My brief stint on OkCupid has made me realize that online dating is not for me - not at this point in my life, anyway. I met some nice people and it was a pretty positive experience overall, but I think I’ve grown too used to dating friends; people who are already part of my life. It makes for messy situations, true, but every time I’ve tried dating people I don’t already know it’s fallen flat. I might try it again at some later point in my life, but at the moment I suppose I’m content to be single.
Link away, I won’t laugh. I just posted something about what I do for work, so we’ll see how this goes.
Sweet. I wake up, hop on aim, and after a conversation with a girl from OKCupid I’ve doubled today’s dates from one to two.
I’ve never done online dating, but I think I would pretty clearly suck at it. Five or six emails over the course of several weeks as prelude to a face to face meeting? Perhaps my penis makes me overconfident and blind to danger, but isn’t that a bit much? I’d be terribly upset if I went through all this trouble trying to vet my suitors and then it turned out that they had a funny smell and chewed with their mouth open.
I mean, when you meet someone in real life you talk with them for a while and then you seem to hit it off and you exchange numbers. Sometime in the near future you go out and do something. No elaborate courting ritual. Well, there is one but it happens at the same time that you’re sipping the coffee or quaffing the beer.
Right? I don’t know, maybe I’m doing it wrong…
Lizard’s rules for Dating:
[ol]
[li]If you’re a man, don’t take advice from women about what you should do. Think for yourself, and follow your instincts.[/li][li]If you’re a woman, don’t take advice from men about what you should do. Think for yourself, and follow your instincts.[/li][li]If you’re a man, pay for the first and second date. If she doesn’t at least offer to kick in by the fourth date, even a little bit, don’t call her again or spend any more money on her. An exception can be made if there is a significant income disparity, or if she is a single mother. But if you are on the same economic level, don’t tolerate mooching.[/li][li]Don’t tolerate someone who doesn’t treat you well. There are other fish in the sea.[/li][li]Don’t take anyone who treats you well for granted. They might start thinking you’re not worth the effort.[/li][li] Suffering of some sort is inevitable. You are far from the first person to have his feelings hurt, her ego bruised, his heart broken, or her pride offended. Deal with it, and move on. Bitterness is NOT attractive.[/li][/ol]
Well, in many cases I’ve shot off one short message saying “Hi”, then a longer response to her response ending with my aim screename, an hour long aim conversation ending with me getting her phone number, and then from there I typically get her on the phone, and either make plans for a date then and there or for a few days in the future.
Scroll up and click the link I posted earlier for my guide to online dating.
I’ve mostly stopped sending out lengthy emails. I do it for some girls if I really like the responses I’m getting, but otherwise I just get them on the phone so I can decide whether or not we click without wasting either of our time.
Oh, and today was quite wonderful. I’ll go into detail later but it’s getting late.
I’ve gotten some responses from online sites. I’m not aggressively seeking a relationship so the slow level isn’t really a problem. School is chewing up a major chunk of time.
But I’d like to offer a counter perspective to Phouka’s points.
IM: I’ll have to agree that slow response times are annoying, no excuse for that. But I like the real time interaction and being able to see what I’m about to say before I say it. I can either reconsider the wisdom of saying it or revise it before I hit send.
Another point that she considers a negative that I consider a plus. For me to be attracted to a woman, she’s got to have a certain amount of intelligence. That level being high enough to hold her own here on the Dope if she she were a member. Excessive grammar/spelling/punctuation errors does not bode well.
Phone: Not my prefered method as I’m really not a verbal person, but I’ll give her my number and she can call with her number blocked. That way she’s still totally in control of the contact. Probably just a male perspective, but I’m not really worried about a stalker type.
email: It’s okay too, I’m more comfortable with writing than talking, but the delay between responses is a cause for uncertainty. Has she read it and has just decided she’s not interested and can’t be bothered to respond? How long do I wait before sending a followup asking if she got the first one?
OTOH, I’m meeting someone from OKCupid for coffee this afternoon. Not much basis for a long term relationship based on our interests, but friends are good too.
And then there’s the nice young lady from Russia that has emailed me, but that’s a subject for another thread…
It’s yesterday afternoon when I someone I had shared a couple messages with on OKCupid signs on. Our messages to each other hadn’t been long, but we seemed to really jibe with each other based on what little we shared. The aim conversation was a blast. She was imaginative, sharp, quick, and funny…and she had hitch hiked all across the country. Way cool girl. After an hour of this I ask her if today is her day off. this is a good question to ask for anyone you’re holding an aim conversation with because if they’re talking to you in the first place, they probably are home looking for something fun to do. I asked if she wanted to grab some coffee, she put the question off for a while and we made more conversation
After a while I told her she never answered me. She says “you’re right, I didn’t”, and then agrees to meet me. I’m a happy guy 
She arrives in some hot pink pants she bought so I could recognize her. To compensate for not having any hot pink pants of my own, I brought a wooden statue of a nude woman leaning against a tree my Grandpa had picked up in the Korean War. If you take the woman off of her wooden stand, you can spread her legs open and use her as a nutcracker! Good conversation piece. I also brought Hunter S Thompson’s Curse of Lono so we could look at the illustrations.
