Straight women know even less about attracting and dating women than you do, so feel free to ignore their advice if it disagrees with your own experience or advice from people with actual experience in pursuing women.
I did online dating a year ago after moving to the East Coast and the best piece of advice which I can give you is to request a date in your first contact with someone. You’ve seen their photo, you’ve seen their profile and established there’s something of substance to be attracted to and reasons to be interested in dating them, in my opinion, there’s really nothing else to be established on your end before meeting this person for a date, especially if you live in a major metropolitan area for which the investment of time and effort to meet for a date is minor. Obviously, if you live an Alaskan fishing village and meeting someone for coffee would require 6 hours and $600 of air-travel you may choose to be more selective in who you meet, but time spent composing e-mails can also be considerable. Frankly, we’d rather have you working on your substantiative responses in General Questions.
So, to review, my advice is to directly ask for (not tilt at) a date in your first e-mail. Provide specific recommendations for a date, general time, and neighborhood. Permit her to suggest an exact place and time if she’s interested and has an idea about where to go.
I would assume (based on both experience and seeing the result from the other side via female friends) that, “I’ll think about it,” or some similarly ambivalent response is at best a slow roll and more likely an overly soft rejection. My standard response to that is to hand the ball over to her (“Well, call me if you’re free sometime,”) and assume (typically) that nothing will come of it.
In general form I agree; however, I’ve seen from watching female friends deconstruct their conversations with potential suitors that just because the man makes a direct approach doesn’t mean that that it will be taken directly; I’ve witnessed hour-long discussions of what was “meant” in saying “Goodbye,” rather than “See you on Thursday.” Very frustrating, especially when I’m asked to provide the Designated Guy Point of View, which is subsequently discounted as being “too simple.” I’m just glad I wasn’t born with inside plumbing; my brain couldn’t handle the convolutions of thought.
For what it is worth, I’ve e-mailed the woman in question back with a message somewhere between that suggested by Promethea and Boyo Jim, basically saying, “I understand that you are busy, and I am, too, but we should have a brief meetup over coffee just to see if there is any mutual interest in person. Let me know when you’re available and we can figure out a time to meet.” I don’t think that’ll come to anything, but that’ll be my last communique unless she responds positively.
Thanks to everyone who responded with advice and constructive criticism.
Try not to read too much into it. I mean, sure, I’d be a little frustrated if I was in your situation, but its when we try too hard that we fall on our collective asses.
There’s lots of reasons she might be doing this. One UNIVERSAL thing I’ve noticed is there seems to be a subset of both men and women who seem content just to flirt with people online- they have no intention of meeting them in person.
Some people use dating sites because they just got out of/still in a bad relationship and they want the confidence boost in knowing there are people excited about meeting them/respect them for their qualities.
Some people are very picky and have mile-long checklist they use to see if someone is ‘worthy’ thus a lot of people end up in their ‘rejected’ pile
Some people are insecure and like to ‘test’ partners by doing arbitrary things and sorting out how the other person reacts.
this person could be any of the three or even something else :o
I agree with the way you worded it. It’s time for her to either agree to meet or stop wasting your time. Yes, some people do like to chit chat a bit through email first, but
a prolonged email exchange without meeting can backfire if one of you gets your hopes up and then you don’t hit it off in person. I think exchanging a few emails over the course of a week or two is completely sufficient for moving on to pursuing going out together for coffee or something of that nature.
Good luck!!
So I got a response to my e-mail this morning, and for a woman who can’t spare thirty minutes of her time to meet up face to face she sure spent a lot of time drafting an e-mail of barely veiled invective and pent-up resentment; printed out it would probably fill up three pages or more, single spaced. While this doesn’t really help me in the overall scheme of things, at least I avoided getting tarbabied to the crazy.
I also got a response from another woman; unfortunately, also at the bottom of the list of women I send messages to, and her e-mail didn’t increase the thrill factor but I suppose it would be hypocritical at this point not to face up with her and at least mouth pleasantries and entertain the possibility of greater interest, so I’ve responded with a request to meet. Beyond that and the few other messages I’ve sent out since I started this thread, I think I’m kind of burned out on online dating again for a while. I’m not sure what other venues to pursue, but this seems to be a phenomenal waste of time.
Yeah, online dating means you occasionally run into crazy people. There is a reason why some folks turn to online dating.
Don’t give up, though. Sometimes it just takes a while to find someone worthwhile in the midst of the rest.
Well, after nearly a hundred messages sent out and virtually no worthwhile responses, I’m kind of tired of this, and I’m to the point that they all seem to just kind of blur together, even (or perhaps especially) the ones that try to be sarcastic and countercultural. I still need to try to date, if for no other reason than the pressing need for diversion, but this isn’t really taking me anywhere worthwhile.
I know how it goes. During my time on internet dating sites, I was messaged by a paranoid schizophrenic who was attempting to build a harem of wives to bear his children despite “the government” trying to warn people away from him. Countless overweight, balding middle aged men flocked to me just because I happened to be in my early 20s at the time (I have come to realize that they figure that if they just message enough youngsters, surely one will take the bait). I was messaged by barely literate guys who made it clear that they had not made the most rudimentary effort at reading my profile before writing.
Somewhere along the way though, I also met a handful of really amazing guys who made up for all the disappointments and weird experiences.
I think she’s holding you off because she’s still married/involved and the splitup is taking longer than she anticipated, or the online dating progressing faster.
Or maybe she’s just waiting for her husband to sign the insurance papers. “It’s just like the first time I came here, isn’t it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.”
The other one that responded appears to be bust as well. I’ve signed up for another service and have set myself a goal of sending out fifty messages in the next two weeks (provided work does not intrude) but after that I’m shot. I’m not sure what else to do, or why this is so difficult for me but apparently relatively easy for others, but I don’t think this is worth the effort I’ve put into it. I’m not sure what else to try, though; meeting women through my (admittedly limited) normal social venues seems to be ineffectual and I don’t have time (or frankly patience) to increase my exposure by taking classes or whatnot. I need to do something but this just isn’t it.
I have activities that I already do (hiking, kayaking, diving, climbing, snowboarding, et cetera), but I haven’t met suitable, available women through them, and I don’t have time to do more; in fact, I have difficulty making time to do most of the things I’d already like to do.
I never had trouble getting women to agree to meet for lunch. Lot’s of women have some degree of hesitation because they don’t have a handle on a person. Telling women who I was and what I did locally seemed to reduce the anxiety level dramatically.
I don’t know what you do for a living, but once you start corresponding is there some published work or study you did or anything you’re involved with professionally that you could point them toward and say “This is what I do” or 'this is who I am". Even of wiki entry about an equation or project you did or a team photo from your work website might help.
I felt a lot better about myself after I discovered other people posting about their failures on the Success-Failure forum on okcupid. You aren’t the only one who has had a run of bad luck on dating sites. The people who find someone right away may very well just have lower standards.
You’re killing me, here. I wasted twenty minutes reading these and almost couldn’t stop laughing, like the overweight single mom who fills her profile full of complaints and details from failed relationships and then solicits advice to which others respond with comments such as: Are you an educated adult? Maybe you could write a profile that makes you sound like one. What I get from your profile is “slubby Mom that doesn’t care.” You didn’t spend the time to proof-read or write a profile that is worded well or coherent; you didn’t share much valuable information about yourself, and you basically managed to make an effective list of reasons why somebody would not want to get involved with you…Oh, and learn how to apply make-up, get a decent hair cut, and learn how to dress yourself. Weight is one thing, looking like a slob is something else.
