In the 21st century relating through writing (emailing) is a quick and efficient way to learn a lot about a person and how they tick, with minimum initial commitment or investment face-to-face and is at the core of effective online meeting. But we must all accept that it is not a perfect science and that it encompasses pitfalls and heart breaks.
In many cases if a "potential" is not witty or doesn't write well, let's just say it's a turn off which makes it very fucking difficult for some like me even if I think that person is attractive. Yes write to me but yeah like Grammar and Punctuation is completely optional. NOT! Moreover why go to the extreme hassle of spelling words such as "to", "you" and "one"? Substitute them with single letters and numbers it only serves to let me know what a illiterate fool you really are.
Let's face it the Internet offers unlimited options. Not only does it make for cynical or dismissive prospects with little care for how their rejections or non-contact affects the feelings of others. But it can also be intrusive if you allow it to be that way. So whether you are looking for a friendship or a lover it can be a conveyor belt type of situation of finding someone.
Obviously we can immediately focus on people with similar interests, beliefs, age and other important criteria without having to spend time and money "going for coffee or dinner. People can be sidestepped without ever needing to make contact. It's "partner shopping" in a global supermarket of humanity. Case in chief: I’ve been communicating with this person for over 6 months. I keep asking to see what he really looks like? His favourite thing to say to me…”Just go here and look at my photos.” I reply… Yes, I did but I can’t determine if you are male or female?” So yah Keep me guessing. Choose blurry photos…Or the party image that includes several of your friends…. You not included. OR send me a sexy headless image, preferably from the late '80s. OR better still recent photos? Why bother? Go back and cut/scratch out your former girlfriend. Fucking brilliant.
So we all go online and are of the feeling, thought, belief that perhaps you could ( may) build some sort of friendship based solely on the things I write in a profile. Do we really? Will you be turned off by my images? Will you respond if I reveal my naked self or truth to you? If I tell you everything about who I am will you still be there in any capacity? Will you? That remains the question at large. I remain optimistic.
My sense is most humans are addicted to initial flirtations and the "drug" of being liked, appreciated and wanted which is merely an illusion of meeting someone. The connection is based on internalized and selfish feelings, often projections of what we are looking for, rather than what the other person is actually like. Sometimes I am guilty of saying to someone after receiving an image...”Hey you’re pretty sexy hot, can I come over and stroke your ego for the rest of your life, and show you off to my friends and family?”
The approach morphs people into the commodities of others' consumption. Physical attraction is fickle. Individuals can be intensely "in like" one minute, and not at all later, simply based on appearance. Often, people are in love with "being in love" not with each other at all. For example: Contacting me and protraying interest in wanting to get to know me bla blah blah... Two weeks go by. After sending me seven hundred messages, make it clear you do not intend to date, because of his past relationship. Remember, playing the victim is sexy. Let me know you're fresh out of a shitty relationship. How attractive is that? WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ON A DATING SITE. Dating site. It’s a fucking dating site moron. Get it! Waste my precious time with painfully obvious bullshit.
My experience so far is that photos can be very misleading. If physical attractiveness and refinement is important to you, (as it is for me) a balanced look at someone over time and in many contexts is achieved through photo sharing. People look very different in different photos. What I have also come to realize is you can never project an illusion of a person from one image. That is a huge no no. However so many are very guilty of this. And especially if you do not send clear standardize images then it clearly deceitful at the onset. It's the 'NET' we cannot change the rules of engagement, it will not fly.
Write this on your forehead….”Friendship and love is solid, reliable and unconditional”. I feel most of us can learn to receive and give if we are honest with ourselves and others. The internet approach goes against almost everything traditional; our body, our heart, and mind but the ‘Net’ convinces us is real. The most pain, hurt, brokenness and distress caused online are caused by people attempting to find the divine within each other, is a misunderstanding about the veracity of emotional online connection, and an abandonment of what meeting a friend /lover really is.
Online meeting seems too often bypass wonderful prospects of enduring friendships in exchange for the endless anticipation of finding a "right" person who will be perfect and the Internet feeds this hope. It is a forlorn and hopeless vacuum. A better way is to find perfect love within, and give that unconditionally to another imperfect human being (to whom you are, or are not, at times, "attracted").Consider using the Internet as a doorway to real life and real engagement with actual human beings, sovereign and independent of your wants and needs.
I am an old-fashioned girl living in a modern world. I really love meeting someone with no guards up but that seems so unrealistic today.
//end metaphor
I went out on a date a few months ago….I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers to my temples, massaging my forehead. If I had a speck of magical ability, I would have whisked myself away from this interminable evening. But it was not to be; when I opened my eyes, he was still there, glaring at me sullenly, his food barely acknowledge. My dish had been cleared at record speed in a vain attempt to accelerate the evening. But my date was determined to see me suffer.
For the millionth time, I asked myself why I had ever attempted online dating. At first, it seemed like a great idea: coming out of a long-term relationship, it was an easy and fun new way to meet men. I wasn’t looking for anything too involved, and the online medium was perfect for casual dating, I was told. I even met one or two terrific men … in an absolutely insane haystack.
What I have come to realize is “Online dating” is a deceptive and perverse netherworld; forget all those people who keep a profile without a picture (hidden or overt), who, for all you know, could be twelve-year-old boys in a log cabin somewhere. Forget, even, the blatant liars; you know, the “blue-eyed babe” with a “muscular athletic” build who turns out to be a six-foot behemoths with scraggly brown hair and eyes as azure as mud. Let’s focus on the people who are totally upfront; even they’re nuts.
