While I urge anyone to listen to their intuition, I wouldn’t be bothered by someone asking to meet right away. After online dating for a while, you learn to do away with a lot of the getting to know someone by email, because you can’t really know if you’re attracted to someone until you actually meet them. So really it’s just best to meet asap rather than waste a lot of time emailing back and forth first, just to find that it’s a dud when you do eventually meet.
Like others said, I don’t think there is anything unusual about it. I try to go from a couple of emails to at least one phone call to a first date really quickly (days usually). It shows them that you are serious and let’s them show you the same thing. Some people would be happy to get caught in an infinite mail loop and lots of excuses why they can’t do something. It is better to identify those people sooner rather than later and move on. I am sure most of us have a rather long line of candidates that we can choose from at any given time. You have to cull the herd aggressively and that is a great way to do that.
I haven’t met any psychos but I use Match.com mostly where the quality is pretty high. I always go for the type of people that are easy to background check as well through public sources and I do that as a precaution. They have all been exactly how they presented themselves initially.
I’d say the same thing. I’d rather meet someone as soon as possible. I’ve gone on for a week or more and then when I asked to meet and that was that.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with how quickly he asked to meet her, but I agree with kmshrader that the “by the way, you’ll need to pick me up” part is a big turnoff. When you ask someone to meet you for the first time, pick a place that you can get to on your own! I wouldn’t have hesitated to say no to that. “Sorry, I’m not comfortable picking you up; where could we meet?”
But it doesn’t matter whether you’re sick of it: the point is to make a good first impression on someone who has never seen any pictures of you before. Right? I recommend always using the best picture of yourself as your main profile pic.
Always? Even if my best picture was 10 years and 100 pounds ago?
Personally, I like to change my profile pic on a somewhat regular basis, that way the people that have seen it every day for the last 6 months (all those people who’s profile pics you’ve been seeing too) might say “Hey, who’s that?” or will see “InvisibleChimp uploaded a new photo” on their home page and click on your profile and even though they read your profile a year ago maybe they’ll take another look at it.
But you shouldn’t listen to me since I’m still here and it’s not that I’m getting 25 people a day looking at my profile.
Sorry, for a moment there I forgot that this is the Dope: I recommend always using the best current picture of yourself as your main profile pic.
How old can a picture be and still count as current?
Do you still look like the guy in the picture? Then it’s current.
Be careful. I had just started exchanging messages with a woman when I mentioned that my main picture was a bit old. I had two other more recent pictures, her profile had only one pic, and very dark. She nonetheless took me to task and stopped communicating.
I have a date scheduled today with a 95% match. The difficulty is she lives around 100 miles away. She is not coming to Portland just to meet me though. She comes to Portland regularly, was coming here this weekend, and wanted to meet me while here. What am I doing? It would almost be better if it doesn’t go well because we live so far apart.
So how did it go?
As for me, I briefly joined eHarmonyUK, but the layout of the free site sucked so much, I left within about 48 hours. So I’m back to OKCupid. I had an interesting one where a 20-something messaged me basically asking if I’d play Mrs Robinson to his graduate - sheesh, way to make a girl feel old! I politely declined, without bruising his ego thankfully
I have an odd situation where I made the first move and messaged a pretty looking long haired dude from two cities away (a big deal in a small country, especially when you don’t drive). He seems nice, fairly quicky disclosed to me that he’s had problems with depression in the past and offered to let me end the chat there if that bothered me, and didn’t leg it when I disclosed some of my past grief to him. The odd bit is.. when he told me his unusual first name, I stuck it in face book and promptly found his full name and FB profile, as we have two mutual friends. I’m not quite sure what to do next - i.e. whether to tell him, or keep quiet about my stalker-habits for now!
And, umm, for long-term readers of this thread, I’m seeing Mr My-Ex-Is-Back again tomorrow night. I’m hoping this means his ex is off the scene and he’s available again, but it might just be he’s a nice guy who wants to “stay friends”. Either way, it’s a night out and a few pints, so, I’ll not get my hopes up too much, but I will go anyway
I contacted someone, we traded a couple messages, and then she stopped replying.
What do you do when the last resort doesn’t work?
It went well. Thanks for asking.
The true last resort is stalking her for a while and then killing her in a murder-suicide when she doesn’t fall for you but I think most of us here are above that. Romantic comedies aren’t a good dating guide plus the chasing shifts the power balance badly towards the other person and you wouldn’t want any relationship that begins that way. Take it as a blessing.
I hate to be cliche but she just isn’t that into you. Don’t feel bad about it. I have a line around the block yet there were two that I tried hard with, went out on a couple of great dates with, and then talked to them afterwards an hour or more each time about what we were going to do next. Then, the communication line went dead cold with no warning and no reason for it. I had their home and cell numbers plus their personal e-mail addresses so I tried a combination of those a couple of times letting them know when they could contact me but there was nothing but silence.
I have dumped more than a few myself but I am graceful and polite about it and always respond to any personal messages. Some people just aren’t and it is better to know that about them early on than when they pull bigger things later.
Your ideas intrigue me, and I…
No, probably not something to joke about.
I didn’t mean this particular woman was my last resort, just online dating in general. It’s not going terribly well, I’m just not sure where one goes after failing at this.
It isn’t supposed to be easy for anyone. I am a demographic dream and I have no trouble getting first or second dates and that is after rejecting all the ones that didn’t make my cut. Still, it is a brutal game. I still haven’t figured out how to get past a second date so that is my goal now. I have been coached well and was taught it is all a raw numbers and skill game that you can get better at.
I have tried various experiments:
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One was to contact 5 new people every single day for a week based on your criteria - shoot a little high and a little low just like applying for college. Be careful about having too many applications in at once though because you may be some conflicting delayed responses that you can’t handle. Do that enough and you can determine your worth in the dating marketplace. Don’t ever expect more than a 20% response rate though no matter who you are contacting. Most people aren’t truly available or looking for someone like you no matter what they say in their profile.
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Read profiles carefully and use that knowledge in your initial e-mail. I have yet to find someone I didn’t have something in common with.
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Always end with a specific question about them based on their profile. They like that plus it gives them a reason to respond.
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Learn to have a thick skin. They don’t know you and you don’t know them. It is just a social video game that you can learn. Try different strategies to get better and don’t worry about being rejected yourself or offending anyone. These women routinely have males sending them nude photos of themselves from what they tell me so be more classy than that but learn to define your own style.
Believe me, I gave up on this being easy at least a decade ago. Now, I might as well be looking for the Higgs boson or the Holy Grail.
Robot, I just wanted to say hang in there! Cliche, I know, but remember we’re all pushing for you
Could someone possibly explain this behavior?
Sunday: Girl messages me, we exchange a few messages and agree to meet up Wednesday.
Monday: We each give suggestions on where we could get dinner.
Tuesday: Her account is deleted.
Is this what it looks like being blocked? What happened?