In part one, I shared an excerpt from Barbara’s (41) email. She believes all the good guys are gone, relies on online dating, and doesn’t feel attracted to men who want her. Age and her success are critical factors in her concluding that she’s been left with “the shit”.
In that post, I explained the impact of negative mindset. It has far-reaching consequences not just for dating but how you try to forge relationships and who you’re attracted to. There were some major naysayers in the comments. Yet here’s the thing: I’m not saying anything different to what I say in every single post on this blog. The message hasn’t changed.
Have an honest conversation with yourself.
Get real about who you are, what you want, and your expectations to ensure you are not only acting in your best interests but aren’t engaging in counterproductive mentalities and behaviours.
Relationship (or dating) insanity is having the same beliefs, carrying the same mentality, going after the same ‘type’, ‘compatibility’ and ‘common interests’, having the same relationship pattern, the same life routine, the same plausible excuses, and expecting a different result.
But if it’s not working, then the onus is on you to change. You are the only common denominator and the only real factor you can influence.
Unless you’ve never had the ‘privilege’ (I say that loosely) of being with an assclown or Mr Unavailable, there’s an issue with your dating pattern. Attracted to and have a consistent habit of being involved with these guys? Clung to relationships with them? Yeah, it’s fair to say that whatever you think ‘attraction’ is, it’s not healthy. You’re attracted to the wrong things. As a result, you can’t keep using that old chestnut of ‘But I’ve gotta be attracted to them’.
If you can hand on heart, with 100% honesty, say you have boundaries, healthy love habits, no attraction to Mr Unavailables and assclowns (that’s not attracting them; I mean actually being attracted to and becoming involved with them), personal security, a full life that isn’t dependent on your relationship status, positive beliefs about love, relationships, and yourself, and haven’t stuck to the same routine and tried and tested route, then go ahead and say there are very few decent men to date.
It’s beyond the scope of this post to go majorly into the whole ‘attraction’ thing. For more insight, read the following posts:
But moving on to the online dating aspect, here’s something interesting:
Here’s the reality: If you use dating sites, your opportunities to meet 1) Mr Unavailables, 2) assclowns, and 3) con artists trying to get you to transfer money from your bank account significantly increases.
Barbara said that she has to do online dating. She doesn’t. Not being funny, but the internet and dating online has only been around for a portion of her dating life. If you couldn’t use dating sites for 3, 6 months or even a year, what would you do with yourself? How would you go about meeting men?
In ‘Getting Out of Stuck: What are you doing to help bring love into your life?’, I used the example of a reader who had every excuse under the sun for why her plans to adapt her very routine lifestyle hadn’t come to fruition. Similarly, Barbara’s life centres on working at her very successful career, the gym, supermarket, visiting the same bars and restaurants, looking around hopefully at work events, and spending a significant amount of time online. This has been her routine for several years, and life is pretty much about work and finding a man. Really, it’s like waiting for ‘fate’ to intervene and just letting life happen to you.
I’m not saying don’t date online. What I am saying is that online dating doesn’t control the dating universe. It doesn’t represent ‘all there is’. Because of its proliferation and its adoption by people who have an allergy to the truth, really decent prospects get drowned out by the noise. Online dating is an option, but it’s not your only option, and I wouldn’t bank on it.
If you’re someone who hopes ‘this might be the one’ each time you date or who mourns the loss of every guy you meet, from the guy who said he’d call but didn’t to the one you went on three dates with, to the one you dated for a year, I suggest steering clear of online dating, at least for a while.
A key issue in many of the struggles we have with relationships is illusions. If you’re inclined to see platinum where there’s copper and you bet on potential, cling to illusions, and don’t process things like red flags to ensure your feet are firmly in reality, online dating will just add to your virtual reality. It will make things even messier.
Much like I said in part one, we tend to see what we think and believe. At this stage, anyone who’s online dating needs to take it as a given that they are likely to have to wade through a lot of doo doo to get to a potentially decent mate. This is called 1) managing your expectations and 2) being realistic.
Use online dating along with being out in the real world, forging real connections and getting on with your real life. The trend for conducting your dating life behind the comforts of your computer/phone is a protective measure.
