I think you should give a little more thought to ReticulatingSplines’s suggestion to look at your own ability to carry on an interesting conversation. Your example questions seem trite and uninteresting to me.
I listen to music all day, but it’s never been a passion of mine. So I could talk about my interest in music for about 8 seconds before boring myself. Personally I would find a way to steer the conversation toward something we are hopefully both interested in, but I’ve always been good at doing that. I don’t think it’s fair to blame the guys 100% for being disinterested in improving the quality of the discourse.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been on a lot of dates with boring women who’re bad at making conversation and I’ve always managed to carry on an engaging conversation. Even when I don’t like the person or want to see them again, we can at least have a lively conversation for 2 hours.
I disagree. Any person who has been lobbed conversational softballs that include “What authors do you like?” and “What food do you like?” AND “What do you do when you’re not working?” and can only respond with vaguely monosyllabic grunts is not likely to become a sparkling conversationalist under the best of circumstances.
I have met women who claim most guys they meet are “boring,” and the only correlation I can figure out is that these women also watch a ***lot ***of TV and movies. The guys they meet in RL are more boring than the male characters on their favorite TV shows.
So again, if the men are boring, compared to who? What is your baseline? Who is not boring?
And there are plenty of women out there who will be happy to accomodate that.
It’s also not hard, once you have a little life experience, to spot the married ones. One thing I’ve also found amusing regarding younger men is that so many of their pictures have part of a woman’s head in the corner. :rolleyes:
This. I find an issue with a lot of women I date is that the lady will talk my ear off about herself, but very rarely or never ask questions about myself. I’ve asked on this board why so many women do this, but never really have gotten a satisfying answer.
Just because the guys are messing up doesn’t mean that the OP isn’t also messing up. She, and a lot of women, pursue dead ends at a higher-than-rational rate. The guys are wrong for being “boring” but that doesn’t preclude her from being boring herself. It takes 2 to tango.
It’s a different world out here in the dating pool 2013, Shakes. You don’t have to date girls to have sex anymore. There’s an entire “hook-up” culture where mutually attracted, noncommittal sex is available, even acceptable. Yes, even for multiple encounters. Blame the cell phone.
Zen advice.
Better advice (imo). I know a lot of female friends who when I can tell pretty quickly just by how they’re describing the guy they just went out on a date with if they’re reaching for a relationship rather than being genuinely smitten. Little verbal cues like calling him “the gym guy” rather than “Matt, the gym guy”, qualifying him as “nice”, or being obsessive with online fb/twitter stalking.
Just an explanation, not accusing anyone specific of this:
the name - Not using someone’s name is dehumanizing and shielding herself for casual brush-off if/when it doesn’t work out.
nice - The leading adjective is the most important. Ideally you want the guy you date to be smart, dynamic, engaging, funny, interesting, hot… not nice. The easiest thing a guy can be is nice. In fact, most, if not all guys are nice on a date. If the impression that’s left on you after the first date is “nice” then that person didn’t make much of an impression and it rarely gets better from there.
stalking - Less history, more mystery. Online stalking belies trust issues and insecurities. Either you don’t trust him to be everything he is or you don’t trust yourself to be as engaging so you’re looking for tips/hints to supplement your personality profile. Or you’re a glutton for punishment.
Allergic to cats. However, I will mainline benedril if the OP turns out to be… Emma Watson.
True. I’m often in that camp. True love would be nice, but some nice respectful love making is not a loss. But please make it clear which one is going on. I do hate guys who promise love eternal and then flake. Look, it’s 2013, if you just want a night of fun then for fuck’s sake tell me.
End of rant.
To OP, I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong as such. I agree with Ferret Herder about taking the initiative and writing to the guys whose profiles you don’t find boring and don’t wait for them to write to you.
Apart from that, I think dating is just a somewhat messy business by nature. I also think people have got the impression that they are somehow owed a great partner by life and if that’s not happening then something’s wrong. I think it’s not like that. He might never arrive or he might arrive tomorrow. And to me that’s kind of okay. I’m set to have fun along the way. And it if it isn’t fun, kindly but clearly say "no thanks, and move to the next date. Or go hang out with your friends for a bit. No harm done.
I don’t know the OP, but the conversational snippets she relates establish “boring” by any reasonable measure:
SHE ASKS: “What kind of music do you like?”
DATE 1:“A lot.”
DATE 2: “Nothing specific.”
DATE 3: “I don’t get the appeal of live music.”
SHE ASKS: “What authors do you like?”
DATE 1: “No favorites.”
DATE 2: “I don’t read fiction.”
SHE ASKS: “What kind of food do you like?”
DATE 1: “I dunno, never thought about it.”
SHE ASKS: “What do you do when you’re not working?”
DATE 1: “Talk to people.”
DATE 2: “Think.”
That’s boring, in any dictionary. How can anyone read, and not have any favorites? Really? Every author you read was equally appealing, huh? Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me?” grabbed you just the way Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird,” eh?
I agree with Pookah (but how do you feel about kangaroos?). You’re probably not doing anything wrong. There are a lot of boring and/or terrible people, and you can find most of them on the internet. You’re doing it right now!
That’s not to say that you can’t find anyone who works for you, but I don’t think your experiences as you’ve related them are weird or require an explanation of what’s going wrong; that’s just how it goes sometimes. Most times.
Plus, what’re you, in your mid-20s? It seems to me like guys in that age range are, by and large, having a hell of a time with themselves these days, especially vis a vis women. 90% of the guys you described in the OP are probably super-depressed themselves - pathologically boring. The Venn diagram of the pickup-artist-inspired avant-garde phallocrats, the hypersensitive manchildren, the sad needy love sponges (and god, the law students!!) vs. the regular single dudes with some semblance of their shit together, on the internet in particular, is going to tend towards requiring some weeding out, I think. I really don’t think I’m overgeneralizing. There are people out there. There are just also shitty people out there.