We had fun. She really took to my “Show and Tell” pieces. We walked, and talked, and when it rained, we continued walking and talking and laughing. Good vibes! I ended the date when my second one started calling me to ask about when exactly we were meeting. I wasn’t sure if I liked the exact words I used when I said I’d get back in touch with her, so I figured there was a 70% chance it went well all in all. Awesome girl. Really quiet spoken but filled with thought. Cute as a minx too.
Pretty much right after that I headed over to Taste Restaurant in College Park. Tonight was improv night and the comedy group known as Absent Minded Comedy was performing. Free admittance!
I haven’t been dating for long, but for every date I’ve had I’ve always been the first person on the scene and the girl is usually late. Not this time. I walk right into the restaurant and she’s sitting there waiting for me looking very nice. She had this black and white motif going for herself. She loved zebras. We sit down at our tables.
The strange thing about this date was that right before I headed out to meet the girl my brother had called me to ask if I wanted to go to Taste with roughly a dozen of our mutual friends for the Improv Comedy show…go to Taste? I’m already going to Taste. Yes I have a date. No, I’ve never actually met her in person. We met online.
Just a wee bit of potential for awkwardness, eh?
But she was too cool for awkwardness. She was quiet too and struck me as being more introverted than the last girl which always makes me comfortable. I socialize mostly so I can get by in life, not so much so I can have fun. I usually prefer smaller crowds. She threw out a few recommendations for the Improv group, which gets her major points in my book. People who don’t like to participate or try new things out of shyness are a total bore to me. I’ve had those dates before. They make me wish for an eject button.
The show ends and we move to outside to talk. We have a good conversation for about an hour or so about everything and nothing until I walk her to her car and wish her a safe drive home.
I’m thinking I had a lot more in common with the first girl than with the second…but for some reason I was equally attracted to both. I drive home thinking about how I don’t feel like myself. I’ve always identified myself by the amount of dedication and care I’ve spent of friends, family members and pets. It’s even spelled out in my CraigsList profile in so many words: I’m a provider. I like to give and nurture. I think more about what I’m giving than what I should be receiving.
But now it seems like my second and third impressions have been proving lackluster lately due to time and money restraints. I really don’t like it, but I’ll be damned if I got back to dating one girl at a time before either of us decide to be mutually exclusive.
Today this night owl wakes up at 8:00am. The girl who wasn’t calling me is calling me. I rub my eyes and answer. Apparently her dad is in town and is interested in what hotel he should be staying at, what attractions he should be seeing, and how to get into Disney’s yacht club. I’m a concierge and would know these things…well most of them anyhow. Yes I’ll collect some pamplets. Yes I’ll find out some information about Disney’s yacht club. As for a hotel…try the Grand Bohemian at Downtown Orlando. Yes, yes, yes…maybe because it’s early, maybe because I don’t know how to say no, maybe it’s because I still don’t know what you want from me, maybe because I think you’re actually going to be my friend after I outs our nonromantic feelings for each other. Girls are hard to be friends with, they always think you want something more no matter what you do to try and convince them otherwise.
I check my OKCupid inbox and have a message from my first date from the day before. She had a really good time and enjoyed the tea and company. She’d like to hang out again. Right on.
Not too long ago follow up on a text message from Non calling girl and make plans to hang out at the Wing House after I run a few errands.
I understand these preferences because they used to be my own. Then I had a girl who lived two hours away from me fucking puree my heart in an industrial strength blender after I had been speaking with her online for two to three hours every night for two and a half months.
And then after that, I maintained long, thoughtful emails with women who would suddenly drop off the face of the Earth after I had already invested hours in time communicating with them for reasons they will never tell me.
Now I time girls. I’ll share 1-3 emails with them…depending on the length of the messages. From there, they can decide to either talk to me on aim, or not talk to me at all. After an hours conversation on aim, they can either talk to me on the phone, or they can move on. Do you know what I tell them? I say:
“Hey, I’m a personable guy, and talking over the internet is really no way to get to know someone. I do have a profile up on an online dating site, but it’s ultimately there to get me out from behind the computer. You should call me. My number is XXX-XXX-XXXX.”
And I mean every word of it. I’ve only had one girl cease talking to me after asking for her number using this line and she was only sending me one sentence emails messages over and over anyways.
