not a big deal…just don’t ever talk about it.” Even when you explain the stuff you have trouble figuring out how to talk about, you get accused of showing off and being a “special snowflake” and told not to talk about it. Gee, thanks. How can you expect me to go “30 minutes” without even once referencing even in passing four of the last five years of my life? People don’t get that I’m not telling “Peace Corps stories.” EVERYTHING from 2006-2010 is going to be deeply colored by where I was. It’s not super special, but I can’t avoid talking about it without avoiding talking about all of my mid and late twenties. That’s a lot of time to downplay, and I’m nothing like I was before it.
When there is the Rip Van Winkle thing. When I came back, I had never seen Glee. I had the impression Lady Gaga ruled America, but knew no other pop music. I missed the entire financial crisis. I missed Obama’s election, the Tea Party, Geln Beck, Sarah Palin and Nancy Grace. I had never used a self-checkout machine. Fkat screens were luxury item you’d see on “Cribs.” Only businessmen had smart phones. My friends were artsy San Franciscans out of college, not DC yuppies.
I couldn’t talk about music, movies, politics and current events, unless you wanted to talk about Ivoriane Pop and the new mayor of Chongqing. My hobbies were KTV, roasting goats, and mah jong.
Living extensively in a community out of the expat scene is not like travel. You don’t see what it is like. You live it, day in and day out. You work a regular job. You make friends, and you go to some of their funerals. You are sick half the time, too, from the same diseases they get. The political oppression iaffects your daily life. And you change. You adapt. You get a new name, learn a new language, and realy get a whole new identity. Everything, down to taking a shit, is different. You need to be able to negotiate the world as a Chinese, a Cameroonian, whatever, just to survive. And you do it and it changes you forever.
And then you go home and you can’t talk about it. Nobody thinks it’s a big deal. But it is a big deal to you. Nobody gets why you can’t figure out how to use self-checkout machine, why you ask what “Glee” is about, why your English syntax is garbled. And you can’t explain because they don’t really want to hear about it. You use vague terms, minimize, and go home to hear another friend in Africa died. Another of your Chinese students is suicidal and asking you what to do. And that world and self is speeding away from you. You aren’t fully anywhere.
Now, this isn’t keeping me up at mights and I certainly don’t bring it up with anyone who is’t an RPCV or who I’m dating. I’ve had a smooth transition, and figured out how to make sense of this stuff pretty well. Time fixes the rest as other stuff becomes more relevent. But it is a process. A tough one. And it’s not a character flaw to go through it and to have emotions about it.