Many people use online dating because it feels like a ‘safer’ rejection than going out there and risking a ‘harder’ rejection. However, the difficulty is too much reliance on online dating stops you from really putting yourself out there.
If you don’t have a man, and you really, really want a man, and you’re investing a lot of your efforts in online dating and coming up short with dubious men, you’re bound to feel disillusioned.
Be careful of that desire to be the exception because that translates online too, where we unwittingly expect a fairy tale ending where some guy online ‘makes us the exception ‘picks’ us and we run off and live happily ever after. Your ‘prince’ is not two clicks away.
Making getting a man your vocation becomes that scenario where you feel you’re underperforming at your job.
I’m not with the guy I thought I’d be with. Thank goodness! Prior to getting wise about myself and emotional unavailability, unbeknownst to me, I desired qualities and characteristics that screamed Mr Unavailable or even assclown. I haven’t dumbed down or sold out. I’ve ended up with someone infinitely better. Read my post on Forget Mr Good Enough.
They often want to go from 0 to 180 miles per hour. You say hello at 9 am, and by the end of that day you’ve spoken several times and there’s already been something sexual mentioned. Or he’s making veiled comments about how you sound like the “perfect woman” for him.
There’s also the type that makes contact, then disappears, then reappears, then a flurry of contact, and then disappears again. I call these pop-up relationships.
There’s also the type that even when you’ve been in touch for a while and might even be dating, they’re active online, hitting on other women. Or you meet them and they say and do things that contradict what they professed in their profile.
Online dating isn’t a science. There’s an element of luck, and you also need to have a rigorous admissions policy. That means doors closed to people who…
Online dating caters to misguided ideas about compatibility, type, and common interests with your profile and shopping list of requirements. You might look for things that are surplus to requirements. Or you might filter out people who offer better prospects if you’d only give them the time of day.
Also, people who have ‘types’ invariably have toxic ones. It’s all very well having shared interests, but if they don’t add to the relationship and you don’t share core values, the relationship will not work. You won’t be compatible because the relationship won’t healthily meet your needs.
Again, it’s not a case of that there are no good men to date or that all the good men are gone. It’s hard out there (I think people in big cities like LA, NYC, or even London come up against a lot of headache). But let’s be honest and say that on some counts, we make things harder for ourselves.
And I want to stress, nobody is asking you to only think positive thoughts. You need to ensure your beliefs about relationships, love, and yourself are congruent with seeking a healthy relationship. When I do private sessions with clients, I ask them to let me know their 3-5 core beliefs about themselves, love, and relationships. They’re always incredibly revealing and often scarily contradictory.
In part three, I tackle the subject of older men plus the issue of overgrown manchildren that many women come up against. Part four is also available.
Your thoughts?
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Thanks for that Natalie 🙂 the comments yesterday were quite depressing and whilst I do realise that the older you get the harder it is to find someone decent who is magically single, I do like to believe in the positive… Also – online dating is something i just can’t see myself doing and i was wondering would i be left on the shelf if i wasn’t partaking – it’s good to see that there is hope for real-world people like me! However one question – a bit like facebook and twitter, everyone seems to be living online more and more -> my generation is the in-betweener generation. Coming up behind me are people to whom online is just second nature – do you not see a case for adapting our habits to the new habits of the world? ie: decent guys may actually be found mainly online from here on in? A bit like in the professional sphere, businesses who are not online are just left behind?
I don’t think the comments yesterday were depressing, just observations. One makes comments from one’s own life experiences. I do agree with NML’s comments about on-line dating. You need a strong ego and sense of self to deal with the many rejections and no responses you will get on the various match sites. A friend suggested I use them after my 15 year breakup — I got no responses to any of my emails and more rejections from potentials than I had in my whole dating life. Obviously fo rme, that was not the way to go. I don’t think anyone is saying meeting someone is an improbability; only that after late 40’s, 50’s,etc. the odds go way down. I think you try whatever methods to met men that are available — but it is a disposable society — and dating habits reflect that. Some of us who have been repeatedly burned are very relucatant to be “disposed of/dumped” one more time. It is difficult to remain optimistic in view of such kinds of rejections however healthy you sense of self is.
