Online Dating – A New Breed of Men?
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“Do I give the wrong signals?”
This is the question a friend recently asked me over drinks. I asked her to elaborate, fully knowing that her stories are usually quite colorful!
A few months back she decided to try some online dating. The tricky thing with online dating is that it’s a hybrid of blind dating. You never get the physical in-person first impression and the information you receive on the person is filtered. Whether it’s through a friend, family member or the person themselves, their story is somewhat constructed for you (leaving room for exaggeration and flat-out lies). Anyway, because of this, online dating starts way before the actual first date; a lot of questions and introductions may already be out of the way. But does this mean that the first date is more like a second, third or fourth? I would say no. My friend has encountered something that may change my opinion.
On two recent dates that began online, she had similar instances where both men assumed that things were progressing a lot faster than my friend figured. The first man took her out to dinner and midway through the meal asked her to join him, he had something to show her. She reluctantly left the table and followed him – to the back near the bathrooms – where she suddenly realized that what he wanted to show her was something she didn’t want to see. She hightailed it into the woman’s room, waited a few minutes and then returned to the hallway where her date stood, annoyed. She asked him point-blank why he brought her back there and he casually said, “Well I thought, you know, you could…” They went back to the table and he carried on the date, talking about his family, his child from a previous marriage, etc. My friend got the impression that he thought they were closer then she thought they were. Yes, she might know a lot about him but this was the first time they made physical contact.
My immediate impression was, well this guy was a sleaze bag or really lonely. Then my friend tells me about the other man she went out with….
They went out to eat and then went out to a lounge. Her date had some friends that were already at the lounge in a private booth. They hung with them for a while and suddenly my friend found herself alone in the booth with her date and he closed the curtains. He started kissing her and she was okay with it – she thought it was kind of sexy. Mid-make out however he stopped, got up, knelt on the table in front of her and unzipped his pants. Yeah. She was a bit shocked. She told him bluntly that she was absolutely not going there and he casually pulled himself back together, got up, opened the curtains and settled down. A few minutes later his friends returned and they all hung out for a bit.
So, my friend’s question remains, “Do I give the wrong signals?”
Since I have never dated her I can’t say if she is giving the wrong impression, however, I have never had a guy expect anything like that on a first date – before even leaving a public place! Maybe it is her. Or maybe there is a breed of guys who just think casual below the belt make outs are normal. Or maybe there is an interesting thing happening with online dating. Your first date happened weeks ago online: chatting, in an exchange of emails, in a phone conversation or sharing photos online. Regardless of all that, women (and I would assume some men) still need that face-to-face time to get to know someone. Whipping it out on the first real date is NOT okay.
How to survive the wonderful world of online dating
I had a little bit too much time on my hands while home for the holidays and I managed to do some serious damage on a few online dating sites.
First of all…I felt odd about the fact that I was meeting guys online instead in bars, the way that god intended. I really have no problem meeting guys in real life, but I just haven’t had much time to go out to bars, so the idea of thumbing through a catalog of men and seeing their pedigree up front was an idea that appealed to me.
A few of them look totally cute, educated, intelligent, funny, but as I’m learning, a 2-dimensional profile will never tell you everything that you want to know about someone.
I went on 4 dates with guys that I met online. None of them were fantastic, most of them plain sucked and one of them has left me with a sour stomach that made me immediately run home and delete my profile.
Here are some tips that I picked up along the way of charting this unknown territory.
1. Don’t be ashamed to say you’re dating online. When I actually opened up and talked about it, there were more people than I ever expected admitting to surfing the internets for true love. Or at least just a good lay.
2. Meet as soon as possible. Don’t talk over phone or IM. We as humans have this amazing ability to paint people to be exactly what we want them to be in our minds, so every little detail that they mention you will take as AMAZING PROOF YOU WERE MEANT TO BE.
3. Be honest with someone when you’re not interested. This is something you should follow in general, but it’s so much easier to ignore when you’re going out with people who you’ve met online. However, everyone’s 10 feet tall on the internet. I managed to get called a bitch for not responding to multiple text messages and IMs.
4. Don’t EVER commit to a dinner on a first date. There’s a pretty strong chance that you’re going to decide that you don’t like someone in the first 2 minutes. Dinner will only be an hour of your life that you will never get back. Extra points for mentioning something that you have to do immediately after the date so you have an easy exit.
5. Don’t get your hopes up. There is a much larger chance that you will spend the entire time crafting up extravagant schemes in your head so you can make a run for the door rather than thinking up names for your future offspring.
Even though I did have a somewhat awful experience with it, I’d still recommend trying it. I’m sure you’re a little curious. You only live once.
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