You can choose to accept to reject this piece of advice, but here it is: People, you don’t know the person you’re talking to and all the world speaking to them online isn’t going to change a damn thing, nor does it increase their chances of liking you more once you move to meeting them in person or speaking with them over the phone. It’s not something you can put off. The best thing you can do is work on your conversation skills so you do sound good over the phone, and you do sound good in person. I realize you’re risking having some creep call you over and over, but if you keep up with the long emails you’re risking wasting a tremendous amount of your time. I say find out if the person is good for you today…if not right now.
Tonight was a lot better than expected. NoCall girl starting breaking into the “Friends” speech, and I pretty much finished her thoughts for her. No one was pissed off at anyone else, and we were both really relieved. We shared dinner together, she gave me my book back and a SuperBad movie poster (Sweet!), and then we just sat outside for a good two hours shooting the shit and making up creative insults for each other. Good times.
I also learned she’s bisexual, and has a very sharp mind for game. So of course we talked about the other dates we’ve been having lately and started trading notes…and then we just watched the girls walk by for a while 
.
Come on… you just started this thread to brag about all your dates, didn’t you? Well, I actually smiled at a guy at the Circle K this morning!! And he smiled back! So there!
Conversation with Hitchhiker girl
“Ok. Cool. Well hey, I’ll talk to you later, Joe.”
“Ok, thanks.”
ARRG! Is there a more AFC way of ending a conversation than by saying “Thanks” to a person for saying they’ll talk to you later. Jesus Christ, these are mistakes I should be over by now.
But she did accept my invitation to Sleuths Dinner Mystery, saying should would call me just as soon as she knew what days she was working next week. Still…I’m feeling an anxiety with this girl that needs to die. Whatever…I made her laugh on the phone…she’s likely to remember that more than anything else.
Waiting for a response from Zebra girl for the same invitation on a different day.
Well…to share the highs as well as the lows. If you’re feeling envious slap a personal onto Craigslist and grab some dates! I’ll even help you write a page for yourself if you need it.
Though initiating eye contact and smiling is admirable progress too. Baby steps.
But seriously, get out there and game with me 
I was on LavaLife for quite a while, but I’ve set that aside for a time as I do other things. I’ve had about a dozen dates through LL in four years, but that includes a two-year gap; no date has been more than once. The vast majority of my initial contacts went unresponded to.
Maybe I’ll try craigslist or okcupid or another service, but right now I’m preoccupied keeping up a full-time job, trying to start my own business, and going to the gym. I’m toying with the idea of speed dating, but after reading Fastlife’s site, it’s clear that I need a serious wardrobe upgrade before I do it. At least these days I feel more confident socially.
So did you just start your thread to give us a book report on the works of Neil Strauss and Erik von Markovik?
Haha. It is reading like that, innit?
I will say that Neil Strauss’s “The Game” has totally changed the way I view…well…a lot of stuff. And in a very good way. I wholeheartedly recommend it to any awkward, shy, or socially inept guy out there that just can’t seem to get a date even if his life depended on it. Shit mssmith537, you’ve been around for a while. You can’t tell me I haven’t come a long way. You used to be a regular contributor to a lot of my dating (or attempted dating rather) woe threads.
Mystery Method is a good read too, though I’d take his teaching’s with a lot of salt. His whole “Neg” theory is too much for me to stomach, even if it does work. Personally I prefer the teachings of David DeAngelo.
Zebra Girl got back to me. She wants to know when the show is and says she has the day off. Hitchhiker Girl is waiting for her schedule to be released before I make arrangements.
And on a side note, my short story for my Creative Writing 2 class was very, very, very warmly received. Two of my classmates were laughing out loud at many of the passages and the professor spend the wide majority of his time gushing over my work and just a few seconds lamenting how I didn’t indent certain things and how one or two words were redundant. Another classmate said I should submit it for publication and that I could win a contest.
If my math grades weren’t plummeting straight to the fieriest pits of hell, I’d call this life of mine right now “perfect”.
I’m going to Seaworld now 
.
Well the term AFC (Average Frustrated Chump) is lifted right out of his book. I haven’t read the book for the record, just the Wiki entry. I did watch Mystery’s show on VH1 with my girlfriend. We even try out his canned pickup lines on each other at bars (but we bastardize them a little):
Her: What have you got going on other than your looks.
Me: Nothing…I’m just super good looking.
From what I’ve seen, they don’t tell you to do anything sleazy or underhanded. And it isn’t hypnosis or Jedi mind shit or anything. It’s just a framework to use when youre talking to a girl:
-Avoid inane job interview style chit-chat
-If things are going well “bounce” with her to another location (that really does work well).
-Basically just carry yourself like you’re the shit…but without being arrogant.
I’ll have to go back and check the archives. I help a lot of people. 
Oh “negs” definitely work. It’s basically just playful teasing.