@Afoolbyanyothername That’s an interesting question. Personally, I see online dating as an option. It’s not the oracle and it’s not where all single people reside. If you can use it and have enough self awareness and general awareness to recognise that you will meet more dubious people before you get to the good stuff, unless you’re on something very niche and focused, then go for it. Using online dating will open up your options. However, where I do take objection to online dating is when people hide behind it and say it’s their *only* option or transfer poor dating habits from the ‘real’ world into the ‘virtual’ world. Lots of businesses are online and almost all will opt for some sort of presence, but plenty of businesses don’t sell online or place their reliance on it. I suggest that people do the same thing.
@stilllooking I think you have to recognise that one person’s feeling is their feeling. How you saw the comments is how you saw it, and much like in relationships, you have to be careful of inadvertently attempting to invalidate someone else’s feelings. One thing I do disagree with is this perception of being rejected online – emailing someone on a dating site doesn’t demand reciprocal attention, otherwise men would be feeling far larger amounts of rejection. To use dating sites, you have to accept that not everyone will get in touch – that’s not rejection, that’s using a dating site. The fact that there is the appearance of more choice online means it’s a case of putting yourself out there. None of these people know who you are and some may not have even read your email. That’s the reality of online dating.
That is very true. There is actually a great website I heard about called meet-up.com which you can find things to do that interest you like skiing, spirituality, hiking, etc in your area which is a great way to find and play with your passions, live life and be fulfilled and potentially meet new friends or special someone. I do understand that it’s so important to be truly fulfilled in yourself, your life, etc… etc… that’s why I am building a strong identity right now for myself and everything will fall into place. I find it challenging to break negative love habits (especially when it comes to those intense guys that I mistake for interest) … but I will… I’m in the process of trusting my gut. (Hopefully! 😉
Meetup is indeed very good. Having your own life not solely built around men is extremely important. It means you won’t act like the sun rises and sets on a guy and will also recognise those that blow hot air and detract from you.
I agree. Too often we think that ‘all the good guys are taken.’ Well, they are not. Many of my female friends have met good guys of late and I also have platonic male friends who I would say were good guys, but are not in relationships. I think women are programmed, in particularly by the media, that it’s ‘so much harder’ for females to meet a decent guy, that youth equates with beauty, that once women hit 30, or 40, or 50 etc there is no hope of having a relationship (this is rubbish, eg after my gran died my grandad married again – to a 75 year old lady who had not been married before – I don’t expect she’d ever thought she would walk down the aisle at that age, but she did).
Unfortunately the last guy I dated was Mr Wrong and EUM, but I know good guys out there and agreed, dating sites are not always the way to go. For example, my hobby is traditionally a male dominated sport and I know decent guys quite naturally through that – there’s no pressure.
Once we tell ourselves that it’s a battlefield out there, that there are so many single women fighting it out to get a man, that men can basically take their pick of the bunch – then we focus on a complete myth, not the reality. The reality is that quite a few men are also asking where they can meet decent women – there are many guys out there who want to meet a lady whose company they can enjoy and with whom they are compatible – and they don’t want botox, size zero and plastic boobs, just a normal person.
It sounds a cliche, but ideally we all need to try and focus on being happy with who we are and recognising that being in a relationship and being single both have their problems – the grass is not always greener, ideals do not generally measure up to reality – but life is precious and too short to waste.
We need to think that any guy would be lucky to have us, that we are worth being treated with respect and hold our heads up high – ladies we are worth it! 😀 🙂
Great attitude. When I was single, the core group of friends I hung with were single and we all said the same stuff – no good men to date, it’s hard, yada yada yada. The thing is, much like we choose men that reflect what we believe, we surround ourselves with people who make it easier to hold onto the beliefs. When I met someone, within a couple of years, the rest of them did. I see people in their 40s and 50s meet people all the time. There are less men to go around, but there are less women too. You’d expect that at this stage. But there are good men to date.
I’m going to leave this one alone because that type of dating is not my style. And I think people could start focusing on other areas of there lives and not worry so much about where a man or woman is missing. A partner can only do so much and they shouldn’t get in the way of other things. I love my animals and love my friends and at the moment am better off by myself. I used to not be interested in school wen i was younger. Today, i’m a very happy college student who very firmly knows what he wants and teases girls about the good apples being at the top of the tree. If they want it, they will have to climb up here to get it
Vanna, you’re absolutely right. Taking care of yourself and your own needs means you don’t make desperate love decisions.