This date was a perfect example. I had chosen a nice restaurant in the City, he picked me up (in town at local police station because it is my preferred drop-off and pickup location, as oppose to Tim Horton’s, besides I’m not a coffee drinker and it really stinks), and I was on my very best behaviour. So why was he so upset with me? I’ll tell you. I had just returned from a trip. And he was upset that I didn’t wait so that he could go with me. Never mind the small fact that this was our first date! And he was genuinely angry, mind you; by not taking him with me on a vacation that took place before we knew each other, I had caused irreparable harm to our relationship.
Needless to say, that guy didn’t last long. And he was relatively normal compared to some of the other people I talked to. I spent just over nine months with an online profile on a “popular” dating website. Among the collection of freaks with whom I came in contact were manwhores, webcam boys, grandfathers, transvestites, and transsexuals(well that one is a stretch one dude looked prettier than me with nice tits, what do I know). Quite a few posted pictures that were clearly cut out of a magazine or taken from some professional site. Many had no problem showing their bodies in the most vivid poses, with as much exposure as possible. The only drawback here was they really needed to cover that up, because it wasn’t pretty. My eyeballs are still burning from the exposure. A great majority were simply online to indulge the darker side of their sexuality.
And then there were the ones I place in the “you’ve got to be kidding” category. These included the plethora of incredibly attractive immigrants from Eastern Europe who had their suitcases packed and were waiting for me to bring them over to the Canada in exchange for the most mind-bending sex I could imagine. Some of these Russian hunks could barely string together a full sentence in English, but they had no problem describing, in startling detail, what they would do to me when we were together. And of course, I couldn’t forget the surprising number of stranded studs in Nigeria and Kenya who begged me to send money to help them escape their desperate plight. Their stories were the stuff of soap operas: girlfriends who had tricked them, they had a child, grandma died but was miraculously revived at the funeral, he was kidnapped, and stolen all their money; mothers who had fallen sick right before the civil war erupted, trapping both daughter and mother in a hostile land. If only they could get some money from a sexy, charming kitten, they would be eternally, and deliciously, grateful.
(None of the above is made up, by the way).
After a while, it became a kind of sick game. There was one character who refused to reveal age, height, weight, or any physical attributes (I can only assume they were female), but promised me all kinds of sexual delights (with a heavy emphasis on oral pleasure). I chatted pleasantly with amateur man-whores (who weren’t exactly in the business but were moderately attractive and figured they could make a buck or two), who always started the conversation with “are you a cop?” I learned a lot about the lifestyles and fantasies of submissive and dominatrix. Now I’ve became extremely selective and cautious when it came to meeting people.
I know it’s not all bad. A good friend of mine married the man she met online. And I dated a perfectly normal guy whom I met online for a little while. The truth is I really didn’t meet him online; however we reconnected after he finished his studies, and our initial communication began by emails. Maybe it counts, maybe not? But who really cares.
Of course, the site you choose has a lot to do with it; the ones that require payment tend to screen out some (not all) of the wackos. I never got into the e-Harmony breed of sites that make you fill out a 357-page questionnaire before you can register, and who will notify you of potential mates based on this. I’m sure it’s a thoroughly researched, scientific approach to online dating; but like I said, I didn’t want to find my soul mate. I just wanted to meet new people outside my circle of friends and avoid a serious relationship. I was very honest about my desires in my profile, and most of the men I spoke with were in the same boat. Most of them were also slightly mad. And don’t forget, this is a girl’s perspective. I don’t even want to think about how many unhinged men are trolling the Internet.
So what is the lesson here? Only that you should take online dating for what it is: for every honest girl waiting to meet a nice man, there are at least five men in immediate need of emotional counselling. For every sweet girl who thought online dating would be a new and exciting way to meet people, there is a leather-clad, whip-wielding psychopath who will feed you the heel of his shoe and make you call him “Daddy”. And for every normal girl—like me—who thought that the Internet would be an interesting experiment, I have some advice: keep a very, very open mind.
Three things, I argued, are problematic with online dating, for all that it can undoubtedly be a bit of fun.
1. It teaches you to define, and then repeatedly refine, an ideal of a lover and then seek someone who checks all the boxes. But love is about loving a real person, pretty much the opposite activity. To deploy the distinction made by Erich Fromm, the key thing in the art of love is not how lovable someone else is to you but how capable of love you yourself are. Sounds bleak, but actually it is hopeful, for there is much you can do about that which doesn't depend on a lover who you don't even know - yet.
2. It perpetuates the myth that there is someone out there waiting for you, when in truth, a husband, or partner is not made your 'other half' but becomes your 'other half' over time. Or to deploy another distinction from Fromm the key is not falling in love, which is easy, but standing in love. Therein lies its real joy.
3. If you have any friends I suspect that a shared circle of friends is a key ingredient for a successful long term relationship, since they provide a context and support for love, and also, crucially, hinder the romantic notion that 'the one' is the only one in your life you really need. Online dating abstracts you from your circle of friends, in taking you out of real life and into the ether where another, and another, and another stranger is only a click away. That is its thrill, of course, not least when you feel you've been through all your friends, and their friends and their friends, and none can conjure up someone suitable. But that is also, I suspect, the internet's curse - a life of serial dating.
Online dating is shaping attitudes to how we treat each other in real life isn't actually helping. You Choose....!
