I’ve been trying out online dating for a couple of years now since my last break-up. To put it very bluntly, I haven’t had a lot of luck lately. Maybe some of it is me and my expectations, but I’ve grown to dislike online dating. I don’t mean to sound cynical and negative, but it just hasn’t produced a lot of effective and positive results for me and left me wondering: does online dating work?
I’ve been out on some dates with some good-looking and interesting women, don’t get me wrong. Some have been ok, and others have been, well… forgettable. Guys — I feel your pain. I know that women probably deal with similar frustrations while dating guys. It’s difficult to find the right fit in your love life, and nobody really wants to settle. The only real positive that I can take from my personal dating disasters is realizing how lucky I am so far to have the freedom to date whenever and whoever I want to, and it gave me some dating practice and experience with a variety of different women and dating situations.
Personally, I like to weed out my options on dating sites first. I may be interested in 2 percent of a large pool of potential dates. Out of that 2 percent, I will schedule the dates, and so far I’ve had terrible luck, but I’m always optimistic. I’m one of those guys who had some luck with meeting attractive, interesting, and cool women on some social networks, but distance is a factor. The friendships that I’ve formed with some women on social networks have encouraged me to ‘keep chugging along’ like a Choo-choo Train with my dating life. We will go over some common dating frustrations that most men deal with while online dating.
She doesn’t return your message
Obviously, guys tend to be attracted to certain photos of women. Otherwise, why would there be profile photos on dating profiles in the first place? It’s superficial, but it’s the way it is. Let’s say that I’m checking you out, your profile photo looks hot to me, and I decide to break the ice with you (it takes some courage to do this, after all). I send you the initial message, “Hey, I like your profile. What do you like to do for fun?” After finally getting the nerve to send the message after weeding you out from the pack of the other 98 percent, I receive no reply whatsoever. This is common with online dating, because certain women (of the very attractive variety) would rather not reply to you, than tell you bluntly that you look ugly to them, and they’d never want to go out with you, let alone have sex with you. In other words, this is my way of a writer of not being narcissistic and instead humble about this fact, and I can confidently say that there are certain women out there who don’t find me attractive at all. They are most likely crazy lunatics, but I know — what a mighty blow to my ego!
But here’s the thing — I do it to women as well. I think that everyone is like this. We all have different aesthetic tastes in things, looks are subjective, what one person finds attractive may not necessarily be attractive to another person. Therefore, I do this as well, so I’m not going to blame those women who shot me down — even before the first date. Everyone inevitably gets rejected in some form or another. After all, we’re all human beings searching for love on this planet.
She looks nothing like her profile pic
I’ve had some experience with this. The woman looks nothing like her profile photo, and not only that, but her perfume is very strong and smells bad! Sometimes while I’m out on these dates, I secretly want to hold my phone up to her face, and say, “Is this you?” I don’t mean to sound rude, but I also felt misled, and drove out to the middle of nowhere to meet up with her for our date.
This is common. Some women will either use fake photos or old photos that aren’t recent (say… from a decade ago) to get dates with men. I think that it’s important to use recent photos of yourself on dating sites and real ones, so that you are being a truthful and genuine person. It was valuable dating practice for myself, but it was also a waste of time and gas money, because she wasn’t being real about her profile photos on the dating site. “Do you want to go out again?” She asked. “Uh… No… I don’t think so. I’ll be busy at home deleting your number from my phone.” I didn’t really say this, but you get the drift.
I’ve used a good technique to avoid potential disasters in the future — you try to get her name before the date, and you covertly Facebook stalk her. After doing so, you know what you’re getting into, and how you can expect her to truly look on the date. I actually learned this from a woman who I went out with on a date, because she Facebook stalked me before the date, and I ‘made the cut’ with my voice (after being screened on her voicemail) and she liked my photos, but it didn’t really work out with her for other various reasons… I’d rather not go into this now. We had fun, and she enjoyed the multiple glasses of wine on my bill, while checking out the waiter with her drifting eyes.
She stands you up
I had a first date with a woman at a local coffee shop, and I kind of liked her after having a good time with her, and it seemed like we were hitting it off. Overall, it seemed like a good first date to me. I proceeded to schedule our next date. I decided that we could meet up at the mall (no big deal), we could walk around, have a casual conversation and fun date, go shopping, etc. She didn’t show up! After apologizing to me over text, I gave her a second chance, because she reaffirmed that she still really likes me, and wants to go out with me again. After having a pleasant and comical texting conversation and kind of ‘laughing it off’, (as she felt really bad about it and she seemed apologetic), I decided to reschedule our date, because I’m a flexible guy, and can be patient.
The next date was going to be outside at a local restaurant, the mood was set, there was pleasant live music distilling into the atmosphere, the sun was shining bright outside on the patio as it was going to set to dusk, it was going to be a perfect date outside in the sunshine and one to remember…. One for the ages! Well, I remembered it, because she didn’t show up again (and didn’t even consider to call me about it). After some reluctance, and while slowly losing my patience and mind, I rescheduled the date, thinking that this surely wouldn’t happen again. Yet, she didn’t show up again, and gave me some lame excuse! Then I decided to throw in the towel with her politely, after she told me that ‘she isn’t ready to date yet’, which really means (in Womanese), ‘I want to date. Just not you’. I wanted to go home and bang my head against the wall… How could dating be so lousy for me? It’s not even lousy — it’s blousy — and I don’t even know what that means!
She lives too far away
This problem is common for me. Sometimes I think that if I lived in California or the UK or somewhere like that, I’d do fine with my love life and relationships. The reason is because I often connect and have abundant chemistry with women who are too far away for me to realistically date. It’s a fun process of getting to know them, but ultimately it leads to doom for myself. I have wonderful and sparkly connections with them, they are physically attractive, and I’d love to take them out on some dates, yet there’s only one tiny issue — they live on another continent, or in another state or country… Lucky me.
Location is one of the most crucial prerequisites for dating, unless you find yourself lucky enough to find a woman who will ‘save herself for you’ until you inevitably meet in reality. Good luck with that, mate! Just ask the other handsome men texting her, or knocking at her door.
Does online dating work? Who knows. I am not ashamed to say that I’ve been rejected, stood-up, and I’ve had dates that were forgettable or a complete and utter meltdown. After some dates that don’t work out, I can just bang my head against the wall, or go to bed in painful disgust, but I will wake up the next day with the warm sunshine beaming on my face, dust myself off like a cowboy, and declare, “NEXT!” And maybe one day I’ll get what I truly want in this messy virtual reality.