I think you have to have realistic expectations for online dating. It has worked for me- and it has worked against me. As a single parent with a home to maintain, I cannot go kayaking at the drop of a hat. If my son was grown, I probably would not use online dating because I would have a lot more freedom to be out and about. If I was in my 20’s, I wouldn’t bother at all. My closest friends now live out of town. It is very difficult for me to meet a man the traditional way. I have recently joined several Meet-up groups and they are a lot of fun. I see this as a social network and getting myself out there to make friends. I would definitely recommend them. I’ve been divorced and on my own since 2001. I don’t think I’m being needy about wanting companionship and I don’t need a man to complete me. But I’m starting to look forward in time and I do not want to spend the rest of my life alone. I have a lot to offer the right man and will not give up as two of my closest friends seem to have. I refuse to be that jaded!
Amen! Keep the faith! Glad you are enjoying yourself. It’s not needy to desire companionship. It’s natural and human nature. It is needy to be emotionally demanding, look for people to fulfill needs that you should be doing yourself, and to look for people and relationships that validate negative beliefs. Keep doing Meetup and anything else that you enjoy – I always say anything you enjoy, it makes sense to do more of it. In time, you’ll meet someone.
If anyone has any examples of women 30+ who have found healthy, long-term, stable relationships — please share! I would love to know about these, as (like I mentioned yesterday) I really can’t think of any examples in my large circle of single female friends. Ten years on and we are ALL still looking….
30+ – God there are plenty! I suggest you branch out from your circle of single friends. It doesn’t mean don’t be their friends – it means broaden your horizons because our beliefs are reflected around us. It’s easy to believe there are no men to date when you hang around with a load of singles saying the same thing.
Online dating – yuck – tried it once after chatting awhile discovered he was a real AC. Sorry but I read body language and thats hard to do online. So ah – no thank you. What to meet a great guy – stop looking for him. I found when I started working on me and not worrying about (actually running from) involvement with some guy – they started popping up all over the place – even had to run one off. Its when I stopped looking for it – I found it and right under my nose. A few years ago I would not have thought Sparkey was my “type” -he wasn’t. My “type” were EUM/ACs. I had to change my thinking and really define what I wanted in my life. First I wrote a list of what would not do (negative qualities) and reversed it a list of attributes I did want (positive qualities) Hard to know what you want when you haven’t defined it yet. Made me look at myself to see if I was exhibiting these qualities. How could I expect a mate to have these if I did not? I am an aircraft carrier – I do turn slowly but I still turn. Its worth the effort.
Brilliant comment – very happy for you! Love the last line 😉
Hi, this is an answer to Elle’s request. Though I’m slightly jaded…lol, I have two close friends who have found love. One is moving in with her boyfriend of 14 months and the other who went on Eharmony and her very first date found the love of her life. Grrrrr….and I’ve been online dating for how long?!? It’s actually great to see and I’m hoping to change my mindset. I’ve found that I’m very shallow and Mr. Gorgeous usually turns out to be an ac. Soooo, today I received a dozen rosen from a man who is not my usual type physically but meets all my other expectations. I’m going to try to break out of my box. ; )
Michelle, I beg you to keep breaking out of the box, to chase substance, and avoid the shallow 🙂 Keep the faith !
You said this:
They often want to go from 0-180 miles per hour – you say hello at 9am and by the end of that day you’ve spoken several times and there’s already been something sexual mentioned or he’s making veiled comments about how you sound like the perfect woman for him.
I do this with everyone. I feel the need to take everything at warped speed. I think it is because I want that immediate gratification. I want then to want me, now!
Can you tell me how to change this in myself?
.-= Danielle´s last blog ..The Happiness Project Week 4 =-.