Re women who claim to want “smart” men I’ve found this usually translates to “men who agree with me and make me feel smart”. Intellectual debates or discussions beyond this level are often leg closers.
Your experience sounds utterly normal, sorry. You gotta kiss a lot of frogs, etc etc.
Why drive yourself crazy? Odds are, the truth of the matter is that you can take what he said at face value. Add in he’s trying to date because he thinks he “should”, or because he over-estimates his ability to juggle work with social life (which a LOT of people do), and that’s why he’s still on the dating site. He hasn’t accepted that he doesn’t have time for it right now, or that he could make time (which is maybe true or maybe not, no way to tell) but he’s got other, incompatible priorities right now. None of this is a bad reflection on his intent, and I doubt he lied, it’s just the place where he is right now. Eventually he’ll be in a different place, as will you. Not to say that you should “wait for him” or some shit, you shouldn’t, but that all this is perfectly normal and common, too.
Also, FWIW, I technically still have a dating profile up, not that I check it ever. If I get an email that someone messaged me, I’ll hop in and look, but other than that it’s an inactive profile, I just am too busy/lazy to take it down.
Whether or not you settle is up to you, but I wouldn’t settle for boring. That just can’t end well. Compatibility is important for long-term relationship health/success. You need to want to talk to the guy you’re seeing.
It’s not you, it’s them. Truly. People are flaky, especially when dating. I had to kiss a lot of frogs, too. Some of 'em were real dicks about it.
Personally, I spent a lot of time getting to know a person before I dated them. Even on a dating site, what’s the rush? If you’re in it for a long term relationship, spend those weeks feeling the other person out. Talk to them like you would a friend. Get to know them a little. A couple wham-bam questions and “oh he seems boring, next one” is just too fast in my opinion. I never actually used a dating site, but all the advice for women I’ve ever heard is to go out and look through profiles yourself rather than waiting for them to come to you.
I’m the type of person who makes friends first and then makes lovers out of them. Are you that type of person? In that case, you HAVE to take it slow because you’ll never find “the one” if you rush it. It’s too easy to overlook gems that way. I found it easier to talk to people first in group settings like chat rooms and then move in to personal conversations for ones that struck me as interesting, but I’m not sure if that’s even feasible with an online dating site.
Why not just get involved with some chat rooms for stuff you’re interested in on the side? You get to talk about what you like and meet new people in the process. Downside is you never know where they live and then you’ll find out you’re falling in love with a guy in another country (been there done that, it’s really tough). Probably best to do the local book club if possible.
I’ll just add, I always had better luck doing it this way. In fact, I don’t think I in-person met anyone I hadn’t initiated contact with myself. And the dates were enjoyable, we had a lot in common, the only fail with those was the guys’ flakiness / unwillingness to commit to the process. And that, as far as I know, is impossible to find out without doing the first date. On the other hand, I made a few friends that way, too.
The guys who initiated contact with me, were filtered out by the time the question of a first meet came up. Usually pretty quickly, actually. I don’t think it ever took more than a few days to a week for some serious dealbreaker to reveal itself.
That’s true; people responding with the answers she gave us aren’t likely to become interesting no matter what she does. But in picking those examples she revealed 3 questions she apparently feels are decent date conversation topics, and I think they’re awfully boring.
Of course, if food and music are her two big passions in life that could change things a bit.
Generating conversational chemistry is shockingly difficult. Back when I was a serial dater, it became exceedingly clear that >90% of people are incapable of talking about anything other than themselves. And then once you notice it, you can’t un-notice it; it turned into a bizarro game, waiting for ANYONE to ask ANYTHING about me. It was almost comically frustrating.
So, really, it’s not worth feeling depressed about. You are probably not doing anything wrong, you’ve just had a string of crappy dates. Keep at it, and if nothing else, you can relay your bad date stories here
Regarding the questions I was asking- those were during lulls in the conversation, actually during the most recent conversation I was trying to have with a guy. I don’t grill every guy with questions like that. This guy was just sitting in silence playing with his watch, and not saying anything, so I was trying to initiate a conversation.
I don’t have anything against non-fiction either and could name some stuff I’m interested in if asked. Not sure why that would potentially be a deal breaker. How is that any different from the guy who never reads fiction? At least I’m willing to give things a chance.
Anyway, I don’t think questions like that are that awful. When I was with the nerdy guy I’d comment on stuff on his book shelf and it would lead to an actual conversation about that author, related things, and so on.
And regarding how I speak English- I believe I speak standard English. I was using fail as in the expression “epic fail.” If someone considered occasional usage of slang to be a deal breaker then I would consider them to be wound too tight and it would become a deal breaker for me.
Those who have said I need to date more guys are probably right. These are just a handful of guys who I’ve met and there are so many more out there. I just get discouraged, especially when someone like the law student enters my life. Things seem to be going great and then poof he disappears. He probably is just too busy though and I shouldn’t take it personally. I’m 24 and a lot of guys my age seem to still be getting their lives on track so maybe it’s just not a good time to pursue a serious relationship. With the exception of my friend who met someone on OkCupid, all my friends in relationships are with a high school boyfriend or in one friend’s case someone she met at work.
One idea I had is to try volunteering somewhere through New York Cares. That would be a good way to find a decent guy who has similar interests and values and I think it would be easier and less artificial than online dating.
And yeah, the common denominator is me, so if my female friends can’t pin point what the issue is then maybe some of my male friends can give a different perspective.
with those was the guys’ flakiness / unwillingness to commit to the process. And that, as far as I know, is impossible to find out without doing the first date. On the other hand, I made a few friends that way, too.