Hi Danielle. You know when you’re in a fast moving car – you don’t see what’s going on around you. You can’t take in the view. It may feel exciting, but it always has to slow down, and when it does, you might not like what you see. You make things go really fast because you’re looking for validation, big displays, and probably get off on the thrill of the chase. Instant gratification suggests being prepared to get caught up in illusions rather than build up to medium to long term happiness. You think the reward outweighs the risk. You’re looking for validation – get to the root of why you want validation and force yourself to slow down so that you can 1) get to know the real person and 2) recognise whether this is actually a person and relationship that you want. Read https://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/seeking-validation-understanding-in-your-poor-relationships-part-one/ and https://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/trading-on-your-looks-sex-appeal/ and https://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/dating-when-youre-lonely-or-feel-time-is-running-out/ and https://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/knowing-if-you-feel-good-in-new-relationships-part-one/
Elle, I was watching tv a few nights ago and this cute couple were talking about how they met. She was about 37 and he’s about 50 and divorced. They recently got engaged and are looking forward to squeezing out a kid or two while there’s still time. They seemed happy, and it sounds like she had her fair share of heartbreak in the past. Also my sister’s friend married a great guy last year at the age of 40. And her brother-in-law, another nice guy, looks set to marry soon. He’s 42 and so is his gf.
I hear stories like this all the time. Thanks for sharing.
I am a happy ending story of a 30+ woman meeting a good guy after habitually dating EUM’s. All through my dating years I chased after the EUM’s and ignored the guys who were interested in me. I always blamed the situation, the context, the country i was in at the time, or I blamed myself and considered myself damaged goods. Getting involved with a married man was the ephiphany point for me, and at the same time a friend referred me to this website by chance and that was when I started to look at things very differently.
I broke up with the guy, and with all the old hangers-on. I got myself into counsellng and I downloaded the e-book and sat at the computer in massive amounts of shame as my self-deception fell away. I stopped thinking about finding a man.
At short time later I was moving into a new work field and a friend offered to introduce me to a guy who lived nearby and worked in the field I was interested in. I was nervous because he could be a potential employer, but eager to meet him. We met for coffee, which turned into drinks and then dinner. I got the feeling he was interested in me personally, and whilst I felt like a friendship might be possible, good even, I wasnt interested in him. He was 17 years older than me, and away with his work quite a lot. The age difference, the weeks of work away, and other things were all red flags I paid attention to for the first time. But our friendship continued to develop. What he lacked in looks he made up for in intelligence, but there was no chemistry. He was patient and not pushy, but it became clear to me that we were moving more into dating than hanging out as friends. I though about it a lot – we had become good friends quite quickly, and despite the red flags waving around things I had made mistakes about before, he treated me with respect and most importantly he treated himself and his friends with respect. I set boundaries and he acknowledged them and respected them. He got cranky with me one time when I did not respect his boundaries, and I knew he would not be a pushover.
One day he played a song for me, the chorus of which was “I’ll adjust this lust for a friend I can trust” and I immediately knew I wanted to be better friends with him. I knew that I wanted to be his best friend and he mine. The attraction still wasn’t quite there, but it seemed to be less important. And so, a few months after first meeting, we got together. The physical attraction side of things developed after trust had been established. The friendship has continued to deepen into love, and a year and a half later I still feel like I did in the beginning, wanting our friendship to continue, wanting to be each other’s best friend, still showing each other respect and communicating our love with actions rather than words. I’m 39 and I thought it would never happen. He is 56, divorced and had been single with the occasional short-term affair for 10 years. He also thought that his days of romance were over. I guess you never can tell.
.-= j´s last blog ..Vexatious to the spirit =-.
Amen! What a *brilliant* story – thank you!
There is no easy answer to this dilemma,it’s a very tricky one. Do we make our own luck? Do we attract the positive and negative into our lives by our mindset at a given moment? Perhaps, but I’m afraid I’m a bit sceptical because it does seem simplistic.Many people say “I met my guy when I stopped doing this and started doing that”.etc etc. And good for them! But more of us, despite stopping and starting the same things,don’t seem to scoop the big prize,or even a small one. So I think it depends on a lot more than our mindset and lifestyle, though I do agree that we must be positive and live a balanced life. Luck, age,attraction,location – they’re all part of the deal. And I completely agree with the people who swear by attraction. There has to be some spark,otherwise it’s going nowhere and you’re only leading some poor guy up the path to la la land and feeling crappy and guilty in the process. As for location, while the big cities might be crawling with players, there’s very little action in the small towns.Very shallow dating pools there!
So though on line dating is far from ideal, it’s very often the only option. I’ve made a lot of very positive changes to my life in the last year.I go out there and mix.I’m attractive,fun and successful but I never come accross anyone interesting to date. And I want to date so it has to be online.That doesn’t mean I’m closing doors to meeting someone in a natural way in the real world, but it does give me more options and a feeling that I have some control over my love life or lack of. True, the majority are eum but anecdotal evidence suggests there are some decent ones there too.As NML says, we have to operate a very strict door policy.
As someone else said,we’ve all had relationships and chances are we’ll get one again at some stage if we’re anywhere on the right side of 80, so no point in over fretting.Sometimes easier said than done,I know, but we might as well try to relax and enjoy wherever we’re at in life. Anything really is possible!
I love your comments Kay. I’m going to suggest what I said to one of my mum’s friends after a number of dating disasters – stop looking for spark, start looking for substance and being treated well and the rest will follow. ‘Spark’ is actually another term for fireworks, passion, chemistry, attraction – all things that people who end up with dubious partners look for from the outset. Even though they end up with a load of headache because the person creates ‘spark’ because it caters to their dysfucntion, they stay because there is spark, but often for the wrong reasons. Genuine relationships, with the ability to last and grow into something of substance with love, care, trust, and respect, which also includes passion and feeling attracted to one another, need a hell of a lot more than spark. People who focus on chemistry, passion, chemistry, attraction, and spark find that the relationship doesn’t build and expect instant results and instant gratification. People who take the other route and let things build up and grow, discover substance that feels very attractive and creates genuine attraction on healthy principles.
The tone of this column, and the related blogs, is decidedly different and upbeat. I will take from this column the “meet-up.com” advice, and try that out next. It is always nice, and affirming, to read positive stories about people beyond their 20s and 30s meeting up with one another and making something work.
I will endeavor to persevere.
.-= Res Judicata´s last blog ..Myth: There Are No Good Men to Date (Especially when online dating) – Part 2 =-.
I think it is important to realize that you need to hook up by your 30’s or early 40’s and understand that in your 50’s and 60’s, like competition for jobs, the scale is not tipped in your favor for meeting men. This was advice I received in my 20’s and I didn’t follow it. I never had problem meeting men until now. Like I mentioned before, it’s a disposable society, and technololgy has allowed a “dumping” process that would have been inconceivable years ago. I was shocked to the core by the callousness of how I was cast aside. Not all relationships work out, of course, but kindness in telling a person is much preferable to abrupt disappearance. Comparing stories with other women made me realize that this was the norm, not the exception. None of the 60 year old+ friends and acquaintances, all divorced in their 50’s whether it was by their choice or not, and all of whom wanted to meet up wth someone for a permanent relationship, were successful. How sad it that? And these are some of the kindest, generous, most compassionate women I have had the honor to know. I don’t know what is wrong these days, perhaps a learned inability to perceive past the immediate.
What you said about the job market and dating is very accurate. Also people don’t like confrontation or having to break up with someone who they don’t feel that they are in a relationship with. I don’t doubt that these women are “the kindest, generous, most compassionate women [you] have had the honor to know” but as many women can attest to, those qualities don’t always play out so well, if you’re too kind, an overgiver, and too compassionate. Even if you’re not the latter, how we see friends and who they are in relationships are often two different things, plus there is more to relationships than these three qualities. All we can ever speak for is our own experience.
Good for you Res!
The online dating world is tricky. Somehow, though, it seems to help grease the wheels. I’ve noticed that when I ramp up my online dating, my activity in the real dating world (even if it’s just flirting with boys) increases. But I’ve found there are just as many EUMs in one world as in the other. As a good friend of mine says, “It’s a numbers game.” And as another good friend of mine says, “Finding someone is like finding a parking space. All it takes is one.”
.-= Tara´s last blog ..Mr. Unavailable #28.5: The Pseudo-Return =-.
Thanks for making me giggle! Yes, their are a lot of emotionally unavailable men online (and off). Online dating allows for distance and creating a persona that would not happen in the real world.
Kay
Your mindset is limiting yourself to just online, you say that you “you never meet anyone interesting out and online seems like the only option”… perhaps, you need to surrender because the truth is whether you are online, or out in the real world you truly have no control either way. When you try and shove love in, when you want it, how you want it, etc… etc… it will work against you. I am no expert, but I know the key to finding love is doing what you truly love in your life and all else does follow, it is easy because the universe operates like that. If you can take or leave it, when you can set it free, it does come to you. I’m not saying you are desperate or anything, you seem to have a great attitude, you want love in your life and are trying to do the best you can to make it happen. You go out to these mix and mingles, etc… why not try something you never tried, get adventureous and do things differently, you may find love.
Online dating, whilst it can be helpful, has created a perception of instant results, instant gratification, a neverending supply, and an inaccurate perception of compatibility and common interests. Unless you have incredibly good love habits and strong sense of awareness, that shopping list of requirements and your profile, just let’s you go out and look for more people, more problems. Looking for love is hard work. When I looked for it, I came up against problem after problem. When I let things be, I met someone. When I did, it was at a time when I genuinely felt that I would rather be on my own than be with someone that detracted from me. I realised I could be happy with or without a man because I had my own life not built around finding men or being with one.
In agreement with the first post, using online is simply a form of communication. There’s more to online than dating sites though, and so long as you are working on the core issues about yourself and you have a life that is good as it is then you’ll already have the tools to avoid idiots – one hopes. After all, is a BAR a good place to meet someone who might have a drink problem? Yep. Like it or not the world is becoming more digital, what has to be kept in mind is that YOU choose where you are looking for maybe don’t swim in polluted waters in the first place.
I wouldn’t have been attracted to the guy I am seeing – and huge rockets didn’t go off with him, but over time things are becoming more natural and as they do I am finding more to like, without drama. I met him via mutual rl friends on the internet… so far, actions are proving louder than words so maybe this IS the future of relationships. We’ll just need to evolve some new social skills to deal with it.
Good to hear from you Butterfly. It’s taken me about 2 weeks to get caught up to this point with comments. Great to hear that you’ve met someone and that you’ve also let go of the anger 🙂 The key is giving it time instead of expecting instant fireworks and gratification. Thanks for sharing.
After a year of partaking in the online dating business, I decided to shut delete my profile (which, btw, was paid).
It was meant with a lot of disappointment. If you’re wondering what site I was on, well it’s e-harmony — guess I got suckered into the commercials. Anyway, I spoke to a few guys that I found interesting. I liked the site because they were sending me matches rather then me ‘shopping’ for what would eventually become my type anyway.
Needless to say, this failed too.
I’m quite confused by these articles because you do say that they are out there and I believe it. However am I to understand that if the guy fits “my type” then I should run the other way? I think I have a handle on the not going for the unavailable’s and assclowns. I think my type has changed quite a bit. I’m going for guys I would never have considered. Problem is, I don’t get a second date out of it, which is very disappointing.
I am interested to read the article on older men as that is what I seem to be attracting these days.
If you have a ‘type’, I’d be very worried. You’ll find the great majority of people who have a type and are not with that ‘type’ – it’s a toxic type. Online dating in itself means that you are opening yourself up to going on more first dates that don’t progress. Not everyone on dating sites is looking for love or a relationship – even if they say they are, they do so because they probably get a better quality of ‘candidate’ by saying they’re looking for a relationship. Also it’s good to check that you’re actually going out with these guys because you’re genuinely interested and open to the possibilities, as opposed to playing The Polar Opposites Game and ‘experimenting’ and dating down. People (both male and female) can sense when you’re dating them as a settling option.
Elle –
I am in a happy relationship with a great man who I met at a party. I am over 40. I tried online dating for years, finally let life be and he just walked in!
I attended a lovely wedding last year for my friend who met her husband on E-harmony – She is in her fifties and he, too. He is a lovely man.
Ah, that made me smile! Glad you’re enjoying life whilst letting it be x
In addition, my previously divorced father and step-mother had known each other for quite a few years, and they got together when they were in their mid-50’s and 10 years later are still together. Widowed friends of theirs who met each other through community organisations got together in their 60’s… My mother worked in a low care aged housing village and ‘friendships’ regularly developed between the singles in there.
.-= j´s last blog ..Clench =-.
Yep, it really is possible. Most of my aunts who have had their share of man trouble, met their guys in their 40s and 50s.